Education for Australia's information future

Digital disruption and an increasingly networked society drive rapid change in many professions and a corresponding need for change in tertiary education. Across the world, information education has, to date, prepared graduates for employment in discrete professions, such as librarianship, records management, archives and teacher librarianship. However, contemporary information practices are less defined and are demanding of new professional skill-sets and understandings. This paper reports a study that consulted Australia's tertiary academics about the current circumstances of information education in the academy and elicited a vision and a concern for future directions in Australian information education.     

Quantifying Stress in Children

Today there is a greater awareness than hitherto of the existence and effects of pupil stress. There is also the recognition that the causes of pupil stress may be increasing in number and seriousness. However, recognition of this situation does not necessarily increase our understanding of it. In this paper, Ewen Rennie provides an example of the ways in which greater understanding might be achieved. A group of teachers were asked to rate the degree of stress engendered by a number of events. Though the results revealed significant differences from those of similar work undertaken in the past, their real value would be as a basis for comparison with the perceptions of parents and pupils.     

Three approaches to measuring children's perceptions about technology

Abstract

This paper reports the development and use of three instruments which comprise a comprehensive technique for describing children's perceptions about technology. The instruments are a questionnaire for upper primary school children, a quiz using pictures instead of written items for lower primary school children and, for both age‐groups, a combined writing/drawing activity which complements the questionnaire or quiz. The instruments are designed to cater for children from a range of age levels, provide information helpful to teachers about children's perceptions of technology, and be suitable for use in research. The instruments were trialled in a total of 28 classes in Western Australian schools and construct validity established by examining the pattern of responses between pairs of instruments completed by the same children. The teachers stated that participating in the processes of developing and administering the instruments was useful and gave them valuable information about children's views of technology.