Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA Critical Review of D’Andrea, F. M. (2012). Preferences and practices among students who read braille and use assistive technology. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 106(10), 585-596(South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment (SPEVI), 2015)Utilising research about the educational use of assistive technology by students with vision impairment to access computers (Corn & Wall, 2002: Farnsworth & Luckner, 2008; Fellenius, 1999) and recognising the importance of technology in school and personal life, D’Andrea investigated the current academic use of paper braille and assistive technology among twelve blind, braille-using students aged 16-22 in the United States, and their practice and attitudes regarding such use. Her results suggest a varying nature to how students used a range of high and low tech tools, and how their approaches to completing class work were largely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences of the technologies. The study also demonstrates the importance of students’ choice-making ability regarding the selection of tools and strategies.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTo lead or not to lead? Gender disparity in the leadership of boys’ schools(Gender & Education Association, 2015)This paper provides an analysis of gender disparity within Australian boys’ schools revealing a disproportionate number of men and the under-representation of women in senior school leadership roles. With women accounting for the vast majority of teachers worldwide and significant increases in women entering the teaching profession over the last two decades, they continue to be underrepresented in senior management roles in secondary schools (Yong-Lyun and Brunner, 2009). The pursuit of leadership in boys’ schools is more complex for women, with senior roles often beyond their reach. This marginalisation has left capable, enthusiastic female educators disenchanted, frustrated and resentful of a profession that sees them managing ‘soft’ roles, and making space for male counterparts who take up the top jobs. This paper draws on findings from semi-structured interviews with thirty-six female teachers across six boys’ schools. Drawing on feminist perspectives of leadership (Sinclair, 2014; Blackmore, 1999), this paper analyses teachers’ perceptions of factors that block them and lead to male domination within school leadership. Results show that career advancement in boys’ schools is not self-determined with sex discrimination and a lack of support or mentoring, diminishing female teacher’s aspirations for the top jobs. This research provides an important insight into the continuing yet under-researched operations of patriarchy within the feminized field of teaching. It challenges sex-role stereotyping and a deficit perspective of women in presenting boys with a fairer representation of gender within boys’ schools.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA New Class of Teachers(University of Melbourne, 2015-09-24)The next generation of educators is being schooled in a different approach to the classroom.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLiterary Conversations: An Australian Classroom(Sense Publisher, 2011)This essay arises from an ongoing discussion about the teaching of Literature which followed after a 'critical friend', Bella Illesca spent a series of consecutive lessons observing the action in Prue Gill's Year 12 Literature class. By examining, interpreting and exploring the events of the classroom as students discussed the short stories of contemporary Australian writer, Beverley Farmer, we were lead to articulate our aims with teachers, our puzzles and our concerns in ways that helped each of us think afresh about teaching.
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Item(In-between) the complicities of the imagination: Teaching English in Public and Private Schools(Phoenix Education, 2014)The following story arises in response to a reading of Hannah Arendt’s essay, ‘The Crisis in Education’ (1954/1976) and her concept of natality found in The Human Condition (1958/1998). In these works, Arendt prompts us to think about teaching not as something that we do unthinkingly in compliance with the dictates of an impersonal bureaucratic system, but as ‘words and deeds’ in response to the presence of the children before us and the worlds of experience and language that they bring with them to the classroom. These ideas are particularly pertinent to us at this moment in Australia’s history when government policies continue to conceptualize curriculum and pedagogy in ways that try to represent students’ human qualities as quantifiable data and English teachers’ professional knowledge and practice as likewise things that can be measured.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHow to assess four-year-old children's number knowledge in a play-based program(Beyond Tomorrow ECME Melbourne, 2014-06-17)Assessment is “the process of observing children in everyday experiences, analysing those observations and recording the information” (DEEWR, NQS PLP, 2012, p.1). Assessment in early childhood needs to be real and relevant to children’s everyday experiences, informed by context, and personal and meaningful (Carruthers & Worthington, 2006). Mathematics assessment needs to be connected to each child’s prior knowledge and grounded in social contexts, such as play, to support the further learning of mathematical concepts and strategies (Carruthers & Worthington, 2006; Perry et al., 2006; Perry & Dockett, 2002; Sun Lee & Ginsburg, 2009; van Oers, 2009). Numerals and quantity are one of the earliest mathematical concepts children learn (Clements & Sarama, 2009). Authentic insight into the knowledge that children have about numerals and quantity is imperative to inform our teaching practice. We present findings from a study in which children’s representations of number and children’s talk whilst representing numbers were analysed to determine whether this approach would be an effective way for early childhood educators to assess mathematical understandings and to inform contingent scaffolding for ongoing learning within play-based contexts (Fleer, 2008).
