Guidelines for designing middle-school transition using universal design for learning principles

Transition from primary (elementary) to secondary school can be both an exciting and daunting prospect for young adolescents. Ensuring that students quickly settle into their new secondary school environment is the goal of transition programs employed by schools. These programs typically comprise a number of discrete and interrelated initiatives that often commence in the year prior to the move and continue during the initial months in the new school. These activities generally include specific initiatives for both the students and their parents. The needs of both groups are many and varied. It is critical that whatever transition events and strategies are planned, the needs of all students and parents are catered for. In this paper the authors propose that the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) may provide a useful basis for the development of transition programs that address the needs of all participants. UDL is based on three principles which are; multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. Examples outlining how these principles can be applied before, during and after transition are provided. The authors conclude with the proposition that research be conducted in a variety of cultural contexts and across countries to investigate whether transition programs based on UDL principles better enable schools to meet the needs of all transitioning students and their parents

Parents: Active partners in the educational achievement of their children

Parents exercise a significant influence on student achievement and psychosocial functioning within the school environment. However, the best way to involve parents as active partners in the education of their children is not always evident. This article explores the perceptions of parents and their role in the academic achievement of students in nine high performing Catholic secondary schools in Western Australia. Initially, the review of literature focuses on three constructs: relational trust, parental involvement and policy documents for Catholic schools. Data collection involved a series of focus group interviews in which parents were invited to reflect not only on their role but also on the impact of school leaders, teachers and student peers on their sons and daughters achievement. The findings of the study are outlined under the following themes: the place of school leadership; the significant role of teachers in their child’s academic achievement; teachers knowing the students; the influence of school culture; and parental reflections on their own capacity to enhance the educational experience of their child

Using Video to Develop Skills in Reflection in Teacher Education Students

Teacher education students confront the challenging task of acquiring a unique and complex set of skills during their courses. These skills are acquired through the study of education theory together with practical experience in the classroom. Perhaps one of the most important skills that students quickly need to develop is that of reflective practice. It is only through a critical and detailed analysis of their performance that strengths and weaknesses can be ascertained and addressed. Video has been used as a tool in teacher education for many years and provides a means by which a teaching episode can be captured more permanently to be used as a point of reference for reflection. This paper discusses the concept of reflection and examines the use of video to enhance the development of these reflective practice skills in a cohort of Graduate Diploma of Education students. Students indicated that that the use of video, in conjunction with written feedback from teachers, had enhanced their capacity to reflect on their teaching skills

Collaborative Writing in Petroleum Engineering: a Case Study of Petroleum Engineers in an Academic Setting

Interest in collaborative writing has surged in composition studies since the mid-tolate 1980s; aspects addressed include motivation, the composing process, the kinds of participants, authorship, conflict, etc. Much composition research concentrates on collaboration in the workplace to gain an understanding of collaborative writing that can be readily transferred to the classroom and that can prepare students for the social, as opposed to solitary, act of writing—to encourage collaborative thought. In this study, I attempted to find out more about what occurs in the stages (prewriting, writing, post-writing) of collaborative writing. My subjects were petroleum engineers on university campuses. Departments were chosen according to faculty size; thus, generalizations about collaborative writing in petroleum engineering could be made. Petroleum engineers seemed to follow patterns noted in much earlier research in their collaborative endeavors. Their use of outlines as a prewriting technique and their sense of writing as a solitary act appear typical of other collaborative writers. Also, they used collaborative writing as a teaching tool. These engineers revealed that communication, verbal or written, is essential to the success of their research endeavors. One interesting writing pattern found was that of parallel writing, where engineers in the same location independently engage in drafting duel outlines of an individual project; once completed they compare the outlines and merge them into one outline. They admitted that disadvantages are present, but they seemed to believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Therefore, it is important to continue observing their habits and applying that knowledge in the classroom

A comparative study of controversy in the education systems of Western Australia, Victoria and New Zealand: Community participation in government schools 1985-1993

The release of Better Schools in Western Australia: A Programme for Improvement (1987), in line with other public sector agency reforms; contained a prescription for the restructuring of the Education Department of Western Australia from 11 bureaucratic to a corporate management system of school administration. These changes were intended to render the education system, and especially schools more flexible, responsive and accountable. Among the proposals for educational restructuring was a new opportunity for community participation through \u27\u27school based decision making groups. Contemporaneously, the education systems in Victoria and New Zealand were undergoing similar reforms. The research agenda for this thesis is based on two questions. The first research question is: In what ways did the reforms conducted by the governments in Western Australia, Victoria and New Zealand change the participation of the school community in school decision making in state schools during the period 1985-1993? The extent to which the new organisational structures, based upon corporate management, facilitated the admission of the school community into the school decision making process is investigated. In order to facilitate the analysis of policy, this thesis develops a conceptualisation of the notion of controversy. The controversy framework involves the investigation of a number of elements of a controversy - stimulus, context, events, issues, arguments, protagonists, constraints, consequences and closure. The use of this framework is intended to assist in educational policy analysis by highlighting and elaborating upon the interdependent elements, including power relationships, involved in educational policy formulation and implementation. The second research question is: How effective is controversy as a framing device for educational policy analysis? The adequacy of “controversy” as a framing device is evaluated at the conclusion of the thesis. In order to investigate the research problems a variety of data was gathered and analysed. Scrutiny of the major Government and Education Department policy documents us well as a review of literature such as journals, books, newspapers, and documents produced by organisations such as teacher unions, was undertaken. In the case of Western Australia face-to-face interviews were conducted. A series of video-taped interviews with major actors in the controversy in Western Australia was also used in the data gathering process. The data was then systematically ordered using the controversy framework which enabled comparison of the controversies in Western Australia, Victoria and New Zealand. The conclusions drawn focus upon the manner in which corporate management and genuine democratic community participation are antipathetic. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the school community was unable to exert meaningful influence upon the direction being charted for government schools. As a framing device for educational policy analysis it is concluded that controversy, at this preliminary stage, appears to have merit end further use and refinement of this framework is recommended

