Does school health and home economics education influence adults' food knowledge?

Home economics and health teachers are to be found in many parts of the world. They teach students about food in relation to its nutritional, safety and environmental properties. The effects of such teaching might be expected to be reflected in the food knowledge of adults who have undertaken school education in these areas. This study examined the food knowledge associations of school home economics and health education among Australian adults. Two separate online surveys were conducted nationwide among 2022 (November 2011) and 2146 Australian adults (November-December 2012). True/false and multiple choice questions in both surveys were used to assess nutrition, food safety and environmental knowledge. Knowledge scores were constructed and compared against respondents' experience of school health or home economics education via multiple regression analyses. The results from both studies showed that home economics (and similar) education was associated with higher levels of food knowledge among several age groups. The associations of home economics education with food knowledge differed across several Australian states and recall of home economics themes differed across the age groups. These findings suggest that home economics education may bring about long-lasting learning of food knowledge. Further research is required, however, to confirm the findings and to test the causal influence of home economics education on adults' food knowledge.

Science education policy-making : eleven emerging issues

The Perth Declaration on Science and Technology Education of 2007 expresses strong concern about the state of science and technology education worldwide and calls on governments to respond to a number of suggestions for establishing the structural conditions for their improved practice. The quality of school education in science and technology has never before been of such critical importance to governments. There are three imperatives for its critical importance. The first relates to the traditional role of science in schooling, namely the identification, motivation and initial preparation of those students who will go on to further studies for careers in all those professional fi elds that directly involve science and technology. A suffi cient supply of these professionals is vital to the economy of all countries and to the health of their citizens. In the 21st century they are recognised everywhere as key players in ensuring that industrial and economic development occurs in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. In many countries this supply is now falling seriously short and urgently needs to be addressed. The second imperative is that sustainable technological development and many other possible societal applications of science require the support of scientifically and technologically informed citizens. Without the support and understanding of citizens, technological development can all too easily serve short term and sectional interests. The longer term progress of the whole society is overlooked, citizens will be confused about what should, and what should not be supported, and reactive and the environment will continue to be destroyed rather than sustained. Sustainable development, and the potential that science and technology increasingly offers, involves societies in ways that can often interact strongly, with traditional values, and hence, making decisions about them involve major moral decisions. All students need to be prepared through their science and technology education to be able to participate actively as persons and as responsible citizens in these essential and exciting possibilities. This goal is far from being generally achieved at present, but pathways to it are now more clearly understood. The third imperative derives from the changes that are resulting from the application of digital technologies that are the most rapid, the most widespread, and probably the most pervasive influence that science has ever had on human society. We all, wherever we live, are part of a global communication society. Information exchange and access to it that have been hitherto the realm of the few, are now literally in the hands of individuals. This is leading to profound changes in the World of Work and in what is known as the Knowledge Society. Schooling is now being challenged to contribute to the development in students of an active repertoire of generic and subject-based competencies. This contrasts very strongly with existing priorities, in subjects like the sciences that have seen the size of a student’s a store of established knowledge as the key measure of success. Science and technology education needs to be a key component in developing these competencies. When you add to these imperatives, the possibility that a more effective education in science and technology will enable more and more citizens to delight in, and feel a share in the great human enterprise we call Science, the case for new policy decisions is compellingly urgent. What follows are the recommendations (and some supplementary notes) for policy makers to consider about more operational aspects for improving science and technology education. They are listed under headings that point to the issues within each of these aspects. In the full document, a background is provided to each set of issues, including the commonly current state of science and technology education. Associated with each recommendation for consideration are the positive Prospects that could follow from such decision making, and the necessary Prerequisites, if such bold policy decisions are to fl ow, as intended, into practice in science and technology classrooms.

Researching Teachers for the Middle Years

The educational landscape around middle schooling reform is a contemporary focus of the Australian school education agenda. The University of Queensland Middle Years of Schooling pre-service teacher education program develops specialist teachers for this crucial phase of schooling. This program has become a national leader for middle school teacher education. This paper reports on aspects of a longitudinal study that began with the first cohort of students in the program in 2003. To date 234 students have been involved as participants in the study. The findings demonstrate that students: can articulate what is meant by the term middle years and can identify with a need for a philosophy of middle schooling; are aware that they are part of a reform movement which has swept the nation and which has implications for teaching in schools in the twenty first century; are confident the program is producing highly skilled professional teachers willing to take on the challenges of teaching in the middle years; can say how their training has helped them understand and account for the educational experiences of students in a time of transition; and hold quiet, yet firm beliefs about teaching in the middle years. Furthermore, using a measure of lexical density to analyze the verbs used by respondents, it seems that this quiet confidence has grown in the period from 2003 – 2006.

