Factors in Agency Development: A Supervisory Teaching Perspective

Promoting student agency is an emerging priority in education. Supervisory teaching is a potentially useful approach for supporting agency development. This approach includes two characteristics, namely, tutorial learning conversations between the teacher and a group of one to four students, and students learning independently for extended periods of time. Supervisory teaching lessons in three primary-school classrooms were observed over a period of five months and teachers were interviewed as part of the data collection process. Five key factors were found to support students to have more agency in their learning: independence and ownership, scaffolding, students as teachers, joyfulness, and reflection. The findings point toward several factors observed within supervisory teaching that led to greater student agency, including individualised learning conversations, allowing students control over their learning, the benefit of reduced structure in the learning environment, and the fact that joyfulness in learning is a significant factor in elevating student agency

Parents' Perceptions of and Concerns About Composite Classes

In developed countries, the most common pattern of classroom organisation is the single-grade class, where students of a similar age study a syllabus specifically written for their grade. A significant minority of classes, however, have always been mixed-grade, where students from two or more different grades are taught together in the same classroom by the same teacher. In Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, in 2011, 95% of government primary schools have at least one mixed-grade class. Such mixed-grade classes exist in a number of different forms and are distinguished from each other by a variety of characteristics, such as whether the class is temporary or permanent, whether it is formed by choice or necessity, whether it is the same as or different from other classes in the school, and whether students' learning is based on their age/grade or by their stage of development and individual learning needs. This study was carried out in relation to one type of mixed-grade class, namely, the composite class. Composite classes are temporary, usually two-grade, classes. They are most commonly found in urban or suburban schools and they exist alongside the much larger number of single-grade classes in a school. They are formed by necessity, as a result of (i) uneven grade enrolments leading to some students being "left over" when the single-grade classes are formed to capacity, and (ii) fixed funding models that preclude the hiring of more teachers and the formation of smaller classes. Students normally return to a single-grade class the following year, thus composite-class teachers need to match what they teach the different grades in their class to what the other teachers in the school are teaching their single-grade students. These constraints mean the workload of a composite-class teacher is greater because of having to prepare lessons based on at least two different syllabi. Composite classes can therefore be conceived of as a temporary arrangement of two (or more) "classes within a class"

An Evaluation of the use of an Online Demonstration School

In 2016, a change was made to the approach taken for delivery of the first practicum placement experience for initial teacher education students at [the university]. Rather than the traditional 20-day in-school observation placement, an alternative 10-day online experience, called the Online Demonstration School (ODS), was developed. The ODS provided students with a fully online practicum experience involving viewing videos of a variety of classroom situations developed in conjunction with local schools. Subsequent reflection and collaboration with peers and academics allowed targeted aspects in the classroom situations to be examined in depth. This article summarises the literature supporting this change and presents a comparison of the effectiveness of these two alternative approaches based upon an analysis of mentor teacher grading of the second practicum placement completed. The analysis indicates that there are few significant differences in grading of the second in-school practicum placement by mentor teachers based upon whether students complete the in-school placement or the ODS. The benefits of the use and possible future development of the ODS are discussed

Opening the doors of possibility for gifted/high-ability children with learning difficulties: Preliminary assessment strategies for primary school teachers

The traits linked to gifted children with learning disabilities (twice-exceptional) are diverse and complex. Identification of these children can be hindered by a combination of factors, including variations in teacher knowledge and experience, inconsistencies in the visibility of high abilities coexisting simultaneously with one or more learning disabilities, and also the lack of a practical assessment tool. This mixed-methods study addresses the need for such a tool and other assessment strategies that primary school teachers can implement in the preliminary exploratory stage of identifying possible twice-exceptional children. In this process, the focus centres on learning strengths and difficulties. The first phase of the Study focused on procedures leading to the development and trialling of a comprehensive and useful teacher checklist questionnaire (TCQ). Its comprehensiveness was developed through reviewing research-based characteristics, anecdotal lists and teacher perceptions. Section A of the TCQ is based on the six natural-ability Domains found in Françoys Gagné's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT 2.0; 2008) or, more recently, his Expanded Model of Talent Development (EMTD, 2013). Section B has three familiar categories of learning difficulties known within the context of the primary school. In the trialling phase, ten teacher participants trialled the TCQ and ranked the selected children in their classes on every item in the nine categories. Overall, qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest promising trends in the preliminary investigation into the TCQ's internal reliability, validity and practical usefulness. In the second phase, six child participants were selected for case studies to determine whether other assessment strategies supported the findings of the TCQ. The results from Interviews with each child, a Parent/Teacher Questionnaire, a non-verbal intelligence test (Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices), and a Think-aloud protocol, affirm the worthiness of the TCQ, but variations in results suggest the importance of its inclusion as part of a comprehensive assessment protocol

Preparing Teachers to Program Philosophy/Critical Thinking in Subject English to Explore Indicators of Giftedness in Secondary Students in Western Australia

