Professional Educator Volume 4 Number 2 May 2005
EDITORIAL
National and diverse: education is at the same time a state and a Commonwealth matter, and there’s plenty of room between those two stools for it to fall. Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, however, depends on which agenda item you happen to be looking at, and there’s quite a bit on the list...
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Julie Beard, MACE, CATCH! New Educators Network, Australian College of Educators, Canberra.
Congratulations to Judy Bolton for ‘Survival tips for beginning teachers’ (Professional Educator 3(3) 2004) and her five survival tips! They really are very helpful for beginning teachers. The Australian College of Educators has set up a network to support beginning teachers – called CATCH! Here are five more shorthand tips based on issues raised with me...
In support of reading vouchers
Dr Pauline Griffiths, Adjunct Research Associate in the Division of Communication and Education at the University of Canberra and ACT Broker for the Tutorial Voucher Initiative. Question: what do Whoopi Goldberg, Claude Monet, Agatha Christie, Venus and Serena Williams, Winston Churchill, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Frost, Laura Ingalls, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens and George Washington have in common with Australian children who were assessed as being below the Year Three National Reading Benchmark in 2003? Answer: they improved their skills as a result of home tutoring with a competent expert...
OPINION – Work-life balance, or collision?
by Barbara Pocock
The issue of ‘work and family balance’ – a rather inadequate phrase, since for most people ‘balance’ is what’s lacking – is a matter that should be high on any educator’s agenda. Placed as they are within institutions that affect them and the students they teach, the ways in which educators live and work and talk about the life and work options of their students are of paramount importance. While creches, kinders, schools, TAFE institutes and universities are not the only places where useful conversations can take place about the way we live and work, they are places where such conversations can have a big impact.
by Leslie Cannold
What we have in Australia is, to use associate professor Barbara Pocock’s language, a collision between work and family. What we’d like – and indeed what women and men caring for children or ageing parents are crying out for – is a balance between work and family responsibilities. As the subtitle of a recent conference paper on the problem – ‘Time crunch or yuppie kvetch?’ – suggests, not everyone accepts there is a problem, or at least one widespread enough to merit concern. In Australia we’ve been lucky, for the most part, as the bulk of debate here has focused not on the existence of the work-family collision, but on the best way to solve it.
RESEARCH
Who’s teaching Science?
A continuing decline in enrolments in sciences and mathematics at the secondary and tertiary levels of education coupled with few science graduates selecting a teaching career means we need to implement rigorous workplace planning for the teaching of science in schools as a matter of urgency, say Tim Brown, David Finlay and Bill MacGillivray.
Kerri-Lee Harris, Felicity Jensz and Gabrielle Baldwin report on their key findings from the ACDS study.
Indigenous Students and Literacy and Numeracy: What does the research say?
Indigenous students typically achieve at significantly lower levels than non-Indigenous students by the time they reach Year Three. What’s the reason for that? One way to find out is by way of a longitudinal study, as Nola Purdie and Alison Stone explain.
Talk about special things: Grandparents and their grandchildren’s learning
While grandparents are carrying an increasing childcare load, little research has been undertaken into the learning experiences they provide for their grandchildren, until now. Jill Robbins and Beverley Jane explain.
INNOVATION
Aboriginal Centres of Excellence: From concept to reality
If we asked schools to establish an Aboriginal centre of excellence by collaborating in partnership with a range of stakeholders and selecting one curriculum area designed specifically for Aboriginal students in secondary schools, what would be the outcome? Helen Dolan has the answer.
Talk about special things: Grandparents and their grandchildren’s learning
While grandparents are carrying an increasing childcare load, little research has been undertaken into the learning experiences they provide for their grandchildren, until now. Jill Robbins and Beverley Jane explain.
School improvement: what it takes to engage Indigenous people in education
When Charles Darwin University Senior Secondary College entered the National Awards for Quality Schooling, Annette Jamieson knew her school had carved out some huge improvements, especially for Indigenous students, but could it win the award for Best National Achievement in School Improvement? In February, she got her answer: yes. Here, she explains how the school went about the business of improvement.
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Measuring teacher quality and student achievement
Measuring teacher quality and student achievement The quality of teachers and teaching are fundamental to schools and students’ learning. While that’s generally accepted, new research is investigating the links between teacher professional development, pedagogy and student achievement. James Ladwig and Jennifer Gore report.
INTERVIEW
Worth working for
Steve Holden spoke with Walter Neal, distinguished educator and founding member of the Australian College of Educators, and got a lesson in educational history – and contemporary education.
ISSUES
Big Brother really is watching
The increasing use of email and the internet in schools, colleges, universities and other workplaces raises important legal questions for workers and employers, as Karen Wheelwright explains.
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Statistical reports on schooling and Indigenous education, yet another inquiry, and discussion papers on higher education: it looks like the education sector has become home for more than one numbers game. Steve Holden reports.
REVIEWS
The Essentials of School Leadership edited by Brent Davies
reviewed by Dave Loader
Creating Great Schools by Phillip C Schlechty
reviewed by Steve Marshall
AS I SEE IT. . . The most beautiful word
You don’t have to be an English teacher to be interested in a survey to discover the most beautiful word in the English language. Even Danny Katz wanted to find out...