Adolescence: A useful concept for this millennium

‘Adolescence’ has become increasingly recognised as a nebulous concept. Previous conceptualisations of adolescence have adopted a ‘deficit’ view, regarding teenagers as ‘unfinished’ adults. The deficit view of adolescence is highly problematic in an era where adulthood itself is difficult to define. The terms ‘kidult’ or ‘adultescent’ have emerged to describe adult-age people whose interests and priorities match those of their teenage counterparts. Rather than relying on ‘lock-step’ models of physical, cognitive and social growth put forward by developmental psychology, adolescence can be more usefully defined by looking at the common experiences of people in their teenage years. Common experiences arise at an institutional level; for example, all adolescents are treated as the same by legal and education systems. The transition from primary to secondary schooling is a milestone for all children, exposing them to a new type of educational environment. Shared experiences also arise from generational factors. Today’s adolescents belong to the millennial generation, characterised by technological competence, global perspectives, high susceptibility to media influence, individualisation and rapid interactions. This generation focuses on teamwork, achievement, modesty and good conduct, and has great potential for significant collective accomplishments. These generational factors challenge educators to provide relevant learning experiences for today’s students. Many classrooms still utilise textbook-based pedagogy more suited to previous generations, resulting in disengagement among millennial students. Curriculum content must also be tailored to generational needs. The rapid pace of change, as well as the fluidity of identity created by dissolving geographical and vocational boundaries, mean that the millennial generation will need more than a fixed set of skills and knowledge to enter adulthood. Teachers must enable their students to think like ‘expert novices’, adept at assimilating new concepts in depth and prepared to engage in lifelong learning.

I-Spi: innovative shared practical ideas: a support guide for literacy and numeracy in the early years of schooling, for home tutor/supervisors in distance education

Innovative Shared Practical Ideas (I-Spi) is a guide to help you and your children learn together. It is designed to affirm, support and strengthen your role as home tutor/supervisors in your daily learning sessions with your children. In this guide particular emphasis is given to the value of talk, formal and informal early literacy and numeracy practices (including ideas from distance school lessons, from home tutor/supervisors, research, and beyond), assessment of these practices together with informal assessment ideas for gauging your children’s literacy and numeracy progress, and stepping in and building on strategies

The handbook of physical education

What is the current condition of the field of physical education? How has it adapted to the rise of kinesiology, sport and exercise science and human movement studies over the last thirty years? This Handbook provides an authoritative critical overview of the field and identifies future challenges and directions. The Handbook is divided in to six parts: - Perspectives and Paradigms in Physical Education Pedagogy Research; - Cross-disciplinary Contributions to Research on Physical Education; - Learners and Learning in Physical Education; - Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education in Physical Education; - Physical Education Curriculum; - Difference and Diversity in Physical Education. This benchmark work is essential reading for educators and students in the field of physical education.

Establishing a zone where technology innovation is supported

Learning technologies are now a ubiquitous force in the higher education sector however we continue to pursue more inventive ways to use them for teaching and learning. Many teaching academics that seek to be innovative do not have access to a supportive technology innovation zone. The aim of this study was to investigate the articulated staff development needs of academics involved in a faculty based technology innovation project and create the conditions that would cultivate innovation. The study sought to find out how academics perceived they might best be assisted through their technology innovation process so that participants’ needs were incorporated into planning. A questionnaire was used to elicit background information about the academics’ experience, skills and self diagnosed skill deficits in this context. Participants were also requested to provide information about how they thought they would best acquire the skills given their time and other resource constraints. A modified Delphi Technique was utilised to achieve some consensus on what academics required to support technology innovation. Complemented by an enabling and empowering team based approach, the academics were provided with an innovation zone to achieve significant goals for the project.

A reflexive course for Masters students to understand and plan their own continuing professional development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is seen as a vital part of a professional engineer’s career, by professional engineering institutions as well as individual engineers. Factors such as ever-changing workforce requirements and rapid technological change have resulted in engineers no longer being able to rely just on the skills they learnt at university or can pick up on the job; they must undergo a structured professional development with clear objectives to develop further professional knowledge, values and skills. This paper presents a course developed for students undertaking a Master of Engineering or Master of Project Management at the University of Queensland. This course was specifically designed to help students plan their continuing professional development, while developing professional skills such as communication, ethical reasoning, critical judgement and the need for sustainable development. The course utilised a work integrated learning pedagogy applied within a formal learning environment, and followed the competency based chartered membership program of Engineers Australia, the peak professional body of engineers in Australia. The course was developed and analysed using an action learning approach. The main research question was “Can extra teaching and learning activities be developed that will simulate workplace learning?” The students continually assessed and reflected upon their current competencies, skills and abilities, and planed for the future attainment of specific competencies which they identified as important to their future careers. Various evaluation methods, including surveys before and after the course, were used to evaluate the action learning intervention. It was found that the assessment developed for the course was one of the most important factors, not only in driving student learning, as is widely accepted, but also in changing the students’ understandings and acceptance of the need for continuous professional development. The students also felt that the knowledge, values and skills they developed would be beneficial for their future careers, as they were developed within the context of their own professional development, rather than to just get through the course. © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

Understanding technology integration in secondary mathematics: Theorising the role of the teacher

Previous research on computers and graphics calculators in mathematics education has examined effects on curriculum content and students’ mathematical achievement and attitudes while less attention has been given to the relationship between technology use and issues of pedagogy, in particular the impact on teachers’ professional learning in specific classroom and school environments. This observation is critical in the current context of educational policy making, where it is assumed – often incorrectly – that supplying schools with hardware and software will increase teachers’ use of technology and encourage more innovative teaching approaches. This paper reports on a research program that aimed to develop better understanding of how and under what conditions Australian secondary school mathematics teachers learn to effectively integrate technology into their practice. The research adapted Valsiner’s concepts of the Zone of Proximal Development, Zone of Free Movement and Zone of Promoted Action to devise a theoretical framework for analysing relationships between factors influencing teachers’ use of technology in mathematics classrooms. This paper illustrates how the framework may be used by analysing case studies of a novice teacher and an experienced teacher in different school settings.

Building learning communities to support beginning teachers use of technology

This paper reports on the early stages of a three year study that is investigating the impact of a technology-enriched teacher education program on beginning teachers' integration of computers, graphics calculators, and the internet into secondary school mathematics classrooms. Whereas much of the existing research on the role of technology in mathematics learning has been concerned with effects on curriculum content or student learning, less attention has been given to the relationship between technology use and issues of pedagogy, in particular the impact on teachers' professional learning in the context of specific classroom and school environments. Our research applies sociocultural theories of learning to consider how beginning teachers are initiated into a collaborative professional community featuring both web-based and face to face interaction, and how participation in such a community shapes their pedagogical beliefs and practices. The aim of this paper is to analyse processes through which the emerging community was established and sustained during the first year of the study. We examine features of this community in terms of identity formation, shifts in values and beliefs, and interaction patterns revealed in bulletin board discussion between students and lecturers.