Promoting African music and enhancing intercultural understanding in teacher education

Australia is a culturally diverse nation. The Arts provide a pathway that contributes to the rich tapestry of its people. Tertiary music educators have the responsibility to provide opportunities to effectively prepare and engage pre-service teachers in becoming culturally responsive. The authors discuss the importance and need to include guest music educators as culture bearers when preparing pre-service teachers to teach multicultural music. Drawing on data from student questionnaires, author participant observation and reflective practice in 2014, the findings highlight the experiences and practical engagement of an African music workshop in teacher education courses. Generalisations cannot be made, however, the findings revealed the need, importance and benefits of incorporating guest music educators as culture bearers who have the knowledge, skills and understandings to contribute to multicultural music education. This experience may be similar to other educational settings and it is hoped that the findings may provide a platform for further dialogue in other teaching and learning areas.

Negotiating and creating intercultural relations: Chinese immigrant children in New Zealand early childhood education centres

A multiple-case study investigation of the experiences of eight Chinese immigrant children in New Zealand early childhood centres suggested that the immigrant children’s learning experiences in their first centre can be understood as a process of negotiating and creating intercultural relations. The children’s use of family cultural tools, such as the Chinese language, was a distinctive feature of their learning experiences, simultaneously revealing and extending their exploration of the intercultural practices and their establishment of a sense of belonging. In the presence of Chinese-speaking peers who acted as ‘bridges’ and ‘boundary objects’, the Chinese language was actively used by the immigrant children in English-speaking early childhood centres and, as a result, they created intercultural relations which: (i) bridged the two cultures; (ii) brought the cultures into convergence; (iii) enabled the children to claim group identity; and (iv) battled intercultural constraints. The absence of Chinese speakers, on the other hand, constrained possibilities for intercultural relations. The focus on intercultural relations in this study is expected to lead to educational initiatives to support the incorporation of diverse cultures in early childhood services.

Summer is a good time for informal education

Students look forward to summer because usually it means a break from formal and non-formal education. Formal education refers to education in formal educational institutions, such as pre-schools, primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions and other registered training organisations. Non-formal education refers to organised educational activity outside the established formal system, that is intended to deliver a defined set of learning objectives to an identifiable group of learners (Chemistry in Australia, October 2014, page 33). Informal education refers to all learning outside the formal non-formal educational system; informal education is often associated with life-long learning as it can include reading non-fiction books and scholarly articles, viewing documentaries and other informal professional development. Informal education can also include travel to other countries and climates. Social constructivist theory maintains that learning occurs in social settings; conversely, most learners are limited by their cultural experiences. For example, Australian students have little first-hand experience of sublimation, but this is commonly observed in very cold climates when frost, ice or snow apparently “disappears” as it sublimes to water vapour, without passing through the liquid state. A favourite summertime activity is to go to the movies, especially in air-conditioned cinemas on a hot day or night. Watching movies are a form of virtual travel, and many educators make use of movies to illustrate chemistry concepts. Some movie producers want a sense of authenticity and work hard to get the details right, even though those details might be incidental to the main plot. For example, in Centurion, Roman soldiers fail in their rescue attempt, and are taunted by the Picts for stupidity -- they would have succeeded if they had only realised that metal become brittle in the cold. Another favourite example comes from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Bilbo, Samwise and Gollum are crossing the Dead Marshes and see lights that appear to float over the Marshes. These wills-o-the-wisp have been known for centuries, and was the subject of a debate between George Washington and his officers. Washington and Thomas Paine, “the Father of the American Revolution”, believed that the lights were due to a flammable gas released from the marsh, while Washington’s officers believed that the lights were due to a flammable liquid on the surface of the marsh. On Guy Fawkes Night, 5 November, 1783, the Washington-Paine experiment showed that when mud at the bottom of a river was disturbed, bubbles of flammable gas rose to the surface of the water. (Unknown to Washington and Paine, Alessandro Volta had performed a similar experiment in 1776.) A problem with informal education is that it is often unguided. Students may find it difficult to discern the difference between scientific reality and an artistic distortion of reality in novels and movies. Educators have an important role here. If we only teach facts and concepts, learners will be dependent on a teacher. If however, we foster students’ curiosity and ability to exercise judgement, they will be able to learn for themselves, not just during the summer, but also in every season of every year.

