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This paper presents a critical analysis of literature relating to why males choose to become primary school teachers. Discussion within the paper concentrates on identifying and exploring connections between what is currently known about being a male primary school teacher and what motivates these men as they both pursue and practice within the profession. This paper reflects the preliminary investigations of a broader doctoral project that will examine the recruitment and retention of male primary teachers within Tasmania. Countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have experienced calls for increased male recruitment to and retention in the primary teaching profession. Current research into the male primary school teacher experience offers strong arguments for the need to recruit and retain more men into primary teaching as well as many attempting to explain the reasons for low numbers of male classroom primary teachers. Interestingly, studies investigating the motivations of those men who choose to teach young children are far less common. The critical review of relevant literature allows for deeper understanding of present perceptions of the male primary school teacher and teaching experience to be established. In doing so, the paper emphasises exploration of the motivations of men who choose to be male primary school teachers, and proposes that it is within the exploration of male's attitudes towards and motivations to being a male primary school teacher that will elicit rich insight into how strategies currently utilised for the recruitment and retention of male primary teachers can be improved.

This position paper develops the case for a greater focus on the teaching of local histories in the Australian Curriculum: History. It takes as its starting point an Indigenous epistemology that understands knowledge to be embedded in the land. This connection between knowledge and country is used to examine recent literature on whether the teaching of history in schools can succeed in the context of the new history curriculum. Various proposals from academics to develop a framework that can be used to select appropriate content and approaches to teaching history in Australia are explored. It questions whether a geographically dispersed and diverse body of students can ever be engaged with knowledge that is often taught far from the place of its making. The paper eschews the traditional concepts used by historians to teach and interpret history, to propose a greater focus on learning from country.

There is increasing interest in making more effective use of schools as community hubs, both in Australia and internationally. Investment in shared facilities aims to engage parents and local communities in schooling, encourage civic participation, co-ordinate educational and community services and overcome disadvantages of location or service provision. Parent and community partnership with schools is an important priority within current educational policy, at both state and Commonwealth levels. It is a priority that can be supported from different parts of the political spectrum, fitting liberal conceptions of parental choice and private investment as well as more communitarian conceptions of local engagement, civic renewal and participatory design. There is increasing interest in making more effective use of schools as community hubs, both in Australia and internationally. Investment in shared facilities aims to engage parents and local communities in schooling, encourage civic participation, co-ordinate educational and community services and overcome disadvantages of location or service provision. Parent and community partnership with schools is an important priority within current educational policy, at both state and Commonwealth levels. It is a priority that can be supported from different parts of the political spectrum, fitting liberal conceptions of parental choice and private investment as well as more communitarian conceptions of local engagement, civic renewal and participatory design.This paper provides historical background, policy context and educational rationales for the rise of the community hub concept. It discusses how schools as community hubs have provided early childhood services, through both state funding and public-private partnership. It then focuses on the lack of alignment between the Commonwealth Government's top-down scheme of school capital investment, "Building the Education Revolution," and other major public investments into digital infrastructure for schools. This lack of alignment points to a wider lack of community input into school redevelopment projects, alongside a fundamental difficulty in identifying the appropriate constituents of a target community. The paper concludes with four key challenges to the design and implementation of sustainable schools-based community hubs: governance and consultation; cross-jurisdictional issues; physical vs. digital infrastructure; and measurement of effectiveness.

Autoethnography is adopted as the procedure and orientation for this PhD study which aims to explore the cultural identity of the Chinese families and its influences on their children's mathematics learning. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, readers are invited to travel with the researcher a journey in which she explores her diasporic identity by engaging in the stories of others. This will be done by examining how her understanding of her own Chinese identity was challenged by those of the participants in the interviews. Second, through her experience and reflections, readers are provided with an insider's lens to understand some of the data collected in the interviews. Data are collected through interviews, journals, observations and fieldwork memos. As an autoethnographic study, it is not the aim of this thesis to provide a generalization of data. Rather, rich data sets which are partially contrastive and partially congruent to one another challenged the homogeneity of Chineseness. This paper discusses how the researcher uses her dual positionality to explore blurred boundaries between the observer and the observed, insider and outsider. It highlights how self is an important instrument in both the collection and analysis of data.

