Learning English from signed English: an impossible task?

A sample of elementary school- and high school-age deaf students in special education programs in the Australian state of Queensland using Australasian Signed English (ASE) took the Test of Syntactic Abilities (Quigley, Steinkamp, Power, & Jones, 1978) and wrote a story in response to a wordless picture sequence. Several analyses of the students' test scores and of the written language of their stories were undertaken. It was found that classroom use of ASE was of benefit to these students in developing English and telling a story in writing, but that there were complex aspects of syntax that required special teaching. The implications for the use of Signed English systems and the teaching of English to deaf students who use Signed English communication are examined.     

Characteristics,Academic and Post-university Outcomes of Students with a Disability at the University of Newcastle

A cohort of 108 students with a disability, and a matched sample of students without a disability, were surveyed over a three-year period at the University of Newcastle. The purpose of the study was to examine the characteristics and academic outcomes for students with a disability because this group of students is significantly under-represented at Australian universities. Significant differences were found between some personal characteristics, academic performance, and outcomes following discontinuance or completion of study. The results are discussed within the context of disability legislation and policy in Australia.     

Envisioning Our Practice: Examining and Interpreting Pedagogical Visions of Four Early Career Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how pedagogical visions inform our work as former classroom teachers and current teacher educators in rural and urban regions of the United States. Specifically, we explore the instructional decisions we make as we work to meet these visions in higher education. Teacher educators are charged with the task of fostering visionary teachers in today’s highly challenging educational landscape. We pose the question: How can teacher educators foster visionary beginning teachers without an examination of their visions for their practice? Using a self-study design, we examine the intersections of our pedagogical visions for teaching and the instructional actions we take to work toward our visions in higher education. Findings highlight specific instructional practices and strategies used to enact visions while providing a critical discussion of the lens of visioning within self-study research.     

Three pathways to support the professional and career development of casual academics

Almost half of current academic staff will need to be replaced within three years in the Australian academic workforce. Literature suggests that casual academics are a potential solution, yet they are frequently excluded from the career development opportunities that would allow them to fulfil an ongoing academic role. Most academic development programmes designed for and delivered to casual academics are constructed by academic developers with little or no input from casual academics themselves. This paper documents what casual academics determine to be their academic development needs and how they could be addressed using three pathways of professional and career development.     

Assessing the Practicum

The practicum appears in many different forms in professional education — as field placement, cooperative education, sandwich programs, internship and clinical placement. This review of current literature reveals many different conceptions of the kinds of learning outcomes that can be achieved through learning in the workplace and the contribution that the practicum can make to professional education. In consequence, assessment philosophies and methods are equally varied. Five distinct approaches to assessment of the practicum are identified and the strengths and weaknesses of each are evaluated. While assessment of the practicum in some programs has been very limited, in the best examples cited, integration of the practicum with the educational program has provided opportunities for students to bring together a range of knowledge and skills in a complex natural environment. Well‐designed assessment requirements can make a significant contribution to learning in the practicum by putting pressure on supervisors to structure the opportunities available and by requiring students to identify and reflect on what they have learned.     

致命的泡沫Nasdaq前总裁品评新经济与风险投资

我们都听说过泡沫，都看过泡沫，泡沫经济对许多人像一个谜团，随着对经济学的不断研究以及对风险投资的接纳，才逐渐有了一些了解。     

Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development

We consider 3 questions regarding the effects of economic deprivation on child development. First, how are developmental outcomes in childhood affected by poverty and such poverty correlates as single parenthood, ethnicity, and maternal education? Second, what are the developmental consequences of the duration and timing of family economic deprivation? And, third, what is the comparative influence of economic deprivation at the family and neighborhood level? We investigate these issues with longitudinal data from the Infant Health and Development Program. We find that family income and poverty status are powerful correlates of the cognitive development and behavior of children, even after accounting for other differences—in particular family structure and maternal schooling—between low- and high-income families. While the duration of poverty matters, its timing in early childhood does not. Age-5 IQs are found to be higher in neighborhoods with greater concentrations of affluent neighbors, while the prevalence of low-income neighbors appears to increase the incidence of externalizing behavior problems.     

Interdisciplinary Research: Practising the In‐Between

This article will demonstrate that practice‐led photographic research offers an example of dialogical encounter. Through recourse to an outline of my own practice and the experience of completing a practice‐led doctoral thesis, the article will account for photographic practice and interdisciplinary research in terms of dialogism. This will demonstrate that visual research is a productive nexus: it does not simply concern itself with the products of creative practice, but is a generative space itself. The article will also discuss interdisciplinarity from a personal perspective on practice‐led research, which, over time, has developed into an interdisciplinary mode of working. The radical notion of the dialogical self will be considered with specific reference to interdisciplinarity and practice‐led research. The dialogical encounter will also be considered in relation to transformative learning encounters and what is at play in learning through practice, an encounter which places its protagonists at risk. However, far from being a negative state of affairs, this interstitial space in which the researcher/learner/teacher is lost and found is in fact a highly productive place in which to be.