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This mixed-methods study considers ‘permanent expulsionary punishments’ (PEP) from government schooling. Analysis considers the literature, available PEP data from two jurisdictions, and attitudinal data from Australian staff, in considering the contribution of policy, agency, and discourse (PAD) to the causes of PEP. It compares attitudes in a Queensland sample with those in other Australian jurisdictions. Across Queensland schools, 2007–2014, rates for the two categories of PEP almost doubled and more than quadrupled. This contrasts with neighbouring state, New South Wales (NSW), where the rate of PEP remained constant. PEP may disproportionately impact equity groups, already vulnerable to poor academic, and therefore social mobility, outcomes: especially those of First Nation Heritage (FNH). Thus, pre-identified gaps in educational outcomes for FNH children are stretched, despite this purportedly being a national education and social justice priority. The findings are that discernible differences exist between participants from Queensland, and other jurisdictions. However, despite these differences, responses overall were polarised reasonably uniformly across jurisdictions. Most participants attributed influence onto both family and child with fewer attributions onto schooling systems or PEP itself. Other considered factors which might influence attitudes include cohort differences like gender, age and experience.

This study was motivated by the situation that many students studying Indonesian language have problems to understand and communicate in spoken Indonesian. This is because Indonesian is a diglossic language in which different sets of grammar and vocabulary are used between the high and low diglossic variants, whereas students are usually only taught the high diglossic variant. Only the high diglossic variant of formal Indonesian has an official status, while the low diglossic variant of colloquial Indonesian does not. Sneddon observed that in everyday speech the linguistic features of high and low diglossic variants are merging into a middle variant that Errington called Middle Indonesian. This study examines the extent to which a middle variant of spoken Indonesian has formed by quantifying the amount of high and low linguistic elements that are present in a corpus of everyday spoken Indonesian derived from audio-recordings and written texts containing spoken language. We collected and classified a 14,000+ word corpus of spoken Indonesian. With reference to published descriptions of high (formal) and low (colloquial) diglossia, each colloquial item in the corpus was counted and calculated as a ratio to the total N of the corpus. Colloquial features were found with an average proportion of 0.39 across the corpus, indicating that colloquial Indonesian lexicon and grammar may contribute as much as 39% to everyday spoken Indonesian. This result evidences the need to include this middle variant of spoken Indonesian in the design and resourcing of materials within the Indonesian language curriculum.

With the GAISE emphasis on prioritising concept development over mathematical calculation in statistics education, statistical language has increasingly become the focus of research. Yet, there is a dearth of research investigating techniques to teach statistical language. To redress this gap, we introduced a group of statistics tutors to some cooperative learning techniques commonly used to teach language and concepts in other disciplines (Jigsaw and Think-Pair-Share). The twofold aim was to explore the tutors’ uptake of the techniques and how to improve their proficiency in implementing the techniques. The techniques were delivered experientially with tutors through a professional development session followed by implementation of the techniques in their tutorials. A semester-long exploratory case study was conducted using surveys, focus group sessions and shared self-reflection on a digital discussion board. From the tutors’ reported experience and feedback, areas for improvement in the implementation of the techniques were identified, pertaining to the effectiveness of the techniques, expectations of teacher and student roles in learning, and classroom management. Plans for addressing these areas for improvement in future studies are presented, which include enhancing the professional development and adding in-class mentoring of tutors. First published November 2018 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives

Data driven pedagogy has been introduced into Australian schools over the last decade to improve student learning outcomes, but are teacher educators preparing preservice teachers to be data litera...

The six recommendations made by the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) committee were first communicated in 2005 and more formally in 2010. In this article, 25 introductory statistics textbooks are examined to assess how well these textbooks have incorporated the three GAISE recommendations most relevant to implementation in textbooks (statistical literacy and thinking; use of real data; stress concepts over procedures). The implementation of another recommendation (using technology) is described but not assessed. In general, most textbooks appear to be adopting the GAISE recommendations reasonably well in both exposition and exercises. The textbooks are particularly adept at using real data, using real data well, and promoting statistical literacy. Textbooks are less adept—but still rated reasonably well, in general—at explaining concepts over procedures and promoting statistical thinking. In contrast, few textbooks have easy-usable glossaries of statistical...

