Supporting Australian Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal nursing students using mentoring circles: an action research study

Attempts to recruit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into nursing degrees have made minimal impact on the number of registered nurses working in Australia's healthcare sector. Yet increasing the number of Indigenous nurses remains one of the most important objectives in strategies to close the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Poor retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in a Bachelor of Nursing Science degree offered in far north Queensland, Australia, indicates the need for a different approach to support and retain Indigenous students. This action research study used a decolonizing methodology and was conducted at a satellite university campus in a remote Torres Strait Island community. Researchers trialled the use of a mentoring circle to support and retain nursing students and interviewed mentors and mentees about their experiences. Grounded theory methods were used to analyse the data. Findings indicated a growth in participant students’ emotional intelligence as a result of participating in a mentoring circle. Students developed confidence, formed a group identity, better-negotiated the university environment, became more effective communicators and supported one another through difficulties. The mentoring circle model improved students' university experience and its use should be considered by tertiary educators working with Indigenous students.     

Legal Research for the Nonlaw Librarian: An Introduction

Special Libraries, Special Challenges is a column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, and business. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and solutions that arise specifically in given subject libraries, while drawing links to how such issues affect librarianship in general. Special or subject-matter librarians interested in authoring a piece for this column are invited to contact Tammy R. Pettinato at pettinato@law.ucla.edu.

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Dealing with Pro Se Patrons

ABSTRACT

Special Libraries, Special Challenges is a new column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, business, and so forth. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and solutions that arise specifically in given subject libraries, while drawing links to how such issues affect librarianship in general. Special or subject-matter librarians interested in authoring a piece for this column are invited to contact Tammy R. Pettinato at pettinato@law.ucla.edu.     

Possibilities in the Boy Turn? Comparative Lessons from Australia and Iceland

Recognising that there is now a globalised educational discourse about “failing boys” circulating in the privileged nations of the global north, this article provides a comparative perspective on educational policy responses to the “boy turn” in Australia and Iceland. Specificities of the responses to the boy turn in the two societies offer interesting insights into this policy domain. For instance, Australian policy has been state‐centric with the media playing a significant role in backlash politics and with federal government funding interventions for boys, and Iceland was the only nation in which girls outperformed boys in all areas of mathematics in the PISA 2003 study. The article concludes by arguing the need for a renewed feminist and profeminist agenda to challenge dominant constructions of masculinity and for the establishment of a more equal gender order.     

Open educational resources: an analysis of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities student preferences

The cost of college tuition and textbooks continues to rise and can function as a barrier to education for many students. This study evaluated Minnesota State Colleges and Universities students’ attitudes towards different types of learning material (e.g. commercially printed textbooks, eBooks and open educational resources (OERs)) and class type preferences (e.g. on-campus, hybrid and online). In addition, students indicated that they had ever chosen not to purchase a required textbook as well as how much they pay on average for a single textbook and approximately how much they paid for textbooks in the most recent semester. Cost was noted as a common deterrent; however, a more frequent reason provided by students for not buying a textbook was being able to adequately complete assignments without the textbook. This indicates that instructional method might be more of an issue than cost. OERs would lower these costs, but few students have been exposed to this kind of learning material and the overall impact on teaching quality is still largely unknown. The differences between two-year institutions and four-year institutions are examined and ideas to remedy the problem are noted.     

Interrogating single‐sex classes as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational and social needs

This paper explores the policy of single‐sex classes that is currently being adopted in some schools as a strategy for addressing boys’ educational and social needs. It draws on research in one Australian government, coeducational primary school to examine teachers’ and students’ experiences of this strategy. Interviews with the principal, male and female teachers responsible for teaching the single‐sex classes and the students involved in these classes are used to illustrate the impact and effect of the strategy on pedagogical practices in this particular school. The data are used to raise critical questions about the impact and effects of teachers’ pedagogical practices in light of the current literature and research about single‐sex classes. In this case study, it was found that teachers had a tendency to modify their pedagogical practices and the curriculum to suit stereotypical constructions about boys’ and girls’ supposed oppositional orientations to learning. It is concluded that teacher knowledges and assumptions about gender play an important role in the execution of their pedagogies in the single‐sex classroom.     

How Framing Climate Change Influences Citizen Scientists’ Intentions to Do Something About It

How we communicate the dangers of climate change may influence attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Here we test two pairs of positive and negative framing statements with North American citizen scientists interested in gardening and birdwatching. Mentioning dangers for humans did not increase participants’ interest in taking personal action on climate change, but mentioning dangers for birds was highly effective. Highlighting the positive collective impacts of small behavioral changes also increased participants’ interest in taking personal action. These results suggest that while some dire messages are ineffective, those evoking concern for target species of significance to the learners may be as successful as positive messages.     

Researcher Study Thyself: AERA Participants' Speaking Times and Turns by Gender

This research compares speaking times and turns of female and male presenters and audience members at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In their presentations, males spoke longer than females, but the differences were not statistically significant. They spoke significantly longer than females, however, when posing questions or comments during open discussions, and they made a significantly greater number of responses to these questions and comments. Some chairs were inconsistent in monitoring allotted speaking times. Females' participation was lower in less-structured situations, such as open discussions and co-presented papers, than in settings with greater structure.     

Online multiplayer games for the social interactions of children with autism spectrum disorder: a resource for inclusive education

ABSTRACT

This article describes the support for social interactions received by three students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through their multimodal engagements with Minecraft®. The data were collected through at-screen observations and semi-structured interviews. Multimodal analysis of the data demonstrated that online multiplayer games supported social interactions through modes, such as speech, writing and gesture, and within physical and virtual spaces. The analysis revealed that online multiplayer games provided platforms for the students to use speech to engage in reciprocal conversations, to share information, to make requests, to give commands and to direct others. Additionally, screen-based written texts were used to attract the attention of others, send messages, communicate rules and maintain engagements with others within the students’ physical and virtual worlds. Furthermore, the findings showed that online multiplayer games supported the students’ uses, interpretations and mirroring of gestures for social interactions. The findings have implications for providing opportunities to support social interactions in multimodal ways that social spaces in face-to-face and offline contexts do not allow. The findings offer implications for targeting the students’ interests in online multiplayer games to support their capacity to initiate and sustain social interactions in inclusive educational settings.