Search

Despite many claimed benefits, teacher collaboration remains patchy, under-theorised, and resisted. At the same time, new large teaching spaces offer teachers opportunities to teach in teams within and across school subjects to enhance teacher and student learning. In this paper we aim to contribute to theorising the nature and means of this form of collaboration, drawing on both relevant literature and analyses of three case studies of team teaching. We found that team teaching (a) is enabled and constrained by multiple contextual factors, and (b) potentially changes and enhances the nature and scope of teacher professional learning.

In this paper, we analyse results from one classroom session within an 8-week program in which Year 10 students constructed 'trash' puppets of endangered Australian animals. In making the puppets and using them as part of a 'theatre in a suitcase' performance at Melbourne Zoo, students were expected to integrate both scientific and artistic goals to demonstrate knowledge of specific endangered species. In this process, students needed to learn how their more immediate, everyday positive and negative aesthetic responses could be made continuous with a scientific aesthetic to produce both a coherent puppet and an advocacy performance. Through micro-ethnographic practical epistemology analysis of video data of this session, we demonstrate how this mix of everyday and subject-specific aesthetic responses, judgements and intentions interacted to shape and promote students' learning in science. In addressing this multimodal and multi-purpose task, students learnt and applied science knowledge to a real-world issue of species endangerment.

Many factors are claimed to explain Australian students' declining participation rates in senior secondary science subjects. These include, for instance, the influences of SES, indigeneity, and gender. While acknowledging the compelling case for these factors affecting student pathways, in this study we explore associations between students' literacy achievement test scores in early secondary school and their senior secondary participation in science. Our analyses of Australian national literacy testing data indicated that students who subsequently studied physics, chemistry, and biology showed stronger foundational literacy competence than students not studying these subjects. Drawing on a Bourdieusian perspective, this research explores the conversion of cultural capital, in the form of language literacy achievement, into science capital. We consider that these findings (a) reconfirm the foundational role of literacy in all science learning, and (b) support a growing research agenda that focuses on how students can learn the particular literacies of science before senior secondary study. Our findings also have broader implications for policy and practices that support school student participation in science study.

Despite mixed results in research on student learning from drawing in science, there is growing interest in the potential for this visual mode, in tandem with other modes, to enact and enable student reasoning in this subject. Building on current research in this field, and using a micro-ethnographic approach informed by socio-semiotic perspectives, we aimed to identify how and why student drawing can contribute to student reasoning and learning. In our study, secondary school students were challenged to explore and collaboratively create explanatory representations of phenomena including through drawing. Data were generated using multiple wall- and ceiling-mounted cameras capable of continuously tracking groups of students negotiating these representational challenges. Our analysis proceeded through active and iterative viewing of the extensive video record, and the identification of themes to establish possible relationships between drawing and reasoning. Through this process, we (a) identify multiple necessary conditions and varied opportunities for student drawing to enact and enable reasoning, and (b) extend current understandings of how the particular affordances of this mode interact with these conditions to contribute to student learning in science.

Despite an intense focus on improving Australian students' writing performance in recent years, and comprehensive instructional advice to English teachers, researchers have noted a lack of gains in standardised writing tests and negative effects on student engagement and learning. In this paper we claim that these outcomes are partly attributable to current orthodoxies around how writing is conceptualised, taught and tested. In reviewing relevant literature and drawing on a case study with low SES students, we propose the need for more diversity in the 'what', 'how' and 'why' of students' writing experiences. In putting this case, we are not arguing that the current intense focus on technical and rhetorical competence (the 'how' of writing) should be abandoned, but rather that students can benefit from more focus on and say in the 'what' and 'why' of this activity.

Australian students' performance on national and international literacy assessments has declined since 2000, while teachers in contemporary classrooms contend with conditions of increased complexity and uncertainty. In July 2017, the Australian Government commissioned a panel of experts to provide advice on how to improve Australian students' achievement and school performance. The panel concluded that Australian schools must support every student to realise their full learning potential through an increased emphasis on personalised student learning and collaborative teacher practices. This paper outlines a case study of complexities and influences in enabling and constraining a local curriculum innovation in literacy that sought to personalise learning and promote teacher collaboration in conditions of constant change and disruption. Named "Literacy Toolbox," this initiative was developed by Year 7 and 8 literacy leaders at a Tasmanian secondary school to increase student agency and enhance teaching around a model of deprivatised or shared practice. The findings provide insight for education researchers and schools regarding the challenges and opportunities of attempts to enact personalised learning and co-teaching in the current context.

Creative reasoning and problem-solving are crucial to how scientists work and how students learn in school science. However, developing guided inquiry that develops these capabilities within a prescriptive curriculum has proven difficult. In this paper, we report on a study of a teaching sequence that aimed to develop these capabilities through structured inquiry where students responded to representational challenges on the topic of respiration in senior secondary biology. We found that this activity engaged students and improved conceptual understanding. Students had many opportunities to practise reasoning skills in negotiating, integrating, refining, defending and translating their ideas across representations. Key conditions supporting this learning included (a) students having some prior relevant understandings that enabled them to engage with the demands of the challenge, and (b) effective teacher guidance of student sign-making.

