The positioning of mathematics in an environmental thematic curriculum

With a crowded curriculum, many primary schools attempt to integrate their key learning areas. One primary school in a large regional city has taken this a step further. Using the ’environment’ as the overarching theme, the key learning areas are interwoven into the teaching of the environment. This has presented some issues when attempting to teach English and Mathematics. These issues and the way the school and teachers solve them are documented in this case-study.

Teacher and peer assessment of creativity in technology education

This study, part of a PhD thesis, investigates a number of aspects relating to technology education, creativity and the assessment of creativity and aesthetics. Following tuitional sessions, panels of upper primary school children were involved in assessing the creative and aesthetic characteristics of technological products made by other children. Teachers assessed a selection of student drawings for creativity and these results were compared against the corresponding products assessed by the panels of Year 5 children. Subjects were administered a test on their knowledge of technology and these scores were compared to product creativity scores. The results showed high correlations between the assessor ranks for both creativity and aesthetics although there was generally more consistency with creativity. While some subjects produced both creative drawings and products, others showed creativity in only one outcome. A further finding of the investigation identified the relationship between students' knowledge of technology and the creative product constructed by the older children in the study.

Developing an inclusive model for 'teacher' professional development

This paper reports on the findings of a recent teaching grant awarded in  2004, from the Australian Teacher Educator's Association (ATEA). The grant enabled a professional development teaching (PDT) team to be established at Norlane West primary School, Geelong. The team comprised of twelve 'teachers' who included two teacher educators, six Year 5 and 6 teachers  and four student teachers. The aim of the project was to examine how a  team of new and experienced teachers developed and changed their  teaching repertoire and their professional identity through a process of teaching, learning and reflection. What made this particular project unique was the inclusion of student teachers in the PDT team and the action  reflection cycle adopted by all members of the team. The reflective cycle consisted of a teacher educator, teacher and the team of student teachers all participating in a filmed teaching experience, editing and reflecting on their own teaching and then sharing the video with the other members of the PDT team. This individual and team reflection process proved to be very  successful and an effective model for influencing 'teacher' professional development.

Applications of cognitive theories to children's fire safety education

Children under five have the highest rate of fire-related accidents (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2001). It is therefore essential to develop effective fire safety education programs to prevent casualties due to a fire. At present, there are fire education programs conducted across Australia for primary school children. However, it is vital that these programs get their message across to the children in the most efficient manner to help children retain the information. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of the 'Fire Ed' program conducted in Victoria and assessed the retention of fire safety information in children in preparatory and Grade five levels. The findings suggest that the information is not retained over long periods of time. Suggestions are made to provide fire safety education in line with
theories of cognitive development to make it more effective.

Can health promoting schools contribute to the better health and wellbeing of young people? The Hong Kong experience.

Background: The Health Promoting School (HPS) is a WHO sponsored framework, compiled to enable education and health sectors to be more effective in school based initiatives.

Aims: This study attempted to test the hypothesis that students from schools that had comprehensively embraced the HPS concept as indicated by the Healthy School Award, were better, in terms of health risk behaviour, self reported health status, and academic results, than students from schools that did not reach the standard of the award.

Methods and Results: The results presented came from nine schools (four primary and five secondary) applying for accreditation of the Healthy Schools Award after adopting the HPS framework for two years. Regular consultancy support and training were available to all schools. Students had completed before and after surveys to assess their health behaviours, self reported health status, and academic standing before the two year intervention, and at its end. Data from the before and after surveys of the students attending schools that reached certain level of HPS standard as indicated by the award, were compared with students whose schools did not receive the award, and the results showed differences. Some differences were found to be more significant among the primary school students than secondary schools students. This illustrated early intervention for lifestyle changes to be more effective. Students’ satisfaction with life also improved if their schools adopted the concept of HPS comprehensively.

Conclusions: The results suggest that comprehensive implementation of HPS would contribute to differences in certain behaviours and self reported health and academic status.

Representation and learning about evaporation

While there has been considerable research on children's understanding of evaporation, the representational issues entailed in this understanding have not been investigated in depth. This study explored students' engagement with evaporation phenomena through various representational modes. Primary school classroom sequences and structured interviews shortly after, and a year later, indicated significant advances in learning flowing from negotiation of meaning around particle representations. A case study of one child's learning is used to demonstrate how a molecular distribution representation can offer the possibility of significant advances in children's thinking about evaporation. The findings suggest that teacher-mediated negotiation of representational issues can support enriched student learning

Fresh kids: the efficacy of a health promoting schools approach to increasing consumption of fruit and water in Australia