The Australian Curriculum is due to be implemented fully in Western Australia by 2017. In an introduction to the new curriculum on the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority's website, The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008) is quoted as stating that critical and creative thinking are fundamental to students' becoming successful learners. Later in this introductory section, it is explained that The Australian Curriculum will enable students to develop capability in critical and creative thinking. According to researchers such as Lipman (1969, 1974, 1995, 1998, 2003), critical and creative thinking are the consequences of engaging in a course in Philosophy. The Department of Education and Training of Western Australia has indicated that "strong critical thinking skills" are indicators of giftedness and leading researchers, for example, Silverman (1993) and Clark (2002) have suggested a similar connection between "thinking skills" and giftedness when publishing their own checklists. It follows logically, that if critical thinking and the component skills that make up this term can be taught, then to some extent at least, it is possible to teach students to exhibit behaviours that characterise the academically gifted

Meeting the Educational Needs of Gifted and Talented English-Language Learners in Australian Secondary Schools

Australia is the only OECD country where first- and second-generation refugee and migrant children score above the average on international PISA Reading test scores. These positive results have been explained not only by the socio-economic status of Australian immigrants but also by the teaching support that is provided in the Australian education system. Students in Australian schools for whom English is an additional language or dialect are entitled to assistance in the form of ESL provisions. These provisions have gone some way towards providing support but often take a universal approach to meeting students' learning needs. The students themselves do not form a homogeneous group but rather come from a range of backgrounds and present with a wide range of abilities and experiences, and include gifted and talented students (referred to as gifted English-language learners, or gifted ELLs). Gifted ELLs have received sparse attention in the research, with the majority of studies focused on Latino populations in the United States. My inquiry expands the research by focusing on gifted ELLs from Australian secondary schools

Virtual Provision for Gifted Secondary School Students: Keeping the Best and Brightest in the Bush

This evaluative research, using a mixed methods case study approach with triangulated design, investigated the perceived value of a virtual academically selective secondary school provision for Years 7–10 (age 12–16 years) that operated in Western NSW Region from 2010 until 2014. Students replaced regular curriculum study in the areas of English, mathematics and science at their local stategovernment- funded bricks-and-mortar school, with study that was conducted online with a cohort of academically gifted students from across similar schools in Western NSW Region. Perceived value by students and staff in the virtual provision as well as perceived value by parents and local state-government-funded secondary school Principals was positive, with students reporting a strong sense of belonging to the gifted cohort as well as their local school cohort, an improved skill-set to meet 21stcentury learning requirements and the capacity to harness their full potential through development of enabling skills such as organisation and study skills. Academic achievement of the virtual provision cohort in national or state-wide standardised tests matched those of metropolitan selective secondary school counterparts in literacy, numeracy and science understanding. All stakeholders agreed that the virtual provision did not suit all gifted learners, only those who were autonomous learners or were motivated to learn in a lightly supervised environment and who held a positive academic self-concept and as such were comfortable not being first in their class all the time. Some students found the challenge of many academically-able peers overwhelming as they had been the outstanding pupil all their school life. Unexpected benefits reported by parents of the students in the cohort included their choice to stay in employment in the regional, rural or remote areas, or to delay or abandon their plans to send their child to a metropolitan boarding school as their gifted childʼs learning needs were being met by the virtual provision. This decision added to the social fabric of the rural communities and their local school. Teachers in the virtual provision reported being re-invigorated in their career by having a virtual staffroom of like-minded peers who embraced challenge, were curriculum specialists in their area and endorsed technology-enhanced learning. This research contributes to the growing field of knowledge about the suitability of virtual school provisions for gifted secondary school students in rural, regional and remote settings. Keeping the best and brightest students and teachers in the , along with their families, is essential to ensuring dynamic and vibrant rural, regional and remote communities

GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05∶30∶44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ∼30 M_⊙ black hole merged with a ∼8 M_⊙ black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs

Properties and Astrophysical Implications of the 150 M_⊙ Binary Black Hole Merger GW190521

The gravitational-wave signal GW190521 is consistent with a binary black hole (BBH) merger source at redshift 0.8 with unusually high component masses, 85⁺²¹₋₁₄ M_⊙ and 66⁺¹⁷₋₁₈ M_⊙, compared to previously reported events, and shows mild evidence for spin-induced orbital precession. The primary falls in the mass gap predicted by (pulsational) pair-instability supernova theory, in the approximate range 65–120 M_⊙. The probability that at least one of the black holes in GW190521 is in that range is 99.0%. The final mass of the merger 142⁺²⁸₋₁₆ M_⊙) classifies it as an intermediate-mass black hole. Under the assumption of a quasi-circular BBH coalescence, we detail the physical properties of GW190521's source binary and its post-merger remnant, including component masses and spin vectors. Three different waveform models, as well as direct comparison to numerical solutions of general relativity, yield consistent estimates of these properties. Tests of strong-field general relativity targeting the merger-ringdown stages of the coalescence indicate consistency of the observed signal with theoretical predictions. We estimate the merger rate of similar systems to be 0.13_(-0.11)^(+0.30) Gpc⁻³ yr⁻¹. We discuss the astrophysical implications of GW190521 for stellar collapse and for the possible formation of black holes in the pair-instability mass gap through various channels: via (multiple) stellar coalescences, or via hierarchical mergers of lower-mass black holes in star clusters or in active galactic nuclei. We find it to be unlikely that GW190521 is a strongly lensed signal of a lower-mass black hole binary merger. We also discuss more exotic possible sources for GW190521, including a highly eccentric black hole binary, or a primordial black hole binary