Postgraduate teachers' commitment to teach Aboriginal studies in Australian schools

This study was commissioned by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) under its Education Innovation Program (EIP). The project goals were supported by the NSW Teachers Federation, NSW Primary Principals' Association; NSW Department of Education and Training (NSW DET); NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc.; the Aboriginal Studies Association; and the Australian Council of Deans of Education. This paper presents the findings emanating from the qualitative component of the study. The qualitative component of this project followed and elaborated on the quantitative study which aimed to: a) critically evaluate the impact of preservice primary teacher education Aboriginal Studies courses on practising teachers' self-perceived abilities to appreciate, understand and effectively teach Aboriginal Studies, Aboriginal perspectives, and Aboriginal children in Australian schools; b) compare and contrast the self-perceptions of teachers who had undertaken a core or elective course in Aboriginal Studies in their initial teacher education course with the self-perceptions of teachers who had not undertaken such courses; c) characterise participating teachers' initial teacher education courses in relation to the Aboriginal Studies content covered; and d) identify teachers' perceptions of useful structure and content to consider including in future teacher education courses. The responses from telephone interviews with teachers in schools and responses to open-ended questions in surveys are discussed. The findings identify congruence and dissonance in the areas of: the contribution of preservice teacher education; benefits of preservice Aboriginal Studies for students in schools; the place of Aboriginal Studies in schools and the curriculum; Aboriginal Studies and student ethnicity; strategies for teaching Aboriginal Studies; and the content of preservice courses.

Public and personal domains : professional standards for teachers of English in Australia

For many teachers the term ‘professional standards’ conjures up notions of benchmarks against which to measure their performance. This is to locate standards in a public domain that is external to individual teachers, defining their professional role largely in terms of their accountability to other stakeholders in education. The following article argues an alternative view of standards as mediating between public and personal domains. Those domains should remain distinct – indeed, sometimes they may exist in a productive tension – but for standards to have any purchase with the profession they must be personally meaningful. The author draws on both his experience in teaching graduate English students in the pre-service Diploma in Education course at Monash University and his research in a national project to develop subject specific standards for primary and secondary teachers of English. The project, Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA), is federally funded and involves a consortium of universities, state government bodies and the two English teaching associations, whose members constitute the panels of teachers at the heart of the project.

Re-connecting with nature

This session will report on findings of a collaborative action research project focussing on student recordings of personal reflections on connections with place. The study involves students in a unit of a Graduate Certificate of Outdoor and Environmental Education course spending time (at least four separate experiences) in a place of their choosing. Each experience is framed with a different but particular purpose in mind and students record their feelings/learnings using a variety of forms. In this workshop we will summarise student findings on how they engaged with ‘their’ place and levels of connections that were made. We will explore different ways of connecting with nature and strategies for improving connections through journeying in outdoor programs.

Developing a culturally-specific peace curriculum for Vietnamese primary schools : a case study of participatory action research in cross-cultural design

In 2003 the International Conflict Resolution Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia, produced a primary school teaching manual for UNESCO Vietnam in consultation with ASP schoolteachers and principals. The finished manual included lessons plans and materials for a five year, 50 lesson peace education course. The Manual is one of the first examples of a systematic core national curriculum in peace education worldwide.

Development of the Teaching Manual posed a number of challenges including differences in language, culture, government and education system. To meet these challenges, a Participatory Action Research approach was central in the project’s development and curriculum design. This case study is offered as a model for effective cross-cultural curriculum development of peace education materials. In particular, the creation of a systematic core course in peace education and the use of UNESCO’s peace keys are outlined as innovative aspects of the project.

Student attention, engagement and participation in a Twitter-friendly classroom

Guided by a participatory action research methodology, this paper outlines an approach to integrating the social media Twitter platform within a tertiary education course, based on a social, constructivist pedagogy. It explores the perceptions of students on the benefits of using this technology for enhancing attentiveness, engagement and participation in the classroom. Previous studies have shown that greater participation and communication can stimulate student learning and lead to better academic performance, increased motivation, and an appreciation of different points of views. The untested hypothesis is that social media tools like Twitter can foster this type of communication. Students posted their responses during classroom activities via Twitter and then were surveyed on their perceived benefits associated with using the social media platform. The preliminary findings of the qualitative study suggest that, while not without its challenges, social media tools like Twitter have the potential to be used effectively for education-based activities in the classroom to improve communication and engagement both amongst the students and with the instructor.