Assessment for learning in the accountability era : Queensland, Australia

Developments in school education in Australia over the past decade have witnessed the rise of national efforts to reform curriculum, assessment and reporting. Constitutionally the power to decide on curriculum matters still resides with the States. Higher stakes in assessment, brought about by national testing and international comparative analyses of student achievement data, have challenged State efforts to maintain the emphasis on assessment to promote learning while fulfilling accountability demands. In this article lessons from the Queensland experience indicate that it is important to build teachers' assessment capacity and their assessment literacy for the promotion of student learning. It is argued that teacher assessment can be a source of dependable results through moderation practice. The Queensland Studies Authority has recognised and supported the development of teacher assessment and moderation practice in the context of standards-driven, national reform. Recent research findings explain how the focus on learning can be maintained by avoiding an over-interpretation of test results in terms of innate ability and limitations and by encouraging teachers to adopt more tailored diagnosis of assessment data to address equity through focus on achievement for all. Such efforts are challenged as political pressures related to the Australian government’s implementation of national testing and national partnership funding arrangements tied to the performance of students at or below minimum standards become increasingly apparent.

Internationalising Australian secondary education

This thesis presents the findings of a case study of international students who enrol in Australian secondary schools. Specifically, it focuses on the ways that staff in three schools and two international colleges position Eastern Asian international students through discourses of cultural difference. It draws together the Discourse Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis with the work of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu. The study finds that groups of students are positioned positively or negatively depending on their relationship to the dominant discourses of the Australian school. Australian students, while rarely mentioned, were positioned positively. By contrast, the Eastern Asian international students were positioned negatively in relation to the privileged discourses of Australian schooling. These discourses reflected the cultural capital that was valued in the schools. In particular, the cultural capital of active and willing engagement in competitive sports and being rough, rugged and an ‘ocker’ were privileged at the schools. International students from Papua New Guinea, and a few Eastern Asian students who behaved as ockers, were positioned positively because they realised cultural capital that was valued at the schools. By contrast, the students who were unable to be positioned through these discourses, because they did not realise cultural capital that was valued, were not viewed favourably. As a result, the data showed that there was a hierarchy of positions at the schools that were constructed in staff accounts. The analysis of data suggests that only some students are positioned favourably in Australian schools. The students who were already able to construct privileged Australian school discourses were positioned positively. The data suggest that the majority of the Eastern Asian students were represented through negative discourses because they did not realise cultural capital that was valued at the schools. Findings of this study may assist schools to identify international students who may experience their Australian school education negatively. The findings may also contribute to assisting staff to better engage with international students.

Literacy education in a changing policy environment : introduction

Literacy has long been at the heart of discussions about improving the quality and equitable distribution of educational outcomes. The last decade, however, has seen a dramatic redirection of policy effort in this regard. The effects of this policy redirection are playing out now; it may be that new policy emphases may have consequences for how educators think about what matters in literacy, how they can, and should, make judgements about what matters, and how they can, and should, act on those judgements. This issue of the Journal focuses on the changing landscape of policy and practice in literacy education. Educators in many countries have encountered increasingly intensive government moves to centralise and standardise school education. In Australia national testing of literacy and numeracy began relatively recently. The results for individual schools have been publically reported since 2009. Following trialling in 2010 and 2011, most states and sectors are now beginning to implement new Australian curriculum in English, Mathematics, Science and History...

A question of agency : applying Sen’s theory of human capability to the concept of secondary school student career ‘choice’

In this paper, we seek to operationalize Amartya Sen's concept of human capability to guide a scholarly investigation of student career choice capability. We begin by outlining factors affecting youth labour markets in Australia; a prosperous country that is affected by a ‘two-speed’ national economy. We then examine recent government initiatives that have been designed to combat youth unemployment and cyclical disadvantage by enhancing the aspirations and career knowledge of secondary school students. We argue that these policy measures are based on four assumptions: first, that career choice capability is a problem of individual agency; second, that the dissemination of career information can empower students to act as ‘consumers’ in an unequal job market; third, that agency is simply a question of will; and finally, that school education and career advice – as a means to freedom in the space of career development – is of equal quality, distribution and value to an increasingly diverse range of upper secondary school students. The paper concludes by outlining a conceptual framework capable of informing an empirical research project that aims to test these assumptions by measuring and comparing differences between groups in the range of freedom to achieve and, therefore, to choose.

