Children participating in science through digital-media literacies

This article outlines the findings of a research project in which primary school students in Queensland, Australia undertook science learning through media arts pedagogy. The project was a component of the URLearning Project. We found that students' development of digital media literacies allowed participation and communication in science in ways that were otherwise unavailable to them.

Challenges confronting career-changing beginning teachers : a qualitative study of professional scientists becoming science teachers

Recruitment of highly qualified science and mathematics graduates has become a widespread strategy to enhance the quality of education in the field of STEM. However, attrition rates are very high suggesting preservice education programs are not preparing them well for the career change. We analyse the experiences of professionals who are scientists and have decided to change careers to become teachers. The study followed a group of professionals who undertook a one-year preservice teacher education course and were employed by secondary schools on graduation. We examined these teachers’ experiences through the lens of self-determination theory, which posits autonomy, confidence and relatedness are important in achieving job satisfaction. The findings indicated that the successful teachers were able to achieve a sense of autonomy and confidence, and, in particular, had established strong relationships with colleagues. However, the unique challenges facing career-change professionals were often overlooked by administrators and colleagues. Opportunities to build a sense of relatedness in their new profession were often absent. The failure to establish supportive relationships was decisive in some teachers leaving the profession. The findings have implications for both pre-service and professional inservice programs and the role that administrators play in supporting career-change teachers.

Emotional experiences of preservice science teachers in online learning : the formation, disruption and maintenance of social bonds

The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.

Selection procedures for module discovery : exploring evolutionary algorithms for cognitive science

Evolutionary algorithms are playing an increasingly important role as search methods in cognitive science domains. In this study, methodological issues in the use of evolutionary algorithms were investigated via simulations in which procedures were systematically varied to modify the selection pressures on populations of evolving agents. Traditional roulette wheel, tournament, and variations of these selection algorithms were compared on the “needle-in-a-haystack” problem developed by Hinton and Nowlan in their 1987 study of the Baldwin effect. The task is an important one for cognitive science, as it demonstrates the power of learning as a local search technique in smoothing a fitness landscape that lacks gradient information. One aspect that has continued to foster interest in the problem is the observation of residual learning ability in simulated populations even after long periods of time. Effective evolutionary algorithms balance their search effort between broad exploration of the search space and in-depth exploitation of promising solutions already found. Issues discussed include the differential effects of rank and proportional selection, the tradeoff between migration of populations towards good solutions and maintenance of diversity, and the development of measures that illustrate how each selection algorithm affects the search process over generations. We show that both roulette wheel and tournament algorithms can be modified to appropriately balance search between exploration and exploitation, and effectively eliminate residual learning in this problem.

Preparing pre-service teachers to teach primary science : an integrated approach using the theme of sustainability

An integrated approach to assessment afforded pre-service teachers the opportunity to learn about a local sustainability issue through three learning areas: science and technology,the arts and studies of society and environment (SOSE). Three sustainability issues chosen by the pre-service teachers are presented in this paper highlighting the science concepts explored. Affordances and constraints of the integrated task are discussed in the conclusion.

Visual narratives and counter-narratives in aged care : Centring the participant as photographer in social science research

As detailed by a number of scholars (Emmison & Smith, 2000, 2012; Harrison, 1996, 2002, 2004), photographs and the process of photographing can provide fertile ground for sociological investigation. Examining the production of photography can tell us much about inclusion/omission and power/knowledge in a variety of social settings. Recently, some researchers have begun to utilise the participatory action research methodology, PhotoVoice, where people take and share photographs as a means of communicating and advocating on a specific topic. While medical sociologists have used PhotoVoice to communicate the impacts of disease in vulnerable populations (eg Burles, 2010), little social research has been done that combines PhotoVoice and older persons. This is interesting given the world’s population is ageing and the general lack of research that examines what daily life is like for older people living in aged care (Timonen & O’Dwyer, 2009). In response, a recent project tracked 10 participants who recently transitioned into living in residential aged care (RAC). The project combined the use of PhotoVoice methodology with repeated in-depth interviews. Residents were asked to orally and visually describe the positives and negative aspects of their daily lives. In the first instance, they shared the use of a RAC owned camera and later had the opportunity to access a camera for their sole use. Photographic analysis emphasised the value of centring the participant as an autonomous photographer in social research. In the photographs captured on a shared use camera, the photographs tended to depict predominately positive life stories (e.g. weekly morning tea outings, social activities). In comparison, the photographs captured on the sole use camera also described intimate but everyday activities, spaces, objects and people that frequented in their daily lives. Shifting the responsibility of the camera and photography solely to the participants resulted in the residents disrupting conventions of ‘suitable’ subject matter to photograph (Harrison, 2004) and in doing so, provided a much richer insight into what daily life is like in aged care.