Participating creatively: e-portfolio learning in diabetes education on the cloud

Abstract: The evolution of online teaching in higher education demands a change in the types of pedagogical philosophies and methods used in these courses. This chapter will discuss how a jigsaw model facilitated independent learning and enhanced student learning by working in teams. To accomplish this objective each student needed to communicate with a small group of other students on line and contribute equally for a common goal. A parallel aim was to overcome postgraduate students’ reluctance to utilise technology and communicate within the Cloud, in particular when student groups are big. The authors have found that postgraduate students often experience a sense of learning in isolation. An added benefit was the social dimension experienced within the activity. The chapter will reveal how a jigsaw style integrated learning tool was a successful collaborative learning experience in a classroom setting. The jigsaw activity was designed to enable students to share ‘artefacts’ and knowledge with a small group of students and the lecturer by using the E-Portfolio.  In conclusion, it will be argued that this creative and innovative participatory Cloud learning experience offered more students the opportunity to collaborate within a team in the Cloud. This E-portfolio learning activity introduced the electronic style of information sharing to postgraduate students and additionally the interactive and creative jigsaw learning activity assisted students to navigate the Cloud, use E-portfolio and engage in an environment in which they felt comfortable to communicate in.

Investigating the effectiveness of teacher education for early career teachers in diverse settings: the longitudinal research we have to have

There have been more than 100 reports focusing on the effectiveness of teacher education in Australia over the last 35 years with many positioning teacher education as flawed and in need of reform. These frequent criticisms have drawn attention to the difficulty teacher educators can experience when trying to interrupt or contest this representation: a situation not unique to Australia. In the United States, for example, Pam Grossman has suggested that those in teacher education “seem ill prepared to respond to critics who question the value of professional education for teachers with evidence of our effectiveness” (Grossman in J Teach Educ 59(1):10–23, 2008). A key question facing teacher educators, therefore, concerns the kinds of research that will most effectively allow us to lead debates about teacher preparation. This paper outlines an approach to the conceptualization and conduct of research into the effectiveness of teacher education that seeks to move debates in new directions. Drawing upon the theoretical resources of Soja (Thirdspace: journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, 1996) and Lefebre (The production of space, 1991) we outline the ways in which a spatial approach to conceptualizing teacher education influenced the design and conduct of a large scale, longitudinal project that investigated the question of the effectiveness of teacher education in Australia. In exploring the design features of this ARC linkage grant the paper demonstrates how research changes when teacher education is conceptualised from a spatial point of view and illustrates the ways in which consideration of the conceived, perceived and lived spaces of teacher education can move research about effectiveness into new directions.

E-learning opportunities and challenges for legal education in rural Victoria

Access to justice extends beyond consideration of the systems and institutions of justice; it includes infrastructure such as transport, health, education and communications. Rural, regional and remote (‘RRR’) communities are more likely to face difficulties in accessing advice and accurate information on laws and processes available for resolution of disputes. Perhaps more fundamentally, they rarely have a voice in effecting reforms in laws and related policies. For several decades, community legal centres, legal aid, courts, and a range of other institutions have used community legal education programs to improve knowledge and access to law and justice systems, services and organisations. The recent Productivity Commission Inquiry into Access to Justice Arrangements notes that, ‘Better coordination and greater quality control in the development and delivery of these [community legal education, legal information] services would improve their value and reach.’ At the same time, research into the professional needs of RRR legal practitioners has found that many of these practitioners face considerable difficulties accessing good quality continuing professional development (‘CPD’) and informal networking/support opportunities.6 Current and emerging internet-based technologies open up opportunities for legal organisations to better meet the educational needs of both rural communities and legal practitioners. Though limitations still exist at multiple levels, relatively low-cost, media-rich, synchronous and tailored education programs can now be delivered effectively in many rural and remote areas. However, complex layers of decisions are required to critically assess, harness and optimise technologies to best suit the needs of users, and to utilise teaching and learning techniques that best match the technologies and participant needs. Getting these elements — needs, technology and learning technique — right, nevertheless offers extraordinary opportunities. Sound decisions and good practices should enable state-wide and specialist law and justice-related services interested in improving their engagement with RRR communities to dramatically improve the reach and quality of outcomes, not only for distant participants but the spectrum of stakeholders.

