Examining play-based approaches to teaching and learning in early childhood education and care. Children's learning in pre-school settings is important to their current and later educational success. This project offers a significant opportunity to examine how teachers teach, and children learn, through different approaches to play. It is anticipated that the conceptually-sustaining approach to play will support children's learning outcomes more so than other forms of play. Knowing about this ap ....Examining play-based approaches to teaching and learning in early childhood education and care. Children's learning in pre-school settings is important to their current and later educational success. This project offers a significant opportunity to examine how teachers teach, and children learn, through different approaches to play. It is anticipated that the conceptually-sustaining approach to play will support children's learning outcomes more so than other forms of play. Knowing about this approach to play will help teachers better understand the relationship between teaching, play and learning, instead of focussing only on play and learning. This will also help the field interpret the forthcoming Australian Early Years' Learning Framework, which advocates for the role of play in early childhood education.Read moreRead less
Preschool children's constructions of cultural and 'racial' diversity. This project seeks to study how 60 preschool children understand cultural and 'racial' diversity. The preschool years are critical in forming cultural and 'racial' understandings and Australian data about children's understandings of diversity is scarce and poorly theorised. Given the national debate engendered by Australia's cultural and 'racial' diversity an urgent need exists to redress this and to improve understandings a ....Preschool children's constructions of cultural and 'racial' diversity. This project seeks to study how 60 preschool children understand cultural and 'racial' diversity. The preschool years are critical in forming cultural and 'racial' understandings and Australian data about children's understandings of diversity is scarce and poorly theorised. Given the national debate engendered by Australia's cultural and 'racial' diversity an urgent need exists to redress this and to improve understandings about achieving cultural and 'racially' inclusive curriculum in the crucially formative early years. This trailblazing study is uniquely placed to generate these improved understandings and to lead international thinking about effecting greater 'racial' and cultural justice through early education.
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Negotiating Staff-Parent Relations in Culturally Diverse Early Education Settings. The Australian federal government invests nearly $A1.25 billion annually in childcare and more than 1.6 million children attend some form of childcare. There is an international consensus that parental involvement in early childhood programs enhances their economic and social benefits, including improved educational outcomes, enhanced employment opportunities and increased social participation. This project increa ....Negotiating Staff-Parent Relations in Culturally Diverse Early Education Settings. The Australian federal government invests nearly $A1.25 billion annually in childcare and more than 1.6 million children attend some form of childcare. There is an international consensus that parental involvement in early childhood programs enhances their economic and social benefits, including improved educational outcomes, enhanced employment opportunities and increased social participation. This project increases the likelihood that an increasingly culturally diverse Australia wil.l attain those benefits by offering a radical approach to improving staff-parent relations in culturally diverse settings and helping to reduce the occupational stress often linked with those relations
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Pedagogies for eLearning: A Critical Analysis of Strategies for Effective Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Teaching and Learning. This project will assess the potential benefits and weaknesses of 'elearning' in different subject areas and across a range of social settings (including socio-economic, gender and other critical aspects of learner diversity). It will trace the microdynamics of traditional classroom as contrasted with elearning, and develop models which most prod ....Pedagogies for eLearning: A Critical Analysis of Strategies for Effective Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Teaching and Learning. This project will assess the potential benefits and weaknesses of 'elearning' in different subject areas and across a range of social settings (including socio-economic, gender and other critical aspects of learner diversity). It will trace the microdynamics of traditional classroom as contrasted with elearning, and develop models which most productively exploit the educational potentials of elearning. No such direct comparisons of teaching and learning has been made before. The results will inform the development of learning environments which most effectively contribute to the formation of fully enabled members of the emerging 'knowledge society'.Read moreRead less
Literacy Teaching in the Changing Communications Environment: Reading and Writing Multimodal and Digital Texts. This project will make a contribution to the updating of literacy pedagogy to meet the needs of learners in a communications environment where digital and multimodal texts are of ever greater significance. It will attempt to develop a 'metalanguage', or educationally accessible way of talking about contemporary texts in the classroom context, which supplements and extends traditional g ....Literacy Teaching in the Changing Communications Environment: Reading and Writing Multimodal and Digital Texts. This project will make a contribution to the updating of literacy pedagogy to meet the needs of learners in a communications environment where digital and multimodal texts are of ever greater significance. It will attempt to develop a 'metalanguage', or educationally accessible way of talking about contemporary texts in the classroom context, which supplements and extends traditional grammatical and literary understandings of the written word. The purpose of this research will be to create a model of literacy teaching which is more relevant to the contemporary communications environment and which students find more engaging.Read moreRead less
