Access and participation in higher education of students with disabilities: access to what?

In 1991, the Australian Government designated students with disabilities as one of the six equity groups that were under-represented in higher education. Since that time, there has been only a modest increase in enrolments of students with disabilities despite government polices and funding of disability support services and programs. People with disabilities comprise 20% of Australia’s population but only account for 4% of university enrolments. Despite the existence of the Australian Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) (1992) and the introduction of the Disability Standards for Education in 2005, negative attitudes about students with disabilities by university lecturers continue to exist. Research into the knowledge, attitudes and experiences of staff, especially in practice-based courses such as nurse education, reveals that university staff, practicum supervisors and even some disability staff, are unaware of their responsibilities under the legislation and that teaching staff continue to hold negative attitudes towards students with disabilities. This article reports on research that investigated the barriers facing such students in nursing courses, in particular in clinical placements. It shows that a lack of understanding of legislative and institutional requirements underlies negative attitudes about students with disabilities, especially in practicum-based courses.     

Why support students? Using the past to understand the present

This paper examines why students are supported, taking an historical approach to analyse the influence of former, or longstanding, practices on current practice and to identify repeating themes. Documentary evidence shows that students have been supported because they are young, vulnerable or because studenthood is considered to make unique demands on individuals. Ideas of danger and the need for protection are persistent and can have effects that contradict the educational purposes of higher education. Underpinning rationales result in particular forms of student support, each with its own intended and unintended consequences.     

Navigating the risky terrain of children’s working theories

‘Working theories’ encompass children’s theorising about the social and material worlds. This article looks explicitly at power relations involved in pedagogy around children’s working theories by focusing on the teacher’s control of what and whose working theories get unpacked and extended. From an analysis of four cases from early childhood education (ECE) settings, it is concluded that teaching strategies are related to possible risks of unpacking and extending children’s working theories. From a teacher’s perspective such risks include: undermining the ECE setting’s rules; exposing one’s own lack of knowledge or skills; or risking the relations and atmosphere in the group or setting. These risks affect how working theories are dealt with in terms of time – right away, later or never – and voicing, as teachers regulate children’s ideas for example through making concrete, reconstructing or silencing them.     

Engaging students through new literacies: the good, bad and curriculum of visual essays

In this article, we share our experiences working with students to read and/or write visual essays, texts that rely more heavily on images with minimal print text. We explore how students consider elements of design as they create a visual essay, which entails new forms of semiotic processing of the combinations of the visual, audio, textual, gestural and spatial. In particular, we share a case study of how one adolescent engages with an alternative to the standard essay format when he is not restricted by the use of words alone, but is encouraged to tap into the affordances of digital media, expressing himself multimodally by using words, images and sound.     

A conceptual framework for understanding information seeking in open-ended information systems

Technologies such as the Internet and World Wide Web are changing our conceptions of information systems, from who uses them and how they are used, to how the systems are created and who is doing the creating. Everyday users are afforded the same information retrieval opportunities as information scientists or librarians by using emerging information systems such as the Web. Yet, defining best practices for assisting users in finding the information they seek remains an unrealized goal. Discovering how users engage in information retrieval and strategy building while searching for information in open-ended systems such as the Web is an area in need of exploration if these systems are to fulfill their potential as tools for information seeking and learning. This paper describes a theoretically and empirically based framework for how users formulate and employ information-seeking strategies in open-ended information systems (OEISs). Background information and challenges related to OEISs are provided. OEIS theoretical and user perspectives are described. An example based on a recent research study is provided to illustrate use of the OEIS information-seeking framework. Implications for practice and research are offered.