LPLC Research
As a nationally and internationally recognised leader in research in literacy, policy and learning cultures, the Centre has a strong track record in winning competitive research grants. The Centre actively supports the participation of the education profession in its research agenda and collaboration with its education industry partners. It collaborates with education industry partners by initiating joint projects and by responding to requests for support, information and research.
Research commencing in 2008
Creating a 'third' life: Analysing the cultural and
social impact of simulated environments in an accessible 3D authoring
platform
Associate Professor Gerry Bloustien, Dr Denise Wood, Professor Victoria
Carrington
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount: $13,400
The aim of this pilot project is to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits of the application of multi-user three dimensional simulated environments (3DSE) and Mobile Virtual Learning Environments (MVLE). Although based on the same open source standards as Second Life, the model will be adapted to integrate a range of learning technologies including mobile access, that are currently not supported by available 3DSE and more specifically the Second Life Grid for educational providers.
Investigating the impact of practitioner inquiry on professional identity,
professional practice and organisational knowledge
Associate Professor Phillip Cormack, Dr Katherine Hodgetts, Dr Sue Nichols, Dr
Brenton Prosser
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount awarded: $15,000
plus $10,000 from
Industry Partners DECS and SSABSA
This project addresses the question: What difference does participating in practitioner inquiry make to the professional identity and professional practice of educators and to the knowledge base of organisations? This 18 month project involves following up teachers and other educational practitioners who have participated in practitioner inquiry and related action research projects facilitated by the University of South Australia over the past ten years. The project will consider how involvement in research by professional practitioners feeds back into their practice and into the organisations they work for as well as any implications that involvement has had for their careers.
The pedagogical challenge of new racism: International perspectives
Associate Professor Robert Hattam, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, Associate Professor
Peter Bishop, Dr Danielle Every, Associate Professor Daryle Rigney
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount awarded: $10,350
Should I stay or should I go? Media representations of education and new
teachers' decisions to leave the profession
Dr Katherine Hodgetts, Dr Janette Hancock, Professor Barbara Comber
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount awarded: $10,935
In Australia, the high attrition of new teachers suggests an imminent teacher shortage as the average age of educators exceeds 45 years. Across the Western world, research indicates that (increasingly negative) media representations of teachers impact upon new educators’ capacity to build positive teacher identities that will sustain their long-term commitment to the profession. This study will investigate the relationship between news media representations of teachers and new educators’ decisions to ‘stay or go’. Media analysis will inform focus groups with current and former teachers. Narrative analysis of focus group data will unpack new teachers’ negotiation of media accounts in the context of career decision-making, yielding insights into teacher attrition. These insights will inform teacher education courses, supporting students to critique media accounts and build resilient identities.
First generation pedagogies in Second Life
Dr Rosie Kerin, Ms Pat Grant
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount: $12,946
The virtual world of Second Life (SL) promises much for transforming teaching through experiential and participatory learning, and universities across the world are rushing to be involved. However, as yet there is little research into SL pedagogies that might precipitate a transformation of university teaching and learning. This project will explore both the promise and the challenges of designing and sustaining first generation pedagogies in SL. It will do this through the critical analysis of pedagogical models already established by universities within SL as well as those employed in the teaching of a first year Communications course at UniSA.
Parents reading to children: Representations in children's picture books and
parenting material
Dr Sue Nichols, Dr Elizabeth Bullen (Deakin University)
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount awarded: $10,044
Given considerable investment in promoting parental reading to children, there has been little analysis of the ways in which such reading is portrayed. The researchers will undertake analysis of visual and linguistic dimensions of 1) picture books intended for parents to share with young children; 2) materials promoting parental involvement in children’s literacy including articles, books, pamphlets and posters. From a narrative theory perspective, we ask: If reading to children is the resolution, what is the complication? From a discourse theory perspective, the analysis will address the question: What discourses of childhood, parenting and literacy construct the subject ‘reading to children’?
