Education

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The School of Education at Flinders University offers a comprehensive range of teaching programs from first year through to the Honours, Masters and Doctoral levels. These include teacher education programs as well as programs where education is the focus of study (for example, as part of the BA). The strong research orientation within the School contributes to a vibrant Honours Program as well as attracting many local, interstate and international students to its several Masters and two doctoral programs (PhD and EdD).

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Access, quality and equity in early childhood education and care: A South Australian study
(Australian Journal of Education, 2015-05-29) Krieg, Susan; Curtis, David D; Hall, Lauren; Westernberg, Luke
While much is known about the factors related to student performance beyond Grade 3 less is known about the factors that are related to student performance in early childhood education and the early years in primary school. As part of the 'I go to school' project in South Australia, this study tracked children attending integrated preschool/childcare centres -known as Children's Centres- as they made their transition to school. Results indicated that children who attended early childhood education programs that were of higher quality as characterised by higher staff qualifications and a greater range and more engaging children's activities showed a greater gain in cognitive development than children who attended lower quality programs. Findings also suggested that children who benefited the most from attendance in these programs were children from backgrounds of greater social disadvantage than children from less disadvantaged backgrounds.
Accountability of teachers and schools : a value-added approach.
(International Education Journal, 2006-06) Darmawan, I Gusti Ngurah; Keeves, John Philip
Currently, there has been substantial interest, in Australia and internationally, in policy activities related to outcomes-based educational performance indicators and their link with growing demands for accountability of teachers and schools. In order to achieve a fair comparison between schools, it is commonly agreed that a correction should be made for lack of equity. It is argued that student performance is influenced by three general factors: the student background, classroom and school context, and identified school policies and practices. In this article the effects of these three factors on science achievement among students in Canberra, Australia have been addressed. The effects are discussed with reference to Type A, Type B, Type X, and Type Z effects. Type A effects are school effectiveness indicators controlled for student background. Type B school effects are controlled for both student background and context variables. Type X effects are estimated with student effects, context effects and non-malleable policy effects controlled for. Finally, Type Z effects invoke school effectiveness indicators, controlled for student, context, and all identified policy effects. [Author abstract]
Action learning : a strategy for change.
(Shannon Research Press, 2001-07) Silins, Halia
The National Staff Development Committee of the Vocational Education and Training Sector is promoting action learning as a preferred professional development strategy to support the implementation of key competencies. This paper reports on an investigation of action learning as trialed across five training areas within the Department of Employment, Training and Further Education in South Australia. Two semi-structured hour long interviews were conducted with participating staff, one at the beginning, the other at the end of the project, and two questionnaires were administered: the Stages of Concern Questionnaire and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This paper focuses on the two interviews and these results are discussed in relation to the effectiveness of action learning as a change strategy that can move an organisation for learning toward becoming a learning organisation. [Author abstract]
Agreement between activPAL and ActiGraph for assessing children's sedentary time
(BioMed Central, 2012-02-19) Ridgers, Nicole D; Salmon, Jo; Ridley, Kate; O’Connell, Eoin; Arundell, Lauren; Timperio, Anna
Background Accelerometers have been used to determine the amount of time that children spend sedentary. However, as time spent sitting may be detrimental to health, research is needed to examine whether accelerometer sedentary cut-points reflect the amount of time children spend sitting. The aim of this study was to: a) examine agreement between ActiGraph (AG) cut-points for sedentary time and objectively-assessed periods of free-living sitting and sitting plus standing time using the activPAL (aP); and b) identify cut-points to determine time spent sitting and sitting plus standing. Methods Forty-eight children (54% boys) aged 8-12 years wore a waist-mounted AG and thigh-mounted aP for two consecutive school days (9-3:30 pm). AG data were analyzed using 17 cut-points between 50-850 counts·min-1 in 50 counts·min-1 increments to determine sedentary time during class-time, break time and school hours. Sitting and sitting plus standing time were obtained from the aP for these periods. Limits of agreement were computed to evaluate bias between AG50 to AG850 sedentary time and sitting and sitting plus standing time. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analyses identified AG cut-points that maximized sensitivity and specificity for sitting and sitting plus standing time. Results The smallest mean bias between aP sitting time and AG sedentary time was AG150 for class time (3.8 minutes), AG50 for break time (-0.8 minutes), and AG100 for school hours (-5.2 minutes). For sitting plus standing time, the smallest bias was observed for AG850. ROC analyses revealed an optimal cut-point of 96 counts·min-1 (AUC = 0.75) for sitting time, which had acceptable sensitivity (71.7%) and specificity (67.8%). No optimal cut-point was obtained for sitting plus standing (AUC = 0.51). Conclusions Estimates of free-living sitting time in children during school hours can be obtained using an AG cut-point of 100 counts·min-1. Higher sedentary cut-points may capture both sitting and standing time.