Who is the good high school student?

Schooling is one of the core experiences of most young people in the Western world. This study examines the ways that students inhabit subjectivities defined in their relationship to some normalised good student. The idea that schools exist to produce students who become good citizens is one of the basic tenets of modernist educational philosophies that dominate the contemporary education world. The school has become a political site where policy, curriculum orientations, expectations and philosophies of education contest for the ‘right’ way to school and be schooled. For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world. As a high school teacher for many years, Thompson often wondered how students responded to complex articulations on how to be a good student. How a student can be considered good is itself an articulation of powerful discourses that compete within the school. Rather than assuming a moral or ethical citizen, this study turns that logic on it on its head to ask students in what ways they can be good within the school. Visions of the good student deployed in various ways in schools act to produce various ways of knowing the self as certain types of subjects. Developing the postmodern theories of Foucault and Deleuze, this study argues that schools act to teach students to know themselves in certain idealised ways through which they are located, and locate themselves, in hierarchical rationales of the good student. Problematising the good student in high schools engages those institutional discourses with the philosophy, history and sociology of education. Asking students how they negotiate or perform their selves within schools challenges the narrow and limiting ways that the good is often understood. By pushing the ontological understandings of the self beyond the modernist philosophies that currently dominate schools and schooling, this study problematises the tendency to see students as fixed, measurable identities (beings) rather than dynamic, evolving performances (becomings). Who is the Good High School Student? is an important book for scholars conducting research on high school education, as well as student-teachers, teacher educators and practicing teachers alike.

Post-school needs of young people with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study describes the post-school circumstances and service needs of older teenagers and adults with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder, living in Queensland, Australia. The respondents were 95 parents. Results indicated that the majority of the young people lived in the family home and were unemployed. Of those who worked, 56% had unskilled jobs. They were estimated to spend a significant proportion of their time engaged in solitary, technology-based activities, and comparatively little time in employment or socialising. Parents rated employment support as the greatest service priority for their sons and daughters, followed by specialised support to assist with completing post-school education and training, assistance to support the transition from high school to adulthood, and social skills training.

Kouluromaanien opettajakuva 1930-luvulta 1990-luvulle : ihanteellisia, kapinallisia ja oman tien kulkijoita

The aim of this research is to define what kind of characters and images of teachers appear in Finnish school novels describing social changes and educational political reform from the 1930s to the 1990s written by teachers, particularly grammar school teachers. As comparison material, I use school novels written by Swedish school teachers, in which the changes in Swedish society and educational system and their expressions in the characters of teachers of the school novels are studied. The main focus of my study is centred particularly on school novels in which the images of grammar school teachers are described during times of school reform. From these starting points, the main objectives of the study are novels written by Finnish school teachers Anneli Toijala and Sampo Haahtela and Swedish school teacher Hugo Swensson, who was inspired by Haahtela. The research is qualitative multidisciplinary case analysis. The research method is content analysis, and the approach is hermeneutic. The research is divided into eight main chapters. After the introduction I introduce the essential concepts of my research. In the third main chapter I define the research function. In that context, besides the research objectives, I introduce former research on character description in literature, I define the methodological solutions with grounds and present the research material. Both literary research methods and sociological terminology are applied in the research alongside with pedagogical research. The research results show that images of teachers are diverse. At one end of the spectrum these represent immature pictures of teachers withdrawn into the routines of everyday life; at the other, they advance and reflect the reformist teacher. This becomes clearly evident when comparing the teacher "monsters" of the classic authors to the educational optimists at the end of the 20th century. The results show that the images of teachers in school novels are almost without exception coherent, psychologically credible and consistent, and hardly any different from the images of teachers in the Swedish school novels used as comparison material. On the contrary, plenty of similarities are found. The comprehensive school reform, educational political discourse and teachers' feelings are realistically clarified in the school novels that describe the period. Keywords: literature image, school reform, school novel, teacher image, reflection, internal co-operation in school

Transitions to K–12 Education Systems: Experiences from Five Case Countries

Currently more than 140 countries offer, or are in transition to, what has become the international norm for pre-tertiary education, namely a kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) school education system—kindergarten because of the preponderance of research asserting the long-term learning and social benefits of school readiness programs; and 12 years of primary and secondary schooling due to the time needed to acquire the knowledge and skills sets necessary for 21st century university education, postsecondary training, or decent1 work. This desk study2 conveys the experiences of four countries and one province in preparing and implementing a transition to a K–12 school education system: Mongolia, Ontario (Canada), the Philippines, Poland, and Turkey. Looking at K–12 transition in countries and systems that vary as broadly as this set enables common threads to stand out and divergent options to be noted.

