AbstractsFrom dismal failure to strong and smartAutumn 2005;
Pages 40–41
The author describes steps he took as new principal at Cherbourg State School, Queensland, that have transformed outcomes for its Aboriginal students. On taking up his role he found that attendance, literacy and student behaviour were all very poor, but that many staff attributed these failings to ‘social and cultural complexities’, lack of interest in education by students and parents, and lack of community support for the school. He campaigned among staff and students to raise expectations, demanding higher academic achievement without sacrificing cultural identity. High staff turnover at this time assisted in the transformation of school culture. Students’ attendance levels, application to their academic work, and general behaviour have dramatically improved. KLA Subject HeadingsTeacher-student relationshipsSocially disadvantaged Social life and customs School culture School and community Queensland Parent and child Motivation Aboriginal students Aboriginal peoples An Australian Certificate of Education?16 March 2005;
Page 6
Three steps could be taken to reduce duplication of effort between State and Territory education systems and to permit easier comparisons of students’ results between jurisdictions. Firstly, States and Territories could all rename their existing senior school certificates as the Australian Certificate of Education (ACE) without any immediate change to curriculum or assessment procedures. Systems have already collaborated to produce guidelines for certification of post-compulsory schooling through the ACACA: these guidelines could be developed further to provide the framework of quality standards for a common Year 12 certificate. Secondly, systems could introduce a common aptitude test into the ACE for assessment of cross-curricular skills such as critical thinking. The test could be used to assist moderation of school-based assessments, for selection of students by tertiary institutions, and also in ‘finer-grained study of student and school performances’. Thirdly, ACACA agencies could explore ways to share secondary syllabuses and assessment procedures operating in different jurisdictions. Responsibility for different areas of the senior secondary curriculum could possibly be divided between education authorities. KLA Subject HeadingsStandardsSenior secondary education Federal-state relations Educational planning Educational certificates Education policy Curriculum planning Assessment 'Oh what would you do Mrs Brown?' Some experiences in teaching about sexuality
Volume 39
Number 1, 2004;
Pages 71–91
The authors examine issues in sexuality education in New Zealand, and present findings from interviews and collaborative work with four women teachers. The curriculum statement Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum makes sexuality education a Key Learning Area, covering health, interpersonal relationships and wellbeing (‘haurora’), as well as physical issues. Since its publication, different groups have expressed concern on issues such as teachers’ training needs, resourcing for sexuality education, parents’ rights, accommodation of religious beliefs, and the appropriate age level for commencement of students’ sexuality education. Teachers’ main concern has been how to handle student questions, especially requests for their personal opinions. Female teachers in particular may face provocative behaviour in class by male students. Teachers may need to draw on knowledge from other professions such as counselling, youth work, nursing and medicine. Teachers may also benefit from professional development to encourage critical reflection on their own values and on the purpose of sexuality education. They need to recognise dominant and alternative cultural constructions of sexuality, and the way that they display their own values to students through silences, body language and role modelling as well as through words. Key Learning AreasHealth and Physical EducationSubject HeadingsTeacher-student relationshipsStudents Social life and customs Sex education School and community Religion Professional development Parent and child New Zealand Female teachers Ethics Curriculum planning Education policy Classroom management Adolescents School-to-work transitions: why the United Kingsom's educational ladders always fail to connect
Volume 14
Number 3, 2004;
Pages 203–215
Post-compulsory school education in KLA Subject HeadingsEducational planningEducation policy VET (Vocational Education and Training) Vocational guidance Unemployment Transitions in schooling Social classes Economic trends Great Britain Let the show go on!
Number 40, Autumn 2005;
Pages 15–17
The Queensland School for Travelling Show Children was established in 2000, and replaced the service provided to Queensland’s travelling community by the School of Distance Education. The school caters for students from Years 1–7, and its physical structure comprises two mobile classrooms, equipped with computers, which are hosted by local schools in the towns that the show happens to be visiting. The school’s students and parents are part of Australia’s travelling community, a subculture which has its own demands, itinerary, traditions and experiences of schooling. For Catherine Fullerton, one of the authors of this article and principal of the school, integrating the school with the life of the community was one of the challenges she had to face and, according to the article, has handled with sensitivity and remarkable insight. The authors describe the challenges which the show community has to confront, the impact schooling their children has on their lives – family, community and work routines – and acknowledges the cultural sensitivities involved in integrating this community with an educational framework which has its own set of cultural priorities. KLA Subject Heading
Doing the diagnostic
Number 40, Autumn 2005;
Pages 2–4
Ian Whitehead is the principal of a primary school in a socially disadvantaged, regional area of Victoria. In this article he recounts his school’s experiences with Education Department accountability regimes, and how the school community used standardised, state-wide testing, in this case the Achievement Improvement Monitor (AIM) tests, as motivation to improve students’ performance. Whitehead admits that, given the school’s demographics, his school endured a less than glowing review process, but that it brought to the attention of the staff that much more could be done to improve the educational experiences of their students, in particular their male students, who were in the bottom 25 per cent of the state on standardised benchmarks. Whitehead describes the travails of the review process, and the strategies implemented by staff to improve student outcomes. KLA Subject HeadingsLeadershipSchool leadership Education management Statistics Education policy State schools Victoria ‘Thinking and play’ in a new way: ideas technology in early childhood
Volume 10
Number 4, Spring 2004;
Pages 28–29
Fleer describes the move away from technology as systems and tool based towards technology that is based on ideas. She suggests that with the shift from an industrial society to a knowledge-based society, there is a need for technology education to value ideas, as opposed to products, and to equip young people with the conceptual thinking skills to participate fully and productively in the new economy. The article contains an outline of the Technology Education Plan – Stage One: 2002–2006, produced by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training in 2002, and two examples of early childhood educators teaching technology education in ways that encourage and value ideas as ends in themselves. Key Learning AreasTechnologySubject HeadingsTechnology teachingEducation aims and objectives Caught in the closet: the silencing of sexuality in early childhood education
