Education Commons^™

The Effective Provision Of Pre-School Education (Eppe) Project: Findings From The Early Primary Years, Kathy Sylva, Edward Melhuish, Pam Sammons, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This brief focuses on the main findings related to pre-school effects on children's development up to age 7.

Temporal Requirements For Configuration, Switch, And Shape-Change Detection In Novel Objects, Simone Favelle, Stephen Palmisano

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Abstract presented at the 27th European Conference on Visual Perception, 22-26 August 2004, Budapest, Hungary

Accelerating Self-Motion Displays Produce The Most Compelling Vection, Stephen Palmisano, F Pekin, Simone Favelle

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Abstract presented at the 27th European Conference on Visual Perception, 22-26 August 2004, Budapest, Hungary

Resistant Starch Consumption Promotes Lipid Oxidation, Janine A. Higgins, Dana R. Higbee, William T. Donahoo, Ian Brown, Melanie L. Bell, Daniel H. Bessesen

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

12 subjects consumed meals containing 0%, 2.7%, 5.4%, and 10.7% RS (as a percentage of total carbohydrate). Blood samples were taken and analyzed for glucose, insulin, triacylglycerol (TAG) and free fatty acid (FFA) concentrations. Respiratory quotient was measured hourly. The 0%, 5.4%, and 10.7% meals contained 50 μCi [1-¹⁴C]-triolein with breath samples collected hourly following the meal, and gluteal fat biopsies obtained at 0 and 24 h. RS, regardless of dose, had no effect on fasting or postprandial insulin, glucose, FFA or TAG concentration, nor on meal fat storage. However, data from indirect calorimetry and oxidation of [1- …

From Theory To Practice: What Does The Metaphor Of Scaffolding Mean To Educators Today?, Irina Verenikina

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The current emphasis on rising educational standards in Australian society (eg A Commonwealth Government Quality Teacher Initiative, 2000) has stimulated a growing interest in Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory widely renowned for its profound understanding of teaching and learning. The metaphor of scaffolding commonly viewed as underpinned by socio-cultural theory and the zone of proximal development in particular, has become increasingly popular among educators in Australia (Hammond, 2002). Teachers find the metaphor appealing as it "offers what is lacking in much literature on education - an effective conceptual metaphor for the quality of teacher intervention in learning" (Hammond, 2002, p.2). However, there …

Designing And Researching A Youth Development Model For Physical Activity Participation, Jan Wright, Stuart Woodcock, Jeanette Webb

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

The project to be described in this paper was originally conceived in the context of research that points to depression as a major factor influencing the health and well-being of young women (Biddle 1995; Yarcheski 2001) and other research that suggests a relationship between participation in physical activity and improvements in the protective factors associated with depression.

Support Or Spoon Feeding? Research Skills Training For First Year Marketing Students In A Large Class, S. R. Lambert, V. K. Yanamandram

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper describes the work done by the authors to develop and evaluate a new worksheet and quiz assessment developed to explicitly teach the skills required by marketing students to complete their studies and to be successful professional marketers. While concerns were raised in the teaching faculty that such interventions might amount to spoon feeding, the authors felt that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that such an activity was an effective learning support, especially in such a large first year class. Student survey results indicate that for many students the activity successfully taught a repeatable process of how to …

The Self: How Does It Relate To Locus Of Control, Quality Of Life And Adaptive Behaviour For People With Mild Intellectual Disabilities?, Roselyn M. Dixon, Herbert W. Marsh, Rhonda Craven

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Research has found that when people with intellectual disabilities are moved from institutions into smaller community-based services, positive outcomes have been recorded. However, positive outcomes have not been inevitable. It is now recognised that mere placement in the community is not always sufficient. Individual characteristics of clients and the nature of services received in the community may be very significant to maintaining normalisation and social role valorisation. Areas that have consistently been found to have an impact on community-based living are the social competencies and affective functioning of people with intellectual disability. Given the recognised importance, it is surprising that …

Practising Creative Leadership: Pipedream Or Possibility?, Narottam L. Bhindi

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Does your school embrace the essential characteristics that distinguish creative organisations from the pedestrian? Do you possess the qualities that distinguish the sloggers and floggers from the creative leaders? Creative leadership, says Narottam Bhindi, is not the preserve of a chosen few, blessed with special gifts and foresight. It is a passion, commitment, and energy awaiting arousal, recognition, and release..

