Conceptual play: foregrounding imagination and cognition during concept formation in early years science education. The National Quality agenda has created the need for better understanding learning in early childhood. This study seeks to find out how the imagination of preschool aged children helps them to learn scientific concepts. The outcomes will help early childhood educators in childcare centres and kindergartens to teach science to young children.
Scientific play-worlds: Researching play, imagination and science teaching. This project aims to investigate how imaginative play, as a pedagogy of science teaching, promotes children’s scientific visualisation and imagination in contexts of contradiction and drama. The project expects to generate new knowledge about teaching science to infants, toddlers and preschoolers in play-based settings. The expected outcome is an evidence-based model of early childhood science teaching and a method for m ....Scientific play-worlds: Researching play, imagination and science teaching. This project aims to investigate how imaginative play, as a pedagogy of science teaching, promotes children’s scientific visualisation and imagination in contexts of contradiction and drama. The project expects to generate new knowledge about teaching science to infants, toddlers and preschoolers in play-based settings. The expected outcome is an evidence-based model of early childhood science teaching and a method for measuring imagination in scientific play. Potential benefits include improved pre-service and in-service education and improved cognitive outcomes young children in their formative years.Read moreRead less
Affective imagination in science education: exploring the emotional nature of scientific and technological learning and engaging children and teachers. Children are born into an increasingly complex world and knowing how to engage with technologies and to think scientifically is central, yet preschool teachers are becoming reluctant to teach science. This project explores the emotional dimension of concept formation, so as to generate methodologies that engage teachers to teach more science.
An investigation into the relations between imaginary situations and scientific abstractions in preschool digital play. Imaginative play is the leading activity of preschoolers. But imagination is also important in scientific work, for example in the work of Niels Bohr and Barbara McClintock. Aided through digital tablet technology to create animations of scientific learning, this study examines how imaginative play helps children to imagine scientific explanations not visibly supported in real ....An investigation into the relations between imaginary situations and scientific abstractions in preschool digital play. Imaginative play is the leading activity of preschoolers. But imagination is also important in scientific work, for example in the work of Niels Bohr and Barbara McClintock. Aided through digital tablet technology to create animations of scientific learning, this study examines how imaginative play helps children to imagine scientific explanations not visibly supported in real life, such as the Earth circling the Sun, or science concepts not directly observable, such as, how sugar dissolves faster in hot water. Studying imagination in play and imagination in science will contribute to new understandings about the nature of science teaching in preschools.Read moreRead less
Literacy in the digital world of the twenty-first century: learning from computer games. The creation of a literate and tech-savvy workforce and community is essential to Australia's future prosperity. By helping teachers better understand and teach ICT-enabled forms of text and literacy, drawing on insights from young people's actual engagement with digital culture in their leisure hours, the project will help strengthen young Australians' capacity to critically evaluate and use ICTs for effect ....Literacy in the digital world of the twenty-first century: learning from computer games. The creation of a literate and tech-savvy workforce and community is essential to Australia's future prosperity. By helping teachers better understand and teach ICT-enabled forms of text and literacy, drawing on insights from young people's actual engagement with digital culture in their leisure hours, the project will help strengthen young Australians' capacity to critically evaluate and use ICTs for effective learning and communication. This project will help produce the skills, knowledge and orientations necessary to create smart information use, through developing and strengthening young people's uses and understandings of ICT-based forms of text and literacy.Read moreRead less
Using pedagogical reasoning to explicate expert practice that aligns with national teaching standards. Standards and accountability are being used to measure and judge teachers, thus the ability to determine pedagogical expertise is increasingly important. Standards alone give little about the teacher reasoning and expertise required to demonstrate them. This project will research how pedagogical reasoning (PR) can be used to understand expert teachers’ professional knowledge, to offer richer wa ....Using pedagogical reasoning to explicate expert practice that aligns with national teaching standards. Standards and accountability are being used to measure and judge teachers, thus the ability to determine pedagogical expertise is increasingly important. Standards alone give little about the teacher reasoning and expertise required to demonstrate them. This project will research how pedagogical reasoning (PR) can be used to understand expert teachers’ professional knowledge, to offer richer ways of interpreting and using standards in judging expertise in practice. This project intends to map the PR of science teachers whose pedagogy generates deep understandings and high levels of engagement onto the standards and research how to represent the outcomes to provide others with scaffolds and expertise to make the standards meaningful in daily practice.Read moreRead less
Supporting personalised learning in secondary schools through the use of specific mathematics assessments that reveal thinking. This project will improve numeracy standards in secondary schools, by assisting teachers to personalise the teaching of each student. Through detailed research, the project will develop sophisticated assessments that clearly reveal students' mathematical thinking. On-line diagnosis will suggest teaching activities that can bring about desired conceptual changes. The eff ....Supporting personalised learning in secondary schools through the use of specific mathematics assessments that reveal thinking. This project will improve numeracy standards in secondary schools, by assisting teachers to personalise the teaching of each student. Through detailed research, the project will develop sophisticated assessments that clearly reveal students' mathematical thinking. On-line diagnosis will suggest teaching activities that can bring about desired conceptual changes. The effectiveness of the resources will be thoroughly tested, for impact on student achievement and the mathematics teaching skills of teachers, especially those working out-of-field. Rural schools will have equal access to these resources. Good numeracy provides the foundation for life-long learning, employment satisfaction and the economic competitiveness of Australia.Read moreRead less
Enriching mathematics and science learning: an interdisciplinary approach. This international, longitudinal project aims to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative interdisciplinary learning approach in mathematics and science. Through collaborating primary schools in Australia and the United States of America (USA), it will investigate how students’ invention and transformation of representational systems can connect to support deeper reasoning and learning. The project will form the ba ....Enriching mathematics and science learning: an interdisciplinary approach. This international, longitudinal project aims to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative interdisciplinary learning approach in mathematics and science. Through collaborating primary schools in Australia and the United States of America (USA), it will investigate how students’ invention and transformation of representational systems can connect to support deeper reasoning and learning. The project will form the bases for new curricular designs that leverage students’ representational practices across science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to promote more robust and generative knowledge.Read moreRead less
Enhancing mathematics achievement and engagement by using technology to support real problem solving and lessons of high cognitive demand. New technologies have exciting potential to bring real world applications to life in the mathematics classroom. Working collaboratively with researchers, industry-partner teachers will design, evaluate in classrooms and iteratively refine technology-supported tasks that sustain higher-order thinking and deep engagement with the context. Outcomes include guide ....Enhancing mathematics achievement and engagement by using technology to support real problem solving and lessons of high cognitive demand. New technologies have exciting potential to bring real world applications to life in the mathematics classroom. Working collaboratively with researchers, industry-partner teachers will design, evaluate in classrooms and iteratively refine technology-supported tasks that sustain higher-order thinking and deep engagement with the context. Outcomes include guidelines for managing increased cognitive demand and for balancing abstract and concrete aspects of mathematics, so that students are more engaged in their learning. The effects of technology features, including dynamic control of variables and hot-linked representation, will be tested against theory. Substantial cultural diversity in industry partner schools ensures the findings will be widely applicable.Read moreRead less
Exploring quality primary education in different cultures: a cross-national study of teaching and learning in primary science classrooms. This project uses video studies of primary science classrooms in Australia, Taiwan, and Germany to explore teaching and learning practices, situated in diverse cultures, which provide opportunities for quality reasoning and learning in science. The findings will inform primary science teacher education to improve student achievement.