Increasing degree-seeking international students from affluent Asian countries, who use English as an additional language (EAL), have contributed to cultural and linguistic diversity in Australian universities. However, such diversity posed challenges in pedagogy and assessment. Drawn from a larger interview study, exploring what resources helped first year EAL international students come to belong in an Australian university, this paper addresses these students' concerns of finding group members. The data is analysed through Bourdieu's concepts of field and capital to provide insight into what underlies decisions over whom to group with. This paper finds that these students are caught between seeking a sense of belonging and networking to local student peers. It is argued that these considerations are produced by both prior educational trajectories and new conditions on offer in Australia's local classrooms. The findings have empirical implications to enhance group work experience in the higher education sector.

Information behaviour is a pertinent practice throughout students' research work. However, research students, particularly those with English as an additional language, experienced challenges and complications when studying in a western university. Issues relating to their information behaviour during the research process has largely been under-addressed and/or overlooked in both the fields of library and information science (LIS) and higher education. As part of a larger research project, this paper focuses on four Chinese PhD students' information behaviour in literature review practices. Semi-structured interviews were analysed through Foucault's concepts of discourse, knowledge and power. The paper argues that the PhD students' literature review practices, in terms of searching and synthesising relevant articles, are subject to two forms of discursive practices--the problem-based and resource-based practices. This study provides insights for research educators and students in the discourse of research education to weigh the practical consequences of different discursive practices in the construction of researchers' scholarly work. (Contains 1 figure.)

One approach that is helpful in framing and facilitating effective and ethical rural education research projects is centred on ensuring that researcher-participant relations are respectful, responsible and reciprocal, predicated on the shared principles of CHE (connectivity, humanness and empathy). This approach derives from a strengths-based paradigm that eschews deficit discourses about supposedly marginalised groups in favour of more enabling and productive narratives. This paper illustrates the appropriateness and utility of this approach to researching ruralities through a comparative analysis of two separate research projects involving rural residents in different parts of Queensland, Australia. One study investigated the approaches taken by selected rural families to enhancing the physical movement opportunities and experiences of their young children. The other inquiry explored the formal and informal learning aspirations and outcomes of members of mobile show or fairground communities whose itineraries pass through a succession of rural towns. The paper highlights ways in which the researchers, despite approaching and positioning educational research differently in their respective projects, worked to maximise the outcomes accruing to the participants. This maximising is a prerequisite of educational research that provides mutual benefits to participating communities and that builds on their ruralities respectfully, responsibly and reciprocally.

One of the key challenges for education in Northern Australia is attracting and recruiting teachers who can respond to the challenges of the region at the start of their careers through professional experience in the region. For pre-service students in regional locations such as the Northern Territory these challenges include coping with the distance and isolation, and high staff turnover. In response to these challenges there are initiatives to improve teacher quality and promote remote and regional areas as options for study to employment pathways. This paper describes and discusses the "Teaching Schools" Partnership, developed in 2006, involving teacher-employing authorities in the Northern Territory and Charles Darwin University to provide professional experience. Utilising Wenger and Lave's notion of "Communities of Practice" as a theoretical framework this paper analyses the challenges of offering professional experience with the resultant partnership practising, mutual engagement and joint enterprise of both parties. The paper will outline the current theoretical and conceptual principles and the framework of the "Teaching Schools" Partnership and describe practices that have made this collaborative successful. Close examination of this partnership reveals a need to extend the present outlook and potentially engage at a broader scale with increased focus on community. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

The purpose of this paper is to justify and reflect upon the way in which video technologies were employed in data generation for a study of student agency in a science classroom using discursive psychology. The research was designed with the purpose of providing new understanding of how students develop a sense of themselves as responsible agents in secondary science classrooms. The study drew upon discursive psychology for this purpose, and attended to the social meaning made relatively determinate in participants' conversations. An instrumental case study was developed from video recordings of a science classroom in action and video-stimulated interviews with the research participants. The scientific and moral criteria for evaluation underlying the research is explained in the paper. Phonological transcripts were generated as the primary data source for the study. The analysis, including the production of the phonological transcripts, is explained and an example of the report is provided to reflect upon the importance of the video technology for meeting the scientific and moral criteria for evaluation of discourse-based research in education. By making the criteria for evaluation explicit and reflecting upon the enhanced capacities of researchers to meet these criteria using video technology, the paper contributes to the theme of the symposium of "researcher practice in the generation of data for educational research using video-based research design". An appendix presents the phonological transcription conventions (adapted from the system developed by Jefferson (Woods & Kroger 2000, p193).