An Online Mentoring Practicum In Physical And Health Education Teacher Preparation: Preliminary Findings And Future Directions, Douglas Hearne, Lori Lockyer, Gregg S. Rowland, John W. Patterson

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

An important aspect of any professional education is the opportunity for students to engage in meaningful practical experiences. In pre-service teacher education, this vital practicum component has undergone challenges in recent years due to increasing student numbers (due to the increasing demand for new teachers) and limited resources in university and school sectors. As a result, new innovations to enhance the practical component of this professional degree have been sought.

This paper highlights preliminary findings of one aspect of a larger study that used asynchronous Web-based communication tools to facilitate mentoring and peer support through the practice teaching experience. Analysis …

Understanding Scaffolding And The Zpd In Educational Research, Irina Verenikina

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Marcia (pseudonyms have been used for the students and teachers mentioned in this paper), a third year early childhood student, was undertaking her teaching practice in a Kindergarten classroom. At the Faculty of Education reflection day Marcia approached me in tears. The reflection day is held half way though the practicum in order to give students an opportunity to share their classroom experiences with peers and lecturers. She was not happy with her supervising teacher, Annette, who would not allow her to scaffold the pupils reading comprehension in her classroom. Annette demanded of Marcia that books be read to the …

Learning Design At The University Of Wollongong, S. R. Lambert

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper describes the work done by the author to develop and document a Learning Design process at CEDIR, a centrally funded and located educational development support unit at the University of Wollongong. CEDIR works with educational technology as an intrinsic part of educational design. The Learning Design unit was set up in January 2002 with the aim of ensuring sound pedagogical design of CEDIR educational products and to maximise staff development opportunities during their development The new service processes and tools developed to facilitate these aims have been further refined and evaluated in 2003. This paper reports on the …

Collaborative Design Projects: Evaluating Students' Online Discussions, S. R. Lambert

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper reports on the author’s work to evaluate student online discussion, a learning tool used in a face-to-face graphic design subject centred around a collaborative design project. A modified teaching and learning model with new online resources was trialled with approx 45 undergraduate design students in session 1 of 2003. The 4 students in each project team were allocated a specific role based on contemporary design studio practice. An online discussion space was set up for each project team. A number of evaluation techniques were used including a content analysis of online discussion postings on which this paper focuses. …

Childhood Tetanus In Australia: Ethical Issues For A Should-Be-Forgotten Preventable Disease, Paul N. Goldwater, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, Richard G. Power, Paul H. Henning, M S. Gold, Terence G. Donald, Jon N. Jureidini, Christine F. Finlay

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

• Refusal of a parent to have a child vaccinated against tetanus raised ethical issues for the treating clinicians.

• The clinicians felt their duty to the child was compromised, but recognised that our society leaves the authority for such decisions with the parents.

• As there was no reason, other than different beliefs about vaccination, to doubt the parent's care for the child, the clinicians limited their response to providing strong recommendations in favour of vaccination.

• Other issues raised by this case include community protection, and the costs to the community of treating a vaccine-preventable disease.

Sharing Patient Information Between Professionals: Confidentiality And Ethics, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, Ea Mulligan

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

• Careful consideration of the ethical implications is required before patient information should be shared without the patient's knowledge.

• Routine and apparently uncontroversial releases of information can be perceived as problematic by patients.

• The ethics of such "ordinary" breaches of confidence can be explored by considering the patient's autonomy, the patient's best interests, and the public interest in preserving or breaching confidentiality.

• Patient autonomy can be supported and ethical problems may be avoided when patients are given as much information as possible about foreseeable information disclosures.