Service-learning: A Valuable Means of Preparing Pre-service Teachers for a Teaching Practicum.

Abstract The use of service-learning as a teaching methodology is in its infancy within Australian tertiary institutions. Parker et. al., (2009) noted that, until recently, community service-learning has been under-utilised within the Australian higher education system. Within teacher education programs, service-learning has been used primarily as a means of providing real-life experiences for pre-service teachers as well as developing their personal and professional skills. The research conducted in this study focused on ways involvement in a service-learning experience could contribute to the preparation of pre-service secondary teachers for their first teaching practicum. The participants included Bachelor of Education, Master of Teaching and Graduate Diploma of Education pre-service teachers, all of whom completed a service-learning unit prior to a 10-week practicum. The results indicated that pre-service teachers found that participating in a service-learning program had been of assistance, from both a personal and professional perspective, in helping to meet the challenges of their first practicum

Middle school students\u27 views about leaders and leadership

This article presents the views of 72 Australian middle school students from 12 metropolitan schools across six states and territories as to their understanding of leadership. Initially, literature is reviewed regarding the developments in middle-years education and theories of leadership pertinent to student leadership. The research methodology is then explained, providing an overview of the participants, the school contexts and methods of data collection and analysis. The subsequent section on results is presented under three topics: examples of good leaders, attributes that make a good leader and participants’ understanding of the concept of leadership. A final discussion is centred on three considerations: the form of leadership that middle school students believed to be appropriate, the type of leadership that they rejected and possible underlying reasons for their choices

Service-learning: promoting the development of the graduate professional standards in pre-service secondary teachers

Service-learning has not been a common feature of tertiary courses and this is no less the case in initial teacher education programs. Where service-learning has been included the motivation has been to broaden the experience of students with respect to the development of their personal and professional skills. The National Professional Standards for Teachers, introduced in Australia in 2012, defines the range of competencies that pre-service teachers must demonstrate by graduation. This research investigated two aspects of a service-learning program within a secondary teacher education course. The first was the extent to which a service-learning program could promote the development of the graduate professional standards in pre-service teachers. The second was the manner in which the personal and professional skills of pre-service teachers can be enhanced through a service-learning experience. The results suggested that service-learning can impact preservice teacher development towards the graduate standards. The results also indicated that for the vast majority of pre-service teachers, their personal and professional skills were enhanced through participation in a service-learning program

Managing the move

In Western Australia, the compulsory years of education have typically been divided into seven years of primary school followed by five years of secondary school. This changed in the Catholic Education system in 2009 when it was decided that year seven students should be migrated to secondary schools. A good deal of thought and planning was invested in this enterprise in the year prior to the move being executed. This report examines how the move of year seven students to the secondary environment was managed by six Catholic schools, and investigates responses from students and parents during the transition year. It is hoped that the insights gleaned will be of assistance to other schools or sectors considering similar transition arrangements. The schools in the study adopted a variety of different approaches to the transition process and utilised different forms of organization, ranging from a traditional secondary school model to one typifying a strong middle schooling philosophy. In some schools, purpose built year seven learning communities had been constructed or modifications made to existing classrooms to provide a “base” for the students. In other schools the students simply moved from class to class as in a traditional secondary school. In some schools primary trained teachers were employed to teach in the “core” subjects and the year seven students had secondary teachers in the specialist areas. In other schools there was either a mix of primary and secondary trained teachers or the year seven program was taught exclusively by secondary trained teachers. The research provided the opportunity for the stakeholders to tell their transition story. A mixed methods approach was adopted in which both qualitative and quantitative tools were utilized. A survey was developed for use with each of the stakeholder groups and this was then followed by semi-structured interviews with focus groups in each of the schools

Transitioning year 7 primary students to secondary settings in Western Australian Catholic Schools: A description of the process

In 2009 the Catholic education system moved to a six plus six model, even though the public education system in Western Australia decided to remain with a seven year primary and five year secondary school structural arrangement. Prior to implementation, a great deal of planning was undertaken by the Catholic Education Office and individual schools to ensure the smooth transition of Year Seven students to a secondary school setting. This system-wide shift presented a one-time opportunity to investigate the planning arrangements of six Catholic secondary schools that agreed to participate in the study. This study reports the unique challenges experienced by each school, what they learned from the process and what hindsight taught them about how things might have been done differently. Insights should be valuable to other systems contemplating a similar transition