All my students are reading the same book and they're successful: an inclusive teaching approach
(Australian Literacy Educators' Association, 2002) Bayetto, Anne Elizabeth
A model for programming proposed by Taylor, Short, Frye and Shearer (1992) was adapted and trialed by classroom teachers (R-9) to investigate how a single text could be used as a basis of instruction for all students in a class. The main focus, though, was to explore how an approach indicated by the model could support students with learning difficulties in the development of literacy skills. Teachers wrote summaries of the single texts and used them for teaching skills that included phonemic awareness, decoding and comprehension. The research provided positive indications that this approach could successfully be used as part of a whole class literacy program.
Anecdotally speaking: using stories to generate organisational change
(2008) O'Toole, Kathleen Margaret (Paddy); Talbot, Steven; Fidock, Justin
Aspirations, progress and perceptions of boys from a single sex school following the changeover to coeducation.
(Shannon Research Press, 2004-08) Yates, Shirley Mary
Career and further education aspirations, educational progress and perceptions of the learning environment were measured annually over three years in primary and secondary boys from a single sex non-government school, following the changeover to coeducation. Hierarchical Linear Modelling analyses revealed the significant role played by the career aspirations of cohorts on boys' progress over time. Further education plans and perceived difficulty of schoolwork were also significant influences, with difficulty at the grade level affecting boys' progress over time. Furthermore, satisfaction with life at school at both cohort and grade levels was a significant determinant of boys' educational progress. These findings suggest new directions for research into single sex/coeducational learning environments. [Author abstract]
Assessing young children’s learning: Using critical discourse analysis to re-examine a learning story
(Early Childhood Australia Inc., 2017-06) Krieg, Susan
The current policy contexts of many countries demand that early childhood educators are able to articulate their practice in new ways. For example, the need to assess and report positive learning outcomes in multiple ways to policy-makers, families and educational systems is a feature of contemporary early childhood education and care. This theoretical paper introduces a multi-dimensional framework to support the assessment of young children’s learning and then provides an example of how modified tools drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to effectively examine these dimensions of learning. CDA is a multidisciplinary methodology that integrates the study of language with a consideration of wider social practices. It offers a perspective from which to examine how ways of thinking, speaking, acting and being are drawn from, and also contribute to the particular discourses that are made available within social institutions (in this case, early childhood centres). CDA focuses on how language establishes and maintains social relationships and identities. This paper provides an example of how some of the tools made available in CDA can enhance assessment practices with young children. It is argued that CDA enables early childhood educators to re-examine young children’s learning in new ways. The processes outlined in this paper have the potential to inspire early childhood educators to embrace assessment as an opportunity to articulate, celebrate and communicate young children’s ways of knowing in new ways.