Pre-School Experience And Cognitive Development At The End Of Year 1, Louise Quinn, Edward Melhuish, Kathy Sylva, Pam Sammons, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart, Karen Hanna, Graham Sweeney

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This longitudinal study assesses the attainment and development of children followed between the ages of 3 and 7 years. Over 700 children were recruited to the study during 1998 and 1999 from 80 pre-school centres. Both qualitative and quantitative methods (including multilevel modelling) are used to explore the effects of pre-school experience on children's cognitive attainment and social/behavioural development at entry to school and any continuing effects on such outcomes up to 7 years of age. In addition to the effects of preschool experience, the study investigates the contribution to children's development of individual and family characteristics such as gender, …

A Literature Review On The International State Of Knowledge Of Drug Testing At Work, With Particular Reference To The U.S, Peter Francis, Natalia K. Hanley, David Wray

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Over the last forty years there has been a substantial growth in workforce drug testing. Most notably, this proliferation has occurred across U.S. industry and federal organisations. Developments in the U.S. have become the catalyst for an international debate on the issue of substance use in the workplace and ways of responding to it.

Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Theory And The Zone Of Proximal Development, Irina Verenikina

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Vygotsky's life goal was to create a psychology adequate for the investigation of consciousness. He stated that consciousness is constructed through a subject’s interactions with the world. Consciousness is neither reducible to behaviour nor separate from it, but instead is an attribute of the organisation of practical activity. It is the process that organises behaviour. Vygotsky introduced the idea of externally mediated activity that involves the use of external means to reach a goal. This led to the idea that mental processes could only be understood if we understand the tools and signs that mediate them. Wertsch believed that it …

Replacing Traditional Lectures, Tutorials And Exams With A Knowledge Building Community (Kbc): A Constructivist, Problem-Based Approach To Pre-Service Primary Teacher Education, Brian L. Cambourne, Julie Kiggins, Brian Ferry

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on a journey that begun in 1997 when a small group in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong agreed to trial an alternative model of teacher education known as the Knowledge Building Community (KBC) Project. This alternative model of teacher education was based upon three learning principles, community learning, school-based learning and problem-based learning. Since the first students began in 1999 the original model has undergone several revisions and is now best described as a ?negotiated-evaluation-of-a-non-negotiable-curriculum-based-on-a-constructivist-model-of-learning-and-knowledge-building?. The aim of the KBC Program has been to deal with the perennial problem of contextualising students' professional …

Teaching As A Craft: Making Links Between Pre-Service Training And Professional Practice, Lisa Kervin, Jan Turbill

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

It is acknowledged in the literature and in professional practice that there are "gaps" between the theory of pre-service teacher education and the realities of classroom practice. The report from the 2002 National Meeting of Professional Educators identified tensions between theory and practice and suggested that teachers were "living these out in everyday learning environments" as a "creative tension" (Cumming, 2002, p. 3). We believe the challenge for teacher educators is to assist beginning teachers in making links between pedagogical theory they have accrued in their pre-service training and practice they are attempting to put into place in their classrooms. …

Schema Construction Among Pre-Service Teachers And The Use Of It In Mathematics Teaching: A Case Study, Mohan Chinnappan

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Recent developments about cognitions underlying mathematical learning are beginning to suggest that the activation and appropriate use of prior knowledge by students is, to a large measure, controlled by the quality of organisation of that knowledge. Thus, teaching needs to support the construction of well-connected mathematical knowledge. An important assumption here is that teachers need to construct a repertoire of subject-matter knowledge that is rich and well connected before they can help their students build similar mathematical knowledge. Thus, mathematics knowledge building is an important issue in teacher preparation programs. This paper reports on a study about the knowledge state …

Exacerbation Of Tgf-Β-Induced Cataract By Fgf-2 In Cultured Rat Lenses, Anna Cerra, Kylie Mansfield, Coral Chamberlain

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Purpose: Culturing rat lenses with transforming growth factor-beta (TGFβ) results in the formation of anterior, opaque subcapsular plaques which exhibit many of the features of human subcapsular cataract. The present study was undertaken to determine whether this process is influenced by the presence of fibroblast growth factor (FGF), a normal component of the lens environment in situ.

