Contextualising the teaching and learning of measurement within Torres Strait Islander schools

A one year mathematics project that focused on measurement was conducted with six Torres Strait Islander schools and communities. Its key focus was to contextualise the teaching and learning of measurement within the students’ culture, communities and home languages. There were six teachers and two teacher aides who participated in the project. This paper reports on the findings from the teachers’ and teacher aides’ survey questionnaire used in the first Professional Development session to identify: a) teachers’ experience of teaching in Torres Strait Islands, b) teachers’ beliefs about effective ways to teach Torres Strait Islander students, and c) contexualising measurement within Torres Strait Islander culture, Communities and home languages. A wide range of differing levels of knowledge and understanding about how to contextualise measurement to support student learning were identified and analysed. For example, an Indigenous teacher claimed that mathematics and the environment are relational, that is, they are not discrete and in isolation from one another, rather they interconnect with mathematical ideas emerging from the environment of the Torres Strait Communities.

Craft, process and art : teaching and learning music composition in higher education

This paper explores models of teaching and learning music composition in higher education. It analyses the pedagogical approaches apparent in the literature on teaching and learning composition in schools and universities, and introduces a teaching model as: learning from the masters; mastery of techniques; exploring ideas; and developing voice. It then presents a learning model developed from a qualitative study into students’ experiences of learning composition at university as: craft, process and art. The relationship between the students’ experiences and the pedagogical model is examined. Finally, the implications for composition curricula in higher education are presented.

Teaching to the middle in Australia : four teachers tell their stories

This chapter explores the perceptions of middle years specialist teachers in the contemporary Australian schools context. Written narratives were obtained from 4 Australian teachers. Each has followed distinctly different paths to teaching in the middle years. However, each has a high leadership profile in the general schooling sector assumed relatively early in their professional careers. These teachers were asked about their entry into teaching, the pathways they pursued to teaching at the middle level, opportunities and limitations experienced for them in schools, and their conceptions of the future of middle years reforms in Australia.

Literacies in place : teaching environmental communications

Reports on the work of a group of primary educators who participated in the collaborative practitioner inquiry stage of River Literacies, and explores what happened when a group of teachers made a serious commitment to rethink and extend the repertoires ofmulti- modal literacy for use with their students.

Teaching parallel computing concepts with a desktop computer

Parallel computing is currently used in many engineering problems. However, because of limitations in curriculum design, it is not always possible to offer students specific formal teaching in this topic. Furthermore, parallel machines are still too expensive for many institutions. The latest microprocessors, such as Intel’s Pentium III and IV, embody single instruction multiple-data (SIMD) type parallel features, which makes them a viable solution for introducing parallel computing concepts to students. Final year projects have been initiated utilizing SSE (streaming SIMD extensions) features and it has been observed that students can easily learn parallel programming concepts after going through some programming exercises. They can now experiment with parallel algorithms on their own PCs at home. Keywords

Educating EFL preservice teachers for teaching astronomy

Malaysia’s Vision 2020 for enhancing its education system includes the development of scientific literacy commencing at the primary school level. This Vision focuses on using English as the Medium of Instruction (EMI) for teaching primary science, as Malaysia has English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in its curriculum. What changes need to occur in preservice teacher education programs for learning about primary science using EMI? This paper investigates the education of Malaysian preservice teachers for learning how to teach one strand in science education (i.e., space, primary astronomy) in an English-language context. Ninety-six second-year preservice teachers from two Malaysian institutes were involved in a 16-week “Earth and Space” course, half the course involved education about primary astronomy. Seventy-five of these preservice teachers provided written responses about the course and their development as potential teachers of primary astronomy using EMI. Preservice teacher assessments and multimedia presentations provided further evidence on learning how to teach primary astronomy. Many of these preservice teachers claimed that learning to teach primary astronomy needs to focus on teaching strategies, content knowledge with easy-to-understand concepts, computer simulations (e.g., Earth Centered Universe, Stellarium, Celestia), other ICT media, and field experiences that use naked-eye observations and telescopes to investigate celestial bodies. Although generally proficient in using ICT, they claimed there were EFL barriers for learning some new terminology. Nevertheless, powerpoints, animations, videos, and simulations were identified as effective ICT tools for providing clear visual representations of abstract concepts and ways to enhance the learning process.