Developing young students’ meta-representational competence through integrated mathematics and science investigations

This paper describes students’ developing meta-representational competence, drawn from the second phase of a longitudinal study, Transforming Children’s Mathematical and Scientific Development. A group of 21 highly able Grade 1 students was engaged in mathematics/science investigations as part of a data modelling program. A pedagogical approach focused on students’ interpretation of categorical and continuous data was implemented through researcher-directed weekly sessions over a 2-year period. Fine-grained analysis of the developmental features and explanations of their graphs showed that explicit pedagogical attention to conceptual differences between categorical and continuous data was critical to development of inferential reasoning.

“Do I really need a nap?”: The role of sleep science in informing sleep practices in early childhood education and care settings

A compelling body of studies identifies the importance of sleep for children’s learning, behavioral regulation, and health. These studies have primarily focused on nighttime sleep or on total sleep duration. The independent contribution of daytime sleep, or napping, in childhood is an emerging research focus. Daytime sleep is particularly pertinent to the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC) where, internationally, allocation of time for naps is commonplace through to the time of school entry. The biological value of napping varies with neurological maturity and with individual circumstance. Beyond the age of 3 years, when monophasic sleep patterns become typical, there is an increasing disjuncture between children’s normative sleep requirements and ECEC practice. At this time, research evidence consistently identifies an association between napping and decreased quality and duration of night sleep. We assess the implications of this evidence for educational practice and health policy. We identify the need to distinguish the functions of napping from those of rest, and assert the need for evidence-based guidelines on sleep–rest practices in ECEC settings to accommodate individual variation in sleep needs. Given both the evidence on the impact of children’s nighttime sleep on long-term trajectories of health and well-being and the high rates of child attendance in ECEC programs, we conclude that policy and practice regarding naptime have significant implications for child welfare and ongoing public health.

Understanding preservice teachers’ development of pedagogical knowledge practices when co-teaching primary science to peers

Preservice teachers articulate the need for more teaching experiences for developing their practices, however, extending beyond existing school arrangements may present difficulties. Thus, it is important to understand preservice teachers’ development of pedagogical knowledge practices when in the university setting. This mixed-method study investigated 48 second-year preservice teachers’ development of pedagogical knowledge practices as a result of co-teaching primary science to peers. Data were collected through a survey, video-recorded lessons, extended written responses and researcher observations. The study showed how these preservice teachers demonstrated 9 of 11 pedagogical knowledge practices within the co-teaching arrangement. However, research is needed to determine the level of development on each pedagogical knowledge practice and how these practices can be transferred into authentic primary classroom settings.

“I was proud of myself that I didn’t give up and I did it”: Experiences of pride and triumph in learning science

The role that specific emotions, such as pride and triumph, play during instruction in science education is an under-researched field of study. Emotions are recognized as central to learning yet little is known about the way in which they are produced in naturalistic settings, how emotions relate to classroom learning during interactions, and what antecedent factors are associated with emotional experiences during instruction. Data sources for the study include emotion diaries, student written artifacts, video recordings of class interactions, and interviews. Emotions produced in the moment during classroom interactions are analyzed from video data and audio data through a novel theoretical framework related to the sociology of human emotions. These direct observations are compared with students’ recollected emotional experiences reported through emotion diaries and interviews. The study establishes links between pride and triumph within classroom interactions and instructional tasks during learning episodes in a naturalistic setting. We discuss particular classroom activities that are associated with justified feelings of pride and triumph. More specifically, classroom events associated with these emotions were related to understanding science concepts, social interactions, and achieving success on challenging tasks.

Telephone-delivered health coaching improves anxiety outcomes after myocardial infarction: The 'ProActive Heart' trial

Background: Recently, we found a telephone-delivered secondary prevention programme using health coaching (‘ProActive Heart’) to be effective in improving a range of key behavioural outcomes for myocardial infarction (MI) patients. What remains unclear, however, is the extent to which these treatment effects translate to important psychological outcomes such as depression and anxiety outcomes, an issue of clinical significance due to the substantial proportion of MI patients who experience depression and anxiety. The objective of the study was to investigate, as a secondary hypothesis of a larger trial, the effects of a telephone-delivered health coaching programme on depression and anxiety outcomes of MI patients. Design: Two-arm, parallel-group, randomized, controlled design with six-months outcomes. Methods: Patients admitted to one of two tertiary hospitals in Brisbane, Australia following MI were assessed for eligibility. Four hundred and thirty patients were recruited and randomly assigned to usual care or an intervention group comprising up to 10 telephone-delivered ‘health coaching’ sessions (ProActive Heart). Regression analysis compared Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale scores of completing participants at six months (intervention: n = 141 versus usual care: n = 156). Results: The intervention yielded reductions in anxiety at follow-up (mean difference = −0.7, 95% confidence interval=−1.4,−0.02) compared with usual care. A similar pattern was observed in mean depression scores but was not statistically significant. Conclusions: The ProActive Heart programme effectively improves anxiety outcomes of patients following myocardial infarction. If combined with psychological-specific treatment, this programme could impact anxiety of greater intensity in a clinically meaningful way.