The personal domain: Exploring what sustains professionals through the
narratives of teachers, social workers and emergency service workers
Dr Brenton Prosser, Dr Sarah Wendt, Dr Michelle Tuckey, Dr Helen Masterman-Smith
Divisional Research Performance Funding: Amount awarded: $10,000
Continuing Research
Global conversations
Sue Shore, Elaine Butler
Sue Shore and Elaine Butler have worked collaboratively at UniSA and its preceding institutions, on program and course developments, teaching, symposia, and research projects over two decades. This includes shared reading and identification of professional development activities to build our capacity as a research team. We are committed to work as public intellectuals, as well as creating space for our postgraduate students to engage in this work with us. During this time we have accumulated a number of data sets to provide important longitudinal analyses of policy shifts and theoretical framings of vocational education and training (VET) provision during times of considerable cultural, socio-economic and political change. The following link provides details regarding the research projects and activities we have undertaken to progress our broad research agenda of learning for work and life. This agenda continues to unfold to this day.
Global/local conversations around work and life
Parents' networks: The circulation of knowledge about children's literacy learning (2007-2009)
Sue Nichols, Helen Nixon (UniSA) and Jennifer Rowsell (Rutgers
University)
Funded by An ARC Discovery Grant
This international and longitudinal study will investigate the networks accessed by parents in different socio-cultural locations searching for knowledge and resources about children’s literacy learning, the roles of organisations in these networks, and the ideas about literacy, pedagogy and parents’ roles circulating through these networks. It is significant in using an innovative methodology to study texts, images, objects, accounts and practices as they flow through family, community and broader national and global networks. It will inform policy and practice in public community service provision and family literacy, enabling social programs to engage all parents more effectively.
Parent partnership in a new service landscape: Policy and provider perspectives (2006-2007)
Sue Nichols and Elspeth McInnes (UniSA)
Funded by UniSA Australian Competitive Grant Development Scheme
This project, aims to investigate how parent/carer partnership in defined and practised by professionals from different services who are coming together to provide an integrated early childhood service. It will produce professional development resources for training of professionals to work collaboratively in partnership with parents and caregivers. Focus group interviews, policy analysis and case studies of two contrasting centres form the basis of this study.
Schooling, globalisation and refugees (2006-2007)
Rob Hattam (UniSA), with colleagues from the University of the Sunshine Coast, University
of Queensland, and Queensland University of Technology
Funded by ARC Discovery Grant (administered by Uni of Sunshine Coast)
This project aims to explore schooling for refugee students in the Queensland public education system. It proposes to develop and test a new research approach by combining policy analysis, critical discourse analysis and visual narratives to explore global and local policies, and school-based practices. By focusing on refugees, a cohort of 'placeless' peoples, the project aims to examine how education institutions engage with issues of global and national identity, and citizenship in an increasingly ‘borderless’, ‘networked’ society. The project aims to contribute to ‘good practice’ in refugee education, as well as explore issues of globalisation for all Australian school students.
Redesigning pedagogies in the north (2004-2007)
Rob Hattam, Phil Cormack, Barbara Comber, Marie Brennan, Lew Zipin, David
Lloyd, Alan Reid, Helen Nixon (UniSA) with partner organisations: Northern Adelaide
State Secondary Principals' Network, Australian Education Union (SA Branch),
South Australian Government Social Inclusion Unit and the Department of
Education and Children's Services.
Funded by
ARC Linkage Grant
Internationally, the middle years of schooling are increasingly problematic for students and teachers, and thus a crucial site for pedagogical reform. The last decade of research and development is nearly exhausted. There is need for a new generation of pedagogical innovation that recognises shifts in demography, identities and socio-economic conditions. This project aims to build curriculum and pedagogical practice that engage young people’s lifeworlds and the concerns of their communities. It will develop a university-school professional learning community that supports educational action research and that informs pedagogical practices through ethnographies of the everyday lives of diverse young people.