Volume 10
Number 4, Spring 2004;
Pages 20–21
Semann draws the reader’s attention to the issues of homophobia and heterosexism in society generally, and to the many discriminatory legal and regulatory provisions which continue to deny families headed by same sex parents the rights afforded to heterosexual families. He points to research which shows an increase in the number of families with same sex parents, and suggests that early childhood services will need to examine their practices and become more inclusive of same sex families in the interests of social justice and equity. KLA Subject HeadingsDiscriminationGay and lesbian issues Early childhood education Wearing your underpants on the outside: Investigating children’s hero play
Volume 10
Number 4, Spring 2004;
Pages 12–14
O’Brien notes the disinclination for adults to encourage children’s superhero play, and exhorts them to become more active in facilitating such activity because it has developmental benefits for children. O’Brien, citing the available literature on the subject of children’s hero play, supports the view that children are able to explore and mediate their reality through fantasy, as they can experience unusual events, simplify situations and avoid the harmful effects of ‘real’ experience by pretending. Adults, and especially early childhood teachers, can facilitate hero play by setting the rules for games, drawing children’s attention to the values of their superheroes, using their games as an opportunity to teach them problem-solving strategies and helping them identify some of the real heroes in their lives. KLA Subject HeadingsEarly childhood educationInterrupting the cycle of bullying and victimisation in the elementary classroom
Volume 86
Number 4, December 2004;
Pages 288–291
This article describes an action research project, centred on the issue of bullying, which was conducted by teachers at a primary school in the state of KLA Subject HeadingsBullyingWhy are we learning this stuff? What is this stuff good for, anyway?
Volume 86
Number 4, December 2004;
Pages 282–287
The authors of this article exhort educators to have conversations with students about learning and education. Teachers should not ignore or skip over questions – or even sarcasm – about the relevance of their discipline, disciplinary knowledge or education in general, but instead see them as 'teachable moments', a time to break from the lesson plan and encourage students to have a free and open discussion, even a debate, about their education. In so doing, teachers not only address the immediate inquiry, but they actively encourage students to reflect on a 'philosophy of education', and create an environment in their classrooms where inquiry, debate and dialogue are respected. The authors also note that taking advantage of these moments allows educators to use a constructivist teaching methodology in considering the place of education in students' lives, as it allows students to discover for themselves the meaning and understanding that education brings to their existences. The article contains examples of classroom dialogue from a mathematics class, in which the teacher departed from the lesson plan to consider students' questions about the relevance of the subject matter they were learning. KLA Subject HeadingsEducation philosophyEducation aims and objectives Thinking big: a conceptual framework for the study of everything
Volume 86
Number 4, December 2004;
Pages 276–281
Marion Brady suggests that the narrowly defined curriculum, predicated on the academic disciplines, gives students a misleading idea of the way knowledge should be organised. Far from the narrowly compartmentalised view of knowledge, Brady makes a claim for 'generalists' instead of specialists, and for a reconceptualisation of the way knowledge is organised. Brady argues that human beings have an innate conception of the world, and all that needs to be done is for educators to make students aware of this innate conceptual framework. This framework consists of five categories – time, setting, actors, social patterns and assumptions – which Brady argues people bring to understanding any situation. While its component parts can be found in the accepted knowledge disciplines, it, however, is not an interdisciplinary approach as it precedes the disciplines. Brady asserts that it is time for educators and leaders to challenge the 'mile wide and inch deep' curriculum, and to introduce students to a 'seamless' and holistic understanding of knowledge, as to do less would be to continue to propagate a failing system, one that bears very little relevance to helping students solve life's 'big questions', and which forces them to address knowledge in a way that is incompatible with human experience. KLA Subject HeadingsEducation philosophyKnowledge Making a match between students and student teachers16 March 2005;
Page 3
The Dusseldorf Skills Forum and the University of Western Sydney have collaborated to develop Learning Choices: Next Generation, a program that addresses the needs of at-risk students. The program also gives student teachers experience in dealing with 'problem' children. Organisations working with at-risk youth can go the Learning Choices website to locate student teachers who have registered with the program and who have interests relevant to the organisation's needs. The UWS allocates time for the student teachers to provide 60 hours of unpaid one-on-one teaching time with the students. KLA Subject HeadingsTeacher trainingSocially disadvantaged The labour market for Australian teachersThere is a shortage of teachers for maths, physics, chemistry, ICT and technology, LOTE, and in some rural areas. Overseas research indicates that maths and science teachers, and outstanding teachers across disciplines, are more likely than other teachers to leave schools to take up other professions. Maths and science teachers appear to be less attracted than other teachers to the non-pecuniary benefits of the profession, such as enjoyment of contact with children. As a partial solution to these problems, teachers in maths and science should be offered higher pay at all career stages. This incentive should be signalled to undergraduates through formal pay structures. Schools should be able and willing to offer better pay to undersupplied and/or outstanding teachers. The adoption of these solutions is hindered in the government and Catholic sectors through the tradition, reinforced by unions, of matching pay closely to teaching experience. The paper covers issues including the segmentation of the teaching labour market, factors affecting flow between teaching and other professions, the nature of teacher shortages and techniques for estimating them, comparisons of teaching to other professions, teachers' own perceptions of their pay and job satisfaction levels, and techniques to identify high quality teaching. KLA Subject HeadingsTeaching professionTeachers' employment Science teaching Physics Mathematics teaching Languages other than English (LOTE) Educational planning Education policy Economic trends Chemistry |