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.

Releasing Dragons

As a woman traveling from one of the world’s youngest nations, Australia, my aim was to examine if western ideology had infiltrated life styles of Chinese women since the “opening up” of China in the 1980s. It is through a metaphoric examination of the contents of women’s handbags – traditionally a very secretive environment – that I sought to investigate aspects of a gender-based economic and social basis of China in 1999.

On democracy

If one clear argument emerged from my doctoral thesis in political science, it is that there is no agreement as to what democracy is. There are over 40 different varieties of democracy ranging from those in the mainstream with subtle or minute differences to those playing by themselves in the corner. And many of these various types of democracy are very well argued, empirically supported, and highly relevant to certain polities. The irony is that the thing which all of these democratic varieties or the ‘basic democracy’ that all other forms of democracy stem from, is elusive. There is no international agreement in the literature or in political practice as to what ‘basic democracy’ is and that is problematic as many of us use the word ‘democracy’ every day and it is a concept of tremendous importance internationally. I am still uncertain as to why this problem has not been resolved before by far greater minds than my own, and it may have something to do with the recent growth in democratic theory this past decade and the innovative areas of thought my thesis required, but I think I’ve got the answer. By listing each type of democracy and filling the column next to this list with the literature associated with these various styles of democracy, I amassed a large and comprehensive body of textual data. My research intended to find out what these various styles of democracy had in common and to create a taxonomy (like the ‘tree of life’ in biology) of democracy to attempt at showing how various styles of democracy have ‘evolved’ over the past 5000 years.ii I then ran a word frequency analysis program or a piece of software that counts the 100 most commonly used words in the texts. This is where my logic came in as I had to make sense of these words. How did they answer what the most fundamental commonalities are between 40 different styles of democracy? I used a grounded theory analysis which required that I argue my way through these words to form a ‘theory’ or plausible explanation as to why these particular words and not others are the important ones for answering the question. It came down to the argument that all 40 styles of democracy analysed have the following in common 1) A concept of a citizenry. 2) A concept of sovereignty. 3) A concept of equality. 4) A concept of law. 5) A concept of communication. 6) And a concept of selecting officials. Thus, democracy is a defined citizenry with its own concept of sovereignty which it exercises through the institutions which support the citizenry’s understandings of equality, law, communication, and the selection of officials. Once any of these 6 concepts are defined in a particular way it creates a style of democracy. From this, we can also see that there can be more than one style of democracy active in a particular government as a citizenry is composed of many different aggregates with their own understandings of the six concepts.

Individual differences in learning from worked examples by senior secondary mathematics students

The primary purpose of this research was to examine individual differences in learning from worked examples. By integrating cognitive style theory and cognitive load theory, it was hypothesised that an interaction existed between individual cognitive style and the structure and presentation of worked examples in their effect upon subsequent student problem solving. In particular, it was hypothesised that Analytic-Verbalisers, Analytic-Imagers, and Wholist-lmagers would perform better on a posttest after learning from structured-pictorial worked examples than after learning from unstructured worked examples. For Analytic-Verbalisers it was reasoned that the cognitive effort required to impose structure on unstructured worked examples would hinder learning. Alternatively, it was expected that Wholist-Verbalisers would display superior performances after learning from unstructured worked examples than after learning from structured-pictorial worked examples. The images of the structured-pictorial format, incongruent with the Wholist-Verbaliser style, would be expected to split attention between the text and the diagrams. The information contained in the images would also be a source of redundancy and not easily ignored in the integrated structured-pictorial format. Despite a number of authors having emphasised the need to include individual differences as a fundamental component of problem solving within domainspecific subjects such as mathematics, few studies have attempted to investigate a relationship between mathematical or science instructional method, cognitive style, and problem solving. Cognitive style theory proposes that the structure and presentation of learning material is likely to affect each of the four cognitive styles differently. No study could be found which has used Riding's (1997) model of cognitive style as a framework for examining the interaction between the structural presentation of worked examples and an individual's cognitive style. 269 Year 12 Mathematics B students from five urban and rural secondary schools in Queensland, Australia participated in the main study. A factorial (three treatments by four cognitive styles) between-subjects multivariate analysis of variance indicated a statistically significant interaction. As the difficulty of the posttest components increased, the empirical evidence supporting the research hypotheses became more pronounced. The rigour of the study's theoretical framework was further tested by the construction of a measure of instructional efficiency, based on an index of cognitive load, and the construction of a measure of problem-solving efficiency, based on problem-solving time. The consistent empirical evidence within this study that learning from worked examples is affected by an interaction of cognitive style and the structure and presentation of the worked examples emphasises the need to consider individual differences among senior secondary mathematics students to enhance educational opportunities. Implications for teaching and learning are discussed and recommendations for further research are outlined.

