“Let’s Review.” A Look at the Effects of Re-teaching Basic Mathematic Skills

In this action research study of my classroom of 8th grade mathematics, I investigated the effect of reviewing basic fraction and decimal skills on student achievement and student readiness for freshman Algebra. I also investigated the effect on the quality of student work, with regards to legibility by having students grade each other’s work anonymously. I discovered that students need basic skill review with fractions and decimals, and by the end of the research their scores improved. However, their handwriting had not. At the end of the research, a majority of the students felt the review was important, and they were ready to take math next year in high school. As a result of this research, I plan to implement weekly fraction and decimal review assignments in all middle school grades: 6th, 7th, and 8th. In addition, fraction and decimals must be incorporated into daily assignments, where appropriate, in order to encourage students to retain these skills.

A REVISIONARY APPROACH TO CROSS-CURRICULAR LITERACY WORK

In this dissertation, I use qualitative research methods to study relationships between compositionists and faculty in other disciplines in the context of cross-curricular literacy (CCL) work. Drawing on a two-year CCL project in the biology department, for which I was a participant observer, I argue that compositionists need to attend more carefully to issues that influence day-to-day interactions with disciplinary faculty in order to develop more meaningful CCL relationships. Toward that end, I offer a revisionary approach to cross-curricular literacy work that cultivates complex relationships by delaying consensus and embracing disconnection and disorientation. More specifically, I employ revisionary stance as a discursive strategy to complicate three key concepts in CCL literature and scholarship—expertise, change, and outcomes. I re-vision three texts produced during my time in the biology department in order to illuminate the complexities of negotiating expertise, recognizing change, and pursuing outcomes in CCL contexts. Given the reciprocal relationship between discursive and material change (Lee), I maintain that revision of CCL discourse can inspire revision on a pedagogical level, shaping how compositionists and disciplinary faculty participate in CCL interactions. Thus, a revisionary approach leads me to conceptualize revisionary pedagogy for cross-curricular literacy work. I theorize revisionary pedagogy as a means of fostering pedagogical relationships in CCL contexts, complicating how relationships are framed in traditional Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines scholarship. The literature advances three main conceptual models of CCL, each of which embraces expertise, change, and outcomes in ways that sponsor potentially problematic relationships between compositionists and disciplinary faculty. I draw on Composition scholars’ rich conceptualization of revision (Jung; Lee; Welch) and pedagogy (Kameen; Qualley; Stenberg) to challenge the litany of next-best models and imagine alternative possibilities for relationships in CCL contexts. Revisionary pedagogy is a means of approaching material circumstances that reconstitutes how compositionists and disciplinary faculty conceive of and participate in CCL relationships.

Challenges of Students’ Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) in Library and Information Science in the ICT Environment

The ICT revolution has permeated every profession and all areas of human endeavour. Professions such as law, medicine , engineering, and library and information science are adjusting to the ICT environment through re-tooling, retraining, and curriculum revision. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of ICT on the student industrial work experience scheme (SIWES) of library and information science students. It traces the historical development of the scheme, the ICT development trends in LIS, and the challenges this development brings to SIWES. Strategies to absorb this shock created by ICT are offered.

THE ORGANISATION OF RABBIT CONTROL (Oryctolagus cuniculus) IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

ABSTRACT: Under Western Australian legislation, landholders have an obligation to control rabbits on their properties; local authorities the responsibility to supervise their work whilst the Agriculture Protection Board has a Statewide supervisory and co-ordination role. Prior to 1950 (when the Agriculture Protection Board was formed) the central role was in the hands of a Government department which, through lack of staff and money was unable to provide adequate supervision, and rabbits were in plague proportions. Since 1950, the Board has actively engaged in a vigorous policy aimed at tighter control and supervision. To enable this, the Board has entered into a voluntary scheme with local authorities whereby the role of local supervision of landholders is passed to staff employed by the Board, but jointly financed by the local authority and the Board. A contract poisoning service is also pro¬vided by the Agriculture Protection Board to any landholder who is unable or unwilling, to meet his obligations in this area. Both services are subsidised. Two of the major reasons for the poor level of control existing before 1950, have thereby been minimised. Soon after its formation, the Board set up a research section which has devoted nearly all of its activities to applied research on control of the State's many vertebrate pest problems. In the rabbit control area, poisoning has received most attention. The "One-Shot" method of poisoning was developed after years of research. Fumigation is at present being closely studied as is the economics of complete eradication from some areas of the State. Greatest needs in the applied rabbit research field at present are: (1) a selective poison, or poisoning regime, which will not harm stock, and (2) a more complete understanding of the economics of control and eradication. The serious rabbit problem which existed in 1950 has been reduced to very small proportions, by organisational development using local research findings. These organisational developments have been implemented by circumvention rather than confrontation.