Notions of place, space and identity in rural teacher education

This chapter explores the concepts of space, place, and identity through a selfstudy narrative lens that focuses on the importance of rural within these conversations. Current research into teacher education acknowledges the signifi cance of context and how it matters in terms of teacher preparation; this chapter examines context in terms of the impact of working in a rural context and the differences and similarities of rural to other contexts. The overarching framework for this chapter will be on myself as a rural teacher educator and how this bounds and is bounded by my own identity and experience ‘growing up rural’ in Australia. I will also outline my own emerging research into self-study as a methodology and how this adds to my role as a teacher educator within rural communities. Firstly however, I will explore the concepts of place and space and how this guides my own rural self-study.

The place of place-based education in the Australian primary geography curriculum

The idea for this paper emerged from a recent qualitative investigation which examined the ways in which six Australian primary teachers conceptualised geography and geography teaching (Preston, 2014b). A finding of this research was a strong correlation between the breadth of geographical understandings and the years of experience and age of participants. For early career teachers, conceptions of geography were narrowly confined to information-oriented perceptions. Whereas, the two teachers, with more than 30 years in primary schools, portrayed much more complex understandings. Their conceptions depicted geography as process-oriented and in relational terms, that is, understandings of geography that recognise the interactions and interdependence of people and environments (Bradbeer, Healey, & Kneale, 2004). Both these experienced teachers were also committed to place-based, inquiry approaches to geography teaching and had been using placebased methodologies long before it became a new movement in education (Morgan, 2009, p. 521 ). This prompted me to question why geography education seldom features in discourses of place-based education and to contemplate the oft-cited argument (at least in the United States) that the recent focus on curriculum standards is incompatible with locally responsive curriculum (Jennings, Swidler, & Koliba, 2005).
In order to answer these questions, I explore the intersections and divergences between place-based education and geography education in the Australian context. Drawing on Smith's (2002) and Gruenewald's (2003) conception of place-based education, and the new. Australian geography curriculum document, I argue that primary geography education has strong synergies with place-based education methodologies and aims. I further suggest that a geographical perspective can augment placebased education to enrich and broaden students' understandings of the complex interactions between and within places. This argument is balanced with a critical examination of the practice of geography education acknowledging that the tradition of fieldwork might benefit from placebased education approaches that enable more embodied, socially engaged interactions with places. Thus, I contend, place-based education and geography education are mutually supportive and each can extend the other. The paper concludes with a reflection on the challenges in Australia in preparing primary teachers for the implementation of the new (place-based) geography curriculum.

Self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments: a systematic review

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. As enrolments in online courses continue to increase, there is a need to understand how students can best apply self-regulated learning strategies to achieve academic success within the online environment. A search of relevant databases was conducted in December 2014 for studies published from 2004 to Dec 2014 examining SRL strategies as correlates of academic achievement in online higher education settings. From 12 studies, the strategies of time management, metacognition, effort regulation, and critical thinking were positively correlated with academic outcomes, whereas rehearsal, elaboration, and organisation had the least empirical support. Peer learning had a moderate positive effect, however its confidence intervals crossed zero. Although the contributors to achievement in traditional face-to-face settings appear to generalise to on-line context, these effects appear weaker and suggest that (1) they may be less effective, and (2) that other, currently unexplored factors may be more important in on-line contexts.

Co-ingestion of energy drinks with alcohol and other substances among a sample of people who regularly use ecstasy

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: Despite the potential harms of mixing unregulated drugs with energy drinks (ED), research to date has primarily been focused on EDs co-ingested with alcohol. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to explore the rate of use, harms and correlates of EDs co-ingested with alcohol and other drugs among a sample of people who regularly use illicit stimulant drugs. DESIGN AND METHODS: In 2010, 693 Australians who regularly used ecstasy completed a 1-h interview about their past six-month ED and drug use. RESULTS: Three-quarters of the sample (77%) had recently consumed EDs with other substances, primarily alcohol (70%) and ecstasy (57%). People who consumed ED with alcohol versus those who had consumed ED with ecstasy and with alcohol (only 8% reported only consuming ED with ecstasy) had similar profiles in regards to demographics, drug use, mental health and drug-related problems. Primary motives for consuming ED with alcohol included increased alertness (59%), the taste (25%), to party for longer (23%) and to combat fatigue (16%). One-half (52%) and one-quarter (27%) of participants who consumed EDs with alcohol and with ecstasy respectively had recently experienced adverse outcomes post-consumption, primarily headaches (24% and 11%) and heart palpitations (21% and 14%). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Co-ingestion of EDs with licit and illicit drugs is common among people who regularly use ecstasy and related drugs. Adverse outcomes of co-ingestion suggest that targeted education regarding negative interactive drug effects is crucial for harm reduction. [Peacock A, Sindicich N, Dunn M, Whittaker E, Sutherland R, Entwistle G, Burns L, Bruno R. Co-Ingestion of Energy Drinks with Alcohol and Other Substances among a Sample of People Who Regularly Use Ecstasy. Drug Alcohol Rev 2015].

