Challenges of elementary science teaching: an Australian perspective

This chapter profiles research that has explored the role of affect in the teaching of science in Australia particularly on primary or elementary science education. Affect is a complex set of characteristics that relate to the interactions between an individual’s knowledge and emotional responses to a stimulus. Thus, there are many dimensions and theoretical frameworks that inform our understanding of how and why people behave in particular ways.

Conceptualising Women's Working Lives : Moving the Boundaries of Discourse

"Theoretical work on the career development of women has travelled a journey from critique to creation. Early work responded to and criticised a literature that focused on theorising male roles in a workplace that was conceptualised as providing vertical career paths primarily for middle class males. More recently theorists are creating new constructions and frameworks to enable a more holistic understanding of career, applicable to both women and men. These constructions include broadening the discussion from women’s careers to women’s working lives. This is the fifth book in the Sense Publishers Career Development Series. It features the vibrant work of contributors from around the world writing in the field of women’s working lives. It emphasises the need to explore theoretical connections and understandings in order to facilitate a more holistic and inclusive understanding of women’s working lives. The writers in the current volume acknowledge the changing roles of women, in both public and private spheres. Women’s roles in paid work are changing both in their nature and type of engagement. In addition, with an ageing population, women’s roles in care work are increasingly being extended from child care to aged care. This book provides a history of theorising about women's careers, in addition to presenting a focus on current empirical and theoretical work which contributes to understandings of women's working lives. It’s contributions both map the current discourse and challenge future work to extend the boundaries of that discourse."--publisher website

Career Development in Childhood and Adolescence

"In the past few years, many career theorists have noted the dearth of literature in the area of career development in childhood and adolescence. A growing need for integrating theory and research on the early stages of vocational development within a systemic, life-span developmental approach has been articulated. This volume, the first book dedicated to career development of children and adolescents, provides a broad and comprehensive overview of the current knowledge about the key career processes that take place in this age group. Each of the eighteen chapters represents an in-depth examination of a specific aspect of career development with a focus on integrating modern career theory and ongoing research and further developing theory-practice connections in understanding child and adolescent career behaviour. Twenty-six authors, leading experts from eight countries, provide a state-of-the-art summary of the current thinking in the field and outline directions for future empirical work and practice."--publisher website

Knitted images : corporeal theorising

Feeling the wool and needles and constructing the knitting is very different to looking at knitting or thinking about knitting. Creating with the material slows everything down enough to enable significant connection with the process. Knitting as a mode for researching involves corporeal activity/philosophy that foregrounds a physical rationality, and this offers critical investigation of knowledge conventions that hierarchize intellectual activity as something that seeks to justify or clarify via a cerebral mode of presenting reasonable and rational arguments...

Knitted images : specimens

Knitting, as a conduit for multiple literacies takes on embodied practice and becomes research, investigation, theorization, and brings about physical and metaphysical theorizing on Deleuzian and Guattarian (1980/1987) concepts of the rhizome: the looping and constructing of the knitted planes prompt thoughts about the project that seem just ‘beyond the level of consciousness’ (Semetsky 2007, p. 200)...

Knitted images : interception

Feeling the wool and needles and constructing the knitting is very different to looking at knitting or thinking about knitting. Creating with the material slows everything down enough to enable significant connection with the process. Knitting as a mode for researching involves corporeal activity/philosophy that foregrounds a physical rationality, and this offers critical investigation of knowledge conventions that hierarchize intellectual activity as something that seeks to justify or clarify via a cerebral mode of presenting reasonable and rational arguments...

Knitted images : drawing patterns

This Arts Based Education Research (Eisner 2008) work provides potent opportunity to consider different problems and challenges that impact on the progress of research (art as data making) and the theories being explored. It provides opportunity to transport ideas across between research activity, and teaching practices...

Knitted images : cartographies

Through the making of these works I research teachers. Here, I push a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay 2008) into ca/r/tography - a process of mapping that is multitexural, mutable; moving between theorization, creation, process, research, and mapped by me as I wander between artist, researcher, teacher...

