Scaffolding and bilingual shared reading experiences: Promoting primary school students' learning and development

This paper explores the connections between scaffolding, second language learning and bilingual shared reading experiences. A socio- cultural theory of cognition underpins the investigation, which involved implementing a language and culture awareness program (LCAP) in a year 4 classroom and in the school community. Selected passages from observations are used to analyse the learning of three students, particularly in relation to languages other than English (LOTE). As these three case study students interacted in the classroom, at home and in the community, they co-constructed, appropriated and applied knowledge form one language to another. Through scaffolding, social spaces were constructed, where students learning and development were extended through a variety of activities that involved active participation, such as experimenting with language, asking questions and making suggestions. Extending these opportunities for student learning and development is considered in relation to creating teaching and learning environments that celebrate socio-cultural and linguistic diversity.

Productive leaders and productive leadership: Schools as learning organisations

This paper draws on a three-year study of 24 schools involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers and principals. Through an examination of three cases, sets of leadership practices that focus on the learning of both students and teachers are described. This set of practices is called productive leadership and how these practices are dispersed among productive leaders in three schools is described. This form of leadership supports the achievement of both academic and social outcomes through a focus on pedagogy, a culture of care and related organizational processes. The concepts of learning organisations and teacher professional learning communities as ways of framing relationships in schools, in which ongoing teacher learning is complementary to student learning, are espoused.

Improving learning in undergraduate control engineering courses using context-based learning models

Control Engineering is an essential part of university electrical engineering education. Normally, a control course requires considerable mathematical as well as engineering knowledge and is consequently regarded as a difficult course by many undergraduate students. From the academic point of view, how to help the students to improve their learning of the control engineering knowledge is therefore an important task which requires careful planning and innovative teaching methods. Traditionally, the didactic teaching approach has been used to teach the students the concepts needed to solve control problems. This approach is commonly adopted in many mathematics intensive courses; however it generally lacks reflection from the students to improve their learning. This paper addresses the practice of action learning and context-based learning models in teaching university control courses. This context-based approach has been practised in teaching several control engineering courses in a university with promising results, particularly in view of student learning performances.

Measuring environmental education program impacts and learning in the field: Using an action research cycle to develop a tool for use with young students

Despite the increasing importance of, and interest in, documenting the impact of environmental education programs on students' learning for sustainability, few tools are currently available to measure young students' environmental learning across all the dimensions of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours. This paper reports on the development of such a tool, using an iterative action research process with 134 students, aged six to eleven, attending programs at an Environmental Education Centre in Queensland. The resulting instrument, the Environmental Learning Outcomes Survey (ELOS) incorporates observations of students' engagement in learning processes as well as measuring learning outcomes, and allows both of these aspects to be linked to particular components of the environmental education program. Test data using the instrument are reported to illustrate its potential usefulness. It is envisaged that the refined instrument will enable researchers to measure student environmental learning in the field, investigate environmental education program impacts and identify aspects of programs that are most effective in facilitating student learning. [Author abstract]

The role of the learning community in the development of discipline knowledge and generic graduate outcomes

In this paper we describe a study of learning outcomes at a research-intensive Australian university. Three graduate outcome variables (discipline knowledge and skills, communication and problem solving, and ethical and social sensitivity) are analysed separately using OLS regression and comparisons are made of the patterns of unique contributions from four independent variables (the CEQ Good Teaching and Learning Communities Scales, and two new, independent, scales for measuring Teaching and Program Quality). Further comparisons of these patterns are made across the Schools of the university. Results support the view that teaching and program quality are not the only important determinants of students' learning outcomes. It is concluded that, whilst it continues to be appropriate for universities to be concerned with the quality of their teaching and programs, the interactive, social and collaborative aspects of students' learning experiences, captured in the notion of the Learning Community, are also very important determinants of graduate outcomes, and so should be included in the focus of attempts at enhancing the quality of student learning.

Promoting Learning for Sustainability: Principals' Perceptions of the Role of Outdoor and Environmental Education Centres

Outdoor and Environmental Education Centres provide programs that are designed to address a range of environmental education aims, and contribute broadly to student learning for sustainability. This paper examines the roles such Centres can play, and how they might contribute to the Australian Government’s initiative in relation to sustainable schools. Interviews with the principals of 23 such Centres in Queensland revealed three roles or models under which they operate: the destination model; the expert/advisor model; and the partnership model. Principals’ understandings of these roles are discussed and the factors that support or hinder their implementation are identified. It is concluded that while the provision of programs in the environment is still a vital role of outdoor and environmental education centres, these can also be seen as a point of entry to long-term partnerships with whole school communities.

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.

The effects of different review opportunities on schematisation of knowledge

Recent research suggests that early in learning, students primarily use episodic memory when recalling information, but as learning develops and schematisation occurs, students' knowledge is likely to be dominated by semantic memory. This shift has been examined through student's memory awareness; 'remembering' is linked to episodic memory and 'knowing' is linked to semantic memory. This paper explores the effect of different review opportunities on students' memory awareness and schematisation, and reports on findings that indicate students are more likely to shift from 'remembering' to 'knowing' if they have the opportunity to review the learning material, but regularly and in different formats. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

Teaching principles of genetics through SNP analysis

An understanding of inheritance requires comprehension of genetic processes at all levels, from molecules to populations. Frequently genetics courses are separated into molecular and organismal genetics and students may fail to see the relationships between them. This is particularly true with human genetics, because of the difficulties in designing experimental approaches which are consistent with ethical restrictions, student abilities and background knowledge, and available time and materials. During 2005 we used analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two genetic regions to enhance student learning and provide a practical experience in human genetics. Students scanned databases to discover SNPs in a gene of interest, used software to design PCR primers and a restriction enzyme based assay for the alleles, and carried out an analysis of the SNP on anonymous individual and family DNAs. The project occupied eight to ten hours per week for one semester, with some time spent in the laboratory and some spent in database searching, reading and writing the report. In completing their projects, students acquired a knowledge of Mendel’s first law (through looking at inheritance patterns), Mendel’s second law and the exceptions (the concepts of linkage and linkage disequilibrium), DNA structure (primer design and restriction enzyme analysis) and function (SNPs in coding and non-coding regions), population genetics and the statistical analysis of allele frequencies, genomics, bioinformatics and the ethical issues associated with the use of human samples. They also developed skills in presentation of results by publication and conference participation. Deficiencies in their understanding (for example of inheritance patterns, gene structure, statistical approaches and report writing) were detected and guidance given during the project. SNP analysis was found to be a powerful approach to enhance and integrate student understanding of genetic concepts.