Reconceptualising professional experiences in pre-service teacher education…reconstructing the past to embrace the future

This paper provides a conceptual framework for developing high-quality professional experiences for pre-service teachers. The paper begins with a discussion of how professional experiences are conceptualised, structured and supervised in each of three orientations, which we have termed traditional, reflective and learning communities. We then describe a number of professional experience initiatives at two Australian universities, which are being reconceptualised around the notion of learning communities. We argue that framing professional experience around the notion of learning communities has the potential to support pre-service teachers to work with their peers and mentor teachers in more collegial and reciprocal ways.     

Increasing explanatory behaviour,problem-solving,and reasoning within classes using cooperative group work

The present study builds on research that indicates that teachers play a key role in promoting those interactional behaviours that challenge children’s thinking and scaffold their learning. It does this by seeking to determine whether teachers who implement cooperative learning and receive training in explicit strategic questioning strategies demonstrate more verbal behaviours that mediate children’s learning than teachers who implement cooperative learning only. The study also sought to determine whether students who receive training in explicit questioning strategies demonstrate more explanatory behaviour than their untrained peers, and, as a consequence, do these same students demonstrate more advanced reasoning and problem-solving skills on follow-up reasoning and problem-solving tasks. The study involved 31 teachers in two conditions, the cooperative + strategic questioning condition and the cooperative condition, and two groups of students from each teacher’s classroom. The results show that the teachers in the cooperative + strategic questioning condition used significantly more mediating behaviours than their peers in the cooperative condition. The study also showed that the children in these teachers’ classes engaged in more elaboration and obtained significantly higher scores on the follow-up reasoning and problem-solving tasks. The study demonstrates the importance of explicitly teaching strategic questioning strategies to children during cooperative learning.     

How mature-age students succeed in higher education: implications for institutional support

This article draws on stories of success in higher education by mature-age students of diverse backgrounds to highlight some key implications for institutional support. We begin by reviewing the post-World War II background of mature-age study in Australian higher education to provide a context for presenting some major findings from a small, in-depth research project. We examine these findings to focus on the role of institutional support in the success of mature-age students, particularly given recent sectoral factors affecting their access and support. The study findings show students’ primary supports were families and friends. Participants all belonged to equity categories as designated by the Australian government, but many did not use institutional supports. Some lacked the confidence to approach staff; others were unaware support services existed or lacked the time to access them. The participants’ stories demonstrate the complex disadvantages experienced by mature-age students. They highlight universities’ need to ensure support services are ‘student-centred’ in order to ensure improved educational and equity outcomes for their mature-age student populations.     

Teachers' Use of Approval and Disapproval in the Classroom

A review and analysis of the research literature on teachers' classroom use of approval/praise and disapproval/reprimand is provided in an attempt to determine the extent to which teachers typically employ praise in their classroom teaching. There is a considerable degree of agreement across the studies reviewed, carried out in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and St Helena, regarding the ways in which teachers typically deploy approval and disapproval, with some interesting variations. There is little evidence to suggest that teachers, universally, systematically deploy contingent praise as positive reinforcement in spite of the considerable literature testifying to its effectiveness. In particular, praise for appropriate classroom social behaviour is only rarely observed.     

Using participatory action research to study the implementation of Career Development Benchmarks at a New Zealand university

Benchmarks for career development services at tertiary institutions have been developed by Careers New Zealand. The benchmarks are intended to provide standards derived from international best practices to guide career development services. A new career development service was initiated at a large New Zealand university just after the benchmarks were published. This provided an opportunity to develop the new career service by implementing the benchmarks. In this article, we employ a participatory action research approach to study the process. Outcomes of a participatory action research cycle are reported and recommendations for using benchmarks are provided.     

An Empire Gone Bad: Agatha Christie,Anglocentrism and Decolonization

Recent scholarly accounts of early post-war society have emphasised the importance of positive and self-congratulatory narratives of decolonisation – whereby the end of empire was the inevitable result of a pro-active British beneficence – or have suggested that society was shielded from a sense of imperial decline. Such accounts are complicated by Agatha Christie’s immensely popular crime novels, which constructed a narrative of British decline rooted in a sense of departure from pre-war ideals of imperial masculinity, but whose Anglocentrism nevertheless offered up the potential for imperial renewal pending a ‘rediscovery’ of such characteristics.