Conflicting notions of risk : the chasm of conflict between institutions and the public

The trust and credibility gap between institutional regulators and the public is based on fundamental social and cultural differences related to power and authority. It is also associated with the 'distance' of a bureaucracies from those whom they serve. The nature of public concern about risk may be investigated by considering specific cognitive decision making 'rules' such as 'familiarity' of a hazard or 'voluntariness' of exposure. A more complete appreciation of the 'how' and 'why' of public response to danger from industrial hazards can be gained by appreciating these 'rules' within the broader context of mis-communication between 'elite' regulators and a highly diverse public. If the results of risk assessments are expressed in technical terms alone, it is unlikely that any real communication will occur. Further, if issues related to the 'remote' nature of much institutional decision making are not addressed, closure of the 'gap' may be difficult to bring about.

Research roadmap summary - Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions (IDDS)

Changes in the construction sector are creating opportunities in research to maximise the benefits of those changes and to continue the exciting developments in improved people skills, new processes and developing technologies. Many research centres around the world are investigating aspects of the current changes to drive their particular expertise forward. However, the CIB Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions (IDDS) priority research theme takes a higher-level view of the changes and then focuses down on a prioritised set of research targets. These targets have been investigated, re-focussed and validated over a period of four years through many workshops, conferences and meetings by a wide ranging group of representatives from approximately 90 industry and research organisations. The outcomes of such research, once put into practice should be significantly shortened timespans from conception of need to occupation of new or revised structures. As time is money, the owners will get their investments into productive use sooner, which means a shorter payback time. In addition, there will inevitably be a reduction in construction costs as productivity increases. The improvements in reliable delivery and improved quality currently being seen in relatively simplistic use of Building information Modelling (BIM) (compared to full IDDS) will inevitably continue its on-going trajectory of improvement. We should also consider the wider economic contribution to society that will stem from such improvements and, finally, and by no means unimportantly, the reliable modelling and delivery of sustainability at both the building and estate/ area scale will significantly improve carbon footprints and other sustainable outcomes. Whilst there are huge opportunities for early adopters, the primary risk will be the expansion of the gap between those working in this way and those who are not so advanced or who even refuse to progress . The opportunities to address the significant and widely varying wastes within the structure of the construction sector and within and across projects are huge and timely and industry is encouraged to become involved.

CIB White Paper on IDDS Integrated Design & Delivery Solutions

CIB is developing a priority theme, now termed Improving Construction and Use through Integrated Design & Delivery Solutions (IDDS). The IDDS working group for this theme adopted the following definition: Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions use collaborative work processes and enhanced skills, with integrated data, information, and knowledge management to minimize structural and process inefficiencies and to enhance the value delivered during design, build, and operation, and across projects. The design, construction, and commissioning sectors have been repeatedly analysed as inefficient and may or may not be quite as bad as portrayed; however, there is unquestionably significant scope for IDDS to improve the delivery of value to clients, stakeholders (including occupants), and society in general, simultaneously driving down cost and time to deliver operational constructed facilities. Although various initiatives developed from computer‐aided design and manufacturing technologies, lean construction, modularization, prefabrication and integrated project delivery are currently being adopted by some sectors and specialisations in construction; IDDS provides the vision for a more holistic future transformation. Successful use of IDDS requires improvements in work processes, technology, and people’s capabilities to span the entire construction lifecycle from conception through design, construction, commissioning, operation, refurbishment/ retrofit and recycling, and considering the building’s interaction with its environment. This vision extends beyond new buildings to encompass modifications and upgrades, particularly those aimed at improved local and area sustainability goals. IDDS will facilitate greater flexibility of design options, work packaging strategies and collaboration with suppliers and trades, which will be essential to meet evolving sustainability targets. As knowledge capture and reuse become prevalent, IDDS best practice should become the norm, rather than the exception.