Gemma Smith and the intuitive abstract

This article examines the work of Brisbane artist Gemma Smith. It investigates the artist's career and her developmental abstract paintings and sculptures. It argues that the artist is fundamentally intuitive in her approach to the genre and also employs mimicry of certain abstract styles as a means through which to develop her own creative outcomes.

Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens [contributions: entries S-V]

Shelton, Edward Mason; p.548 Sherwood Arboretum; p.550 Soutter, William; pp.563-564 Styles or gardens and designed landscapes; pp.575-576 Summer-house; pp.579-580 Trapnell, Walter George; p.602 Tropical Gardens; pp.604-605 Wickham Park; p.642 Wijaya, Made; p.642 Williams, George; p.644 Williams, Keith A.W.; p.644 Verandah Garadening; p.614

Fusing curricula : science, technology and ICT

Curriculum demands continue to increase on school education systems with teachers at the forefront of implementing syllabus requirements. Education is reported frequently as a solution to most societal problems and, as a result of the world’s information explosion, teachers are expected to cover more and more within teaching programs. How can teachers combine subjects in order to capitalise on the competing educational agendas within school timeframes? Fusing curricula requires the bonding of standards from two or more syllabuses. Both technology and ICT complement the learning of science. This study analyses selected examples of preservice teachers’ overviews for fusing science, technology and ICT. These program overviews focused on primary students and the achievement of two standards (one from science and one from either technology or ICT). These primary preservice teachers’ fused-curricula overviews included scientific concepts and related technology and/or ICT skills and knowledge. Findings indicated a range of innovative curriculum plans for teaching primary science through technology and ICT, demonstrating that these subjects can form cohesive links towards achieving the respective learning standards. Teachers can work more astutely by fusing curricula; however further professional development may be required to advance thinking about these processes. Bonding subjects through their learning standards can extend beyond previous integration or thematic work where standards may not have been assessed. Education systems need to articulate through syllabus documents how effective fusing of curricula can be achieved. It appears that education is a key avenue for addressing societal needs, problems and issues. Education is promoted as a universal solution, which has resulted in curriculum overload (Dare, Durand, Moeller, & Washington, 1997; Vinson, 2001). Societal and curriculum demands have placed added pressure on teachers with many extenuating education issues increasing teachers’ workloads (Mobilise for Public Education, 2002). For example, as Australia has weather conducive for outdoor activities, social problems and issues arise that are reported through the media calling for action; consequently schools have been involved in swimming programs, road and bicycle safety programs, and a wide range of activities that had been considered a parental responsibility in the past. Teachers are expected to plan, implement and assess these extra-curricula activities within their already overcrowded timetables. At the same stage, key learning areas (KLAs) such as science and technology are mandatory requirements within all Australian education systems. These systems have syllabuses outlining levels of content and the anticipated learning outcomes (also known as standards, essential learnings, and frameworks). Time allocated for teaching science in obviously an issue. In 2001, it was estimated that on average the time spent in teaching science in Australian Primary Schools was almost an hour per week (Goodrum, Hackling, & Rennie, 2001). More recently, a study undertaken in the U.S. reported a similar finding. More than 80% of the teachers in K-5 classrooms spent less than an hour teaching science (Dorph, Goldstein, Lee, et al., 2007). More importantly, 16% did not spend teaching science in their classrooms. Teachers need to learn to work smarter by optimising the use of their in-class time. Integration is proposed as one of the ways to address the issue of curriculum overload (Venville & Dawson, 2005; Vogler, 2003). Even though there may be a lack of definition for integration (Hurley, 2001), curriculum integration aims at covering key concepts