In this paper, we report on a case study of how three teachers personalised learning in science through supporting a group of Year 8 students to engage in individual inquiry projects. The case study demonstrated how heavily transmissive teaching can be avoided by restructuring classes to optimise student group and individual work and timely teacher coaching opportunities as required. This approach can act as a catalyst to enable/prompt teachers to devise a rich developmental science curriculum that (a) enables tasks to be differentiated so as to address diverse student capabilities and interests, (b) can be team-taught drawing on the particular expertise/iRenterest of teachers in the team, and (c) enables students to connect science learning with their everyday worlds. Reasoning in science can be made personally meaningful to learners when they experience how and why it enables knowledge to be produced, both for themselves and for the wider community.

Student engagement in learning science is both a desirable goal and a long-standing teacher challenge. Moving beyond engagement understood as transient topic interest, we argue that cognitive engagement entails sustained interaction in the processes of how knowledge claims are generated, judged, and shared in this subject. In this paper, we particularly focus on the initial claim-building aspect of this reasoning as a crucial phase in student engagement. In reviewing the literature on student reasoning and argumentation, we note that the well-established frameworks for claim-judging are not matched by accounts of creative reasoning in claim-building. We develop an exploratory framework to characterise and enact this reasoning to enhance engagement. We then apply this framework to interpret two lessons by two science teachers where they aimed to develop students' reasoning capabilities to support learning.

This project sought to evaluate regional students' perceptions of their readiness to learn, assessment processes, engagement, extent to which their learning is personalised and to relate these to academic efficacy, academic achievement, and student well-being. It also examined teachers' perceptions of students' readiness to learn, the assessment process, engagement, and the extent to which students' learning is personalised. The sample involved students in years 7-10 from six Victorian secondary schools. An instrument Personalised Learning Environment Questionnaire (PLQ) was developed to measure students' perceptions of the factors effecting the implementation of Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs). It employed the latest scales to assess a range of PLP indicator variables, with all scales modified for use in an Australian context, and the total number of items kept to a minimum. Only scales more sensitive to PLPs were used to minimise the length of the instrument. There were three outcome variables: academic efficacy, academic achievement, and student well-being. The PLPs were assessed through scales that assess several contributing, distinct dimensions: selfdirected learning readiness, personal achievement, goal orientation, learning environment, personalised teaching and learning initiatives, curriculum entitlement and choice, and perceptions of assessment for learning. The trail PLQ was administered to 220 students, resulting in a 19 scale questionnaire with three or four items per scale. This paper reveals good data to model fit for the majority of items and each scale had good reliability. The paper describes the analytic techniques and results, how the instrument was refined and identifies common and uncommon student perceptions based on a post hoc analysis. The main study consisted of 2,407 students from four schools in the Bendigo Education Plan. They responded to this refined 19 scale version of the PLQ that was developed from the trial PLQ. All scales had satisfactory internal consistency reliability.

In this paper we examine how agency is characterised by teachers and students when personalised learning is enacted in the contemporary open classroom. A case study is outlined that identifies teacher reasoning for practice, the use of physical and virtual learning spaces, and student reaction to teacher facilitation of personalised learning. Agency is conceptualized as a multi-faceted set of behavioural, affective and cognitive choices, as realised by both teachers and students, drawing upon the action possibilities of contemporary educational contexts. A model of the mutuality of teacher and student agency is outlined. The model shows how a shared understanding of the affordances of flexible learning spaces and personalised learning interact to both produce teacher and student expectations and perceptions of their own and other's choices and actions. Specific student choices and actions are examined in relation to problem-solving and open access of resources to achieve the task requirements. Implications are noted for teaching and learning in modern school contexts.

Personalised learning is now broadly endorsed as a key strategy to improve student curricular engagement and academic attainment, but there is also strong critique of this construct. We review claims made for this approach, as well as concerns about its conceptual coherence and effects on different learner cohorts. Drawing on literature around differentiation of the curriculum, self-regulated learning, and "relational agency" we propose a framework for conceptualising and enacting this construct. We then report on an attempt to introduce personalised learning as one strategy, among several, to improve student academic performance and wellbeing in four low SES regional secondary schools in Australia. We report on a survey of 2407 students' perceptions of the extent to which their school provided a personalised learning environment, and a case study of a programme within one school that aimed to apply a personalised approach to the mathematics curriculum. We found that while there were ongoing challenges in this approach, there was also evidence of success in the mathematics case. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

There is growing research interest in the challenges and opportunities learners face in representing scientific understandings, processes and reasoning. These challenges include integrating verbal, visual and mathematical modes in science discourse to make strong conceptual links between representations and classroom experiences. Our paper reports on a project that aimed to identify practical and theoretical issues entailed in a representation-intensive approach to guiding students' conceptual learning in science. We focus here on a teacher developing students' understanding of the formation of ions and molecules. We argue that the representations produced by students in this process met the criteria for representational competence proposed by diSessa ("Cognition and Instruction," 22, 293-331, 2004) and Kozma & Russell (2005). The students understood that an effective representation needed to show relevant information, focus on pertinent points, be self-sufficient in its claims about the topic and provide coherent links between different parts of the representation. The final activity showed that their representations reached Kozma & Russell's (2005) highest level of competence, where the students were able to use specific features of their representations to critique their suitability for explaining bonding and were able to show how their representation linked to the periodic table as a representation. We conclude by considering the implications of these findings.

