Mobile Indonesians: social differentiation and digital literacies in the twenty first century. This is the first dedicated study of the social implications of mobile telephony's recent and rapid popularisation throughout the country. This project will study metropolitan, urban and rural users to understand how mobile phones create the new and unexpected social networks which will shape tomorrow's Indonesians.
Transforming the technologies and modalities of learning: The case of the New Life Sciences in secondary schooling. This project aims to provide theoretical and analytic frameworks for understanding changing intellectual, technological and communicational parameters of contemporary education, but it also aims to make these frameworks accessible enough to become part of the conceptual repertoire of professional practitioners and flexible enough to allow practitioners to maintain currency in evolv ....Transforming the technologies and modalities of learning: The case of the New Life Sciences in secondary schooling. This project aims to provide theoretical and analytic frameworks for understanding changing intellectual, technological and communicational parameters of contemporary education, but it also aims to make these frameworks accessible enough to become part of the conceptual repertoire of professional practitioners and flexible enough to allow practitioners to maintain currency in evolving fields of knowledge in the NLS. As the NLS, and education in this field are both expanding export industries, this study will offer Australian practitioners and authorities evidence and ideas for the growth of the NLS in schools, thereby supporting the maintenance of Australia's prominence in the region as a high-quality, current education provider.Read moreRead less
Raising the literacy bar for economically-disadvantaged students. This project aims to promote higher order literacy skills among economically-disadvantaged students. Higher order literacy is critical for productive engagement in academic, economic and personal spheres of life in literacy-rich knowledge economies. Opportunities for disadvantaged students to develop advanced literacy skills are limited if schools serving these students focus predominantly on basic skills training. This project ....Raising the literacy bar for economically-disadvantaged students. This project aims to promote higher order literacy skills among economically-disadvantaged students. Higher order literacy is critical for productive engagement in academic, economic and personal spheres of life in literacy-rich knowledge economies. Opportunities for disadvantaged students to develop advanced literacy skills are limited if schools serving these students focus predominantly on basic skills training. This project will investigate contradictions in policies and practices in Australia and Hong Kong to understand why and how disadvantaged students are supported or unsupported to learn higher-order literacy skills. It also explores successful practices that promote such learning, alongside basic skills, for disadvantaged students. This will provide significant benefits such as providing new conceptual understandings of the policy-practice interface and empirical evidence to inform the design of effective practices that promote higher-order literacy skills, alongside basic skills, for economically-disadvantaged students in Australia and Hong Kong.Read moreRead less
Multiliteracies, libraries and cybraries: Comparative case studies of Australia and the United States. Libraries are key sites for literacy learning. Commonwealth and state government policies stress the significance of libraries and ?information literacy?, and have called for the integration of new technologies into libraries. Despite an ongoing multi-million dollar investment in books and online connectivity, there are no large-scale studies of school libraries? transition into cyber libraries ....Multiliteracies, libraries and cybraries: Comparative case studies of Australia and the United States. Libraries are key sites for literacy learning. Commonwealth and state government policies stress the significance of libraries and ?information literacy?, and have called for the integration of new technologies into libraries. Despite an ongoing multi-million dollar investment in books and online connectivity, there are no large-scale studies of school libraries? transition into cyber libraries, or ?cybraries.? This project examines the impact of online information technologies on school libraries in two comparative sites in Australia and the US. It describes new forms of text, knowledge and literacy enabled by networked cybraries, and documents how educational systems enable and impede such developments.Read moreRead less
Improving disadvantaged students’ writing engagement and achievement. Economically disadvantaged students are disproportionally represented among those who fail to attain minimum benchmarks in writing in successive rounds of national testing. Our knowledge, however, is limited on why, how and under what circumstances disadvantaged students engage in or disengage from writing. Addressing this knowledge gap, this project examines how disadvantaged students experience and engage in writing, and ho ....Improving disadvantaged students’ writing engagement and achievement. Economically disadvantaged students are disproportionally represented among those who fail to attain minimum benchmarks in writing in successive rounds of national testing. Our knowledge, however, is limited on why, how and under what circumstances disadvantaged students engage in or disengage from writing. Addressing this knowledge gap, this project examines how disadvantaged students experience and engage in writing, and how their writer identities and knowledge about writing develop, as they participate in writing events in different communities in school, out of school and online. The project promotes writing engagement and enhances achievement by making writing personally meaningful and by developing enabling writing communities.
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Learning to write: A socio-material analysis of text production. Contemporary literacy classrooms are places of intense curriculum and technological change. This project will investigate how young children are learning to write as they participate in producing both print and digital texts with a range of tools and technologies. Innovative approaches to teaching writing in early childhood classrooms in four schools situated in low socio-economic communities across two states will be collaborative ....Learning to write: A socio-material analysis of text production. Contemporary literacy classrooms are places of intense curriculum and technological change. This project will investigate how young children are learning to write as they participate in producing both print and digital texts with a range of tools and technologies. Innovative approaches to teaching writing in early childhood classrooms in four schools situated in low socio-economic communities across two states will be collaboratively designed with teachers. The documentation of these classroom design experiments aims to form the basis of innovative practice for other teachers. Employing a socio-material analysis aims to illuminate the affordances of new ways of understanding learning to write in action, in contemporary early childhood classrooms.Read moreRead less
Improving disadvantaged students? Reading outcomes through overcoming reading avoidance and building reading engagement. It is costly for students to avoid reading. Low literacy levels impact negatively on academic success, earning levels and employment opportunities. This project aims to produce new conceptual and empirical knowledge to inform the development of effective teaching practices to promote reading engagement for disadvantaged students.
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
Quality in adult-child interactions during digital experiences. This project aims to address the digital phenomenon with young children by investigating possibilities for adult-child interactions, guidance for educators and ways to measure quality in interactions. The project intends to influence how mobile technologies and applications are created and used in early childhood contexts. Expected outcomes include theory and evidence-based guidelines for adults about how to interact with children d ....Quality in adult-child interactions during digital experiences. This project aims to address the digital phenomenon with young children by investigating possibilities for adult-child interactions, guidance for educators and ways to measure quality in interactions. The project intends to influence how mobile technologies and applications are created and used in early childhood contexts. Expected outcomes include theory and evidence-based guidelines for adults about how to interact with children during digital play. The findings may have implications for educators and families supporting children’s digital experiences as well as app designers creating digital opportunities. The project can therefore contribute to a global agenda focused on young children and technology.Read moreRead less
The status and conceptualisation of cultural knowledge in language-in-education policy for second/foreign language education. This project aims to develop a coherent understanding of approaches to issues of culture and interculturality in languages-in-education planning and policy for the teaching of second/foreign languages in Australia, Europe, North America and Asia. This will involve both a study of the ways in which culturally focused curriculum and content are included in language-in-educa ....The status and conceptualisation of cultural knowledge in language-in-education policy for second/foreign language education. This project aims to develop a coherent understanding of approaches to issues of culture and interculturality in languages-in-education planning and policy for the teaching of second/foreign languages in Australia, Europe, North America and Asia. This will involve both a study of the ways in which culturally focused curriculum and content are included in language-in-education plans and policies, and a study of the ways in which the cultural component of language education is conceptualised in such plans and policies. These studies will provide a basis for examining the consistency of treatment of culture in language-in-education planning and policy.Read moreRead less