Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Research Publications

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 95
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    SMART Assessment for Learning
    STACEY, K ; PRICE, E ; STEINLE, V ; CHICK, H ; GVOZDENKO, E (International Society for Design and Development in Education, 2009)
    “Specific Mathematics Assessments that Reveal Thinking,” which we abbreviate to “smart tests,” provide teachers with a quick and easy way to conduct assessment for learning. Using the internet, students in Years 7, 8, and 9 undertake a short test that is focused strongly on a topic selected by their teacher. Students’ stages of development are diagnosed, and sent to the teacher immediately. Where available, on-line teaching resources are linked to each diagnosis, to guide teachers in moving students to the next stage. Many smart tests are now being trialled in schools and their impact on students’ and teachers’ learning is being evaluated. Design issues are discussed.
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    Getting SMART about assessment for learning
    PRICE, E ; STACEY, K ; STEINLE, V ; CHICK, H ; GVOZDENKO, E (The Mathematical Association of Victoria, 2009)
    “Specific Mathematics Assessments that Reveal Thinking”—or smart tests—provide teachers with a quick and easy way to conduct assessment for learning. Using the internet, students in years 7, 8, and 9 undertake a short test that is focussed strongly on a topic selected by their teacher. Students’ stages of development are diagnosed, and sent to the teacher within minutes. Many tests have been produced and are now being trialled in 7 Victorian schools. Where available, on-line teaching resources are linked to each diagnosis, to guide teachers in moving students to the next stage. This project is sponsored by the Australian Research Council and Victoria’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
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    Organizing for Multilingualism: Ecological and Sociological Perspectives
    LO BIANCO, J (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2008)
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    Transnational education: our expectations and our challenges. Is anyone listening? From teachers’ and students’ perspectives
    MOHAMAD, ROHANI ; Rashdan, Muhammad ; Rashid, Abdul ( 2006)
    In the 70’s and early 80’s, many Malaysian students went to the West to further their tertiary education. They completed their undergraduate program from year one in the respective foreign countries. In the late 80’s, there was a shift in trend. More students conducted their initial years in Malaysia before finishing off their final years in the West. Multiple twinning programs that utilize foreign curriculum but implemented in Malaysian environment are offered at various private educational institutions. In the light of this phenomenon, trans-national education or cross-border education is not novel within the Malaysian educational landscape. This paper is a reflection of the author who had experienced trans-national education as a student and currently experiencing it as a teacher. We ponder upon the nature of experiences that students involved in trans-education encounter that potentially modify their learning behaviors. As for the students, we conclude that they generally experience three types of shocks that are cultural shock, learning shock, and assessment shock. Observations made on the challenges faced by the students to adapt to the demands of the curriculum, novel strategies of teaching and learning as well as requirements of assessments are reported. Finally, we proposed some steps that could be taken to reduce the impact of multiple shocks and enhance learning in trans-national program.
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    Misconceptions about density of decimals: insights from pre-service teachers’ work
    Widjaja, Wanty ; STACEY, KAYE ; STEINLE, VICKI ( 2008)
    Extensive studies have documented various difficulties with, and misconceptions about, decimal numeration across different levels of education. This paper reports on pre-service teachers’ misconceptions about the density of decimals. Written test data from 140 pre-service teachers, observation of group and classroom discussions provided evidence of pre-service teachers’ difficulties in grasping the density notion of decimals. Incorrect analogies resulting from over generalization of knowledge about whole numbers and fractions were identified. Teaching ideas to resolve these difficulties are discussed. Evidence from this research indicates that it is possible to remove misconceptions about density of decimals.
