Improving disadvantaged students? Reading outcomes through overcoming reading avoidance and building reading engagement. It is costly for students to avoid reading. Low literacy levels impact negatively on academic success, earning levels and employment opportunities. This project aims to produce new conceptual and empirical knowledge to inform the development of effective teaching practices to promote reading engagement for disadvantaged students.
Enhancing numeracy learning and teaching across the curriculum. Leaving school without an adequate level of numeracy has devastating consequences for young people's life chances. This project will implement a rich approach to numeracy across the curriculum in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 with the aim of improving students' numeracy learning outcomes and teachers' confidence with and understanding of numeracy.
Improving numeracy outcomes for young Indigenous children through the Patterns and Early Algebra Preschool (PEAP) professional development program. The study aims to improve mathematics outcomes for young Indigenous children and advance the pedagogical content knowledge of early childhood educators and working towards closing the gap in numeracy achievements for Indigenous children. The study will add to the research literature on early algebraic thinking and mathematical reasoning.
Serious play: using digital games in school to promote literacy and learning in the twenty first century. Young Australian’s social and cultural experiences are increasingly digital. This project will offer leadership to schools seeking to use and create games to improve student outcomes across subject areas, and will generate new knowledge about how students and teachers approach digital games and the kinds of literacy, learning and pedagogy they entail.
Emotional learning in socioscientific issues for enhancement of scientific literacy. This project will aim to address international concerns about waning student interest and participation in science by engaging middle school students imaginatively in socioscientific issues. Expected outcomes will enhance students' scientific literacy, and the production of positive emotional energy and the classroom emotional climate.
Responding to Indigenous students' and their communities' voiced experiences regarding effective teaching practices: a catholic education initiative. This project will identify the actions of effective teachers through the voiced comments of Indigenous students and community members and their teachers. Using this information and the literature on culturally located practices, the project will determine the impact of these actions on educational outcomes.
Secondary and university mathematics: do they speak the same language? This project seeks innovative reasons for low progression rates of students in mathematical sciences subjects in Australia. It will examine students' symbol use at university and explore how it differs from the use at school. It will also examine links between students' response to increased symbolic load and their confidence to continue studying subjects with high mathematical content at university. Theoretical outcomes are ....Secondary and university mathematics: do they speak the same language? This project seeks innovative reasons for low progression rates of students in mathematical sciences subjects in Australia. It will examine students' symbol use at university and explore how it differs from the use at school. It will also examine links between students' response to increased symbolic load and their confidence to continue studying subjects with high mathematical content at university. Theoretical outcomes are expected to include new applications of epistemology and didactics theories and identification of key components of symbol load (for example, symbolic density, symbol familiarity) to describe how mathematical practices change with educational level. Practical outcomes are expected to include advice for educators with examples across the mathematical sciences.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150100269
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$361,876.00
Summary
Designing and implementing effective cross-curricular numeracy tasks. Numeracy has been a national education priority for more than a decade, yet there appears to be little progress in students' numeracy performance. A lack of numeracy skills leads to devastating social and economic outcomes for individuals. This project aims to improve students' numeracy capabilities through: attention to the design of tasks intended to enhance numeracy learning across the curriculum; and the refinement of teac ....Designing and implementing effective cross-curricular numeracy tasks. Numeracy has been a national education priority for more than a decade, yet there appears to be little progress in students' numeracy performance. A lack of numeracy skills leads to devastating social and economic outcomes for individuals. This project aims to improve students' numeracy capabilities through: attention to the design of tasks intended to enhance numeracy learning across the curriculum; and the refinement of teaching practices with a view to improving student performance on both standardised numeracy tests and more realistic, contextualised tasks. The project aims to generate new theoretical and practical insights into effective numeracy education across the school curriculum.Read moreRead less
Effectiveness of a whole-school intercultural approach aimed at removing barriers to learning for students from non-mainstream backgrounds. This project will involve the study of localising, implementing and evaluating a whole-school intercultural approach that emphasises inclusion, diverse curricula and the monitoring of attitudes. It is anticipated that the approach will remove barriers to learning for non-mainstream students to help to address systemic inequity.
Building executive function in imaginary play. This project aims to develop a sustainable, play-based program to increase the executive functions of children in the year prior to school. Executive functions (EF) are cognitive processes that control an individual’s behaviour and cognition and include processes such as working memory, inhibitory control and attention. There is evidence that EF skills are critical to a successful transition to formal learning environments and future academic achiev ....Building executive function in imaginary play. This project aims to develop a sustainable, play-based program to increase the executive functions of children in the year prior to school. Executive functions (EF) are cognitive processes that control an individual’s behaviour and cognition and include processes such as working memory, inhibitory control and attention. There is evidence that EF skills are critical to a successful transition to formal learning environments and future academic achievement, and that they are amenable to early intervention. Improving children’s EF skills in the year prior to school could produce lasting benefits across the school years, particularly for more vulnerable children. This project intends to inform professional development programs in early childhood education.Read moreRead less