Attending to feeling : productive benefit to novel mathematics problem-solving
(Shannon Research Press, 2006-09) Aldous, Carol Ruth
What does attention to feeling have to do with solving problems in mathematics? Can feeling be used to navigate a path to a solution? What is meant by a feeling anyway? To what kind of problem does this productive benefit refer? A study of 405 middle school students solving two novel mathematics problems found that individuals utilising a feeling or free-flowing approach to reasoning were more likely to be successful in reaching a solution than those who did not. Indeed, feeling cognitions were found to have both a direct and indirect effect on the generation of a solution depending on whether mainly spatial or verbal processing was required. This finding is consistent with neuroscience research.
Australian and Maltese teachers' perspectives about their capabilities for mental health promotion in school settings
(Elsevier, 2014) Askell-Williams, Helen; Cefai, C
There is international concern about the prevalence and severity of mental health difficulties and the impact such difficulties have upon individuals, families, communities and societies. Policy makers identify schools as strategic settings for promoting students’ positive mental health, such as through the explicit teaching of social and emotional skills. Promoting students’ mental health requires teachers to possess particular types of subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of learners and their characteristics. However, mental health promotion is not typically addressed in pre- or in-service teacher education, thus raising questions about teachers’ capabilities to enact policy directives for mental health promotion in schools. This paper reports a questionnaire study of 1029 Australian and Maltese teachers’ perspectives about their capabilities for mental health promotion. Multilevel modelling showed significant response variations between teachers and between schools on 11 outcome factors. Maltese teachers’ responses were significantly lower than Australian teachers on three outcome factors, namely, Knowledge, Teaching Resources and providing Parenting Support. Differences were also apparent between teachers of secondary and primary students, and between male and female teachers. Years of teaching experience did not show significant effects, highlighting that mental health promotion is a new area of professional learning for teachers. This study indicates that policy directives that situate mental health promotion initiatives in educational settings must be accompanied by opportunities for teachers and schools to build their capabilities in this relatively new domain of school and teacher responsibility. Our participating teachers have reported on issues of international concern, indicating that further attention to the capabilities of teachers and
Australian children's perceptions of discretionary foods
(Elsevier, 2017-08-24) Velardo, Stefania; Drummond, Murray John
Energy-dense nutrient poor foods and drinks, often referred to as discretionary choices, can contribute a significant amount of energy, fat, sodium and sugar to the diet if consumed in large quantities. Currently many Australian children are consuming a diet that is characterised by large quantities of discretionary items. We undertook a qualitative study to gain a descriptive account of preadolescent children's attitudes and perceptions towards health and nutrition. A series of 6 focus groups and 14 individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-eight children aged 11–12 years, across three state government schools in a socially disadvantaged region of metropolitan South Australia. The naturalistic manner of qualitative inquiry led to several unintended yet highly pertinent emergent themes, including children's perceptions and practices surrounding discretionary food consumption. Our results indicate that while Australian guidelines recommend that discretionary foods are consumed ‘only sometimes and in small amounts’, children generally held a different belief with respect to what constituted ‘sometimes’. Many children identified that discretionary foods should be consumed in moderation to maintain a balanced diet, yet reported consuming these foods frequently. Self-reported discretionary food consumption was grounded in socially constructed experiences valued by the children, who made situational attributions to foods and legitimised discretionary food consumption in certain contexts, for example during the weekend. Overall, there is variability between children's opinions about the acceptable frequency of consumption of discretionary foods compared with national guidelines.
The Australian Early Years Learning Framework: learning what?
(Symposium Journals, 2011) Krieg, Susan
Early childhood education and care have assumed importance in many government policy agendas. This attention is often accompanied by calls for greater accountability regarding the anticipated learning outcomes for young children. In Australia, the expected learning outcomes for children aged birth to five years are outlined in the recently published Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). In this article, the author examines the relationship between the EYLF’s outcomes and subject area or content knowledge. The article draws from post-structural and social constructionist understandings of knowledge as unfinished, contestable and contextual. The author concludes that it is not content knowledge itself that is problematic, but it is the way the child and teacher are often positioned in relation to that knowledge that constrains the potential for effective teaching and learning in the early years. The author suggests that revisiting traditional assumptions about content knowledge extends and develops many of the ideas about teaching and learning that are identified in the EYLF, and opens up new identity positions for both children and early childhood educators.
