Negotiating the meaning of achievement standards in the Australian curriculum

Planning for assessment using the achievement standards in the implementation of the Australian Curriculum presents a challenge for teachers. The achievement standards differ in appearance and function from current assessment practices. This research inquiry used qualitative focus group discussions to investigate how Year 6 teachers from three Queensland schools negotiated the meaning of the English and Mathematics achievement standards for their assessment practice. A sociocultural theoretical perspective was used to analyse the data. Three significant influences on the teachers’ understanding of the achievement standards were their understanding of the achievement standard text, their beliefs about learning and assessment, and the assessment culture of the school. The opportunity to learn through supported professional conversations with peers, and the need for a shared assessment discourse were identified as necessities to support teachers as they seek to implement the new practices inherent in the achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum.

Putting the cart before the horse? Driving student engagement through first year career identity development in a large multidisciplinary creative industries cohort

It is now widely accepted that first year students benefit from pedagogies which mediate and support their transitions to university, and assist them to develop an adaptive student identity. We present an initiative which takes an alternative and additional approach to this way of viewing the first year experience. Based on research into creative industries career trajectories, this initiative focuses on the establishment of nascent career identity and professional self-concept amongst 600 first semester Bachelor of Creative Industries (BCI) students at QUT. The BCI is offered as a three year undergraduate program involving self-selection of majors, minors and electives, and also as a four year double degree with Business and Law faculties. Students engage in a scaffolded process of initial career visioning and reflective course planning, based on their own industry and careers research, guided by industry-active academic and careers staff, and drawing upon the experiences of final year students.

Improving Indigenous women’s wellness through action research

Today in Australia, 75% of all Indigenous Australians reside in urban and peri-urban areas. In Brisbane, Indigenous Australians now number just over 45,000, and this number is rapidly increasing. Undertaking research with urban based Indigenous Australians is a relatively new phenomenon. Most past research with Indigenous people has been carried out in remote and regional areas. This paper focuses on a Participation Action Research project undertaken with Indigenous women in the highly urbanised area of North Brisbane. The project takes on the challenge of undertaking urban based Indigenous research. It opts not to centre on poor Indigenous women’s health statistics but instead centres on Indigenous women’s wellness and ways to talk about and work towards wellness. Through the cycles of dialogue with Indigenous women these concepts were teased out and manifested in two highly successful Women’s Wellness Summits. This paper will outline aspects of this project.

Pathways for developing a 'smart' workforce : does the achievement of formal workplace qualifications encourage participation in higher education?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a public workforce education initiative in the context of State and agency policies designed to enhance employee capabilities to adapt to a volatile and changing environment. In particular, we are concerned with public employees’ experience of a higher educational pathway that resulted in their obtaining a Diploma level qualification. In addition to understanding the employees’ experience of this pathway we were interested in whether the experience contributed to their openness to the prospect of university level education. We conducted telephone interviews with a sample of participants from the program. Employees reported very positive experience of the program; in particular employees reported enhanced efficacy beliefs, a strong sense of achievement, and a feeling of recognition. This experience is explained by four main factors; (1) a program design that was well aligned with the employees learning needs, (2) strong support by organisational staff who delivered and assessed participants on capability criteria, (3) strong management support for employees’ participation, (4) an academic ceremony that provided participants with public recognition of their achievement by valued others. Participants’ motivation to participate was primarily intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Participants in the study reported that their experience in this educational pathway gave them the confidence to consider the possibility of university level education. The paper also discusses the practitioner-academic collaboration that led to the development of this paper.

Law student psychological distress, ADR and sweet-minded, sweet-eyed hope

Empirical studies conducted by both Australian and American researchers have established law school’s causative role in increasing law student psychological distress. The purpose of this article is to highlight the role that law school curriculum might play in addressing this problem. By utilising lessons from the field of positive psychology (and in particular hope theory) a first-year law subject at the Queensland University of Technology has been specifically designed to promote law student well-being. Traditional legal education and pedagogy do not hold the answers for addressing this social phenomenon. A first-year curriculum that introduces students to alternative dispute resolution, non-adversarial justice, resilience and the positive role of lawyers in society may go some way to addressing the law student well-being challenge.

Contextualising learning for a real-world university: how an inverted curriculum in the first year can help better student retention

An identified issue within higher education is the high rates of student attrition after the first year, especially in the STEM disciplines. To address this issue, it is essential to reexamine and redesign the first year curriculum to engage and retain the students' interests while also scaffolding their learning experience. This session reports on an initiative based on the principles of the “inverted curriculum” within the Bachelor of Technology (BIT) course at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) that began in 2009 and has resulted in a reduction in first-year attrition rates from 18% in 2008 to 10% in 2009 and 2010 despite a growth in student intake of 15% to 40% in the past two years. We present the process and methods that helped achieve this and initiate a discussion on the innovations that are possible within this concept of inverted curriculum and how it can be implemented.

Identifying engaging features of schooling : assessing the psychometric soundness of student generated research

In this article we report on data analysed from a student project about attitudes to school and student perception of engagement and disengagement. The data were collected by students in an Australian study that employed the Young People as Researchers Model. Middle years students devised and administered a questionnaire to students in grade eight, nine and ten at a secondary school in Australia. A total of 239 students completed the questionnaire. The students completed the initial analysis which was followed by a more detailed analysis by the authors of this paper. The findings support the work of American, British and Australian researchers about the factors that influence engagement and disengagement from schooling. The reported outcomes from the student work and the secondary analysis indicate that students do have the capacity to undertake valid and meaningful research and can make informed contributions to school improvement and student engagement.