Assessment in higher education and teacher education in particular continues to be a prominent feature of the student experience. For teacher education students there is an immediate and future concern as they both experience assessment and go on to become assessors of learning within their profession. In the state of Queensland, Australia, assessment in teacher education has taken on renewed importance with pre-registration testing of new graduates. Assessment is a phenomenon that influences nearly all aspects of students' experience of university--their learning, relationships with staff and peers, and their emotions. This paper reports on data from the author's reflective journal where insights were derived from conversations about assessment during student interactions. Extracts from this reflective writing enabled extrapolation of key issues of student perceptions, learning, relationships and emotions. What students say and do in relation to assessment offers lecturers powerful insights into the central role it plays in their experience of university. Students are active in shaping their assessment experience but are clearly also shaped by it. Lecturers play important roles in sustaining and challenging assessment practices that influence students in complex ways.

It is the Australian Government's intention that all teachers will have, as a minimum, a proficient level of demonstrable professional expertise in both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education and Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. A raft of government policies are giving shape to the engagement of the Australian education system with respect to "closing the gap" between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous Australian education outcomes. This paper reports on the findings of a national study about teacher readiness to be able to account for their skills and knowledge in Australian Professional Standards for Teachers with particular emphasis on those standards focusing on the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Fieldwork was undertaken in each State and Territory capital. Analysis of the findings suggests that postcolonial democracies such as Australia are struggling to employ new frameworks in which to undertake teacher professional development in the Indigenous domain. Current provisions for teacher professional development lack a guiding commitment to a rights and strengths perspective; problematically, there is scant rigorous evaluation of teacher professional development provisions; and, teachers have fear and resistance about teacher standards that highlight Indigenous matters. (Contains 1 footnote.)

To have empathy with another is to experience the psychological life of that person by projecting one's self into another to understand what they are thinking or feeling. The term "empathy" has definitions marked by ambiguity and discrepancy among philosophers, behavioral, social, and medical scholars. Despite this, the professional responsibilities of teachers to be empathic are defined in the graduate standards. Relatively little research examining teacher empathy on teacher-student relationships exists. This paper seeks to develop a definition of empathy that can be used to catalogue teachers' observation of, and interactions with, students. Firstly, a systematic review of the literature reveals considerable disagreement about what constitutes empathy. Secondly, examining empathy in primary school teachers provides connections with "mentalization" (Fonagy, 1991). Defining empathy in terms of mentalization provides important insights for primary educators about how to create positive and productive classrooms built on strong teacher-student relationships. (Contains 7 footnotes.)

The purpose of this paper is to report on a small pilot study in which an heuristic was used to enable principals to reflect on the confidence they have in their existing leadership knowledge and how they might add to that knowledge in the future. The motivation for the study arose from a literature review of strategies for leadership development which showed up the lack of attention paid in research to principals' agency in the pursuit of their own learning. This contrasts starkly with the dominance in the literature of principals' reliance on education systems or authorities which, at present, make most decisions about principals' learning in leadership development programs. The piloting of the heuristic acts as a means of shifting the emphasis from system to self, thus empowering individuals to take more responsibility for their own future leadership learning needs. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper reports on effective strategies for developing the cultural competence of teachers involved in Aboriginal education and presents the preliminary findings of a review into the Connecting to Country Program (CTC), a joint venture of the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) and the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC). They suggest that the AECG three-day cultural immersion has a dramatic impact on participants' knowledge and understanding of local Aboriginal society, history and culture. Some reported a transformational experience while almost all reported: (1) improved knowledge and understanding of local Aboriginal people, histories and cultures; (2) enhanced confidence in incorporating Aboriginal perspectives into the curriculum; and (3) new skills and awareness of the benefits of communication with Aboriginal people and organisations. A mixed methods approach using qualitative and quantitative data has, in this preliminary stage, elicited responses from 130 teachers, 26 Aboriginal students and 8 Aboriginal parents and community members. These responses indicate the importance of developing the cultural competence of teachers through training delivered by local Aboriginal people. This approach supports teachers in developing meaningful and respectful relationships with Aboriginal students, parents and community members where teachers, students, parents and community members are all engaged in Aboriginal student learning.

