Hunger artists : literacy, testing & accountability

This article interrogates the dominant ideology that is shaping education in Victoria at the current moment. It does so by analysing the government school publication, Education Times, focusing on the years 2000–2003. During those years the Victorian Government invested a significant amount of money into improving the literacy outcomes of so-called underperforming students through initiatives such as Restart and Access to Excellence. Education Times played an important role in promoting these initiatives, and thus provides a useful vehicle for examining the ideology driving educational reform in Victoria.

Early years literacy program in Victoria : what can we learn?

This research investigated the implementation of the Early Years Literacy Program in Victoria, Australia. Victoria was chosen for its literacy quality program. Participants interviewed were teachers, literacy coordinators and school principals. The data was transcribed and cross analysed. The implication to the Indonesian context will be possible but problematic.

Exploring girl power : gender, literacy and the textual practices of young women attending an elite school

Popular discourses concerning the relationship between gender and academic literacies have suggested that boys are lacking in particular, school-based literacy competencies compared with girls. Such discourses construct “gender” according to a binary framework and they obscure the way in which literacy and textual practices operate as a site in which gendered identities are constituted and negotiated by young people in multiple sites including schooling, which academic inquiry has often emphasized. In this paper I consider the school-based textual practices of young women attending an elite school, in order to explore how these practices construct “femininities”. Feminist education researchers have shown how young women negotiate discourses of feminine passivity and heterosexuality through their reading and writing practices. Yet discourses of girlhood and femininity have undergone important transformations in times of ‘girl power’ in which young women are increasingly constructed as successful, autonomous and sexually agentic. Thus young women’s reading and writing practices may well operate as a space in which new discourses around girlhood and femininity are constituted. Throughout the paper, I utilize the notion of “performativity”, understood through the work of Judith Butler, to show how textual practices variously inscribe and negotiate discourses of gender. Thus the importance of textual work in inscribing and challenging notions of gender is asserted. I argue that critical literacy is just as important, but perhaps no more guaranteed, within elite girls’ education as it is within boys’ education.

Tertiary literacy on the cusp

This paper outlines some of the recent concerns regarding a perceived decline in literacy standards in Australia, with reference to changing literacy abilities and standards in tertiary education. It presents a summary and critique of the current discussions on changes in literacy expectations and contemporary notions of literacy. It concludes with a summary of three important 'agents of change': economic rationalism, multiculturalism and computerisation.

Accounting for the multidimensional nature of the relationship between adult obesity and socio-economic status : the French second National Individual Survey on Food Consumption (INCA 2) dietary survey (2006–07)

The objective was to study the multidimensional nature of the relationship between adult obesity (OB) and socio-economic status (SES),
using comprehensive indices of SES taken separately or synthesised in an overall index. A nationally representative sample of adults aged
18–79 years was taken from the French second National Individual Survey on Food Consumption (INCA 2) dietary survey (2006–07).
Weight and height were measured and OB defined as BMI $ 30 kg/m². SES variables were reported in questionnaires and included
occupation, education and characteristics of household wealth. Composite indices of SES (household wealth and overall SES indices)
were computed by correspondence analysis, and relationships with OB were investigated with logistic regression analysis. In total, 11·8
(95% CI 10·1, 13·4) % of French adults were obese, without significant difference by sex. While no significant relationship was observed
in men, all SES indicators were inversely correlated to OB in women. Both education and the household wealth index were retained in the
stepwise multivariate model, confirming that different socio-economic variables are not necessarily proxies of each other regarding the OB
issue. On the other hand, ‘controlling for SES’ while including several measures of SES in multivariate models may lead to collinearity, and
thus over-adjustment. A more integrative approach may be to derive a synthetic index by including the SES factors available in a given
study. Beyond this methodological perspective, understanding how OB is related to the different dimensions of SES should help to
target the more vulnerable groups and increase the effectiveness of prevention.

Factors influencing teachers' ICT literacy : a snapshot from Australia

This paper presents the findings of a survey that examined factors influencing teachers’ ICT literacy. The survey was part of a larger study exploring teachers’ readiness to transform their traditional role and engage primary school students in 21st century learning experiences. The survey was conducted with teachers from a simple random sample of 350 Victorian government primary schools in Australia. A recently developed framework of ICT literacy for primary school teachers was utilized to examine factors that influence the development of teachers’ skills and knowledge in integrating new technologies into student learning. In this paper the authors report on teachers’ perceptions about factors influencing the development of their ICT literacy and interpret the impact of independent variables such as age, gender, teaching experience, and teachers’ use of computers in the contemporary primary school. Drawing on the findings of the study they identify important leads for future professional development.

