Leading indigenous education in a remote location : reflections on teaching to be "proud and deadly"

This thesis is a critical reflection of the author’s time as a Principal of an Indigenous state school from 2003-2004. The purpose is to reassess the impact of her principalship in terms of the staff, students and Community change that affected learning outcomes at the school and to reanalyse to what actions and to whom positive changes could be attributed. This thesis reflects and identifies, in light of the literature, strategies which were effective in enhancing student learning outcomes. The focus of this thesis was the Doongal State School*, its students, staff and facilities. The author will attempt to draw out theoretical frameworks in terms of: (1) what changed educationally in Doongal State School, (2) what seemed to be important in the Principal’s role, (3) the processes that took place, and (4) the effect of being non- Indigenous and a female. Overall, the author undertook this critical reflection in order to understand and embrace educational practices that will (a) lessen the gap between the academic outcomes achieved by Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and (b) enhance life choices for Indigenous children. The findings indicate that principal leadership is critical for success in Indigenous schools and is the centrepiece of the models developed to explain improvement at Doongal State School. School factors, Principal Leadership factors, Change factors and factors relating to being a non-Indigenous female principal, which, when implemented, will lead to improved educational outcomes for Indigenous students, have evolved as a result of this thesis. Principal Leadership factors were found to be the enablers for the effective implementation of the key components for success.

A novella of ideas : how interactive new media art can effectively communicate an indigenous philosophical concept

How interactive new media art can effectively communicate an indigenous philosophical concept. The sophistication and complexity of the philosophical concept concerning relationships between land and people and between people, intrinsic to the laws and customs of Australian Indigenous society, has begun to be communicated and accessed beyond the realm of anthropological and ethnological domains of Western scholarship. The exciting scope and rapid development of new media arts presents an innovative means of creating an interactive relationship with the general Australian public, addressing the urgent need for an understanding of Indigenous Australian concepts of relationship to land, and to each other, absent from Western narratives. The study is framed by an Indigenous concept of place, and relationships between land and people and between people; and explores how this concept can be clearly communicated through interactive new media arts. It involves: a creative project, the development of an interactive new media art project, a website work-in-progress titled site\sight\cite; and an exegesis, a Novella of Ideas, on the origins, influences, objectives, and potential of creative practices and processes engaged in the creative project. Research undertaken for the creative project and exegesis extended my creative practice into the use of interdisciplinary arts, expressly for the expression of philosophical concepts, consolidating 23 years experience in Indigenous community arts development. The creative project and exegesis contributes to an existing body of Indigenous work in a range of areas - including education, the arts and humanities - which bridges old and new society in Australia. In this study, old and new society is defined by the time of the initial production of art and foundations of knowledge, in the country of its origins, in Indigenous Australia dating back at least 40,000 years.

Introducing a Business Process and Software Centric Approach for Enterprise System Teaching

To meet new challenges of Enterprise Systems that essentially go beyond the initial implementation, contemporary organizations seek employees with business process experts with software skills. Despite a healthy demand from the industry for such expertise, recent studies reveal that most Information Systems (IS) graduates are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of modern organizations. This paper shares insights and experiences from a course that is designed to provide a business process centric view of a market leading Enterprise System. The course, designed for both undergraduate and graduate students, uses two common business processes in a case study that employs both sequential and explorative exercises. Student feedback gained through two longitudinal surveys across two phases of the course demonstrates promising signs of the teaching approach.

Will they know enough? Pre-service primary teachers' knowledge base for teaching intergrated social sciences

A significant issue in primary teacher education is developing a knowledge base which prepares teachers to teach in a range of subject areas. In Australia, the problem in primary social science education is compounded by the integrated nature of the key learning area of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE). Recent debates on teaching integrated social sciences omit discussions on the knowledge base for teaching. In this paper, a case study approach is used to investigate primary pre-service teachers’ approaches to developing a knowledge base in designing a SOSE curriculum unit. Data from five teacher-educators who taught primary SOSE curriculum indicates that novice teachers’ subject content knowledge, as revealed through their curriculum planning, lacked a disciplinary basis. However, understanding of inquiry learning, which is fundamental to social science education, was much stronger. This paper identifies a gap in the scholarship on teaching integrated social science and illustrates the need to support and develop primary teachers’ disciplinary knowledge in teacher education.

