Academic career development workshop for research students and early career academics

For research students and early career academics, universities offer resources that help develop their research skills – for example, critical theory development, literature reviews, research methods, data analysis, writing skills, etc. However, building a successful career in academia poses a wide range of new challenges in addition to the pure academic craft of research. The resources and resilience one needs in order to shape an academic career path often appear ambiguous, particularly in the innately transformative field of Internet research. In response to feedback from AoIR members, this full-day workshop seeks to address this concern by offering a supportive and constructive environment to discuss career development related issues that are of specific interest to research students and early career academics.

Literacy models across nations : literacy and critical literacy in teacher training programs in India

The thrust towards constructivist learning and critical thinking in the National Curricular Framework (2005) of India implies shifts in pedagogical practices. In this context, drawing on grounded theory, focus group interviews were conducted with 40 preservice teachers to ascertain the contextual situation and the likely outcomes of applying critical literacy across the curriculum. Central themes that emerged in the discussion were: being teacher centred/ learner centred, and conformity/autonomy in teaching and learning. The paper argues that within the present Indian context, while there is scope for changes to pedagogy and learning styles, yet these must be adequately contextualised.

The development of strategies to drive government and academic policy to underpin e-portfolio practice

The impact of government policy can become a strong enabler for the use of e-portfolios to support learning and employability. E-portfolio policy and practice seeks to draw together the different elements of integrated education and learning, graduate attributes, employability skills, professional competencies and lifelong learning, ultimately to support an engaged and productive workforce. Drawing on and updating the research findings from a nationwide research study conducted as part of the Australian ePortfolio Project, the present chapter discusses two important areas of the e-portfolio environment, government policy and academic policy. The focus is on those jurisdictions where government and academic policy issues have had a significant impact on e-portfolio practice, such as the European Union, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. These jurisdictions are of interest as government policy discussions are currently focusing on the need for closer integration between the different education and employment sectors. Finally, issues to be considered as well as strategies for driving policy decision making are presented.

Merging fact with fiction : a study of year 9 students' developing scientific literacy through the writing of hybridised scientific narratives on a socioscientific issue

International assessments of student science achievement, and growing evidence of students' waning interest in school science, have ensured that the development of scientific literacy continues to remain an important educational priority. Furthermore, researchers have called for teaching and learning strategies to engage students in the learning of science, particularly in the middle years of schooling. This study extends previous national and international research that has established a link between writing and learning science. Specifically, it investigates the learning experiences of eight intact Year 9 science classes as they engage in the writing of short stories that merge scientific and narrative genres (i.e., hybridised scientific narratives) about the socioscientific issue of biosecurity. This study employed a triangulation mixed methods research design, generating both quantitative and qualitative data, in order to investigate three research questions that examined the extent to which the students' participation in the study enhanced their scientific literacy; the extent to which the students demonstrated conceptual understanding of related scientific concepts through their written artefacts and in interviews about the artefacts; and the extent to which the students' participation in the project influenced their attitudes toward science and science learning. Three aspects of scientific literacy were investigated in this study: conceptual science understandings (a derived sense of scientific literacy), the students' transformation of scientific information in written stories about biosecurity (simple and expanded fundamental senses of scientific literacy), and attitudes toward science and science learning. The stories written by students in a selected case study class (N=26) were analysed quantitatively using a series of specifically-designed matrices that produce numerical scores that reflect students' developing fundamental and derived senses of scientific literacy. All students (N=152) also completed a Likert-style instrument (i.e., BioQuiz), pretest and posttest, that examined their interest in learning science, science self-efficacy, their perceived personal and general value of science, their familiarity with biosecurity issues, and their attitudes toward biosecurity. Socioscientific issues (SSI) education served as a theoretical framework for this study. It sought to investigate an alternative discourse with which students can engage in the context of SSI education, and the role of positive attitudes in engaging students in the negotiation of socioscientific issues. Results of the study have revealed that writing BioStories enhanced selected aspects of the participants' attitudes toward science and science learning, and their awareness and conceptual understanding of issues relating to biosecurity. Furthermore, the students' written artefacts alone did not provide an accurate representation of the level of their conceptual science understandings. An examination of these artefacts in combination with interviews about the students' written work provided a more comprehensive assessment of their developing scientific literacy. These findings support extensive calls for the utilisation of diversified writing-to-learn strategies in the science classroom, and therefore make a significant contribution to the writing-to-learn science literature, particularly in relation to the use of hybridised scientific genres. At the same time, this study presents the argument that the writing of hybridised scientific narratives such as BioStories can be used to complement the types of written discourse with which students engage in the negotiation of socioscientific issues, namely, argumentation, as the development of positive attitudes toward science and science learning can encourage students' participation in the discourse of science. The implications of this study for curricular design and implementation, and for further research, are also discussed.

Nurturing Needs: Literacy Achievement for Refugee students

Yeronga State School, located 7 km from the city in Brisbane, Queensland, opened in 1871. YSS caters for a middle class inner-suburban community, however, from the mid 1990s enrolments brought new forms of socio-economic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Initially, ESL students were enrolled due to their immigrant parents enrolling in the neighbouring TAFE. Then refugee families from Bosnia and the Middle East became part of the YSS community. In recent years, refugee numbers have accounted for up to 23% of the school population. Many of these new arrivals left behind families in war-torn circumstances, were orphaned or came to live with unknown relatives. Some family members were victims of torture which may have been witnessed by the children. Trauma for some or all family members was a very real concern. Others were born in refugee camps, where food was scarce, belongings needed to be guarded and safety was never guaranteed.

Community engagement and artful academic staff development : a return on expectations through collaborative practice

The changing ownership of roles in organisational work-life leads this paper to examine what universities are doing in their academic development practice through research at an Australian university where ‘artful’ collaboration with the real world aims to build capability for innovative academic community engagement. The paper also presents findings on the ‘return on expectations’ (Hodges, 2004) of community engagement for both academics and their organisational supervisors.

Re-generating the praxis of academic staff development through arts-based learning : beyond paradox

Effective staff development remains a challenge in higher education. This paper examines the non-traditional methodology of arts-based staff development, its potential to foster transformational learning and the practice of professional artistry, through perceptions of program impact. Over a three year period, eighty academics participated in one metropolitan Australian university’s arts-based academic development program. The methodology used one-on-one hermeneutic-based conversations with fifteen self-selected academics and a focus group with twenty other academics from all three years. The paper presents a learning model to engender academic professional artistry. The findings provide developers with support for using a non-traditional strategy of transformational learning.