Online interprofessional education in dietetic students

Aim: The need for dietetic students to develop interprofessional collaborative practice capabilities is well recognised. The aim of this study was to examine the ability of an online interprofessional education (IPE) unit (using asynchronous and synchronous media) to improve dietetic students' confidence in understanding professional roles and attitudes associated with interprofessional practice along with exploring their experience in the unit. Methods: Final year master of dietetic students undertaking a compulsory online unit in IPE were invited to complete a questionnaire examining their confidence in understanding professional roles and their interprofessional attitudes both pre- and post-delivery of the unit, and to participate in semi-structured telephone interviews to explore their experience in the unit. Results: Thirty-five dietetic students completed the questionnaire pre- and post-unit, along with seven students undertaking a telephone interview. Their confidence in understanding the roles of other health professions (P = 0.000 to 0.014), self-assessment of interprofessional communication and teamwork skills (P = 0.002) and attitudes towards interprofessional interaction (P = 0.001) and interprofessional relationships (P = 0.002) increased significantly from pre- to post-unit. The students articulated positives about the experience (flexibility of the delivery, opportunity to reflect on personal factors related to teamwork, increasing their knowledge of other professions) and some challenges (lack of body language, some technological difficulties, the need for regular contribution to the teams' asynchronous discussion boards). Conclusions: This study suggests that although there can be some challenges in online IPE, it can be a positive experience and can improve dietetic students' collaborative practice attitudes and confidence in understanding other professional roles.

The importance of outreach programs to unblock the pipeline and broaden diversity in ICT education

There is a need for outreach programs to attract a diverse range of students to the computing discipline. The lack of qualified computing graduates to fill the growing number of computing vacancies is of concern to government and industry and there are few female students entering the computing pipeline at high school level. This paper presents three outreach programs that have the underlying assumption that students need to be reminded about the creativity and potential of computing so that it remains on the radar of their future career options. Each program instigated social and cultural change through a paradigm shift where girls moved from being ICT consumers to ICT creators. By exposing students to a wide variety of ICT activities and careers during secondary schooling, they were more likely to consider studying information systems, computer science or any other computing course at the university level. Results are presented showing student attitudinal changes as well as observed increases in enrolments at secondary school and university courses

Autoethnography: introducing 'I' into medical education research

Context: Autoethnography is a methodology that allows clinician-educators to research their own cultures, sharing insights about their own teaching and learning journeys in ways that will resonate with others. There are few examples of autoethnographic research in medical education, and many areas would benefit from this methodology to help improve understanding of, for example, teacher-learner interactions, transitions and interprofessional development. Objectives: We wish to share this methodology so that others may consider it in their own education environments as a viable qualitative research approach to gain new insights and understandings. Methods: This paper introduces autoethnography, discusses important considerations in terms of data collection and analysis, explores ethical aspects of writing about others and considers the benefits and limitations of conducting research that includes self. Results: Autoethnography allows medical educators to increasingly engage in self-reflective narration while analysing their own cultural biographies. It moves beyond simple autobiography through the inclusion of other voices and the analytical examination of the relationships between self and others. Autoethnography has achieved its goal if it results in new insights and improvements in personal teaching practices, and if it promotes broader reflection amongst readers about their own teaching and learning environments. Conclusions: Researchers should consider autoethnography as an important methodology to help advance our understanding of the culture and practices of medical education. Discuss ideas arising from the article at www.mededuc.com discuss. © 2015 John Wiley

Students’ academic, intercultural and personal development in globalised education mobility

A growing number of students around the world are engaged in cross-border study mobility. Their academic, intercultural and personal development is a major concern and responsibility of not only the students themselves and their families but also the host institutions and other actors involved in the education of this cohort. This chapter addresses the pressing need to capitalise on international students’ dual strengths of diverse knowledge and transformative capacity as a meaningful and valuable approach to optimising their personal, intercultural and academic development. It also argues that international students’ learning should be conceptualised from a critical approach that considers how these diverse and intangible dimensions of the mobility landscape affect their learning experience rather than merely locating their learning in cultural, institutional or individual parameters.