Misrepresentations of Indigenous History and Science: Public broadcasting,the Internet,and education

This paper examines the role of history in power relations which suppress Indigenous knowledges. History is located as being about power and about how the powerful maintain their power. The paper further examines the Bering Strait theory/myth and ways that discourses in history combine with discourses in science to devalue Indigenous knowledges. The “truth” of science is challenged and examples of manipulation of scientific knowledge are provided, including discussions of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made for television production A people's history and an Internet website provided by the American government. These production activities supported by the Canadian and American governments are considered educational activities engaged in the practice of cultural representation in which dominant discourses about Indigenous peoples are presented. The paper challenges dominant misrepresentations of discourses about Indigenous peoples in a discussion of educational practices emphasizing the need of Indigenous peoples to control education and cultural representations. The paper concludes that it is a responsibility of society to educate all students to understand that any portrayal of history comes from a particular vantage point and to understand that dominant society privileges some representations and disadvantages others. If we teach in a critical way and challenge dominant discourses we can begin to create a society in which all persons in Canada and the USA, including Indigenous peoples, have a role to play.     

Child care choices: A longitudinal study of children,families and child care in partnership with policy makers

Child Care Choices is an example of new early childhood research based on a relationship between policy makers and researchers. It is also an example of large-scale longitudinal team-based research into early childhood in Australia. The ongoing study addresses the professional problem for practitioners and policy makers of the increasing use of multiple care settings and changes to care arrangements in the early years and their possible impacts on child development. The project will follow an initial sample of 693 families with a child aged from birth to three years over a three-year period. An ecological framework is used to include the influences on child development of characteristics of the children and their families, their city or country location, as well as their childcare history and current care arrangements. Development is measured in terms of children’s health, motor development, social and emotional development, language and communication as well as emerging literacy and numeracy. The article discusses the unique features of the project in Australian early childhood research, its history, preliminary findings, and the potential of this kind of large-scale, longitudinal team-based research conducted in partnership with policy makers to contribute to policy as well as to theoretical debate.     

Turning boys off? Listening to what five‐year‐olds say about reading

This paper reports the first part of a 2‐year longitudinal study, which examined the impact of age of entry to school on the reading development of 60 summer‐born boys during Key Stage One. The sample was drawn from 18 schools in six Local Education Authorities operating different admissions policies. Thirty‐one had attended nursery part‐time, while 29 had experienced full‐time reception class before their fifth birthday and before statutory age of entry to school. The data offer an original portrayal of learning to read through the voices of a group of 5‐year‐old boys as they reflected on home and school literacy events relating to reading. Reading acquisition was examined within a theoretical model which incorporates attitudinal factors as intrinsic and defining components of reading literacy. The data draw attention to the centrality of these factors in the complex structure which supports the process of reading acquisition, acknowledging the need to investigate this process from the perspective of the child. This paper discusses the findings in the context of the boys' early years experience and the implications in the light of the widespread debate about age of entry to school and appropriate early years practice. The data suggest the current wide‐spread skills‐based approach to reading often ignores the crucial motivational elements that make a real reader and that the formality associated with this approach may be damaging reading attitudes in the youngest children of our reception classes.     

Increasing public understanding of transgenic crops through the World Wide Web

Transgenic crops among the most controversial "science and society" issues of recent years. Because of the complex techniques involved in creating these crops and the polarized debate over their risks and beliefs, a critical need has arisen for accessible and balanced information on this technology. World Wide Web sites offer several advantages for disseminating information on a fast-changing technical topic, including their global accessibility; and their ability to update information frequently, incorporate multimedia formats, and link to networks of other sites. An alliance between two complementary web sites at Colorado State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln takes advantage of the web environment to help fill the need for public information on crop genetic engineering. This article describes the objectives and features of each site. Viewership data and other feedback have shown these web sites to be effective means of reaching public audiences on a complex scientific topic.     

Supporting English-medium pedagogy through an online corpus of science and engineering lectures

As English-medium instruction (EMI) spreads around the world, university teachers and students who are non-native speakers of English (NNS) need to put much effort into the delivery or reception of content. Construction of scientific meaning in the process of learning is already complex when instruction is delivered in the first language of the teachers and students, and may become even more challenging in a second language, because science education depends greatly on language. In order to identify important pedagogical functions that teachers use to deliver content and to present different ways to realise each function, a corpus of lectures related to science and engineering courses was created and analysed. NNS teachers and students in science and engineering involved in EMI higher education can obtain insights for delivering and listening to lectures from the Online Corpus of Academic Lectures (OnCAL).     

University-School Collaboration: Identifying faulty assumptions

The 1993 Teaching Accord in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, Australia Education Union, and Independent Education Union) committed all funding for professional development to programmes promoting partnerships that involve teacher organisations, education authorities and universities. Since then there has been a proliferation of collaborative research and development projects involving universities and schools. The author has been a university participant in a number of these projects, including the Innovative Links Project (Innovative Links between Schools and Universities for Teacher Professional Development, 1994-96), the Australian National Middle Schooling Authentic Assessment Research Circle (1997) and the School-based Research and Reform Project (1998-2000). The first part of this article reports on research the author conducted into the experiences of the seven teacher educators who worked in the Innovative Links Project in South Australia. The research revealed that for these teacher educators, the Project expectations proved to be problematic because they were based on invalid assumptions about the personal, structural and cultural conditions that impacted on both school and university participants at that time. In the second part of the article, the author draws on experiences in later projects to look at what forms of collaboration are possible in the light of these conditions.     

The personal librarian program: an evaluation of a Cushing/Whitney Medical Library outreach initiative

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library (CWML) at the Yale School of Medicine has offered a "Personal Librarian" (PL) program to medical center students since 1996. This outreach program matches students to a professional librarian as they matriculate, a relationship that is maintained until the student graduates. PLs offer individualized assistance for almost anything-from interpreting library policies and procedures to helping locate materials to assisting with thesis research. The program requires nominal effort on the part of the librarians, making it possible to expand the program to include other student groups. A recent survey revealed that students are extremely satisfied with the program and would generally welcome more contact from their PL.     

Experiential Engineering Through iGEM—An Undergraduate Summer Competition in Synthetic Biology

Unlike students in other engineering disciplines, undergraduates in biological engineering typically have limited opportunity to develop design competencies, and even fewer chances to implement their designed projects. The international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition is a student Synthetic Biology competition that, in 2009, included 110 teams from across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the US. Working at their own schools over the summer, the students use a kit of biological parts from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, as well as new parts of their own design, to build biological systems that operate in living cells. Two years of survey data collected from undergraduates after their iGEM experiences in 2007 and 2008 suggest that both learning and identity as a biological engineer increase as a result of iGEM.     

Ten Years of LibQual: A Study of Qualitative and Quantitative Survey Results at the University of Mississippi 2001-2010

This article analyzes quantitative adequacy gap scores and coded qualitative comments from LibQual surveys at the University of Mississippi from 2001 to 2010, looking for relationships between library policy changes and LibQual results and any other trends that emerged. Analysis found no relationship between changes in policy and survey results but did identify a number of trends across the survey period.