in two or more subject areas within the same lesson (Buxton & Whatley, 2002). This implies covering the curriculum in less time than if the subjects were taught separately; therefore teachers should have more time to cover other educational issues. Expectedly, the reality can be decidedly different (e.g., Brophy & Alleman, 1991; Venville & Dawson, 2005). Nevertheless, teachers report that students expand their knowledge and skills as a result of subject integration (James, Lamb, Householder, & Bailey, 2000). There seems to be considerable value for integrating science with other KLAs besides aiming to address teaching workloads. Over two decades ago, Cohen and Staley (1982) claimed that integration can bring a subject into the primary curriculum that may be otherwise left out. Integrating science education aims to develop a more holistic perspective. Indeed, life is not neat components of stand-alone subjects; life integrates subject content in numerous ways, and curriculum integration can assist students to make these real-life connections (Burnett & Wichman, 1997). Science integration can provide the scope for real-life learning and the possibility of targeting students’ learning styles more effectively by providing more than one perspective (Hudson & Hudson, 2001). To illustrate, technology is essential to science education (Blueford & Rosenbloom, 2003; Board of Studies, 1999; Penick, 2002), and constructing technology immediately evokes a social purpose for such construction (Marker, 1992). For example, building a model windmill requires science and technology (Zubrowski, 2002) but has a key focus on sustainability and the social sciences. Science has the potential to be integrated with all KLAs (e.g., Cohen & Staley, 1982; Dobbs, 1995; James et al., 2000). Yet, “integration” appears to be a confusing term. Integration has an educational meaning focused on special education students being assimilated into mainstream classrooms. The word integration was used in the late seventies and generally focused around thematic approaches for teaching. For instance, a science theme about flight only has to have a student drawing a picture of plane to show integration; it did not connect the anticipated outcomes from science and art. The term “fusing curricula” presents a seamless bonding between two subjects; hence standards (or outcomes) need to be linked from both subjects. This also goes beyond just embedding one subject within another. Embedding implies that one subject is dominant, while fusing curricula proposes an equal mix of learning within both subject areas. Primary education in Queensland has eight KLAs, each with its established content and each with a proposed structure for levels of learning. Primary teachers attempt to cover these syllabus requirements across the eight KLAs in less than five hours a day, and between many of the extra-curricula activities occurring throughout a school year (e.g., Easter activities, Education Week, concerts, excursions, performances). In Australia, education systems have developed standards for all KLAs (e.g., Education Queensland, NSW Department of Education and Training, Victorian Education) usually designated by a code. In the late 1990’s (in Queensland), “core learning outcomes” for strands across all KLA’s. For example, LL2.1 for the Queensland Education science syllabus means Life and Living at Level 2 standard number 1. Thus, a teacher’s planning requires the inclusion of standards as indicated by the presiding syllabus. More recently, the core learning outcomes were replaced by “essential learnings”. They specify “what students should be taught and what is important for students to have opportunities to know, understand and be able to do” (Queensland Studies Authority, 2009, para. 1). Fusing science education with other KLAs may facilitate more efficient use of time and resources; however this type of planning needs to combine standards from two syllabuses. To further assist in facilitating sound pedagogical practices, there are models proposed for learning science, technology and other KLAs such as Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956), Productive Pedagogies (Education Queensland, 2004), de Bono’s Six Hats (de Bono, 1985), and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1999) that imply, warrant, or necessitate fused curricula. Bybee’s 5 Es, for example, has five levels of learning (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate; Bybee, 1997) can have the potential for fusing science and ICT standards.