The Fresh Kids programme utilized the Health Promoting Schools (HPSs) framework to design a whole-of-school, multifaceted intervention targeting specific behaviours to promote healthy eating and reduce the risk factors associated with childhood obesity. The aim of the programme was to evaluate the effectiveness of the HPS framework to increase fruit and water consumption among primary school-aged children over a 2-year period. The study design was an interrupted time series. Four primary schools in the inner west of Melbourne, Australia, participated in the programme intervention. Baseline data were collected using a lunch box audit to assess the frequency of children with fresh fruit, water and sweet drinks, either brought from home or selected from canteen lunch orders. The lunch box audit was repeated periodically for up to 2 years following programme implementation to assess the sustainability of dietary changes. Across all participating schools, significant increases between 25 and 50% were observed in the proportion of children bringing fresh fruit. Similarly, all schools recorded increases between 15 and 60% in the proportion of students bringing filled water bottles to school and reductions between 8 and 38% in the proportion of children bringing sweet drinks. These significant changes in dietary patterns were sustained for up to 2 years following programme implementation. Targeting key nutrition behaviours and using the HPS framework is an effective and simple approach which could be readily implemented in similar childhood settings. Effective strategies include facilitating organizational change within the school; integrating curriculum activities; formalizing school policy and establishing project partnerships with local community nutrition and dietetic services.

The right tool for the job? Use of the multiple intelligences and Bloom's taxonomy grid

This article explores the tacit understanding of teachers in the field of gifted educational practices after their participation in gifted education professional development. The data for this article are drawn from a single-case qualitative study where semi-structured interviews were held with teachers, administrators and support staff in a metropolitan Victorian primary school. The findings lead to two main arguments: first, that some teachers preserved their deeply entrenched beliefs and assumptions about the gifted, the talented and intelligence[s]; and second, that teachers, without critical examination, eagerly adopted and adapted Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory, overlaid with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy of Thinking as a means for addressing individual differences in the classroom. The article argues that teachers welcomed the Gardner/Bloom matrix for its 'tick-the-box' simplicity, with little insight into the theoretical models. Whilst the matrix had an immediate value in the mixed ability classrooms, in the long term it did not support the learning needs of gifted students. [Author abstract]

Children and terraira

The authors have been involved with a group of primary school children since 1998, exploring their science learning in the first years of school. This article describes an activity run with two classes in grade 1, focussing on their ideas about plants. The activity involves constructing a terrarium and using it to challenge children's ideas about the conditions for plant growth.

Thirty years into teaching: professional development, exhaustion and rejuvenation

Female primary school teachers are usually absent from debates about literacy theory and practice, teachers’ professional development, significant policy changes and school reform. Typically they are positioned as the silent workers who passively translate the latest and of course best theory into practice, whatever that might be and despite what years of experience might tell them. Their accumulated knowledges and critical analysis, developed across careers, remain an untapped resource for the profession. In this paper five literacy educators, three primary school teachers and two university educators, all of whom have been teaching around thirty years, reflect on what constitutes professional development. The teachers examine their experiences of professional development in their particular school contexts – the problems with top-down, mandated professional development which has a managerial rather than educative function, the frustrations of trying to implement the experts’ ideas without the resources, and the effects of devolved school management on teachers’ work and learning. In contrast, they also explore their positive experiences of professional learning through being positioned as teacher researchers in a network of early and later career teachers engaged in a three-year research project investigating unequal literacy outcomes.

Teacher researchers - sustaining professional learning

In this paper we argue for an approach to professional development which supports teachers to engage in sustained intellectual inquiry and to investigate the conditions in their classrooms that might make a difference for students at risk of not succeeding at school. We focus on the work of one primary school teacher involved in the research project Teachers investigate unequal outcomes in literacy: Cross generational perspectives and explore the effects that redesigning her literacy curriculum had on her professional identity and the literacy outcomes for one of the children in her class. We suggest that the principles of building theory and practice, positioning teachers as agentive, and making a space for teachers to bring new – and renewed – professional knowledge to their work are principles of practice that energise and sustain teachers and their day-to-day classroom work. Such principles deserve attention, particularly at a time when teacher quality and professional standards are in the minds of policy makers.

Fixing misconceptions: length, area and volume

The author presents a number of children's misconceptions concerning mathematical problems involving perimeter, area, volume and mass. A number of examples of interventions to assist students to understand how to solve these problems correctly are presented.

Play and literacy: what is the connection?

The quality of a child’s ‘pretend play’ during preschool relates to their language ability and ability to retell a story when they reach early primary school.

Sir, can x equal x plus two?

Technology in classrooms has brought opportunities to develop new ways of teaching and learning, as well as new ways of thinking and communicating. The author describes a lesson which aimed to have the grade four children in the class construct on the computer screen images of rectangles. The lesson provided the opportunity to learn about some powerful generalisations about rectangles as well to learn about their geometric and algebraic understandings.

Microworlds and mathematics: playing with melodies

The author looks at the effects of replaying a sequence of sounds or musical notes in reverse temporal order. He presents some programming ideas which illustrate how to use MicroWorlds and Logo programming to play a tune forwards, backwards and even upside down.