Statistics poster challenge for schools

The analysis and interpretation of data are important life skills. A poster challenge for schoolchildren provides an innovative outlet for these skills and demonstrates their relevance to daily life. We discuss our Statistics Poster Challenge and the lessons we have learned.     

Revisiting Susan Isaacs – a modern educator for the twenty‐first century

Susan Sutherland Isaacs (1885–1948) was arguably the most influential child psychologist and educator of her British generation. Her work was studied by eminent contemporary academics, psychologists, philosophers and politicians. Her influence was international. She reached across the world to a generation of teacher educators who passed on her ideas to succeeding generations of primary teachers throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. She was a thoughtful and immensely erudite woman whose deep understanding of children’s thinking has been admired and discussed for nearly one hundred years. Her advice, under the pseudonym Ursula Wise, was much sought after by parents and nannies in the advice columns of the British magazine Nursery World. Susan Isaacs synthesised the work of earlier European and American educators into a particularly English package, suited to the practical bent of the English educator. Her work pre‐figures that of Piaget (whose early work she reviewed) and Vygotsky (whose work was translated from the Russian after her death). And always, at the heart of her work, lay the belief that deep observation was the key to understanding the complex and unique realities of individual children.     

Exploring the orientations of international students in Mexico: differences by region of origin

This study examined the dispositions, experiences, and expectations of international students in a developing country to understand the increasing phenomenon of reverse student flows and the role of the political economy in international student mobility. Students’ dispositions, experiences and expectations—referred here collectively as “orientations”—served as the guiding framework for this study. Data were drawn from survey responses from 279 international students at universities throughout Mexico and analyzed to explore the orientations among students from Europe, Latin America and North America. Findings showed significant differences among international students’ dispositions, experiences, and expectations by these geographical regions of origin. In a broader context, this research addressed the important role of developing countries as not only senders but also receivers of international students. This research also demonstrated the ways that the political economy shape the orientations of students studying abroad.     

Using Clicker 5 to Enhance Emergent Literacy in Young Learners

Best practices in emergent literacy instruction for young children acknowledge and facilitate the smooth progression between children’s early engagement with print materials and subsequent fuller literacy mastery. In so doing, model programs target five key emergent literacy skills. The rapid rise in the breadth and depth of educational technology, including computer software, is offering early childhood education professionals new and powerful tools in teaching early literacy. This paper offers a brief review of best practices in emergent literacy, notes the growth of technology in this instruction, and examines the potential contributions of one specific software program, Clicker 5, in helping diverse emergent literacy learners acquire and practice initial reading and writing skills.     

Science teachers accelerated programme model: a joint partnership in the Pacific region

The paper heralds a new pedagogical model known as the Science Teachers Accelerated Programme as a platform to upgrade the qualifications of secondary school science teachers throughout the Pacific region. Based on a tripartite partnership between a higher education provider, a regional government and a cohort of science teachers, the model offers an accelerated Bachelor’s degree programme to the cohort. Using this tripartite partnership model, a pilot of the Science Teachers Accelerated Programme is underway between the University of the South Pacific, the Government of Samoa and a cohort of science teachers in Samoa. The underpinning activities garnering social and academic integration are highlighted with analytics. The strengths, challenges and opportunities of the new, cohort-taught science model are presented with relevant diagnoses, interventions and adaptive works carried out in the first half of the delivery plan. While the Government of Samoa is considering the implementation of a second cycle, the University of the South Pacific is considering extending the model to other regional countries.     

Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry as Illustrated in the Scientific Research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Interviews with key scientists who had conducted research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), together with analysis of media reports, documentaries and other literature published during and after the SARS epidemic, revealed many interesting aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry in contemporary scientific research in the rapidly growing field of molecular biology. The story of SARS illustrates vividly some NOS features advocated in the school science curriculum, including the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, theory-laden observation and interpretation, multiplicity of approaches adopted in scientific inquiry, the inter-relationship between science and technology, and the nexus of science, politics, social and cultural practices. The story also provided some insights into a number of NOS features less emphasised in the school curriculum—for example, the need to combine and coordinate expertise in a number of scientific fields, the intense competition between research groups (suspended during the SARS crisis), the significance of affective issues relating to intellectual honesty and the courage to challenge authority, the pressure of funding issues on the conduct of research and the ‘peace of mind’ of researchers, These less emphasised elements provided empirical evidence that NOS knowledge, like scientific knowledge itself, changes over time. They reflected the need for teachers and curriculum planners to revisit and reconsider whether the features of NOS currently included in the school science curriculum are fully reflective of the practice of science in the 21st century. In this paper, we also report on how we made use of extracts from the news reports and documentaries on SARS, together with episodes from the scientists’ interviews, to develop a multimedia instructional package for explicitly teaching the prominent features of NOS and scientific inquiry identified in the SARS research.

Assimilating to a boy’s body shape for the sake of performance: three female athletes’ body experiences in a sporting culture

This paper explores three female swimmers’ relationships with their male coaches and the body practices they were exposed to within Australian swimming. Particular attention is given to how the relationships and practices might relate to gender. Additionally, the article examines how (if at all) the conduct contributed to the social construction of an accepted female swimmer body. Through narrative accounts, the three adolescent female athletes articulate hierarchical male coach–female athlete relationships and specific body encounters they were exposed to and/or engaged with. Their experiences reveal how a sexually maturing body (growing breasts, female body shape and menstruating) was deemed unsuitable for performance and the swimmers were thus encouraged to transform their bodies and behaviours towards that of the boys. Using a feminist Foucauldian perspective, these accounts points to how the three swimmers came to regulate their diet, training and appearance in order to fulfil expectations. This self-regulation is problematic in two ways: first, no scientific evidence shows that a boy like physique is essential for best performance. Second, the stress from being pressured to achieve a particular body, as well as the shame that resulted from being unable to achieve the idealised physique, eventually caused the swimmers to develop an unhealthy relationship with their developing bodies. We highlight how those immersed in sporting contexts should recognise the serious implications of gender practices and power relations underpinning the male coach–female athlete dynamic in competitive sport.