Embedding EfS in teacher education : an introductory guide to using the systems change model

Welcome to this introductory guide on using a systems change model to embed Education for Sustainability (EfS) into teacher education. Pressing sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and depletion of non-renewable resources pose new challenges for education. The importance of education in preparing future citizens to engage in sustainable living practices and help create a more sustainable world is widely acknowledged. As a result many universities around the world are beginning to recognize the need to integrate EfS into their teacher education programs. However, evidence indicates that there is little or no core EfS knowledge or pedagogy in pre-service teacher courses available to student teachers in a thorough and systematic fashion. Instead efforts are fragmented and individually or, at best, institutionally-based and lacking a systems approach to change, an approach that is seen as essential to achieving a sustainable society (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004). The result is new teachers are graduating without the necessary knowledge or skills to teach in ways that enable them to prepare their students to cope well with the new and emerging challenges their communities face. This guide has been prepared as part of a teaching and learning research project that applied a systems change approach to embedding the learning and teaching of sustainability into pre-service teacher education. The processes, outcomes and lessons learnt from this project are presented here as a guide for navigating pathways to systemic change in the journey of re-orienting teacher education towards sustainability. The guide also highlights how a systems change approach can be used to successfully enact change within a teacher education system. If you are curious about how to introduce and embed EfS into teacher education – or have tried other models and are looking for a more encompassing, transformative approach – this guide is designed to help you. The material presented in this guide is designed to be flexible and adaptive. However you choose to use the content, our aim is to help you and your students develop new perspectives, promote discussion and to engage with a system-wide approach to change.

Attracting and retaining specialist teachers and non-teaching professionals in Queensland secondary schools : a report to the Queensland Department of Education and Training

This report provides the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET) with independent evidence based data to enable the identification of barriers and enablers to effective attraction and retention of suitably qualified people to specialist teaching and non‐teaching roles in Queensland secondary schools. The scope of this report is to consider the strategic imperatives, trends, and drivers as they apply to the recruitment and retention of specialised teachers and non‐teaching professionals. The research was specifically designed to inform DET on innovative and novel strategies to recruit and retain staff within Education Queensland in areas specifically identified as at risk of experiencing shortages in the near future. Those areas considered to be at risk of experiencing shortages included: • Teaching principals • Specialist teachers in mathematics, science, industrial technology and design, and special education • Non‐teaching professional roles, such as speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and registered nurses providing services in schools to students with special needs.

Transitioning from vocational education and training to university : strengthening information literacy through collaboration

"Students transitioning from vocational education and training (VET) to university can experience a number of challenges. This small research project explored the information literacy needs of VET and university students and how they differ. Students studying early childhood related VET and university courses reported differences in how and where they searched for information in their studies. These differences reflect the more practical focus of VET compared with the more academic and theoretical approach of university. The author proposes a framework of support that could be provided to transitioning students to enable them to develop the necessary information literacy skills for university study."--publisher website

Mandate for remote sensing education and the remote sensing core curriculum

Consensus was developed by the remote sensing community during the 1980s and early 1990s regarding the need for an organized approach to teaching remote sensing fundamentals for collegiate institutions. Growth of the remote sensing industry might be seriously hampered without concerted efforts to bolster the capacity to teach state-of-the-practice remote sensing theory and practice to the next generation of professionals. A concerted effort of educators, researchers, government, and industry began in 1992 to meet these demands leading to the creation of the Remote Sensing Core Curriculum. The RSCC is currently sustained by cooperative efforts of the ASPRS, ICRSE, NASA, NCGIA, and others in the remote sensing community. Growth of the RSCC into the K-12 community resulted from its Internet teaching foundation that enables comprehensive and response reference links to the whole of the education community.

Successful outcomes in vocational education and training courses and mathematics: how pedagogy and expectations influence achievement

This paper reports on a four year Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Skilling Indigenous Queensland, conducted in regional areas of Queensland, Australia from 2009 to 2013. The project sought to investigate Vocational Education and Training (VET) and teaching, Indigenous learners’ needs, employer culture and expectations and community culture and expectations to identify best practice in numeracy teaching for Indigenous VET learners. Specifically it focused on ways to enhance the teaching and learning of courses and the associated mathematics in such courses to benefit learners and increase their future opportunities of employment. To date thirty - nine teachers/trainers/teacher aides and two hundred and thirty - one students consented to participate in the project. Nine VET courses offered in schools and Technical and Further Education Institutes (TAFE) were nominated to be the focus on the study. This paper focuses on student questionnaire responses and interview responses from teachers/trainers one high school principal and five students as a result of these processes, the findings indicated that VET course teachers work hard to adopt contextualising strategies to their teaching; however this process is not always straight forward because of the perceptions of how mathematics has been taught and learned by trainers and teachers. Further teachers, trainers and students have high expectations of one another with the view to successful outcomes from the courses.