An adaptable framework for the teaching and assessment of software development across year levels

Few frameworks exist for the teaching and assessment of programming subjects that are coherent and logical. Nor are they sufficiently generic and adaptable to be used outside the particular tertiary institutions in which they were developed. This paper presents the Teaching and Assessment of Software Development (TASD) frame-work. We describe its development and implementation at an Australian university and demonstrate, with examples, how it has been used, with supporting data. Extracts of criteria sheets (grading rubrics) for a variety of assessment tasks are included. The numerous advantages of this new framework are discussed with comparisons made to those reported in the published literature.

Teaching and learning in a context-based chemistry classroom

Many current chemistry programs privilege de-contextualised conceptual learning, often limited by a narrow selection of pedagogies that too often ignore the realities of studentse own lives and interests (e.g., Tytler, 2007). One new approach that offers hope for improving studentse engagement in learning chemistry and perceived relevance of chemistry is the context-based approach. This study investigated how teaching and learning occurred in one year 11 context-based chemistry classroom. Through an interpretive methodology using a case study design, the teaching and learning that occurred during one term (ten weeks) of a unit on Water Quality are described. The researcher was a participant observer in the study who co-designed the unit of work with the teacher. The research questions explored the structure and implementation of the context-based approach, the circumstances by which students connected concepts and context in the context-based classroom and the outcome of the approach for the students and the teacher. A dialectical sociocultural theoretical framework using the dialectics of structure | agency and agency | passivity was used as a lens to explore the interactions between learners in different fields, such as the field of the classroom and the field of the local community. The findings of this study highlight the difficulties teachers face when implementing a new pedagogical approach. Time constraints and opportunities for students to demonstrate a level of conceptual understanding that satisfied the teacher, hindered a full implementation of the approach. The study found that for high (above average) and sound (average) achieving students, connections between sanctioned science content of school curriculum and the studentse out-of-school worlds were realised when students actively engaged in fields that contextualised inquiry and gave them purpose for learning. Fluid transitions or the toing and froing between concepts and contexts occurred when structures in the classroom afforded students the agency to connect concepts and contexts. The implications for teaching by a context-based approach suggest that keeping the context central, by teaching content on a "need-to-know" basis, contextualises the chemistry for students. Also, if teachers provide opportunities for student-student interactions and written work student learning can improve.

Internationalising the curriculum : attending to cultural diversity in teaching and learning across three faculties at QUT

This was a two-year project focusing on internationalising the curriculum within the context of the QUT Graduate Capabilities and teaching and learning issues within three Faculties. It was based on the assumption that there is an increased need for social and cultural responsiveness in curriculum that intersects local, national and global contexts and priorities. The Internationalising the Curriculum Project sought to challenge and support staff (academic and general) and students to engage with complex concepts of identity, values, awareness and sensitivity as they relate to internationalising the curriculum. The project took a case study approach to planning, implementation and evaluation in a way that complements and enhances platforms developed and emerging from the Indigenous Perspectives and cultural diversity projects already underway in Education, Creative Industries and QUT, Carseldine.

Dramatic teaching : focussing on drama, theatre, and performance in higher education

This 90 minute panel session is designed to explore issues relating to the teaching of drama, performance studies, and theatre studies within Higher Education. Some of the issues that will be raised include: developing an understanding of the learning that students believe they are experiencing through performance; contemporary models for teaching; and the suggestion that the body can be an important site for acquiring a variety of different knowledges. Paul Makeham will present a general position paper to commence the session (15 minutes). Maryrose Casey, Gillian Kehoul, and Delyse Ryan will each speak briefly (15 minutes) about aspects of their research into Higher Education teaching before opening the floor for a round-table discussion of issues affecting the teaching of these disciplines.