Youth literacy development through applied learning and the national curriculum

The introduction of a national curriculum into Australian schools coincides with an increasing body of research emphasising the importance of completing Year 12 or its equivalent if young people are to achieve successful transitions beyond school. This research is reflected in Australian government policy targets to achieve secondary school completion rates to at least 90% by 2015. State governments across the country have also embraced these targets, with some states already achieving above this level thanks to innovative curriculum and pedagogical initiatives that are more attuned to applied ways of learning.

In this chapter we examine the challenges faced by school leaders and teachers as they re-conceptualise approaches to youth literacy development through applied learning pedagogy. We begin by exploring definitions and applications of applied learning and examining the relatively recent growth of applied learning in secondary schools. We discuss the impetus for using applied learning approaches to literacy development and consider the challenges manifest in the day-to-day professional practices of secondary school teachers who use applied learning to engage young people who may otherwise leave school early. We conclude by exploring tensions emerging from the use of applied learning approaches to youth literacy development in Australia and the new demands created by a national curriculum.

Techno-literacy and learning in blended, multicultural course environments

For the last two decades, higher education institutions have been actively engaged in the use of online technology with the aim of transforming the way we teach and learn to improve students’ learning experiences and outcomes. However, despite significant investment in infrastructure and training and a wide-scale uptake of such technologies, the promised transformative effect on student learning is yet to be actualised outside of small pockets of innovation. In this paper, we argue that one of the factors contributing to lack of qualitative large-scale transformation is students’ lack of preparedness and experience in using online tools for learning purposes. Drawing on an ethnographic study of culturally diverse computing students and teachers within learning environments that blend online and face-to-face pedagogies, we argue that, although contemporary university students are largely operationally literate when using online learning tools, they often lack the cultural and critical skills required to use such technologies in a meaningful way to support powerful learning. We argue that, for online learning technologies to transform learning, students need to be supported to develop these higher order techno-literacy skills.

Designing online role plays with a focus on story development to support engagement and critical learning for higher education students

Online role plays, as they are designed for use in higher education in Australia and internationally, are active and authentic learning activities (Wills, Leigh & Ip, 2011). In online role plays, students take a character role in developing a story that serves as a metaphor for real-life experience in order to develop a potentially wide range of subject-related and generic learning outcomes. The characteristics of these stories are rarely considered as factors in the design―and success―of these activities. The unspoken cultural assumptions, norms and rules in the stories that impact on the meanings students make from their experiences are also rarely scrutinised in the online role play literature. This paper presents findings from a case study of an asynchronous text-based online role play involving politics and journalism students from three Australian universities. The findings highlight the centrality of students’ collaborative story-building activity to their engagement and learning, including their development of critical perspectives. The study underlines the importance of certain aspects of the role play's design to support students' story-building activity.

A middle approach to literacy in a minority Indigenous Australian language context.

Kunib-dji live in Maningrida, a remote community in the Northern Territory and speak Ndj-bbana as their preferred language of communication. Kunib-dji are one of many groups of Indigenous Australian languages who speak a minority language. Very little has been documented about the social practices of literacy with speakers of such languages, particularly with the texts that mediate these languages. Knowing about the beliefs and attitudes towards enacted by these speakers towards these texts is useful for understanding the process of learning of minority and majority languages. This paper presents a middle approach to literacy as distinct form top-down and bottom-up approaches, that has emerged from the minority Indigenous Australian language context in Maningrida. The proposed middle approach to literacy incorporates non-indigenous intervention in Indigenous social practices and technological transform of Indigenous texts. The methodological aspects of such intervention and transformation together with the implications of a middle approach to literacy are presented in this paper. Throughout the paper references are made to Kunib-dji children's access to digital Ndj-bbana texts and their engagement with these texts in a home environment.

Bilingual education and the language of news

This paper presents evidence that shows for the first time that news media influence was a significant factor in the decision to dismantle the Northern Territory’s bilingual education policy in 2008. It identifies and discusses five media-related overlays that have affected public discussion and policymaking during the life of the policy. They include the media’s role in informing public understanding of the policy; media representation of Indigenous peoples and issues; the relationship between policymaking and journalism in general; neo-liberal discourses about education, especially literacy; and the reporting practices of journalists who have covered the issue. It draws on relevant literature, the history of the policy and interviews conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policymaking 1988-2008 ARC Discovery Project to interpret some of the connections and disconnections between these overlays and bilingual education policy. This analysis suggests that the news media exerted a complex and uneven range of influences on the 2008 decision to dismantle Australia’s first and most enduring policy of Indigenous self-determination.