Redesigning Pedagogies in the North website
Literacy and the environment (2004-2007)
Barbara Comber, Phillip Cormack, Helen Nixon (UniSA), Bill Green
and Jo-Anne Reid (Charles Sturt University)
Funded by an ARC Linkage Grant with Primary English
Teachers Association (PETA)
The Murray-Darling Basin represents one of the major ecosocial challenges facing Australia. Finding long-term sustainable solutions requires a knowledgeable and literate citizenry and due educational investment now. This study extends the Special Forever project, an innovative environmental communications project, involving the Primary English Teachers Association and The Murray-Darling Basin Commission, designed to enhance primary school children’s knowledge and literacy regarding the Murray-Darling Basin. The Literacy and Environment project analysed the Special Forever archive, is developing ecosocial cartographies, and documenting school-based environmental projects through writing, the arts and contemporary multi-media. The study extends and enhances current understandings of literacy education and the environment.
The following paper, by Phil Cormack, Jo-Anne Reid & Bill Green, was presented at the Senses of Place Conference, at the University of
Tasmania, Hobart, April 2006
River literacies: disursive constructions of place and environment in
children's writing about the Murray-Darling Basin (PDF 866kb)
Rethinking reconciliation and pedagogy in uncertain times (2004-2007)
Rob Hattam (UniSA)
with Peter Bishop (UniSA), Pal Ahluwalia (University of Adelaide), Julie
Matthews (University of Sunshine Coast) and Pamela Christie (University of
Queensland)
Funded by
ARC Discovery Grant
In ‘unsettling times’, reconciliation processes have the potential to strengthen the fragile network of relationships that holds Australian society together. Unfortunately, the pedagogical potential of reconciliation processes has yet to be adequately elaborated. We urgently need more scholarly accounts of reconciliation in action. This project will provide cross-cultural comparative accounts of reconciliation practices in Australia, South Africa and Israel. The project will also develop accounts of how reconciliation is represented and pursued in media culture particularly on the world-wide web. The analysis of these accounts will culminate in the development of a theory of pedagogies for reconciliation.
Completed research
Boys' literacies and identities (2004-2006)
Phil Cormack, Barbara Comber, Sue Nichols and Lew Zipin (UniSA)
Funded by
Catholic Education, SA
Boys growing up in poverty are statistically more likely than other groups to have difficulty with school literacies, often leading to failure and early school leaving. This collaborative action research project will investigate the literacy practices and identities of adolescent boys in the northern region of Adelaide, an area of high unemployment and poverty, or in schools which take students from this region. The project will map school and community literacies and ways of teaching and learning across these sites. The research builds on local knowledges whilst extending the capacities of educators.
Pathways or Cul de sacs?: The causes, impact and implications of part-time senior secondary study (2003-2006)
Eleanor Ramsay, Alison Mackinnon, Marie Brennan (UniSA), Madeleine Woolley
(Adelaide Institute of TAFE) and
Janet Keightley (SSABSA), Judith Lydeamore (DECS)
Funded by ARC Linkage Grant with DECS, SSABSA and the Social Inclusion Unit
The research investigates the factors that contribute to the relatively high proportion of South Australian students who undertake their senior secondary studies part time. It explores the implications for students and their communities in terms of educational and employment outcomes. It will also map the geographic gender and socio-economic dimensions of the phenomenon and identify whether there is a relationship between part time senior secondary study , early school leaving and re-entry pathways. The project will draw upon recent state and national research and educational policy analyses and on qualitative and quantitative data at state and regional level to enhance understandings of these issues and inform the development of educational and youth policy at the state and national levels.
Reforming the engagement of boys in literacy (2004-2006)
Robert Hattam and Phillip Cormack (UniSA)
Funded by DEST Boys' Education
Lighthouse Schools Program
A professional development program funded as part of the DEST Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools Program (Stage 2). The program will provide opportunities for teachers to work across schools in a cluster, have access to up-to-date research and to be involved in classroom based research. The cluster program involves the following set of interlinking activities: teacher research roundtables; in-school professional development activities linked to school development plans; mentoring/teacher swaps; annual conference; other conference workshops; project web-site.
