Insights into the value of a 'stand-alone' course for sustainability education

Education for sustainability (EfS) is emerging as an urgent imperative and challenge for higher education. But what exactly does it mean to put sustainability into higher education? How do we bring sustainability themes into university curriculum, across the enormous diversity of academic disciplines? This paper describes the experience of teaching a large 'stand-alone' EfS subject which sits within the professional contexts of the large first-year cohort undertaking it. We describe the themes, architecture and approach to sustainability education taken in this course and evaluate the learning and assessment activities offered to students. We conclude with reflections on the student experience and feedback, which suggests that while academics build towards a deeply embedded sustainability ethic in higher education, specialist parallel courses have a valuable role to play in the transition to sustainable futures

Fostering professional learning through evidence-informed mentoring dialogues in school settings

This chapter examines how the use of a descriptive observation tool mediates post-lesson conversations that teacher educators and mentor teachers have with preservice teachers. Our principal focus was to investigate the effects of the use of evidence-informed lesson observations in combination with a dialogic approach, as the basis for feedback on teaching practice and student learning. An interpretive case study approach was designed to investigate how mentor teachers and teacher educators used the observation tool. The findings provided data about the effects the tool had on the dispositions of the participants towards collecting and interrogating classroom evidence and how these impacted on their post-lesson conversations with preservice teachers. Preliminary findings suggested that some mentor teachers found it difficult to use description rather than judgement when discussing teaching and learning. This diminished opportunities for the construction and interrogation of professional reasoning in post-lesson discussions. Later findings, however, indicated that the use of the descriptive observation tool for the recording of evidence-informed observations fostered an inquiring and collaborative stance in post-lesson reviews. Collaborations of this nature, between mentor teachers and preservice teachers, provided the preservice teachers with greater agency during the professional dialogue and enhanced their capacity to reflect on their teaching

Educating future teachers: Insights, conclusions and challenges

Ambrosetti, AJ ORCiD: 0000-0001-6919-7778— Innovative (adjective): having new ideas about how something can be done — When we speak of being innovative, we refer to changing processes, products and ideas or creating better ones. Taking the notion of innovation seriously, this volume provides research findings of new practices in professional experience in Australian initial teacher education programs and offers alternative ways of conceiving and enacting professional experience. This volume’s genesis lies in the questions that we posed when we began this project: 1. What are the promising innovations in thinking about, rethinking and enacting professional experience to better prepare prospective teachers to effectively enter the workforce? 2. What can new research contribute in strengthening teacher preparation in schools and early learning centres? 3. What might these promising innovations mean for the range of stakeholders responsible for designing and implementing teacher education including teacher educators, supervising teachers, policymakers, employers and regulatory authorities

Irradiation Facilities and Irradiation Methods for High Power Target

High Power Target systems are key elements in future neutrino and other rare particle production in accelerators. These systems transform an intense source of protons into secondary particles of interest to enable new scientific discoveries. As beam intensity and energies increase, target systems face significant challenges. Radiation damages and thermal shocks in target materials were identified as the leading cross-cutting challenges of high-power target facilities. Target material R&D to address these challenges are essential to enable and ensure reliable operation of future-generation accelerators. Irradiation facilities and alternative methods are critical to provide a full support of material R&D and better address these critical challenges