The intentional teaching of science in early childhood settings

The introduction of the new “Early Years Learning Framework” (DEEWR, 2009) has shifted the focus in Early Childhood Centres (ECC) from incidental learning through play, to planning curriculum with play as the vehicle to achieve learning in science. Using student research, we identified instances of educator practice that fitted with the new framework, and videoed practitioners’ sessions to select vignettes to use as part of an Early Childhood Science Education Unit. This presentation will discuss the varied practitioners’ approaches we saw and students’ and teachers’ interpretations of forms of ‘intentional teaching, with particular reference to science. We formulated an ‘Intentional Teaching Spectrum’ for the purpose of locating along it early childhood educator practice that differed in the opportunities that practice provided for creative and innovative children’s activity. As this work is not yet complete, full analysis of the video material is yet to be completed, so descriptive aspects only will be discussed.

Tertiary teaching of international student : a matter of cultural adaptation

When international student start studying in a university in another country, they always take a time of adjustment. Starting a new page in a different country is a matter of adaptation, with some of them facing major lifestyle and cultural impacts. Educa

Competency-based training, global skills mobility and the teaching of international students in vocational education and training

 In Australia, all vocational education and training (VET) qualifications must be based on competency-based training (CBT) and training packages. Yet, since 2005, there has been a major expansion in the number of VET international students in Australia, 85% of whom are from Asia. Given this development, the teaching and learning contexts in which competency-based training and training packages are located are becoming increasingly diverse and no longer reflect the traditional training characteristics and boundaries that apply for domestic students.
This paper examines the relevance of training packages and CBT for teaching international students in the Australian VET sector. It draws on interviews with teachers and international students from 25 public and private training providers in Australia. The discussion of the findings aims to assist the VET sector create a curriculum framework that supports flexibility, adaptation and responsiveness so that international students’ divergent and shifting study purposes and complex learning characteristics can be catered for effectively. This contributes to helping the sector remain viable in a context in which a VET course is no longer a pathway to migration.

Interethnic understanding and the teaching of local languages in Sri Lanka

 In precolonial times, equal socioeducational recognition accorded to local languages played a key role in promoting inter-ethnic harmony, co-existence and 'connectedness' between linguistically and ethnically .diverse people of Sri Lanka. This history should motivate policy considerations in postcolonial situations in the country. This chapter has its focus on educational issues surrounding the promotion of local languages for interethnic harmony in Sri Lanka, where the promotion of Sinhala among minority Tamils, and Tamil among the majority Sinhalese has been the subject of many current political, policy and popular discourses. Proficiency in the local languages was encouraged actively through policies and practices during precolonial times. However, despite popular thinking that there is an acute need to promote Tamil, its manifestation as a classroom subject in school education curricula for the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka has been lost in the public and policy discourses. Using archival records and opinions expressed in newspapers as data, this chapter explores these ambiguities in attitudes, policies and practices from precolonial times to the present day.

A multimedia environment for supporting the teaching of robotics systems

This paper aims at describing an educational system for teaching and learning robotic systems. Multimedia resources were used to construct a virtual laboratory where users are able to use functionalities of a virtual robotic arm, by moving and clicking the mouse without caring about the detailed internal robot operation. Moreover through the multimedia system the user can interact with a real robot arm. The engineering students are the target public of the developed system. With its contents and interactive capabilities, it has been used as a support to the traditional face-to-face classes on the subject of robotics.. In the paper it is first introduced the metaphor of Virtual Laboratory used in the system. Next, it is described the Graphical and Multimedia Environment approach: an interactive graphic user interface with a 3D environment for simulation. Design and implementation issues of the real-time interactive multimedia learning system, which supports the W3C SMIL standard for presenting the real-time multimedia teaching material, are described. Finally, some preliminary conclusions and possible future works from this research are presented.

TEACHING OF MEDICAL MICROBIOLOGY - COMMENTS ON BASIC VERSUS APPLIED ASPECTS RELATED TO PROFESSION

Comments about education and medicine teaching were made. The learning and the curriculum in according with the priorities of the country's health had special emphasis.Students and teachers of Botucatu considered that the improvement of the 2nd year medical microbiological course was good with predominantly basic contents. The students prefer a balanced content or predominantly applied to medicine.Three phases of the teaching of microbiological contents are proposed: 1st - in the basic cycly (2nd year); 2nd - into the course of Clinical Laboratory (3rd or 4th year); 3rd - into the clinical cycle, following a program of integration.