Autonomy and liberalism in a multicultural society.
(Shannon Research Press, 2005-09) Jewell, Paul Damian
That children should be educated to be ideal citizens, capable of making rational and informed decisions, has been proposed in cultures ranging from Ancient Greece to current societies. In particular, societies that favour liberalism preach the primacy of the individual autonomous citizen and a concomitant tolerance for others. In modern multicultural societies, ways must be found to maintain stability and tolerance of cultural differences. Some cultures do not favour the primacy of the autonomous individual, so educators face a dilemma. Should they promote autonomy in their students, even though that is counter to some cultures' values, or should they abandon promoting autonomy in favour of even-handed treatment of all cultural values? This paper argues for the former, maintaining that educators have a duty, as a matter of professional ethics, to equip their students with the ability to make their own decisions in a modern complex world.
Being in sync: Strategies to support centres’ retention of childcare teachers
(The University of Auckland, 2014) Jovanovic, Jessie
Australia’s National Quality Framework (NQF) is seeking to improve teacher qualifications and ratios to lift the quality of education that young children access (COAG, 2013). The retention of childcare teachers, however, remains a constant challenge as this work continues to be poorly paid, and its importance is frequently misunderstood (Productivity Commission, 2011). Recognising that infant and toddler wellbeing is inextricably linked to the consistency and wellbeing of the teachers who care for them, this article considers the relational factors which created team cohesion and teacher retention across four Long Day Childcare (LDC) services in South Australia. When childcare teachers are able to negotiate a common approach to their practice, they feel able to share their feelings and work in ways which are both professionally gratifying and personally fulfilling.
Blending Formative and Summative Assessment in a Capstone Subject: ‘It’s not your tools, it’s how you use them
(University of Wollongong, 2017-11-30) Houston, Donald; Thompson, James N
Discussions about the relationships between formative and summative assessment have come full circle after decades of debate. For some time formative assessment with its emphasis on feedback to students was promoted as better practice than traditional summative assessment. Summative assessment practices were broadly criticised as distanced from the learning process. More recently discussions have refocused on the potential complementary characteristics of formative and summative purposes of assessment. However studies on practical designs to link formative and summative assessment in constructive ways are rare. In paramedic education, like many other professional disciplines, strong traditions of summative assessment - assessment ‘of’ learning - have long dominated. Communities require that a graduate has been judged fit to practice. The assessment redesign described and evaluated in this paper sought to rebalance assessment relationships in a capstone paramedic subject to integrate formative assessment for learning with summative assessment of learning. Assessment was repositioned as a communication process about learning. Through a variety of frequent assessment events, judgement of student performance is accompanied with rich feedback. Each assessment event provides information about learning, unique to each student’s needs. Each assessment event shaped subsequent assessment events. Student participants in the formal evaluation of the subject indicated high levels of perceived value and effectiveness on learning across each of the assessment events, with broad agreement also demonstrated relating to student perceptions for preparedness: ‘readiness to practice’. Our approach focused on linking assessment events, resulted in assessments providing formative communication to students and summative outcome information to others simultaneously. The formative-summative dichotomy disappeared: all assessment became part of communication about learning.
A Case Study of Online Support for International Students in a Doctoral Program
(Shannon Research Press, 2003-07) Feast, Vicki; Anderson, Jonathan
Online delivery methods that replicate aspects of face-to-face teaching and facilitate learning at a distance are becoming a more common teaching and learning approach in Australian universities teaching external international students. This paper examines a trial of a new online method of course delivery, using a CD-ROM as the basis of materials provision, communication and interaction, for a group of Thai doctoral students in a course at Flinders University in South Australia called Approaches to Research. The paper uses a case study approach and employs a focus group to collect data. The twin purposes of the paper are to describe the two methods of course delivery in which Approaches to Research is taught and to investigate the views of the Thai student group about the success of replicating face-to-face with online teaching. The findings of the paper, which are organised into themes, may provide pointers to university staff contemplating the use of online teaching to facilitate learning at a distance for international students. [Author abstract]
Change in differences between the sexes in mathematics achievement at the lower secondary school level in Australia : over time.
