Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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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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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.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableBuilding Optimism in Prospective Mathematics Teachers(Springer US, 2011)This three-task sequence, which interconnects congruency, similarity, geometric constructions, and deductive proof, can be accessed by prospective mathematics teachers possessing limited understanding of these topics. Creative thinking is stimulated during work within this sequence: experimenting, recognizing relevant mathematics from earlier in the sequence to progress this experimenting, and connecting mathematical understandings. This chapter focuses on how the implementation of this complex task sequence provided opportunities for successes that theory suggests should contribute to developing psychological factors to increase future teachers’ ability to think flexibly when encountering mathematical and pedagogical challenges.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCorroding Habitats(Wangaratta Art Gallery, 2010-10-01)The reality and reliability of the human world rests primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they were produced, and potentially even more permanent than the lives of their authors. Human life, in so far as it is world-building, is engaged in a constant process of reification, and the degree of worldliness of produced things, which all together form the human artifice, depends upon their greater or lesser permanence in the world itself. (Arendt, 1989, p. 96) This body of work explores notions of certainty, permanence and decay in what Arendt refers to as the produced things we are surrounded by, specifically the physical structures that pepper, or at times dominate, our landscape and lives.
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ItemEffects of a free school breakfast programme on school attendance, achievement, psychosocial function, and nutrition: a stepped wedge cluster randomised trial(BMC, 2010-11-29)BACKGROUND: Approximately 55,000 children in New Zealand do not eat breakfast on any given day. Regular breakfast skipping has been associated with poor diets, higher body mass index, and adverse effects on children's behaviour and academic performance. Research suggests that regular breakfast consumption can improve academic performance, nutrition and behaviour. This paper describes the protocol for a stepped wedge cluster randomised trial of a free school breakfast programme. The aim of the trial is to determine the effects of the breakfast intervention on school attendance, achievement, psychosocial function, dietary habits and food security. METHODS/DESIGN: Sixteen primary schools in the North Island of New Zealand will be randomised in a sequential stepped wedge design to a free before-school breakfast programme consisting of non-sugar coated breakfast cereal, milk products, and/or toast and spreads. Four hundred children aged 5-13 years (approximately 25 per school) will be recruited. Data collection will be undertaken once each school term over the 2010 school year (February to December). The primary trial outcome is school attendance, defined as the proportion of students achieving an attendance rate of 95% or higher. Secondary outcomes are academic achievement (literacy, numeracy, self-reported grades), sense of belonging at school, psychosocial function, dietary habits, and food security. A concurrent process evaluation seeks information on parents', schools' and providers' perspectives of the breakfast programme. DISCUSSION: This randomised controlled trial will provide robust evidence of the effects of a school breakfast programme on students' attendance, achievement and nutrition. Furthermore the study provides an excellent example of the feasibility and value of the stepped wedge trial design in evaluating pragmatic public health intervention programmes. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) - ACTRN12609000854235.
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ItemCan improving working memory prevent academic difficulties? a school based randomised controlled trial(BIOMED CENTRAL LTD, 2011-06-20)BACKGROUND: Low academic achievement is common and is associated with adverse outcomes such as grade repetition, behavioural disorders and unemployment. The ability to accurately identify these children and intervene before they experience academic failure would be a major advance over the current 'wait to fail' model. Recent research suggests that a possible modifiable factor for low academic achievement is working memory, the ability to temporarily store and manipulate information in a 'mental workspace'. Children with working memory difficulties are at high risk of academic failure. It has recently been demonstrated that working memory can be improved with adaptive training tasks that encourage improvements in working memory capacity. Our trial will determine whether the intervention is efficacious as a selective prevention strategy for young children at risk of academic difficulties and is cost-effective. METHODS/DESIGN: This randomised controlled trial aims to recruit 440 children with low working memory after a school-based screening of 2880 children in Grade one. We will approach caregivers of all children from 48 participating primary schools in metropolitan Melbourne for consent. Children with low working memory will be randomised to usual care or the intervention. The intervention will consist of 25 computerised working memory training sessions, which take approximately 35 minutes each to complete. Follow-up of children will be conducted at 6, 12 and 24 months post-randomisation through child face-to-face assessment, parent and teacher surveys and data from government authorities. The primary outcome is academic achievement at 12 and 24 months, and other outcomes include child behaviour, attention, health-related quality of life, working memory, and health and educational service utilisation. DISCUSSION: A successful start to formal learning in school sets the stage for future academic, psychological and economic well-being. If this preventive intervention can be shown to be efficacious, then we will have the potential to prevent academic underachievement in large numbers of at-risk children, to offer a ready-to-use intervention to the Australian school system and to build international research partnerships along the health-education interface, in order to carry our further studies of effectiveness and generalisability.
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ItemStudy protocol: national research partnership to improve primary health care performance and outcomes for Indigenous peoples(BMC, 2010-05-19)BACKGROUND: Strengthening primary health care is critical to reducing health inequity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The Audit and Best practice for Chronic Disease Extension (ABCDE) project has facilitated the implementation of modern Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) approaches in Indigenous community health care centres across Australia. The project demonstrated improvements in health centre systems, delivery of primary care services and in patient intermediate outcomes. It has also highlighted substantial variation in quality of care. Through a partnership between academic researchers, service providers and policy makers, we are now implementing a study which aims to 1) explore the factors associated with variation in clinical performance; 2) examine specific strategies that have been effective in improving primary care clinical performance; and 3) work with health service staff, management and policy makers to enhance the effective implementation of successful strategies. METHODS/DESIGN: The study will be conducted in Indigenous community health centres from at least six States/Territories (Northern Territory, Western Australia, New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria) over a five year period. A research hub will be established in each region to support collection and reporting of quantitative and qualitative clinical and health centre system performance data, to investigate factors affecting variation in quality of care and to facilitate effective translation of research evidence into policy and practice. The project is supported by a web-based information system, providing automated analysis and reporting of clinical care performance to health centre staff and management. DISCUSSION: By linking researchers directly to users of research (service providers, managers and policy makers), the partnership is well placed to generate new knowledge on effective strategies for improving the quality of primary health care and fostering effective and efficient exchange and use of data and information among service providers and policy makers to achieve evidence-based resource allocation, service planning, system development, and improvements of service delivery and Indigenous health outcomes.