Comparative evaluation of PBL and traditional lecturebased teaching in undergraduate engineering courses : evidence from controlled learning environment

Project and problem-based learning (PBL) has been widely recognised as an active, collaborative, cumulative and integrative learning approach that engages learners, motivates team creativity and centres on practical education. On the other hand, traditional lecture-tutorial teaching is often criticised for being a passive, surface learning and exam-focused approach. In spite of these evidence-based observations and claims over the years, the traditional lecture-tutorial teaching approach still dominates as the preferred teaching approach at Australian universities. This study sets up a control environment to compare these two teaching and learning approaches by analysing data from students' actual performance, course evaluation and expectation in two large undergraduate engineering courses in 2009 and 2010. The evidence reported in this study is broadly interesting in that both courses were taught by the same teaching staff using two entirely different learning and teaching approaches to the same cohort of students in the same semester within the same degree program. The analysis shows that there are significant differences between the students' actual performance, course evaluation and their expectation. Such conflicting differences may be some of the reasons that may negatively impact teaching staff deterring them from switching to PBL from traditional lecture-tutorial teaching.

Australian primary pre-service teachers’ conceptions of geography

This article reports on the results of a survey of Australian primary pre-service teachers’ experiences, conceptions and perceptions of geography. Research was conducted with two cohorts of undergraduate primary pre-service teachers; one group in second year and another in the final year of a four-year teacher education course. The findings show congruence with similar studies conducted in the UK and indicate that pre-service teachers had a very narrow conception of geography and geography education; a conception that was information-oriented and focused on broad knowledge about the world and locational knowledge and skills. The article concludes by exploring some of the implications for the implementation of the new national geography curriculum in Australia and for primary pre-service geography teacher education more broadly.

Reading the map: locating and navigating the academic skills development of pre-service teachers

This article reports on an action research project that was implemented to strengthen preservice teachers’ academic skills and competencies in a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education course. Strategies identified aseffective included mapping assessment tasks to State and National Early Childhood Education Curriculum and Standards Frameworks and Graduate Teacher Standards and against the skills needed to completeassessment tasks. Tools and resources were developed by lecturers to identify students’ existing skill levels and then scaffold the required competencies into course teaching. The critical reflections of lecturers on their professional learning through this process were found to be integral to successful outcomes for students.

Key milestones in the operationalisation of professional nursing ethics in Australia: a brief historical overview

Objective To provide a brief historical overview of the achievement of key milestones in the development of mechanisms for operationalising professional nursing ethics in Australia; examples of such milestones include: the publication of the first Australian text on nursing ethics (1989), the provision of the first Australian national distance education course on nursing ethics for registered nurses (1990), the adoption of the first code of ethics for Australian nurses (1993), and the commissioning of the first regular column on nursing ethics by the Australian Nurses Journal (2008).

Setting Australian nursing ethics.

Primary argument An historical perspective on the achievement of key milestones in the development of mechanisms for operationalising professional nursing ethics in Australia has been poorly documented. As a consequence an authentic ‘Australian voice’ is missing in global discourses on the history and development of nursing ethics as a field of inquiry. Compared with other countries, the achievement of key milestones pertinent to the operationalisation of nursing ethics in Australia has been relatively slow. Even so, over the past three decades an Australian perspective on nursing ethics has gained a notable voice in the international arena with Australian nursing scholars now making a significant contribution to the field.

Conclusion Nursing ethics in Australia remains a ‘work in progress’. Although significant achievements have been made in the last three decades, the ongoing development of mechanisms for advancing nursing ethics in Australia would benefit from the development and implementation of a strategic agenda of collaborative, internationally comparative, cross disciplinary scholarship, research and critique.

Physics practicals for distance education in an undergraduate engineering course

BACKGROUND : Providing engineering practicals to undergraduates by means of distance education is a significant challenge. The past 30 years have seen the rapid development of the distance education. For many years, Deakin University has offered a full Bachelor of Engineering degree programme via distance education. All first-year students study a unit in physics. This unit includes practicals. Providing practical experiences to students is distance education’s greatest challenge.

