Communication Between Early Educators and Parents who Speak English as a Second Language A Semantic and Pragmatic Perspective

In this article, we discuss communication between early educators speaking their native language and parents who speak English as a second language. Parents who may have a limited proficiency in the second language face challenges to understanding semantic and pragmatic aspects of English. Actual early childhood conference talk in which parents were speaking English as a second language will illustrate potential difficulties to listening comprehension and communication. Additionally, semantics and pragmatics will be used as a framework for recommending strategies to facilitate these parents?? ability to comprehend and communicate during discussions with early educators.     

David F. Treagust: congenial soul, science educator, and international research leader

For almost a half century David F. Treagust has been an exemplary science educator who has contributed through his dedication and commitments to students, curriculum development and collaboration with teachers, and cutting edge research in science education that has impacted the field globally, nationally and locally. A hallmark of his outstanding career is his collaborative style that inspires others to produce their best work.     

“Pirates Can Be Male or Female”: Investigating Gender-Inclusivity in a Years 2/3 Classroom

The term gender-inclusive has become well known in Australian education since the late 1980s. In policy terms, it is associated with an education structured to value girls and women, their knowledge and experience, equally with that of boys and men. This paper reports an analysis of the gender-inclusivity of teaching and learning activities in a combined Year 2/3 class studying an integrated, science and technology topic themed about pirates. The data include field notes from class visits, interviews with the teacher, informal conversations with children, a videotape recording of one class and inspection of children's work. The content of an inherently gendered topic, like pirates, provides teachers with opportunities to challenge the structure of gender in ways that enable children to begin to understand how males and females are positioned in the prevailing discourse and how some groups are privileged over others. In this Year 2/3 class, the teacher was able to help children to develop different views of, in this case, who pirates are, what they might do, and what a more socially just pirate existence might be like. Opportunities to challenge the gendered way we think about things, even pirates, are taken too infrequently in our classrooms.     

Gender-inclusive technology materials for the primary school: A case study in curriculum development

This paper describes how an idea for technology education materials developed into a process for producing unique curriculum modules for teaching technology in a gender-inclusive way to primary children. Using a case-study format, the paper describes the interaction between participants, the sequential evolution of the materials themselves and the degree to which success was achieved in terms of the original goals. The study demonstrates how an awareness of gender bias needs to be a feature from the earliest stages of curriculum development, through to the trialling and modification stages. The curriculum materials were a product of effective cooperation between teachers, science educators and community representatives. They utilise a “process” approach to the teaching of technology and in this presentation, we demonstrate how this same approach is a useful framework for describing this particular curriculum development. Specializations: primary science and technology education, gender issues. Specializations: diagnosis of student learning and teaching for conceptual change, technology education, curriculum evaluation. Specializations: affective aspects of science and technology education, gender issues.     

Consulting Parents to Improve a Child Guidance Service

This paper describes a study undertaken with a group of parents whose children had been referred to the Knowsley Child Guidance Service. A qualitative methodology was used to analyse in-depth interviews with parents. The results led to practical recommendations for the improvement of service delivery. These recommendations had implications for schools and other services involved with parents/carers and children. The survey also provided a base from which to develop a questionnaire for the continuing evaluation of good practice within the child guidance service.     

A journal is a club: a new economic model for scholarly publishing

A new economic model for the analysis of scholarly publishing – journal publishing in particular – is proposed that draws on club theory. The standard approach builds on market failure in the private production (by research scholars) of a public good (new scholarly knowledge). In this model, publishing is communication, as the dissemination of information. But a club model views publishing differently: namely as group formation, where members form groups in order to confer externalities on each other, subject to congestion. A journal is a self-constituted group, endeavouring to create new knowledge. In this sense, a journal is a club. The knowledge club model of a journal seeks to balance the positive externalities of a shared resource (readers, citations, referees) against the negative externalities of crowding (decreased prospect of publishing in that journal). A new economic model of a journal as a knowledge club is elaborated. We suggest some consequences for the management of journals and financial models that might be developed to support them.