Education meets play: a sociological study of how the new compulsory national learning framework for children zero to five years influences educators' practice. New theorising about play and education in early childhood settings has challenged traditional notions of play. This project investigates how educators respond to the requirement for play-based learning by identifying characteristics of successful educators and professional leaders, and strategies and practices that merge education and p ....Education meets play: a sociological study of how the new compulsory national learning framework for children zero to five years influences educators' practice. New theorising about play and education in early childhood settings has challenged traditional notions of play. This project investigates how educators respond to the requirement for play-based learning by identifying characteristics of successful educators and professional leaders, and strategies and practices that merge education and play.Read moreRead less
Designing distanced intergenerational interaction with tangible technology. Older people and their young relatives/grandchildren who are geographically distanced cannot currently experience closeness in tangible ways, which are the natural ways they would play and build relationships in “real” life. Enabling this connection would have positive impacts for both groups, and two types of technologies – Mixed Reality and Tangibles - can be explored to allow us to understand how to do this. We will d ....Designing distanced intergenerational interaction with tangible technology. Older people and their young relatives/grandchildren who are geographically distanced cannot currently experience closeness in tangible ways, which are the natural ways they would play and build relationships in “real” life. Enabling this connection would have positive impacts for both groups, and two types of technologies – Mixed Reality and Tangibles - can be explored to allow us to understand how to do this. We will develop approaches to distanced tangible intergenerational interaction which are designed specifically to increase intergenerational closeness and to be innovative and subtle so that they fit seamlessly into the lives of older people and young children.Read moreRead less
Concept-procedure interactions in addition and subtraction development. The research explores the possibility of different pathways to mathematical knowledge by examining how key concepts and procedures interact in the course of development. Studies 1 and 2 address early addition and subtraction concepts and problem solving in the physical world, Studies 3 - 6 focus on the effects of problem-solving practice and concept-based training and Studies 7 and 8 address children's knowledge of conceptu ....Concept-procedure interactions in addition and subtraction development. The research explores the possibility of different pathways to mathematical knowledge by examining how key concepts and procedures interact in the course of development. Studies 1 and 2 address early addition and subtraction concepts and problem solving in the physical world, Studies 3 - 6 focus on the effects of problem-solving practice and concept-based training and Studies 7 and 8 address children's knowledge of conceptually advanced problem-solving procedures. The results are expected to show that addition and subtraction concepts and procedures influence each other in different ways among children, signifying different pathways of cognitive development.Read moreRead less
The sociocultural construction of early childhood science learning: Learning of scientific concepts within situated playful encounters in early childhood contexts. As a result of large-scale international and intensive neuroscientific research, it is now widely recognized that the early childhood period is one of the most critical periods of a child's development and education. Quality educational input within the first five years of a child's life has been shown to have sustained long term so ....The sociocultural construction of early childhood science learning: Learning of scientific concepts within situated playful encounters in early childhood contexts. As a result of large-scale international and intensive neuroscientific research, it is now widely recognized that the early childhood period is one of the most critical periods of a child's development and education. Quality educational input within the first five years of a child's life has been shown to have sustained long term social and emotional outcomes, and to result in improved educational opportunities and life chances for all children. Gaining a better understanding about how scientific learning can be organized within playful early childhood contexts would lead to more appropriate models for science teaching for Australian early childhood teachers, more science being taught, and a more scientific literate population. Read moreRead less
Developing Accessible Playgrounds for Children with Vision Impairment. Children who are blind or have low vision (BLV) often have difficulties accessing and interacting with playgrounds, most of which are not equipped to support them. Through consultation, collaboration and co-creation with the BLV community, foundational knowledge on the user experience of playgrounds, an evaluation framework for auditing existing playgrounds and design guidelines for creating or retrofitting playgrounds will b ....Developing Accessible Playgrounds for Children with Vision Impairment. Children who are blind or have low vision (BLV) often have difficulties accessing and interacting with playgrounds, most of which are not equipped to support them. Through consultation, collaboration and co-creation with the BLV community, foundational knowledge on the user experience of playgrounds, an evaluation framework for auditing existing playgrounds and design guidelines for creating or retrofitting playgrounds will be developed that support the unique challenges of BLV children and carers. Importantly it will promote access, orientation, physical and social play for BLV children, with improved cognitive, physical and social development, thus enabling a more inclusive and healthy society.Read moreRead less