Factors facilitating or constraining the fieldwork practicum experience for culturally and linguistically diverse student teachers in Queensland schools

Increasing numbers of Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) students, both from the international and domestic sectors are undertaking teacher education programs at Australian universities. While many have positive practicum experiences, there are a significant number who experience difficulties. Little work has been done on viewing this situation from a sociocultural perspective where learning is seen as a form of socialisation into the different beliefs, values and practices of the new community, the placement school. This study argues that all student teachers, particularly pre-service CALD teachers, require active learning communities to become successful. Using perspectives derived from situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and community of practice theory (Wenger, 1998) this study illustrates the processes of learning and identity development and the factors that facilitate or constrain the practicum experience for CALD pre-service teachers. This study adopts a methodology that is grounded in narrative inquiry, with in-depth interview techniques used to explore CALD teachers’ experiences of their fieldwork practicum and their attempts to participate and practice successfully. The data derived from fourteen in-depth narratives of pre-service CALD teachers is analysed from a sociocultural perspective. The practicum for these students is an experience of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice (the practicum school), and the complex nature of the social experience as they engaged in building their professional identity as a teacher is discussed. This analysis is used to propose recommendations and strategies at the faculty and school levels to support positive learning and practicum experiences for this group of student teachers.

Queer, student, activism

Queer student activists are a visible aspect of Australian tertiary communities. I explore the findings of interviews with eight queer student activists, whom were active between 2003 and 2006, in which they discuss their understandings of queer student activism and the way they see the university setting shaping their activism. These findings illustrate how the intersections of queer, student, activism, and their associated contexts, create a particular type of activism. This article thus contributes to queer history by demonstrating how one specific cultural subset does queer activism.

Team teaching : working together to promote student learning

This book chapter examines the concept of team teaching from the perspective of the various stakeholders, in order to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of team teaching for students, to consider the positive and negative dimensions of collaborative teaching for teachers, and to review the implications for educational administration. In addition, attention will be paid to the issues associated with team teaching in the context of e-learning. The chapter concludes with a case study which discusses how the implementation of collaborative teaching within the library and information science discipline at an Australian university helped develop the authors’ understanding of socially constructed knowledge.

Can we teach advertising students to think? Strategies to engage student thinking

Understanding and effectively managing students’ engagement in education plays a significant role in enhancing learning processes and outcomes. Research has shown that students learn more when they are actively engaged in their learning. However, as many educators know, this is not as easy as one might expect. Using a range of teaching approaches, we attempt to impart knowledge and develop understanding and comprehension (Angelo 1993; Biggs and Telfer 1987; Patti 2003; Ranburuth and McCormick 2001). These vary from “information dump” or teacher-centric approaches, to those that stimulate more active involvement. From the literature, we know that experiential learning, such as those strategies that help students acquire practice skills, apply critical thought and active learning, are likely to have achieve higher levels of intellectual skill and ability (Benson and Blackman 2003; Hampton and Lawrence 1995; Hopkinson and Hogg 2004; Kolb 1984).

The development of teacher assessment identity through participation in online moderation

Teachers’ professional conversations regarding the qualities evidenced in student work provide opportunities to develop a shared understanding of achievement standards. This research investigates social moderation conducted in a synchronous online mode as a specific form of professional conversation. The discussion considers the different factors that influenced these conversations which included the technologic medium of the meeting. The focus of the discussion is how participation in online moderation can support teachers to develop an assessment identity as one who works within a standards-based assessment system. Qualitative data were gathered from middle school teachers from different year levels, in different curriculum areas, in diverse geographic locations, and in a range of sociocultural contexts within Queensland, Australia. Analysis of the data through a sociocultural lens of becoming suggests that participation in online moderation, while challenging for teachers, can also provide opportunities to construct and to negotiate an identity as an assessor of student work.

The evolution of QUT’s Student Success Program : 20,000 students later

“The Student Success Program (SSP) is a monitoring and early intervention program in operation at QUT designed to identify and support those students deemed to be at risk of disengaging for their learning and their institution” (Nelson, Quinn, Marrington & Clarke, 2011, p. 83). This report reflects on the development of the program since its inception in 2007. In acknowledging similar initiatives within the sector that monitor student learning engagement, the Nuts & Bolts session allows for identification and discussion of the critical success factors for these intervention and support programs.

Managing distraction and attention in diverse cohorts : 21st century challenges to law student engagement

It is imperative that we consider the use of current and emerging technologies in terms of the nature of our learners, the physical environment of the lecture theatre, and how technology may help to support appropriate pedagogies that facilitate the capturing of student attention in active engaging learning experiences. It is argued that a re-evaluation of pedagogy is required to address the tech-savy traits of the 21st century learner and the extent to which their mobile devices are capable of not only distracting them from learning but also enhancing face-to-face learning experiences.

Facilitating first year students’ engagement with planning education : utilising student affinity for technology to increase cohort cohesion and decrease attrition

First year students overwhelmingly indicate that a strong interest in a field of study prompts them to enrol in university (McInnis et al 2000), yet over a quarter indicate that they have seriously considered dropping out of studies during their first year, with boredom most frequently cited by those domestic students who do depart before graduation (Coates and Ransom 2011). While it may be comforting to write off such withdrawals to the presumed apathy of youth, student “disquiet (in) their first year on campus may be a result of courses and institutions that do not match their needs and objectives, rather than any uncertainty or lack of purpose on their part” (James et al 1999). Voting with their mouse clicks, The current research investigate two conceptualized types of student participation in online discussion forums to increase understanding of student affinity for technology and its potential for fostering social network development amongst first year students.