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ItemThirty-one is a lot!: Assessing four-year-old children's number knowledge during an open-ended activity(SAGE Publications, 2015)In Early Childhood Education, formative assessment should be ongoing and include multiple sources of evidence of children's existing knowledge. Children's understanding of mathematical concepts is highly diverse from a very early age, yet practical strategies to assess children's individual understanding are not always child centred and strengths based.This study explores the diverse ways in which 47 four-year-old children at three different early learning centres in metropolitan Melbourne demonstrated their number knowledge while they traced around wooden numerals, drawing and discussing values of quantity. Examples of children's representations of quantity are illustrated, accompanied by extracts of transcribed conversations. Findings demonstrate that this formative assessment strategy, through attuned prompts and skilled inquiry from the teacher, elicits children's complex understanding of number, located in the everyday experiences of their lives. Embedded in play-based activity, this assessment strategy is both engaging for children and highly productive for educators in documenting children's learning.
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ItemSame admissions tools, different outcomes: a critical perspective on predictive validity in three undergraduate medical schools(BMC, 2013-12-27)BACKGROUND: Admission to medical school is one of the most highly competitive entry points in higher education. Considerable investment is made by universities to develop selection processes that aim to identify the most appropriate candidates for their medical programs. This paper explores data from three undergraduate medical schools to offer a critical perspective of predictive validity in medical admissions. METHODS: This study examined 650 undergraduate medical students from three Australian universities as they progressed through the initial years of medical school (accounting for approximately 25 per cent of all commencing undergraduate medical students in Australia in 2006 and 2007). Admissions criteria (aptitude test score based on UMAT, school result and interview score) were correlated with GPA over four years of study. Standard regression of each of the three admissions variables on GPA, for each institution at each year level was also conducted. RESULTS: Overall, the data found positive correlations between performance in medical school, school achievement and UMAT, but not interview. However, there were substantial differences between schools, across year levels, and within sections of UMAT exposed. Despite this, each admission variable was shown to add towards explaining course performance, net of other variables. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest the strength of multiple admissions tools in predicting outcomes of medical students. However, they also highlight the large differences in outcomes achieved by different schools, thus emphasising the pitfalls of generalising results from predictive validity studies without recognising the diverse ways in which they are designed and the variation in the institutional contexts in which they are administered. The assumption that high-positive correlations are desirable (or even expected) in these studies is also problematised.
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ItemAbstracting by Constructing and Revising a 'Partially Correct Construct': A Case Study(Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, 2010)This study draws on data from a broader video-stimulated interview study of the role of optimism in collaborative problem solving. It examines the activity of a Grade 5 student, Tom, whose initial constructing activity resulted in a ‘Partially Correct Construct’. Insistent questioning from another group member pressuring for clarification led to Tom developing a ‘more correct construct’ with further potential for revision. This paper raises questions about influences that can stimulate or inhibit construct refinement.
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ItemSymbiosis between creative mathematical thinking accompanied by high positive affect, and optimism(The International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME), 2010-01-01)Video-stimulated post-lesson interviews captured changes in a Grade 5 elementary school student, Tom's, orientation to problem solving. Whilst participating in small group problem solving including reports to the class ('Engaged to Learn' pedagogy), Tom changed from self-focused (Task 1), to group focused (Task 2), and taskfocused (Task 3). He experienced surprise as complexities became apparent in what had appeared to be simple (Task 2), and displayed positive affect during his creative thinking leading to insight (Task 3). Consistent with Seligman's (1995) findings, 'flow' (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992), a state of high positive affect accompanying creative activity was associated with optimism building. Instead of needing to be valued by others to feel successfol, Tom began to internalise his successes as attributes of self.