Interviews with teachers and learners

The author has been involved in interviewing teachers and learners about their understandings about teaching and learning. This paper follows from those interviews and begins to discuss what teachers and learners revealed. From an individual perspective, interviewees discussed their motivations, ability assessments and strategies for teaching and learning. From a contextual perspective, interviewees spoke about social interactions, the relative ease of learning in practice and the enhanced learning to be gained from combining theory, practice and reflection. In this paper the author discusses comparisons and contrasts between interviewees' understandings and current recommendations for best practice found in extant teaching and learning literature

Life at school: And students' mental health

Copyright 2017 Australian College of Educators. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.The 2016 NAPLAN results have been rolled out. Parents/careers and children might be ecstatic, happy, unhappy, anxious, angry, dismayed, sad, depressed. NAPLAN is an example of just one of many things that happen in schools that are not only related to learning, but also to emotions and mental health

The Quality of Learners\u27 Knowledge About Teaching and Learning

The aim of this monograph is to report the development and application of a framework for identifying quality in teachers\u27 and learners\u27 knowledge about teaching and learning.https://research.acer.edu.au/saier/1007/thumbnail.jp

Whole-school mental health promotion in Australia

Although there is increasing recognition internationally of the significance of social and emotional health and wellbeing for the healthy development of young people, the levels of support that governments provide for mental health policy and programme initiatives vary widely. In this paper, consideration is given to Australia’s approach to mental health promotion from early years to secondary school, including specific reference to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative. Although it is now well established that schools provide important settings for the promotion of mental health initiatives, there are significant challenges faced in effectively implementing and maintaining the delivery of evidence-based practice in school settings, including concerns about quality assurance in processes of implementation, translation, dissemination and evaluation.peer-reviewe

Venturing into schools : locating mental health initiatives in complex environments

Schools provide viable settings for mental health promotion initiatives, such as programs to develop students’ social and emotional capabilities (SEC). Complexity in the school environments into which initiatives are introduced, such as diverse student capabilities, school structures, and teachers’ knowledge and confidence, will play an integral role in the success of those initiatives. This paper investigates the environments of schools about to receive the KidsMatter mental heath promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative in Australia, using information sourced from questionnaires about 2598 students and their teachers in 50 Australian primary schools. The focus of the report is on the status of the schools’ work in one of the key focus areas for the intervention, namely students’ SEC. Analysis showed relatively high levels of students’ SEC across the whole sample, but with sub-group differences. Teachers’ attitudes towards SEC learning were highly positive. Teachers’ self-rated knowledge and approaches in dealing with SEC were moderate, and point to requirements for additional pre-service and professional development. The extent of regular and sustained delivery of SEC programs and mental health initiatives in general showed variability, suggesting the need to attend to school systems and structural supports. Implications of these areas of diversity in school environments on the selection and methods of delivery of mental health promotion programs in schools are discussed.peer-reviewe

Australian and Maltese teachers' perspectives about their capabilities for mental health promotion in school settings

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy for non-mandated open access submission. Under Elsevier's copyright, non-mandated authors are permitted to make work available in an institutional repository.There is international concern about the prevalence and severity of mental health difficulties and the impact such difficulties have upon individuals, families, communities and societies. Policy makers identify schools as strategic settings for promoting students’ positive mental health, such as through the explicit teaching of social and emotional skills. Promoting students’ mental health requires teachers to possess particular types of subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of learners and their characteristics. However, mental health promotion is not typically addressed in pre- or in-service teacher education, thus raising questions about teachers’ capabilities to enact policy directives for mental health promotion in schools. This paper reports a questionnaire study of 1029 Australian and Maltese teachers’ perspectives about their capabilities for mental health promotion. Multilevel modelling showed significant response variations between teachers and between schools on 11 outcome factors. Maltese teachers’ responses were significantly lower than Australian teachers on three outcome factors, namely, Knowledge, Teaching Resources and providing Parenting Support. Differences were also apparent between teachers of secondary and primary students, and between male and female teachers. Years of teaching experience did not show significant effects, highlighting that mental health promotion is a new area of professional learning for teachers. This study indicates that policy directives that situate mental health promotion initiatives in educational settings must be accompanied by opportunities for teachers and schools to build their capabilities in this relatively new domain of school and teacher responsibility. Our participating teachers have reported on issues of international concern, indicating that further attention to the capabilities of teachers an

Framing the features of good quality knowledge for teachers and students

Article reproduced here with permission from the publisher.In this paper we have two concerns. First we consider the features used to describe good quality learning actions and knowledge representations. Our second concern is the need to develop students’ knowledge of how to act, during teaching-learning transactions, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations. There is a convergence of views, at a broad level, about the character of good quality knowledge. Although there are frequent specifications of the features of good quality learning these discussions mostly do not build on one another so that a coherent representation of such learning is built up. There is therefore a need to consider further the characteristics of learning that are regarded as being of good quality. For this purpose we set out a framework based around six dimensions of good quality knowledge, namely, extent, well-foundedness, structure, complexity, generativity, and variety of representational format. In the final section of the chapter we advance arguments that point to the need to attend to the state of students’ and teachers’ knowledge about how to act, in strategic cognitive and metacognitive ways, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations

A Correspondence Analysis of Child-Care Students' and Medical Students' Knowledge about Teaching and Learning

This paper describes the application of correspondence analysis to transcripts gathered from focused interviews about teaching and learning held with a small sample of child-care students, medical students and the students' teachers. Seven dimensions emerged from the analysis, suggesting that the knowledge that underlies students' learning intentions and actions is multi-dimensional and transactive. It is proposed that the multivariate, multidimensional, discovery approach of the correspondence analysis technique has considerable potential for data analysis in the social sciences. [Author abstract

Changes in Students' Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy Use over Five Years of Secondary Schooling

This chapter appears in 'Transforming the Future of Learning with Educational Research' edited by Helen Askell-Williams. Copyright 2015, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.As students progress through school, we expect that their knowledge about the various subject matters, such as biology or maths, becomes more extensive, well structured, and readily available for application in diverse contexts. This chapter reports the authors’ enquiry about whether students’ cognitive and metacognitive knowledge and strategies do grow during secondary school. Questionnaires were administered to students in three South Australian secondary schools in each of five consecutive years. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to investigate changes in students’ responses over time. Results showed little change in students’ reports of their cognitive and metacognitive strategy use. The disappointing growth trajectories suggest that cognitive and metacognitive strategies for learning are not subject to the explicit teaching and evaluation processes applied to other school subjects. Questions are raised about whether schools and teachers value and recognise the importance of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for good quality learning across subject domains

Life at school and mental health from students' points of view: A study from Malta

Copyright © 2017 Sense Publishers Reproduced with permission of the publisher