Reverse immigration

This book (256 pages, written in Korean) is a critical essay that reviews, questions, and criticises Korean and Eastern immigrants’ thinking and behaviour styles in Australia from their cultural perspectives, and discuss and proposes a creative cultural dimension for their better life in a multicultural context. Multiculturalism is not supportive of Eastern cultures because of individualistic collection of cultures, while transculturalism facilitates nurture of their culture in a community-oriented way within multicultural circumstances. Korean and Eastern immigrants, sharing oriental cultural systems and values, should approach to the Australian multicultural context with transculturalism which allows creating new cultural values in collaboration with and by participation into local communities. ------------------------------------------------------------ Many Eastern immigrants live in their own ethnic communities without or less interacting with Australian (communities). The author defines this phenomenon as “reverse immigration”. Reverse immigration refers to re-immigrating to their ethnic community in Australia or to their birth country despite they did not anticipate that this would happen to them before immigration to Australia. The author argues that Easterners’ collectivistic culture often devalues individuality and vice versa. Cultural clash between West and East often forces the immigrants to choose reverse immigration because of their lack of understanding of Western culture and their cultural characteristics such as low individuality, high power distance, and high uncertainty avoidance. For example, a vague boundary between individualist and collectivist in a collectivistic context (within their ethnic group) often leads to maladjustment to local communities and enhancement of cultural conservatism. The author proposes that the cultural clash can be overcome by cross-cultural activities named “transculturalism”. To Eastern immigrants, transculturalism can be achieved by acculturation of their two predominant cultures, the third-person perspective and generalised others. In a multicultural context, the former refers to the ability to share another person's feelings and emotions as if they were your own, and the latter does the ability to manage community and public expectations. When both cultural values are used for quality interactions between East and West, they allow Eastern immigrants to be more creative and critical and Australian to be more socially inclusive and culturally tolerant. With these discussions, the author discusses cultural differences throughout the book with four topics (chapters) and proposes transculturalism as a solution to the reverse immigration. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 1 criticises Koreans’ attitudes and methods towards learning English that is less pragmatic and practical, but more likely to be a scholarly study. The author explains that Koreans’ non-pragmatic towards learning English has been firmly built based on their traditional systems and values that Koreans view English as a discipline and an aim of academic achievements rather than a means of communication. Within their cultural context, English can be perceived as more than a language, but something like vastly superior to their language and culture. Their collectivistic culture regards English as an unreachable and heterogeneous one that may threaten their cultural identity, so that “scholarly studying” is only the way to achieve (not learn) it. This discourages the immigrants to engage and involve in daily dialogues by “using” English as a second language. The author further advises the readers to be aware of Eastern collectivistic culture in communication and interaction that sometimes completely reverses private and public topics in a Western context. This leads them to feel that they have no content to talk to natives. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 2 compares between Korea and Australia in terms of their educational systems and values, and proposes how Eastern overseas students can achieve critical and creative thinking within a Western educational setting. Interestingly, this chapter includes an explanation of why Eastern overseas students easily fail assessments including essay writing, oral presentations and discussions. One of the reasons the author explains is that Eastern students are not familiar to criticise others and think creatively, especially when they recognise that their words and ideas may harm the collectivistic harmony. Western educational systems focuses on enhancement of individuality such as self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-expression, while Eastern educational systems foster group-oriented values such as interpersonal relationship, and strong moral and spiritual values. Yet, the author argues that the collectivistic approach to criticism and creativity is often more critical and creative than Western individuals when they know what they are supposed to do for a group (or a community). Therefore, Eastern students need to think their cultural merits and demerits by using an individual perspective rather than generalised others’ perspective. The latter often discourages individual participation in a community, and the generalised others in a Western culture is weaker than Eastern. Furthermore, Western educational systems do not educate students to transform (loose) their individuality to fit into a group or a community. Rather they cultivate individuality for community prosperity. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 3 introduces various cases of reverse immigration in workplaces that many immigrants return to their country or their ethnic community after many trials for acculturation. Reverse immigration is unexpected and not planned before immigration, so that its emotional embarrassment increases such severe social loneliness. Most Eastern immigrant workers have tried to adjust themselves in this new cultural environment at the early stages of immigration. However, their cultural features of collectivism, high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, and long-term oriented cultures suppress individual initiative and eliminate the space for experiments in ways of acculturation. The author argues that returning to their ethnic community (physically and psychologically) leads to two significant problems: their distorted parenting and becoming more conservatives. The former leads the first generation of immigrants to pressure their children to pursue extrinsic or materialist values, such as financial success, fame and physical appearance, rather than on intrinsic values, while the latter refers to their isolated conservative characters because of their remoteness from the changes of their own country. The author also warns that their ethnic and religious groups actively strengthens immigrants’ social loneliness and systematically discourages immigrants’ interests and desire to be involving into local communities. The ethnic communities and leaders have not been interacting with Australian local communities and, as a result, are eager to conserve outdated cultural systems values. Even they have a tendency to weed out those people who wish to settle down within Australian local communities. They believe that those people can threaten their community’s survival and continuity. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 4 titled multiculturalism argues that Korean and Eastern immigrants should more precisely understand Australia as a multicultural society in a way of collaboratively creating new cultural values. The author introduces multiculturalism with its definitions and history in Australia and argues the limitations of multiculturalism from an Easterner’s perspective. With well known tragedies of the second generations of U.S. immigrants, Cho Seung-Hui, a university student, massacred 32 people on the Virginia Tech before committing suicide and Hidal Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at Fort Hood and the responses of ethnic community, the author explains that their mental illness may be derived from their parents’ (or ethnic group) culturally isolated attitude and socially static viewpoint of U.S. (Western system and values). The author insists that multiculturalism may restrict Eastern immigrants’ engagement and involvement in local communities. Multiculturalism has been systematically and historically developed based on Western systems and cultural values. In other words, multiculturalism requires high self-confidence and self-esteem that Eastern immigrants less prioritise them. It has been generally known that Easterners put more weight on human relationship than Westerners, but the author claims that this is not true. Within an individualistic culture, Westerners are more interested in building person-to-person connections and relationships. While Easterners are more interested in how individuals can achieve a sense of belonging within a group and a community. Therefore, multiculturalism is an ideology which forces Eastern immigrants to discard their strong desire to be part of a group and does not give a sense of belonging. In a consequence, the author advises that Eastern immigrants should aim towards “transculturalism” which allows them to actively participate in and contribute to their multicultural community. Transculturalism does not ask Easterners to discard their cultural values, but enables them to be a collectivistic individualist (a community leader) who is capable of developing new cultural values in a more creative and productive way. Furthermore, transculturalism encourages Western Australians in a multicultural context to collaborate with ethnic minorities to build a better community.