In this paper we report on a whole school literacy research project, Embedding Literacies in the KLA's (ELK). The starting point for this endeavour is the theory of knowledge development conceptualised within the sociology of education as the semantic wave (Maton, forthcoming). As discipline knowledge typically resides in the "high stakes" texts students need to read and write, knowledge of the language resources used to create academic language is essential, as is a meta-language, which is accessible for use by teachers, students and parents but is sufficiently robust to make visible the resources of specialised academic discourses. To this end, educational linguists involved in the project have developed a framework of language resources, which was originally developed by academic literacy researchers (Humphrey, S. Martin, J., Dreyfus, S., and Mahboob, A., 2010). We report specifically on how we have adapted this framework to form a "4x4 toolkit for academic literacies", The literacy context for exploring this toolkit is the persuasive writing required by the Australian national literacy test (NAPLAN)., the 4x4 not only provides a framework for teachers to interpret the criteria provided by NAPLAN but to map their own and their students' development of language for learning.(Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

This paper offers a brief review of research on the impact of bullying and racism on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within Australia. The overarching emphasis was on the variety of physical, social, mental, and educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youth, whilst also critiquing the prevailing literature with regard to its inclusion and sensitivity towards the importance of culture and connected values. Within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research setting, although a strong base of research on the impact of racism has emerged, research on the impact of bullying is more recent. In addition, while there may be considerable overlap as to the individual impact of bullying and racism, racism research has identified a wider cultural/identity-threat that bullying research (with a few exceptions) has largely ignored. As a result, there is a need to be sensitive to cultural differences with regard to both the types and effects of racism and bullying, and that efforts to understand and to lessen the prevalence of racism and bullying should be framed within the development of a culturally sensitive and secure framework (Coffin, 2008).

Contemporary studies in the field of education cannot afford to neglect the ever present interrelationships between power and politics, economics and consumption, representation and identity. In studying a recent cultural phenomenon in government schools, it became clear that a methodological tool that made sense of these interlinked processes was required. The Circuit of Culture (the Circuit) was refined as a tool of cultural analysis by British cultural theorists in the late 1990s. This paper will provide a brief history of the Circuit, some of its applications and critique, and an overview of the way the Circuit has been utilised to explore a topical cultural phenomenon involving the commodification of international student programs in Australian government schools (Leve, 2011). This study draws on the Circuit to open the way for an exploration of the multiple interrelated processes involved in the construction and management of an education commodity. The Circuit emphasizes the moments of production, representation, consumption, regulation and identity, and the interrelated articulations of these moments. It is found to be a useful and flexible tool for exploring the contemporary significance of, and possibilities for, the increasingly complex multiple modes and relationships of each of these significant moments in the construction and maintenance of an education commodity. (Contains 2 figures and 7 endnotes.)

This paper presents an investigation into the attitudes of School Administrators to the relationship between formal school registration and school improvement. It concerns a mandatory inspection-type registration process for all Non-Government Schools in Western Australia. Part of the aim of this registration process was to help schools improve twelve educational and administrative aspects. These were: (1) School Governance, (2) School Financial Viability, (3) Enrolments & Attendance, (4) Number of Students, (5) Instructional Time, (6) School Staff, (7) School Infrastructure, (8) School Curriculum, (9) Student Learning Outcomes, (10) Care for Students, (11) Disputes and Complaints, (12) Legal Compliance. A questionnaire based on these twelve aspects was designed with five items per aspect (60 items total), conceptually ordered from easy to hard, and given to 110 administrators. It was completed by 65 administrators for a useable, response rate of 59%. The data were analysed to create twelve Guttman Scales. In a Guttman Scale the items are aligned from easy to hard horizontally and the person scores are arranged vertically from high (top) to low (bottom) by items. If the data were to fit a Guttman pattern accurately, then the pattern of person responses for each item would be in a perfect steptype arrangement. If a person scores high on the hardest item, then that person scores high on all the other easier items. If a person scores low on the easiest item, then that person will score low on all the other harder items. In a practical situation, as was the case for these twelve Guttman Scales, the response patterns were not in perfect step-type arrangement, but they were all very acceptable. The response patterns fit a Guttman pattern, giving strong evidence for a unidimensional scale. The twelve Guttman Scale scores were then used to calculate 66 zero-order, effectively different inter-correlations (Pearson Product-Moment Correlations) between and amongst the twelve aspects of formal registration. The results showed that there were items that administrators said were relatively easy to say that actual school improvements were due to formal registration and other items that administrators said were very hard to say that actual school improvements were due to formal registration. This study produced new Guttman Scales and many interesting correlations for a key aspect of school improvement. It provides new insight into the policy and practice of school registration. (Contains 7 tables.)

