Understanding motivation and practice quality in elite music performance. This project examines motivation and practice quality in elite music performance. It applies major theoretical explanations from other domains where optimising motivation and practice quality has consistently been found to increase performance, persistence, learning, creativity, and wellbeing. The expected outcomes of the project address the competitiveness of Australian musicians, particularly in light of significantly lo ....Understanding motivation and practice quality in elite music performance. This project examines motivation and practice quality in elite music performance. It applies major theoretical explanations from other domains where optimising motivation and practice quality has consistently been found to increase performance, persistence, learning, creativity, and wellbeing. The expected outcomes of the project address the competitiveness of Australian musicians, particularly in light of significantly lower funding for music institutions compared to international counterparts. The research endeavours to inform understandings about the nature of motivation and practice more generally, by extending conceptions that have until now been formed largely through research in non-artistic domains of human accomplishment.Read moreRead less
Improving classroom writing by enhancing reflexive decisions and practice. This project aims to contribute new evidence and deliver improvements in writing skills in Australian primary schools. The project will adopt a reflexive approach utilising the team's skills in writing development and pedagogy, reflexive practice and classroom ethnography, in order to build teachers' capacities and improve writing achievement in Australian schools. Expected outcomes include new writing pedagogies that mov ....Improving classroom writing by enhancing reflexive decisions and practice. This project aims to contribute new evidence and deliver improvements in writing skills in Australian primary schools. The project will adopt a reflexive approach utilising the team's skills in writing development and pedagogy, reflexive practice and classroom ethnography, in order to build teachers' capacities and improve writing achievement in Australian schools. Expected outcomes include new writing pedagogies that move beyond dependence-building strategies and target specific types of writers in context. This should provide significant benefits for teachers, enabling them to optimise classroom conditions, and enhance students' effective decision-making in writing to improve their achievement across all school subjects.Read moreRead less
Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities. This project aims to create a strong integrative research foundation to explain how university researchers and students develop the expertise needed to work in interdisciplinary teams and how this development can be enhanced. It combines three perspectives investigating: how research and innovation communities create interdisciplinary knowledge, how interdisciplinary teams learn to function effectively and the personal resourcefulness that ....Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities. This project aims to create a strong integrative research foundation to explain how university researchers and students develop the expertise needed to work in interdisciplinary teams and how this development can be enhanced. It combines three perspectives investigating: how research and innovation communities create interdisciplinary knowledge, how interdisciplinary teams learn to function effectively and the personal resourcefulness that enables individuals to participate in interdisciplinary work. The outcomes will provide a much better understanding of the qualities that help individuals and groups to work productively across disciplinary boundaries. They will be used to create better strategies for supporting interdisciplinary learningRead moreRead less
Educating preservice teachers to teach diverse learners. This project aims to investigate links between teacher educators’ reflexive decision making and the preparation of teachers for teaching in socially and culturally diverse Australian classrooms. The project takes a transdisciplinary approach, bridging the fields of epistemic cognition and reflexive decision making, to explore how rigorous teaching can be enacted in socially and culturally diverse classrooms. Expected outcomes include enh ....Educating preservice teachers to teach diverse learners. This project aims to investigate links between teacher educators’ reflexive decision making and the preparation of teachers for teaching in socially and culturally diverse Australian classrooms. The project takes a transdisciplinary approach, bridging the fields of epistemic cognition and reflexive decision making, to explore how rigorous teaching can be enacted in socially and culturally diverse classrooms. Expected outcomes include enhanced capacity of those preparing future teachers for new classroom conditions, which will provide benefits for a quality teaching workforce.Read moreRead less
Development of cognitive functions in adult populations. Cognitive functioning has significant social, health and economic effects in the form of either benefits from improved functioning or costs due to cognitive decline. In the latter regard, an aging population presents major challenges to society. The proposed project will investigate the effects of different training regimes on cognition and a range of related outcomes, including transfer of skills, personality change and social functioning ....Development of cognitive functions in adult populations. Cognitive functioning has significant social, health and economic effects in the form of either benefits from improved functioning or costs due to cognitive decline. In the latter regard, an aging population presents major challenges to society. The proposed project will investigate the effects of different training regimes on cognition and a range of related outcomes, including transfer of skills, personality change and social functioning, on a highly innovative brain training App being developed in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Read moreRead less
Giving instructional animations a helping hand. Computer-based instructional animations have not produced the positive learning outcomes that might be expected considering the advances in technology. The project will demonstrate that animations can be highly effective when learning about human movement and further enhanced by the inclusion of human gestures. It will directly investigate how learning is supported when humans observe manual actions, make gestures, or both. The project will identif ....Giving instructional animations a helping hand. Computer-based instructional animations have not produced the positive learning outcomes that might be expected considering the advances in technology. The project will demonstrate that animations can be highly effective when learning about human movement and further enhanced by the inclusion of human gestures. It will directly investigate how learning is supported when humans observe manual actions, make gestures, or both. The project will identify some key conditions under which animations may facilitate effective learning of both mechanical and human movement knowledge, and will develop principles for the design of best-practice instructional materials in e-learning environments.Read moreRead less
Coding animated narratives as contemporary multimodal authorship in schools. This project aims to investigate a re-conceptualisation of multimodal text creation to include inter-related processes of computer programming (coding) and computational thinking, which have previously been confined to technical fields in education research. The project seeks to generate knowledge of cross-curricular teaching pedagogies and student learning of multimodal composition, coding, and computational thinking i ....Coding animated narratives as contemporary multimodal authorship in schools. This project aims to investigate a re-conceptualisation of multimodal text creation to include inter-related processes of computer programming (coding) and computational thinking, which have previously been confined to technical fields in education research. The project seeks to generate knowledge of cross-curricular teaching pedagogies and student learning of multimodal composition, coding, and computational thinking in schools. The project expects to fortify students' capabilities to participate in new forms of digital authorship, developing their capacity for innovative application of computational thinking and coding. Intended benefits include an established evidence base for strengthening English and technology curricula in Australia and internationally.Read moreRead less
Enabling students' critical mathematical thinking. The capacity to use mathematics critically is essential for making prudent decisions and forming balanced judgements about economic, health, environmental and other challenges facing society. Developing Critical Mathematical Thinking (CMT) in the classroom provides students with the necessary skills to address complex real-world problems. Fostering CMT, however, is difficult and teaching practices around its development are under-researched and ....Enabling students' critical mathematical thinking. The capacity to use mathematics critically is essential for making prudent decisions and forming balanced judgements about economic, health, environmental and other challenges facing society. Developing Critical Mathematical Thinking (CMT) in the classroom provides students with the necessary skills to address complex real-world problems. Fostering CMT, however, is difficult and teaching practices around its development are under-researched and under-theorised. This study aims to generate new insight into teaching practices that can promote or inhibit students' CMT development. To address this aim, we use an innovative video-based methodology that integrates researcher and teacher perspectives on students' CMT development.Read moreRead less
How many types of reasoning are there and how do they develop? This project will identify the fundamental components of human reasoning and examine how they change during the primary and junior high school years. It lays the foundation for the development of better methods for teaching children and adults how to reason.
The seeds of literacy in infancy: empirical specification of the acoustic determinants of language acquisition. Reading is one of the most difficult skills we learn, and while the process is largely forgotten by adults, any minor difficulty can have lasting effects. This project will follow speech, vocabulary and reading in infants at or not at risk for dyslexia from six months to five years with implications for parent-child interaction and language delay intervention.