Valkolakki vai haalarit, vaiko molemmat : Koulutuspolitiikan vaikuttajien näkemykset toisen asteen kehityksestä

In the present research Finnish education policy-makers describe the transformation in upper secondary education in the 1990s. They answered questions related to equality and all-round education. The timeline of the research extends from the early development of the welfare state and equality policy to the 2000s. Its focus is on upper secondary education, which, in this paper, denotes general upper secondary education and vocational upper secondary education. The chronological analysis proceeds from the education committee of 1971 up to the youth education experiment of the 1990s. The voices of the then policy-makers are heard in this research. They were the ones who planned the reforms and/or made the decisions. This being the case, the interviewees include cabinet ministers, permanent secretaries, representatives of organisations and the research community as well as civil servants. The research material can be construed as contextual interpretations of the past, influenced by both the times and places where the narrations were given. The persons interviewed described their experiences and views on education policy. In their narratives they illustrated the transformation that occurred in relation to equality and all-round education. The narrative interviews painted a picture of the upper secondary education transformation and the matriculation examination as having a slowing effect on education policy reforms. It was not until the 1990s when the said examination began to make a difference to students in vocational upper secondary education Those interviewed named the persons who, in their opinion, had the most say in Finnish education policy. This list comprised a small circle of people who more or less agreed on the grand values of education policy, i.e. all-round education and equality. Only a small minority represented a radical view of equality, being true believers in universal upper secondary education implemented in accordance with comprehensive school reform. Finnish education policy was led from the perspective of traditional conception of equality from the 1970s to the 1980s. The transformation finally occurred in the 1990s when equality was understood to mean individual needs and the right to choose. As was the case with matriculation education, the insistence on all-round education also hampered the development of universal upper secondary education. The interviews revealed that any attempts to increase the academic syllabus of vocational education caused organisations as well as other policy-makers to oppose such development well into the 1980s. It was not until the youth education experiment of the 1990s that vocational education finally carved a path to higher education, when the polytechnic schools were made permanent. Three principal groups of key players emerged in the research: ministers of education, civil servants and organisations. The research showed that the ministers and civil servant education policy-makers of the 1990s also included only handful women. The circle of policy-makers was small and represented similar schools of thought. In the 1970s era of government committees, representatives of organisations actively participated in education policy. When the committee establishment was discontinued, this eliminated lobbying venues for the organisations. Nonetheless, the organisations regained their policymaking status in the 1990s. New lobbying organisations included the Finnish Entrepreneurs and the Union of Finnish Upper Secondary School Students. However, in contrast to the 1970s, only rarely would individuals rise from the ranks of organisations to the cadre of policy-makers. The interviewees had a twofold view of neo-liberalism Contrary to other policy-makers, representatives of the research community and organisations concur that neo-liberalism did exist in education policy decision-making in the 1990s.

Näkemyksiä käsityöopetuksen kehitystarpeista yhtenäisessä perusopetuksessa

The objective of this study was to find out what development targets craft teachers could identify in the comprehensive school classes 1 through 9 after the curriculum of the year 2004 had declared craft education uniform in textile and technical craft. Earlier research had shown that after this curricular reform craft education had been carried out in dissimilar ways in different municipalities and schools. This causes differences in the contents of teaching and thus in learning outcomes on national level. The most problematic situations occur on the 7th grade when the classes contain pupils with very heterogeneous skill levels. My intention is to find general themes in craft education that are significant when considering developmental objectives. The problem was explored by four research questions as follows: What kind of problems have craft teachers confronted during the application of the curriculum 2004, what are the most important objectives and contents in craft for the comprehensive school, how craft education should be arranged in the future and what prerequisites should be considered to generate high quality craft education? The study was carried out by a qualitative research approach. The informants consisted of 21 persons, out of which 15 were textile or technical teachers and six were textile or technical teacher students. The research data was collected in the form of short open narratives, based on a partially structured inquiry. Respectively content analysis was applied for analysis of the narratives. Research results revealed that craft teachers were mainly satisfied in uniform craft and hoped that both textile and technical craft could be compulsory school subjects for both genders. Textile and technical craft should be defined as separate independent school subjects, both of which should be developed with broader and high quality contents. Craft subjects should be allocated more teaching time. Teachers asked for a more logically proceeding curriculum, initiating from the beginning to the end of the compulsory school. It was suggested that this could be done by a qualified subject teacher. A uniform curriculum solution must be found for the whole country.

