Aspirations of adult learners in Aboriginal family service agencies

There is a gap in the literature on the experiences of Aboriginal adults who have made the transition into education and employment after moving to an urban community. Staff of three Aboriginal inner-city family services agencies participated in an interview that included the question: What changes do you see in your employment and education? Forty-four participants made a total of 70 unique responses. Participants grouped the responses into nine concepts including: advancement in their work, formal education, gaining new skills, teaching others, learning more about themselves, professional development, work experience, helping the youth and working for their own community. Results are compared to the available literature and implications for future research are presented.     

Bridging the Information Literacy Gap with Clickers

A Class Performance System (CPS) is applied as an assessment tool to assist in determining the level of information literacy knowledge already possessed by adult students enrolled in a graduate Educational Leadership and Technology program. The CPS data collected reveals that students possess varying degrees of technology expertise and information literacy skills. Study results suggest that clickers facilitate differentiated information literacy pedagogy and increase engagement for graduate students.     

Reproduction of social class in the teaching and learning of science in urban high schools

The study examines the teaching and learning of science in an urban high school characterised by African American students from conditions of relative poverty. An interpretive study was undertaken involving a research team that included the teacher in the study and a student from the school. Despite the teacher's effort to enact a curriculum that was transformative the students resisted most of his efforts to enhance their learning. The study highlights the difficulties of engaging students when they lack motivation to learn and attend sporadically. In an era of standards-oriented science in which all students are expected to achieve at a high level, it is essential that research identify ways to tailor the science curriculum to the needs and interests of students.     

The Funding of Teaching Quality: A Market Approach

This paper outlines four different ways by which quality in higher education can be measured and concludes that higher quality courses are best rewarded through increased student numbers and the ability to charge top-up fees to their students, provided that adequate bursary schemes exist for students from less affluent families.     

The Regional Dimension in Strategic Planning of Higher Education

This article argues that:

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  in addition to strong regional features in patterns of access to higher education there is historical evidence of informal recognition of regional factors in decisions affecting supply and availability of provision;
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  that further recognition of the region as a significant level of decision making is both inevitable and desirable;
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  that formal democratic structures should be established to recognise that trend and to ensure better governance, strategic planning and coordination of an integrated provision.

     

Researching balance between cognition and affect in science teaching and learning

This paper is based on findings from a three year collaborative action research project on classroom teaching and learning. The research, which involved 33 teachers, over two thousand students from six schools, and the authors, centred on exploring how various features of the classroom context influence teaching and learning processes. We interpret project findings as indicating the importance of balance between cognition and affect for effective teaching and learning. We advance the notion of challenge as a way of conceptualising this balance. Challenge comprises a cognitive/metacognitivedemand component and an affectiveinterest component. Nine major features of a teaching/learning event were found to interact to influence these cognitive and affective components of challenge. Specializations: Collaborative research on science teaching and learning; staff development and school improvement; quality of science education. Specializations: Learning and teaching science; pre-service teacher education. Specializations: teacher development in science education; technology education. Specializations: Science and teachnology curriculum, environmental education, educational disadvantage. Specializations: learning theory, probing of understanding, conceptual change.