The impact of users’ cognitive style on their navigational behaviors in web searching

User-Web interactions have emerged as an important area of research in the field of information science. In this study, we investigate the effects of users’ cognitive styles on their Web navigational styles and information processing strategies. We report results from the analyses of 594 minutes recorded Web search sessions of 18 participants engaged in 54 scenario-based search tasks. We use questionnaires, cognitive style test, Web session logs and think-aloud as the data collection instruments. We classify users’ cognitive styles as verbalisers and imagers based on Riding’s (1991) Cognitive Style Analysis test. Two classifications of navigational styles and three categories of information processing strategies are identified. Our study findings show that there exist relationships between users’ cognitive style, and their navigational styles and information processing strategies. Verbal users seem to display sporadic navigational styles, and adopt a scanning strategy to understand the content of the search result page, while imagery users follow a structured navigational style and reading approach. We develop a matrix and a model that depicts the relationships between users’ cognitive styles, and their navigational style and information processing strategies. We discuss how the findings from this study could help search engine designers to provide an adaptive navigation support to users.

Creating Active Futures : Edited Proceedings of the 26th ACHPER International Conference

Physical inactivity has become a major cause of the global increase in non-communicable disease (World Health Organisation, 2009}. In 2008, the World Economic Forum called for employers to be proactive in the prevention of non-communicable diseases in the workforce. A significant contributor to the development of a healthy workforce is a reliable pool of employees who are receptive to and aware of healthy lifestyle practices even before becoming employed. Health and Physical Education (HPE) is often stereotyped as 'doing sport'. However, if HPE is to play a part in the development of a healthy workforce, then the HPE learning environment must be about creating meaningful learning for all, which is clearly more than the creation of elite athletes. The ultimate aim of health and physical educators must be about 1) developing lifelong and habitual physical activity; 2) developing generic physical skills; 3) inspiring holistic and positive emotional attitudes and 4) instilling a focus on evidence based knowledge as a framework for inspiring active citizenship. As a response to the worldwide move to the development of healthier people, Australia currently has a strong momentum for an expanded and more unified role for HPE within a potential National curriculum. Other countries have engaged in such a process and much can be learned from their experiences of the process. The 2009 Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (ACHPER) conference was a landmark conference that included an International group of experts from all continents and twenty three countries. Creating Active Futures: Edited Proceedings of the 26th ACHPER International Conference is an amalgamation of research and professional perspectives presented at the conference. The papers in this volume emerged from those presented for peer review, rather than through seeking specific articles. This volume is divided into sections based on the five conference themes: 1) Issues in Health and Physical Education (HPE) Pedagogy; 2) Practical Application of Science in HPE; 3) Lifestyle Enhancement; 4) Developing Sporting Excellence; 5) Contemporary Games Teaching. The 'Issues in HPE Pedagogy' section provides a diverse set of perspectives on teaching HPE with papers from a range of topics that include first aid, philosophy, access, cultural characteristics, methods and teaching styles, curriculum, qualifications and emotional development. The second section links science to teaching HPE and provides a range of valuable information on injury prevention, information technology, personality and skill development. Section 3 is a collection of writings and research about Lifestyle Enhancement. Topics include the important role of adventure, the natural world, curriculum, migrant viewpoints, beliefs and globally focused programs in the development of active citizens. The section on sporting excellence contains papers that undertake to explain an aspect of excellence in sport. The last section of this volume highlights some contemporary views on teaching games.

Assessing architectural design processes of diverse learners

Given that what students learn is so strongly related to how they learn, the modes of delivery and assessment that we as teachers provide them with have a major impact on their ability to learn. As this paper shows, good learning environments are constructed from a range of modes that respond to student learning styles and seek to align activities and learning outcomes with assessment tasks, to better accommodate a diversity of student learning styles and backgrounds. This paper uses a number of models of learning to critique and analyse the traditional practices of assessment in an architectural design class, and then proposes and reports on an alternative pattern of assessment. It discusses the issues of accommodating a group of first-year architecture students at Queensland University of Technology in 2009. These students arrived with diverse prior learning backgrounds, the group being evenly split between those with drawing capabilities and those without. They also had a variety of learning style preferences. The experiment in alternative assessment patterns presented here shows that what has traditionally been considered a diverse and difficult cohort of students can benefit from the assessment of a range of task types at different stages in the learning cycle.