(Shannon Research Press, 2001-07) Afrassa, Tilahun M; Keeves, John Philip
In this paper an investigation is reported on whether changes have occurred in the differences between the sexes in mathematics achievement at the lower secondary school level over the 30 year period from 1964 to 1994. In order to make meaningful comparisons the mathematics test scores from the three studies conducted in Australia under the auspices of the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement were brought to a common interval scale using Rasch measurement procedures. The scale scores are used to examine differences between boys and girls in mathematics achievement on the three occasions as well as the changes that have occurred between occasions. No significant sex differences in mathematics achievement are found on each of the occasions. However, a significant decline in mathematics achievement is recorded for boys between 1964 and 1994, but not for girls. The decline in mathematics achievement over this 30 year period for boys is equivalent to nearly one year of mathematics learning, while the drop for girls is only approximately equivalent to half a year of mathematics learning. [Author abstract]
Changes in students' achievement in learning the Chinese language across grades and over time.
(Shannon Research Press, 2001-11) Yuan, Ruilan
This paper examines the changes in students' achievement in learning Chinese as a foreign language across school grades and over a period of a school year in an Australian school. The Rasch model using the QUEST computer program was employed to calculate appropriate scores to estimate the difficulty levels of the test items on a scale that operated across grade levels (Year 4 to Year 12) and across four school term occasions. This paper also identifies whether the level of students' achievement in learning the Chinese language is associated with their proficiency in English word knowledge, as well as the student's underlying verbal ability in English.
Changes in Students' Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy Use over Five Years of Secondary Schooling
(Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global), 2015) Askell-Williams, Helen; Lawson, Mike Joseph
As students progress through school, we expect that their knowledge about the various subject matters, such as biology or maths, becomes more extensive, well structured, and readily available for application in diverse contexts. This chapter reports the authors’ enquiry about whether students’ cognitive and metacognitive knowledge and strategies do grow during secondary school. Questionnaires were administered to students in three South Australian secondary schools in each of five consecutive years. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to investigate changes in students’ responses over time. Results showed little change in students’ reports of their cognitive and metacognitive strategy use. The disappointing growth trajectories suggest that cognitive and metacognitive strategies for learning are not subject to the explicit teaching and evaluation processes applied to other school subjects. Questions are raised about whether schools and teachers value and recognise the importance of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for good quality learning across subject domains.
Changes in teachers’ epistemic cognition about self–regulated learning as they engaged in a researcher-facilitated professional learning community
(Taylor & Francis, 2019-04-09) Barr, Shyam; Askell-Williams, Helen
Research into teachers’ epistemic cognition is emerging as a key to understanding the quality of teachers’ knowledge for teaching. Typically, investigations into the quality of teachers’ knowledge have been situated within traditional subject areas, such as science or maths. However, developing good quality teacher knowledge about improving students’ abilities to engage in self-regulated learning (SRL), across subject areas, is equally important. Studies have demonstrated gaps in teachers’ knowledge and epistemic beliefs about SRL – the foundations for teachers’ epistemic cognition about SRL. This paper introduces a model of teachers’ epistemic cognition about SRL, and reports a micro-analytic study with four secondary science teachers who undertook a 12-week researcher-facilitated Professional Learning Community (PLC). Thematic and numerical analysis of interviews and lesson plans indicated that the PLC facilitated teachers’ reflexive examination of their knowledge and their epistemic beliefs about SRL. Improvements in SRL content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and constructivist beliefs were observed consistently for three of the four teachers. Providing opportunities, such as a facilitated PLC, to enable teachers to reflexively examine their epistemic cognition about a generic subject such as SRL, may be a necessary step in translating research about learning and instruction into classroom practices.

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