A focus on quality assurance of assessment processes in tertiary education within Australia and throughout the world has resulted in a changing landscape of assessment types and grading schemes over the last decade. The use of criteria and standards-based assessment systems are now very commonplace in tertiary education. There are a variety of models now used, but typically they include a criteria sheet and a levelled rubric. An alternative to the traditional matrix-style rubric is the Continua Model of a Guide to Making Judgments (GTMJ). In this paper, we analyse available assessment models and their capacity to guide the marking, grading and moderation of student assessment tasks. We specifically address standards descriptors used to identify the quality expected at each standard. The research was undertaken through a community of practice within the School of Education at a tertiary institution where the collective goal of enhancing assessment grading tools to improve student outcomes was appro...

Learning statistics requires learning the language of statistics. Statistics draws upon words from general English, mathematical English, discipline-specific English and words used primarily in statistics. This leads to many linguistic challenges in teaching statistics and the way in which the language is used in statistics creates an extra layer of challenge. This paper identifies several challenges in teaching statistics related to language. Some implications for the effective learning and teaching of statistics are raised and methods to help students overcome these linguistic challenges are suggested. First published May 2016 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives

This study reports on the effectiveness of computer-based visual feedback systems for the modification of ESL speakersʼ vowel quality. Various programs were examined, based on conformity to criteria that queried their scientific, pedagogic, and practical value. The criteria-selected program, Kay Sona-Match, is a visual feedback system that utilizes the formant frequency components (F1-F2) of the acoustic speech signal. It displays the userʼs vowel space in real time with the facility to mark up the vowel space with different phonetic fonts and authorable templates. While Sona-Match is a potentially useful program, it was not designed specifically for ESL applications, as the product manual testifies. Independent studies have not been conducted to ascertain whether such programs can render lasting modification of vowel quality. In the current study, pedagogy has been developed to accompany Sona-Match to assist Korean English speakers to add English vowel categories to their vowel space. An intervention experiment was conducted with a test group (n = 10) and control group (n = 9), and the outcomes were assessed by expert phonetician judges. A significant lasting improvement was found for the vowel /{/ when the vowel was produced in citation form, but not in continuous speech. Action research was conducted simultaneously to determine the practicality of the software, to assess the experimental model, and to fine tune the pedagogy.

This chapter discusses the impact of the political, cultural and social background of Libyan society on the current quality of English education in the country. Libya has witnessed several attempts to reform English education since the 1970s; however, these attempts were based on introducing grammar-based curricula which were designed by non-native speakers of English, few of whom were Libyans. In an effort to reform English education in the country, the Libyan Ministry of Education developed new English curricula in 2000 based on CLT principles to be used in Libyan primary and high schools in place of the previous curricula which aimed mainly to teach grammar and reading. However, Libyan English teachers have not been able to help their students of English to achieve the objectives of the new curricula because the teachers predominantly use the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) and teacher-centred pedagogy. Despite the government’s intentions to innovate with communicative curricula, the teachers do not actually use these curricula in primary and high school classrooms. The quality of English language teacher education in Libya is underdeveloped and this situation can be seen as a result of a greater issue; the Libyan government’s accreditation procedures for universities, programs and courses are not well-developed.