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    Global challenges for land administration and sustainable development
    Williamson, I. P. ( 2006)
    An important government activity of all nation states is building and maintaining a land administration system (LAS) with the primary objective of supporting an efficient and effective land market. This includes cadastral surveys to identify and subdivide land, land registry systems to support simple land trading (buying, selling, mortgaging and leasing land) and land information systems to facilitate access to the relevant information, increasingly through an Internet enabled e-government environment. For most countries a cadastre is at the core of the LAS providing spatial integrity and unique land parcel identification in support of security of tenure and effective land trading. For many cadastral and land administration officials and for much of society, these are the primary, and in many cases the only roles of the cadastre and LAS. However the role, and particularly the potential of LAS and their core cadastres, have rapidly expanded over the last couple of decades and will continue to change in the future. But what is a land market in a modern economy? Since our LAS were developed, land commodities and trading patterns have undergone substantial changes: they have become complex, corporatised and international. Are our current LAS designed to support a modern land market that trades in complex commodities such as mortgage backed certificates, water rights, land information, time shares, unit and property trusts, resource rights, financial instruments, insurance products, options, corporate development instruments and vertical villages? Modern land markets involve a complex and dynamic range of activities, processes and opportunities, and are impacted upon by a wide range of restrictions and responsibilities imposed on land especially since WW II. These restrictions are continually evolving, primarily in response to economic, energy and sustainable development objectives. They are equally being driven by developments in information and communications techn
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    Creating a culture of human rights from a Muslim perspective
    SAEED, ABDULLAH (Multi-Faith Centre, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 2006)
    In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, issues of human rights have drawn an increasing amount of international attention. Some people view traditional understandings of Islamic law, particularly in areas such as gender rights and freedom of religion, as contradicting values accepted by many today as universal human rights. In response to this view, Abdullah Saeed examines the ideas of human dignity and the importance of context in understanding Islamic law as it relates to the creation of a culture of human rights from a Muslim perspective. This paper, presented in 2005 at the international symposium Cultivating Wisdom, Harvesting Peace at Griffith University, Brisbane, argues that it is necessary to recognize and highlight the fact that many human rights, which are seen today as universal, may well be supported by the foundation texts of Islam. Saeed explores the importance of contextualizing Islamic laws in order to understand their intended meaning; the need to reinterpret traditional understandings which appear to conflict with today’s human rights; and the interpretative and practical possibilities found in foundational texts and the tradition of Islamic thought which can be drawn on to formulate a philosophy of human rights in the modern period.
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    The Agony of the Democratic Paradox
    Schaap, Dr Andrew W ( 2006)
    Against Jürgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe insists that there is no necessary conceptual relation between democracy and human rights but only a contingent historical relation. Moreover, these principles are fundamentally irreconcilable: while democracy presupposes an historical act of exclusion in the political constitution of a demos, human rights presupposes a universally inclusive moral community. Yet, Mouffe argues, the accommodation of these conflicting legitimating principles within a liberal-democratic regime is productive. Although irreconcilable, their paradoxical articulation keeps the limits that enable democratic deliberation and decision-making in view for being political and, therefore, contestable. Radical democracy, she argues, is premised on the recognition and affirmation of this ‘democratic paradox’.In this paper I want to examine whether a commitment to radical democracy requires that we affirm Mouffe’s account of the democratic paradox. Might one be a radical democrat and yet understand human rights and popular sovereignty to be co-original as Habermas does? Specifically, I want to consider what is at stake politically in conceptualising the relation between these two legitimating principles of modern regimes. I will suggest that what is at stake is the representation of political claims. To understand human rights and democracy as ‘co-original’ in the way that Habermas proposes is to peremptorily exclude radical political speech and action that would fundamentally contest the terms of political association. For it diminishes the representational space in which a claim could be articulated that would contest the particular determination of the “we” that authorises that order in the first place.
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    Does Australia have an international development assistance policy?: National interest and foreign aid policy making
    DAVIS, THOMAS ( 2006)
    The Australian Commonwealth government is set to release a White Paper in the first half of 2006 that will set the medium-term strategy for Australian development assistance. It coincides with the government’s announcement that the yearly Australian aid budget will be increased to AUD 4 billion by 2010. The evidence thus far is that the White Paper will not alter the core objective of the aid program, which is to “advance Australia’s national interest by assisting developing countries to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development”. This paper argues that the placement of the aid program under the Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio, and its alignment with foreign policy interpretations of national interest, has served to reduce the scope of aid policy and initiatives and, ultimately, raise questions as to whether or not Australia actually has a fully fledged international development assistance policy. In exploring this, both the current aid policy process and the history of the foreign aid program are investigated with a view to establishing the nature of the long-running tension between development assistance and foreign affairs institutions.