O que pode uma reforma de ensino: os efeitos no cotidiano docente no contexto dos Governos do PT em Chapeco-Sc

Esta tese versa sobre a história da implantação de uma reforma de ensino implementada durante dois governos petistas no município de Chapecó, Santa Catarina. No desenvolvimento do texto busco, a partir das falas coletadas em entrevistas realizadas com professoras, analisar os efeitos produzidos no cotidiano docente a partir da referida reforma. Inicio o trabalho apresentando diversos momentos da história política e educacional brasileiros nos quais diferentes reformas de ensino foram realizadas, apontando as inter-relações existentes entre as políticas governamentais e as políticas de educação. Em seguida, apresento o cenário específico Chapecó no qual ocorreu a reforma estudada. Neste ponto procuro apresentar a constituição política do município e discutir a novidade que um governo, considerado progressista, pode trazer para o campo da educação. Ao final analiso as entrevistas apontando e discutindo os efeitos que a reforma do ensino provocou, a partir das considerações feitas pelas professoras. Partindo de uma perspectiva transdisciplinar busco, auxiliada por referências das ciências humanas e sociais (política, história, sociologia, economia, psicologia) e da filosofia da diferença, compor um dispositivo metodológico que abarque a complexidade da temática proposta. Concluo o trabalho considerando que os efeitos produzidos pela citada reforma de ensino foram variados e só devem ser considerados em sua provisoriedade.

Ocupando os latifúndios do saber: subsídios para o ensino da ciência na perspectiva politécnica da educação

A presente tese tem por finalidade refletir sobre princípios pedagógico-filosóficos para o ensino da ciência na etapa intermediária da educação escolar. Considerando que tanto a prática educativa quanto a prática científica são práticas sociais mediadoras do processo de produção, e que, portanto, não se pode pensá-las fora de um método que as integre dialeticamente a partir de determinantes que estão dados no campo da economia política, procurou-se investigar aqui qual é o estatuto hoje reservado à ciência no quadro de valores introduzidos pela economia política neoliberal e os efeitos dessas mudanças sobre o que se prescreve para a formação científica no ensino médio brasileiro a partir da última reforma educacional (LDBEN/1996). Tratou-se de sublinhar aqui as conexões que foram se firmando entre os processos de universalização da forma-mercadoria e as mudanças introduzidas no regime de produção do conhecimento, que vai cada vez mais sendo moldado pelos objetivos e prescrições do capital. Tendo por referência o materialismo histórico-dialético, o objeto desta tese foi delineado de modo a refletir o processo de constituição da produção da ciência em dois âmbitos distintos: o da macro-política, presidido hegemonicamente pelas instituições ligadas ao capital, a partir da década de 1990, e o da relação epistemológica que subjaz à prática científica contemporânea, assinalando a co-relação entre estes processos e os seus nexos causais. Para dar contas destas relações, procedeu-se a uma investigação histórica e filosófica que teve por objetivo mostrar como o conceito de natureza cunhado pelas mãos dos primeiros cientistas no século XVII futura matriz da noção de ciências da natureza tal como ela é tomada hoje no currículo , assentado numa distinção fixa entre juízos de fato e juízos de valor, deve seu conteúdo a um processo que é finalmente econômico e social. Por meio desta crítica pode-se estabelecer os vínculos entre a economia política, o viés institucional da ciência e o universo da epistemologia. Concluiu-se que há uma relação necessária entre o novo registro institucional de produção do conhecimento, garantido por um estatuto regulatório afinado com as demandas do neoliberalismo, e o novo estatuto epistemológico, assinalado por uma ênfase nos pressupostos do realismo científico ingênuo. Esta relação se projeta sobre o ensino da ciência na forma de uma intensificação de seu teor tecnicista, e dentre as suas características destacamos duas: 1) o conceito de natureza, tomado no ensino das ciências como uma abstração des-historicizada; 2) o mito da unicidade científica, isto é, a crença de que só há uma ciência: a que formulará, numa linguagem única e inequívoca, a verdade do real. Para finalizar, fizemos alusão a dois programas educacionais que, a nosso ver, avançam rumo a novas formas de ensino na medida em que refletem a experiência de um grupo de educadores e alunos com os princípios da educação politécnica: o do Instituto de Educação Josué de Castro (IEJC/ITERRA) e o da Escola Politécnica de Saúde Joaquim Venâncio (EPSJV/Fiocruz).