Various explanations and solutions have been proposed over the last decade in relation to the implications of students' apparent lack of engagement with middle years schooling in Australia. This article reports on responses to a questionnaire by 333 Year 8 students (aged about 13, in the second year of high school) on perceptions of factors relating to their engagement with the academic curriculum. While the majority of students reported a strong sense of the importance of, and opportunities in, schooling, and saw English, mathematics and science connected to those opportunities, this orientation was not matched by corresponding positive engagement with these same subjects. There was diversity in the responses of students, and it is recommended that schools take steps to identify individual students' perceptions of factors influencing their engagement, and where appropriate, deal with those perceptions. (Contains 7 tables.)

There is continuing interest in identifying factors that influence learning in the middle years. This paper reports a case study that aimed to identify key factors that influenced Year 8 students' self-regulation of learning in English in an Australian regional secondary school with a low socio-economic profile. This study focuses on both students' self-regulatory strategies as well as contextual factors affecting student effort and performance, drawing on an analysis of a) a group of year 8 students' perceptions of self-regulatory learning strategies in tackling two literacy tasks, and b) organisational structures and teaching and learning processes that supported student learning. The paper concludes with some implications for future pedagogical and structural practices. (Contains 2 tables.)

There is growing recognition that learners in science need to become familiar with the discourse rules, rationale, claims, and procedures of traditional ways of representing scientific inquiry and findings. At the same time, some researchers in science education have claimed that students also need opportunities to write in ways that enable engagement, clarification, and consolidation of emerging understandings, where writing is used as a tool for shaping and clarifying knowledge. Each agenda has generated powerful new insights into the conditions under which, and the strategies whereby, student writing can support learning in science; but there is a need to clarify further the theoretical implications of this research, especially in the context of new technology-mediated, multi-modal learning environments. Drawing on this literature and other recent reviews, this paper identifies various implications in relation to the theory and practice of future student writing for learning in science.

Whereas there has been strong advocacy of the value of writing for learning in science, the role of student planning in this approach and the relationships between planning, writing, and learning have been underresearched. Our mixed method study aimed to address this issue by seeking to identify quantitative differences in learning outcomes between two groups of students exposed to varying degrees of planning activities in writing-to-learn experiences. We also identified differences in learning outcomes between a group of students with two writing experiences and a group with one writing experience. Results indicate that students with planned writing activities did not score significantly better on conceptual questions as a group than students who had delayed planning experiences. Students with two writing experiences as opposed to one also scored significantly better as a group on answering conceptual questions both immediately after the writing experience and on a test 8 weeks after the unit. The difference in writing treatment initially significantly affected males compared with females but this effect disappeared with further opportunities to write. Students' comments provide support for using nontraditional writing tasks as a means to assist learning, particularly when the focus is on an audience different from the teacher. In reporting on different learning outcomes for the two groups, we consider various implications including identification of some key conditions for student writing to serve learning.

Reports on two inter-related studies that examined the use of non-traditional writing strategies within secondary school science classrooms. The first study involved Year 10 students who incorporated one letter writing experience into the learning sequence when studying genetics. The second study was with Year 9 students who used both a non-traditional laboratory writing heuristic and letter writing as part of the learning sequence when studying a topic on light. (Author/MM)

Reports on a 4-year study examining teachers' concerns in implementing writing-to-learn strategies within science classrooms based on using a model of writing-to-learn. Describes in detail two teachers' participation in an ongoing in-service program to develop pedagogical practices to support writing-to-learn strategies. Central issues for the two teachers included assessment, planning and setup, and their changing roles as classroom teachers. (Author/MM)

Argues for the value of postmodern picture books as a classroom resource for addressing contemporary challenges. Offers a discussion on what postmodern picture books are, a rationale for using postmodern picture books, and teaching postmodern aesthetics. Includes some examples of postmodern picture books. (CMK)

Discusses students' perceptions of using writing as a component of their science learning. Results, collected over four years, are organized to include students' perceptions of writing in science, learning, ownership, purpose, and science. These results are then discussed in terms of students' developing metacognition and epistemologies of science. Discusses implications for future research. Contains 18 references. (Author/WRM)

While there is strong advocacy for schools to integrate the use of new technologies across the curriculum, an extensive literature highlights challenges facing schools undertaking such an agenda. This paper reports on the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a whole-school approach to using new technologies for teaching and learning in a senior secondary school in Australia. The paper provides an analysis of crucial factors in the effective use of computers for learning across the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a classroom activity for teaching high school students about concepts in optics. Fundamental concepts; Materials used; Guide questions for student discussions.