Higher Education and Sustainable Development : A Model for Curriculum Renewal

Responding to the global and unprecedented challenge of capacity building for twenty-first century life, this book is a practical guide for tertiary education institutions to quickly and effectively renew the curriculum towards education for sustainable development. The book begins by exploring why curriculum change has been so slow. It then describes a model for rapid curriculum renewal, highlighting the important roles of setting timeframes, formal and informal leadership, and key components and action strategies. The second part of the book provides detailed coverage of six core elements that have been trialled and peer reviewed by institutions around the world: - raising awareness among staff and students - mapping graduate attributes - auditing the curriculum - developing niche degrees, flagship courses and fully integrated programs - engaging and catalysing community and student markets - integrating curriculum with green campus operations. With input from more than seventy academics and grounded in engineering education experiences, this book will provide academic staff with tools and insights to rapidly align program offerings with the needs of present and future generations of students.

Utilisation of early childhood education and care services in a nationally representative sample of Australian children: A focus on disadvantage

ATTENDANCE IN HIGH -QUALITY early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been shown to have a positive influence on young children’s development and life chances, especially for those children from disadvantaged backgrounds. A number of government policies are in place, both internationally and in Australia, to support these children’s use of ECEC services. But to what extent do Australia’s most vulnerable children use ECEC? Drawing on data from Growing up in Australia: The longitudinal study of Australian children (LSAC) this paper demonstrates that children from a range of disadvantaged groups do use ECEC. However, based on more in-depth analyses using a Disadvantage Index, the paper also shows that children with multiple indicators of disadvantage were more likely to be in exclusive parental care, less likely to be using preschool and using fewer hours of care than their peers. These findings suggest that there may be barriers to ECEC utilisation for children and families for whom ECEC potentially has the most benefit.

Journalism students’ professional views in eight countries : the role of motivations, education, and gender

The global trend toward university-based journalism education has led to a growing scrutiny of students’ experiences at university and the extent to which professional views may be shaped there. Three main influences have been identified in the literature: students’ preferences for certain news beats, their gender, and students’ stage of progression in a journalism program. Typically, however, analyses have focused on only one potential influence within one particular country at a time. Arguing that a comparative approach is needed, this article examines potential influences on journalism students’ role perceptions across eight countries. Results suggest that students’ motivations, and the amount of time they have spent in a program, play a part in influencing their professional views while gender has little influence.

The extended context of career : families negotiating education and career decisions

In families, decisions about parents’ and children’s education and career require an ongoing negotiation to reconcile the goals of all family members. This paper describes a project which investigates these decisions within families experiencing whole family relocation based on one adult’s work. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional workers with school-aged children living in six Australian rural and remote communities. The interview sample included four doctors, 10 teachers, four nurses and nine police. This qualitative phase informed the development of an online survey of a larger sample (n¼278) of the same professional groups, which constituted a second quantitative phase of the research. This paper reports on only one aspect of the survey, that is, the participants’ recording of two previous career location moves they had undertaken and the reasons for these. The data emphasise the family project evident in this decision-making process as the respondents deal with a large range of complex individual, family and broader systems’ influences in reconciling their own careers and their children’s educational opportunities.

A peaking and tailing approach to education and curriculum renewal for sustainable development

Contextual factors for sustainable development such as population growth, energy, and resource availability and consumption levels, food production yield, and growth in pollution, provide numerous complex and rapidly changing education and training requirements for a variety of professions including engineering. Furthermore, these requirements may not be clearly understood or expressed by designers, governments, professional bodies or the industry. Within this context, this paper focuses on one priority area for greening the economy through sustainable development—improving energy efficiency—and discusses the complexity of capacity building needs for professionals. The paper begins by acknowledging the historical evolution of sustainability considerations, and the complexity embedded in built environment solutions. The authors propose a dual-track approach to building capacity building, with a short-term focus on improvement (i.e., making peaking challenges a priority for postgraduate education), and a long-term focus on transformational innovation (i.e., making tailing challenges a priority for undergraduate education). A case study is provided, of Australian experiences over the last decade with regard to the topic area of energy efficiency. The authors conclude with reflections on implications for the approach.

Keyword field-free conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data and extension for dynamic groups

We consider the following problem: a user stores encrypted documents on an untrusted server, and wishes to retrieve all documents containing some keywords without any loss of data confidentiality. Conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data have been studied by numerous researchers over the past few years, and all existing schemes use keyword fields as compulsory information. This however is impractical for many applications. In this paper, we propose a scheme of keyword field-free conjunctive keyword searches on encrypted data, which affirmatively answers an open problem asked by Golle et al. at ACNS 2004. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is extended to the dynamic group setting. Security analysis of our constructions is given in the paper.