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the attitudes of School Administrators to the relationship between formal school registration and school improvement. It concerns a mandatory inspection-type registration process for all Non-Government Schools in Western Australia. Part of the aim of this registration process was to help schools improve twelve educational and administrative aspects. These were: (1) School Governance, (2) School Financial Viability, (3) Enrolments & Attendance, (4) Number of Students, (5) Instructional Time, (6) School Staff, (7) School Infrastructure, (8) School Curriculum, (9) Student Learning Outcomes, (10) Care for Students, (11) Disputes and Complaints, (12) Legal Compliance. A questionnaire based on these twelve aspects was designed with five items per aspect (60 items total), conceptually ordered from easy to hard, and given to 110 administrators. It was completed by 65 administrators for a useable, response rate of 59%. The data were analysed with the Rasch model computer program RUMM2030 which accommodated the small numbers by estimating parameters even when some response cell frequencies are zero or low. It does this by re-parameterising the thresholds into principal components (not the factor analysis kind), but components that make up the structure of the threshold parameters where there are data. The frequencies are not used directly, but rather functions of the frequencies are used as the sufficient statistics for these parameters and the thresholds are recovered from these. A unidimensional, linear scale, School Administrators' Beliefs That Actual School Improvements Were Due to Formal School Registration, was created with 48 items. The Person Separation Index of 0.86 was highly satisfactory. The item-trait interaction was 83.76, df = 96 with p = 0.81 supporting the creation of a unidimensional scale. The results showed that there was a group of items that administrators said were relatively easy to say that actual school improvements were due to formal registration and another group that administrators said were very hard to say that actual school improvements were due to formal registration. This study produced a new Rasch measurement for a key aspect of school improvement. It provides new insight into the policy and practice of school registration. (Contains 6 tables and 6 figures.)

Recommendations arising from the "Review of Australian Higher Education" (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008) see universities aiming to increase enrolments of school leavers generally and those from low socioeconomic status backgrounds particularly. Similar trends in other countries have had mixed success. Enrolments of students from less advantaged groups have remained largely static in recent decades, both in Australia and elsewhere. Research suggests that students attracted to university study due to these "widening participation" initiatives are more likely to attend some institutions than others, and to enrol in some courses than others. Students from less advantaged groups experience higher education differently from their more advantaged peers, and face additional challenges. Using Bourdieu's theoretical concepts of "habitus," "field" and "capital," this study will examine the experiences of non-traditional students enrolled in a teacher education program. Through a longitudinal design, the student experience over the full course of the university program and initial years of the teaching career will be studied. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of the factors affecting the success of non-traditional students in teacher education specifically and university generally. This paper presents an overview of the study.

International student cohorts continue to be increasingly vital to higher education institutions in Australia; currently, they account for 20 percent of enrolments. However, there is concern that over the past few years, enrolment numbers have been dropping. Reasons for this decrease may vary from: tuition fee increases, new overseas universities adding to competition, the global financial crisis, student preferences toward US and UK universities, or perceived lack of Australian scholarship support for international students. At a time when uncertainty in financial markets loom, it is crucial that recruitment, retention, and overall experience, of international student's remain a focus in a university's strategic intent Studies on international students highlight that "adjustment" is crucial to a student's positive educational experience abroad. Cross-cultural differences and English language barriers are main factors in adjustment--influencing well-being and academic achievement. Although literature on international students is extensive, studies of international postgraduate research students is limited. Problems experienced by this cohort are heightened due to the somewhat isolated nature of research programs. The focus of this paper is on international postgraduate research students and factors that contribute to how they adjust or "settle in", to their research student candidature. The research involved in-depth interviews and focus groups with a cohort of postgraduate research students in a Group of Eight, research-intensive university in Sydney, Australia. The findings revealed that students had problems with: selection of supervisors, work opportunities within the faculty, knowing what is expected of them and lack of sense of belonging as means of connecting with a broader community of peers and academics. As faculties become aware of international research student challenges, even prior to enrolment, they can provide targeted support in order to contribute to and optimize the educational experience abroad.

This paper reviews existing literature to identify the changing nature of the Australian education policy field. Through this analysis, it is argued that an international paradigm of testing, propagated by comparative performance data, disseminated by multinational agencies and non-government organisations, is leading to a global audit culture, where a resultant performative ethos is changing notions of traditional state-centred education service provision. This analysis of literature provides a contextual background to explicate the rise of edu-business. Through the use of some examples of edu-businesses currently operating in the Australian education market--found through a stylised approach of network ethnography--it is suggested that there is a pressing need for further in-depth research that investigates the currently opaque and blurred relationship between edu-businesses, schools and governments. Such research will ultimately hope to contribute to the education community's understanding of how increasing trends of privatisation are influencing the "public" processes of education.