PURPOSE : The purpose of this work was to develop the means for off-campus students to complete practical exercises in first-year engineering physics. The solution to the problem also had to comply with accreditation requirements set by Engineers Australia.

METHOD : The long-term solution to the problem was running on-campus lab classes either on weekends or as part of the annual first-year residential school for engineering professional practice. Students work was assessed by means of standard laboratory reports. On-campus marks and off-campus lab marks have been collected and compared over the past 12 years.

RESULTS : The results indicate that the off-campus lab experience is similar to the on-campus experience. Marks for the two cohorts were comparable. Those few students who completed their pracs at home faced and overcame significant challenges.

CONCLUSIONS : We found that performance in their lab reports for off-campus students was similar to that of the on-campus students. Accreditation requirements has shifted the focus from developing activities that students could perform at home to offering timely and efficient on-campus lab classes for off-campus students. Future work will focus on on-campus lab classes in accordance with accreditation requirements and perhaps on-line broadcasts of prac classes for those students who cannot attend lab on-campus.

How online learning in an engineering-physics course helped us flip the classroom

Distance education has developed in the past 25 years or so as a way of supplying education to people who would not have access to local college education facilities. This includes students who live in remote regions, students who lack mobility, and students with full-time jobs. More recently this has been renamed to "online learning". Deakin University in Australia has been teaching freshman engineering physics simultaneously to on-campus and online students since the late1990's. The course is part of an online Bachelor of Engineering major that is accredited by the Institution of Engineers Australia.* In this way Deakin answers the call to provide engineering education "anywhere, anytime."**The course has developed and improved with the available educational technology. Starting with printed study guides, a textbook, CD-ROMS, and snail-mail, and telephone/email correspondence with students, the course has seen the rise of websites, online course notes, discussion boards, streamed video lectures, web-conferencing classes and lab sessions, and online submission of student work. Most recently the on-campus version of the course has shifted from a traditional lecture/tutorial/lab format to a flipped-classroom format. The use of lectures has been reduced while the use of tutorials and practical exercises has increased. Primary learning is now accomplished by watching videos prepared by the lecturer and studying the textbook.Offering this course for several years by distance education made this process considerably easier. Most of the educational "infrastructure" was already in place, and the course's delivery to a non-classroom cohort was already established. Thus many elements of the new structure did not have to be produced from scratch. Improvements to the course website and all the course material has benefited all students, both online and on-campus.The new course structure was delivered for the first time in 2014, has run for two semesters, and will continue in 2015. Student learning and performance is being measured by assignment and exam marks for both on-campus and off-campus students. Students are also surveyed to gauge how well they received the new innovations, especially the video presentations on the lab experiments. It was found that student performance in the new structure was no worse than that in the older structure (average on-campus grades increased 10%), and students in general welcomed the changes. Similar transitions are being implemented in other courses in Deakin's engineering degree program.This presentation will show how physics is taught to online students, outline the changes made to support flipping the on-campus classroom, and how that process benefited the off-campus cohort.

Evaluation of a stress management course in adult education centres in rural Australia

Objective: To investigate whether attending a six-week stress management course in a rural adult education centre is effective in reducing participants' levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

Design: Repeated measures design using self-report measures of stress, anxiety and depression at commencement and completion of a six-week stress management course, and six months post-completion follow up.

Setting and participants: One hundred and thirty-two adults (age range 18–73 years) living in a rural community who self-enrolled in the stress management course at adult education centres.

Intervention: The course consisted of six weekly group sessions. Each two-hour session conducted by mental health professionals, included teaching cognitive behavioural strategies targeted at reducing individual symptoms of stress.

Main outcome measures: Comparative analysis of pre- and post-test and six-month follow up on measures of stress (Stress Symptom Checklist), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale).

Results: Results indicated a significant reduction in stress symptoms (F(7,90) = 34.92, P < 0.001), anxiety and depression (F(3,95) = 87.92, P < 0.001) from course commencement to course completion. These improvements were sustained six months after course completion for stress symptoms (F(11,65) = 22.40, P < 0.001), anxiety and depression (F(5,73) = 41.78, P < 0.001).

Conclusion: Findings demonstrate the stress management course is an effective community intervention in a rural community. Challenges for future implementation of the program are discussed.