Methods: Rat lenses were cultured for 4-8 days with TGFβ-2, alone or in combination with FGF-2, PDGF-AA, or the growth factor inhibitors poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid) (PSS) and suramin. Responses were assessed by monitoring opacification, by routine histology and immunolocalization of markers for fibrotic change …

Professional Learning In Different Contexts Of Mathematics Teacher Education, Ian Putt, Elizabeth Warren, Anthony Herrington

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Editorial

Mathematics Teachers' Beliefs And Curriculum Reform, B Handal, Anthony Herrington

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper discusses the role of mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their impact on curriculum reform. It is argued that teachers’ beliefs about the teaching and learning mathematics are critical in determining the pace of curriculum reform. Educational change is a complex process in which teachers hold strong beliefs about the quality and the process of innovation. Curriculum implementation may only occur through sufferance as many teachers are suspicious of reform in mathematics education given its equivocal success over the past decades. It is not surprising then that many teachers, when they come to enact the curriculum in their classes, rely …

Teachers Function Schemas And Their Role In Modelling, Mohan Chinnappan, Mike Thomas

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

An important element in teaching is the quality of content and pedagogical knowledge that teachers use in the design and delivery of their lessons. In this paper we present a framework for investigating how this knowledge is structured and how it relates to the mathematical modelling process. The framework is then used to compare an experienced teacher’s knowledge and teaching of functions with that of four trainee teachers. The data show that the experienced teacher has built up knowledge that is dominated by conceptual rather than procedural aspects of functions, whereas the prospective teachers have structures often lacking a strong …

Benefits And Barriers To The Consumption Of A Vegetarian Diet In Australia, Emma Lea, Anthony Worsley

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine consumers' perceived benefits and barriers to the consumption of a vegetarian diet.

Design: Survey (written questionnaire) that included questions on perceived benefits and barriers to the consumption of a vegetarian diet.

Setting: South Australia.

Subjects: Six hundred and one randomly selected South Australians.

Results: The main perceived barriers to adopting a vegetarian diet were enjoying eating meat and an unwillingness to alter eating habits. This was the case for men, women and all age groups, although there were sex and age differences present in over half of the barrier items. For …

Regional Development Politics Along Australia's Eastern Seaboard, Phillip O'Neill, Pauline M. Mcguirk

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Despite its enduring nature, there is remarkably little published analysis about Australia's period of contemporary prosperity. It is clear that the post -war Keynesian-Fordist foundations for accumulation in Australia have been displaced. Prima facie evidence suggests that this displacement centres on econormc advantage within the nation's finance, property and business services sectors. Evidence also suggests that a new territorial configurations of Australia's urban and regional economies has accompanied this sectoral shift and, in turn, new spatial distributional flows have been generated. The paper examines whether a new urban-centric economic configuration has emerged. Economic reterritorialisations in Australia have necessarily produced new …

A Comparative Analysis Of Indigenous Peoples' Interests And National Park Issues In Arctic Sweden, Michael J. Adams

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Despite a number of high-profile joint-managed national parks, in Australia there are substantial unresolved issues between indigenous interests and conservation agencies. Conservation agencies have done little comparative international research. This period of Fellowship travel was to commence international field research on comparative analyses of indigenous peoples' interests and national park issues. The focus was investigation and analysis of the Swedish environment agency's policy history and outcomes concerning Saami people's [indigenous Scandinavians] use of national parks in the Laponia World Heritage Area for reindeer herding, hunting and gathering, and other cultural activities. Sweden has a highly comparable economic and social profile …

The Effects Of Frequency And Predictability On Eye Fixations In Reading: An Evaluation Of The E-Z Reader Model, Laurent Sparrow, Sebastien R. Miellet, Yann Coello

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

We tested whether the E-Z Reader model can be generalised to the French language. The simulation showed that the model can account for the frequency effect. The predictability effect is moreover accurate for word skipping, but not for fixation times. We think that this model is psychologically plausible for certain aspects of reading and we have used it to evaluate the performance of dyslexic readers.

An Online Subject Delivered With Help From An "Absent Ceo", James Meek, Shirley Agostinho

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines recent modifications to a masters-level subject in the area of technology-based learning. It shows how a scenario built around a fictitious consultancy company was joined to a new content set. Particular attention is given to a structuring device aimed at strengthening motivation in the addition of an unseen Chief Executive Officer (CEO) character. This device, coupled with reconfiguration of the lecturer as a company adviser, has become a primary driver of subject activity. We explain the rationale for adopting our approach and describe how it was implemented. Preliminary reflections are considered and the paper concludes by outlining …