Student evaluations of faculty and courses have been used as a method of quality control in higher education for almost 100 years. Analysis of the data generated by these surveys has been the focus of considerable research for at least the past 20 years, with the bulk of this analysis using techniques which assume that the survey data, usually Likert item responses, are quantitative variables. By utilising correspondence analysis, a statistical tool which makes no such assumptions on the variables, we have produced results from one set of data comprising 2749 surveys which suggest that the assumption that Likert item responses can be treated as quantitative variables could be challenged. Through this we provide new insight about student evaluations and question these assumptions at least for one data set. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.)

Teaching is considered one of the most trusted professions, yet literature evaluating teachers' understanding of professional behaviour is scarce. Recently, technological advancements such as Social Networking Sites (SNS; e.g. Facebook) have created fresh debate about appropriate behaviour for teachers: in school and online. The "Professional Interactions and Behaviours Scale" (PIBS) was developed to assess the degree to which teachers have developed an understanding of appropriate professional interactions with students. 30 items were developed with reference to the "Victorian Institute of Teachers Profession Code of Conduct" (2008) which states teachers are required to maintain professional relationships with students which are centered on learning at all times whether at school or not. Preservice teachers recruited for the study ("N" = 197) rated acceptability of specific student-teacher interactions and/or behaviours (e.g. "hugging a student as a form of consolation", "being friends with a student on a SNS") on a Likert scale of 1 (unacceptable) to 5 (acceptable). The dimensionality of the PIBS was evaluated using principal components analyses with varimax rotation and 20 items were retained yielding four components; befriending, hugging, external engagement and teacher disclosure. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted and the model demonstrated adequate fit. The PIBS is a unique and promising measure for stimulating dialogue and contribute to the developing definition of "appropriate boundaries" for teachers. An appendix presents the PIBS Scale (30-item version). (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

An assumption made when designing recess interventions in schools is that there is a clear demarcation between eating time and play time. We used observational data conducted as part of the Sydney Playground Project to test if this assumption was correct. The Sydney Playground Project is a cluster randomised controlled trial of a recess intervention. The SPP was conducted in 12 Sydney schools and involved 214 children aged 5-7 years. Analysis of the baseline behavioural observations revealed an average of 18.5% of children's free play time was spent eating. Twenty observations were used to explore the extent and nature of influence of eating on children's play. For most children, eating reduced their capacity to engage fully in play. Some children were socially isolated and unable to play while eating. A small number of children seemed not to be affected by their own eating, but were affected by their peers' eating. The results indicate that a substantial proportion of children's free play time can be lost to eating. Although the methods used do not allow us to make causal inferences, the present findings suggest that eating had a negative impact on quality and quantity of play. Time spent eating should be considered when estimating time children have for free play. Consideration should also be given to reducing the amount of free play time that can inadvertently be spent eating. (Contains 1 figure.)

This investigation examined the course experiences of Bachelor of Education Primary students across each year of the course. The aims of the study were to identify gaps in what we know about our students; to identify relevant domains in student experiences and to assist with course improvements. A reflective inquiry paradigm was adopted for students to give feedback on their course experience as key stakeholders. A mixed methods approach was used to examine participants' reflections on their course experiences. The emphasis was on an analysis of the students' reflections of their experiences and their online responses. The research was designed to engage participants in processes for twenty first century learning using technology that could be replicated in the field. The online survey items were developed through focus group discussions with volunteer students reflecting about their previous years' experiences. Focus group participants were encouraged to identify their positive, negative and interesting experiences through completing a "PMI" template prior to the focus group discussion. Each cohort in Years 1, 2, 3, and 4 were invited to complete the anonymous online survey. The findings provided insights into relevant domains of student experiences for those requiring improvements as well as those operating effectively. (Contains 10 tables.)

Universities in Australia and worldwide, are building a new generation of learning and teaching spaces which are designed to encourage and support active and collaborative modes of learning and teaching. However, there is little evidence to show that students will recognise the contribution these spaces make to their learning. Temple (2008) argued that spaces may become more salient to students once they are satisfied with the quality of learning and teaching that occurs within them. In the present study, ten teachers worked collaboratively to develop and implement active and collaborative approaches to learning and teaching in their respective units. These approaches drew upon the affordances of one of these new generation spaces at Macquarie University, namely, the Collaborative Learning Forum. Evidence from a student evaluation survey (n = 279) confirms Temple's (2008) proposition and also suggests ways to encourage students to adopt a deeper approach to learning and to increase their satisfaction with the value and quality of their learning experience. (Contains 1 figure.)