Teaching crabs to walk straight : is there a place for ethics education in Malaysian accountancy courses?

Recent releases from the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) highlight the importance of ethics education. Academic institutions employ varying methods of teaching ethics and place varying levels of emphasis on ethics teaching during a business/accounting degree. This paper attempts to evaluate whether teaching ethics to final year accountancy students is beneficial. At the commencement of a semester 85 final year accounting students were given five ethical scenarios on which to make an ethical decision. During the semester they were subject to two different methods of teaching ethics, a traditional lecture/tutorial process and a group assignment. ----- After a significant gap, students were re-presented with the ethical scenarios and asked what action they now considered appropriate. In all five instances students offered a more ethical response the second time. When asked to evaluate the methodologies the students considered both training methods to have a positive effect on their ethical thinking. The results suggest it is beneficial to include ethics teaching in accountancy courses, if the profession’s goal of ethical practitioners is to be achieved.

Place value, multiplicativity, reunitizing and effective classroom teaching of decimal numeration

Student understanding of decimal number is poor (e.g., Baturo, 1998; Behr, Harel, Post & Lesh, 1992). This paper reports on a study which set out to determine the cognitive complexities inherent in decimal-number numeration and what teaching experiences need to be provided in order to facilitate an understanding of decimal-number numeration. The study gave rise to a theoretical model which incorporated three levels of knowledge. Interview tasks were developed from the model to probe 45 students’ understanding of these levels, and intervention episodes undertaken to help students construct the baseline knowledge of position and order (Level 1 knowledge) and an understanding of multiplicative structure (Level 3 knowledge). This paper describes the two interventions and reports on the results which suggest that helping students construct appropriate mental models is an efficient and effective teaching strategy.

Art and the sublime : the paradox of indeterminacy unknowing and (dis)orientation in the presentation of the unpresentable

the (dis)orientation of thought in its encounter with art can be understood as the direct result of an encounter with indeterminacy as a lack in meaning. As an artist I am aware of how this indeterminacy impacts on the perceived value and authority of the artistic voice and in particular its value as a research voice. This paper explores this indeterminacy of meaning, as a profound and disturbing unknowing characteristic of the sublime and argues its value to advanced thought and for any methodological understanding of practice-led research. Lyotard described the sublime as an ‘understanding’ through which art and its associated practices may be able to resist an all too easy assimilation by the public as just a consumer commodity. His thought represents an attempt to both politically and philosophically understand art’s, and particularly abstract painting’s, affect as a state of profound and positive unknowing. To talk of the sublime in art is to speak of the suspension of any comfortable certainty in being and instead to engage with the real as a limit to meaning and knowing. It is to talk of the presentation of the unpresentable as a momentary but significant dissolution of representation. This understanding of the sublime is then further explored through the cultural phenomena of the monochrome painting and applied to the work of the two contemporary artists, Franz Erhard Walter and Günter Umberg. Initially the monochrome was understood as an attempt to go beyond traditional representation and present the unpresentable. In the one hundred years or so since that initial move this understanding has broadened. The monochrome now presents itself as a genre or even project within visual art but it still has much to teach us. In the concretely abstract and performative artworks of Franz Erhard Walter and Günter Umberg, traces of this ambition remain and their work can be seen to pose questions probing our understandings and experiences of artistic meaning, its value and the real.

Teaching cause-of-death certification : lessons from international experience

The accuracy of cause-of-death statistics substantially depends on the quality of cause-of-death information in death certificates, primarily completed by medical doctors. Deficiencies in cause-of-death certification have been observed across the world, and over time. Despite educational interventions targeting to improve the quality of death certification, their intended impacts are rarely evaluated. This review aims to provide empirical evidence that could guide the modification of existing educational programs, or the development of new interventions, which are necessary to improve the capacity of certifiers as well as the quality of cause-of-death certification, and thereby, the quality of mortality statistics.