This study investigated factors that could affect inter-examiner reliability in the pronunciation assessment component of speaking tests. We hypothesized that the rating of pronunciation is susceptible to variation in assessment due to the amount of exposure examiners have to nonnative English accents. An inter-rater variability analysis was conducted on the English pronunciation ratings of three test candidate interlanguages: Chinese, Korean, and Indian English. Pronunciation was rated by 99 International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examiners across five geographically dispersed test centres. The examiners had either prolonged exposure, or no, or little exposure to the interlanguage of the candidates. A significant proportion of examiners rated pronunciation higher when they had prolonged exposure, and lower when they had no, or little, exposure to the candidates’ interlanguage. The location of the test centre also had a significant effect on the pronunciation rating, independent of the familiarity variable, with a significant proportion of NNS raters scoring candidates from their home country higher than those who were not. It is recommended that interlanguage phonology familiarity should be considered in the design of speaking tests and rater training and that research is required into test centre bias and the phonological judgements and awareness of OPI raters.

This study evaluates the concurrent validity of an on-line Yes/No test of recognition vocabulary as a placement tool at an Australian English language school. Newly entering students (n = 88) completed a Yes/No test, which measured accuracy and speed of response, and a school placement battery consisting of grammar, writing, speaking and listening measures. Yes/No test accuracy performance approximated that of the listening and grammar placement tests, discriminating between placement levels and correlating with overall placement decisions. Placement level decisions correlated with Yes/No accuracy (r = .6) and the discrete-point placement measures listening (.7) and grammar (.8). Yes/No test accuracy showed a consistently strong correlation (.6) across all test measures, indicating that recognition vocabulary knowledge is a fundamental element in all tests. Response time as an independent measure followed the same pattern as the accuracy results but was less sensitive to differences in placement levels. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that when combined with accuracy, response times account for an additional amount of unique variance in the placement decision. The usefulness the on-line Yes/No test format in placement testing is discussed.

This paper evaluates the validity of teaching English grammar to preservice teachers in a teacher education course at a regional university. The course was delivered in blended mode using the grammar component of My Writing Lab Global (MWLG) and face-to-face instruction. The aim of this study was to establish if there are benefits to derive from teaching knowledge about language (KAL) to preservice teachers. Our quasi-experimental study found MWLG was well-received by participants who believed it had improved their KAL; this improvement was confirmed by 10% improvement on a pre and post KAL test (p < .001). MWLG scores and the KAL test also reliably predicted other academic competencies: the students’ accumulated GPA and their final written assessment scores for the course (r= .4 to .54; p

We conducted aggression experiments using model cowbirds on nesting Field Sparrows (Spizella pusilla) in heavily, moderately, and rarely parasitized populations. We also documented Field Sparrow morning nest arrival times during the laying period, because Field Sparrows appear to desert nests in response to encounters with laying female cowbirds. Field Sparrows responded most aggressively to cowbird models and arrived the earliest in Illinois, where they were most heavily parasitized. Field Sparrows responded the least to models in Pennsylvania, where they are almost never parasitized. Our results suggest that those host behaviors result from some aspect of host–cowbird interactions, but the extent to which such behaviors are genetic or learned needs further study.

Why do bilingual language teachers and students switch between the two languages in their language classrooms? On the evidence of current research findings in relation to English-Vietnamese code-switching in the educational contexts of Vietnam, this article identifies that classroom code-switching between the second language and the first language has its own pedagogic functions and it can be a valuable language classroom resource to both teachers and learners. In Vietnam, the implementation of the monolingual approach of teaching English-through-English-only faces many challenges such as inadequate classroom resources, students’ low levels of English competence, motivation and autonomy, teachers’ limited English abilities, and inappropriate teaching methods. Many Vietnamese teachers of English support code-switching in the classroom and they teach English through the bilingual approach. English-Vietnamese code-switching is reported not to be a restriction on the acquisition of English; rather, it can facilitate the teaching and learning of general English in Vietnam. This practice of code-switching is not just due to a lack of sufficient proficiency to maintain a conversation in English; rather, it serves a number of pedagogic functions such as explaining new words and grammatical rules, giving feedback, checking comprehension, making comparison between English and Vietnamese, establishing good rapport between teachers and students, creating a friendly classroom atmosphere and supporting group dynamics.