Linking numeracy learning and assessment in the middle years (2004-2005)
Phil Cormack and Mike Chartres (UniSA)
Funded by Association of Independent
Schools of South Australia
This study was a consultancy research project for the Association of Independent Schools, South Australia Targeted Programs to support the Lutheran Education Adelaide Hills cluster of schools to develop and implement a common and agreed framework for the effective transfer and utilisation of authentic assessment information in numeracy across all year levels in the Middle years, particularly at the transition point from Year 7 to 8. The project processes included: building on research about the importance of linking assessment and learning (authentic assessment) in the middle years; establishing a shared understanding about authentic assessment across the cluster and utilising teacher knowledge/school data in designing a transition plan for the cluster.
Parents information networks: Investigating the circulation of knowledge about children's learning and development through social and cyber spaces (2005)
Susan Nichols and Helen Nixon (UniSA)
Funded by UniSA Research Policy Committee
Increasingly the internet is being used as a tool to provide educational information and services. Parents are a prime market in this cyber economy but many, especially those with minimal Internet experience, are ill equipped to critically assess the value and usefulness of the sites they encounter. The project employed online surveys, discourse analysis of existing sites, fieldwork and discussions with parents in a range of circumstances to determine their experiences and needs. The project integrated internet-based technologies into the research process, enabling the development of engaging online resources and critical tools that allowed parents to become critical consumers and knowledge producers in relation to education.
Urban renewal from the inside out (2004-2005)
Barbara Comber, Helen Nixon, Jackie Cook and Stephen Loo (UniSA)
Grant from The Myer
Foundation
Urban renewal from the inside-out was a collaborative project that aimed to ensure that young people had an effective voice in urban renewal. The project involved the principal, teachers, students and parents at Ridley Grove School R-7 and researchers and students from the departments of Architecture, Education and Journalism at the University of South Australia. Project members worked together to construct a space designed by Ridley Grove students to link the school, its pre-school and community. The space incorporated garden beds, a water feature, benches and shade structures, which will be completed in 2006. The project provided the school and project community with repertoires of powerful social practices (negotiation, design, consultation) while increasing children’s connection with schooling through a relevant and challenging curriculum.
Strengthening community (2004-2005)
Von Sanderson (UniSA)
Funded by Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Adelaide area have been established through the initiatives of local Indigenous people as an aspect of self-governance. The project will:
- record history of organisations established with Indigenous initiative in Port Adelaide area, where Indigenous people have concentrated for some time, adding to its culture, society and economy
- engage with Indigenous participants in theorising the functions of local Indigenous organisations, their significance to Indigenous people and wider non-Indigenous community/society
- produce publications (monographs, small books) on Indigenous people and organisations of Port Adelaide area, showing their contribution to local community
- produce publications/books/journal articles for use in Indigenous studies, for publication in Indigenous and local press, and add to Indigenous content on the web (eg, add to Port Adelaide Elders Story web-site)
Reflecting on privilege in the teaching professions (2004-2005)
Sue Shore (UniSA)
Funded by UniSA Division of EASS Teaching & Learning
Grant
This project reflects two aspects of the UniSA Act: to meet the needs of indigenous people; and to meet the needs of groups within the community that the University considers have suffered disadvantages in education. It addresses the context of undergraduate teacher preparation programs, and masters level programs that provide ongoing professional development for practitioners working in ‘teaching’ professions. Both ‘target’ groups have substantial interaction with a diverse Australian community which in turn experiences uneven access to education, training and employment. The project builds on the structural changes planned for the UniSA teaching and learning environment by addressing the pedagogical challenges lecturers face in ‘mainstreaming’ access and equity initiatives across all teaching units within the university and increasingly favouring a ‘high tech’ environment. Visit the project website which is under construction at www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/refpriv/
Teenagers online (2004)
Helen Nixon (UniSA)
Funded by UniSA Divisional Research Performance Funds
For increasing numbers of people the web is the medium of choice not only for accessing information and interacting with content but for interpersonal communication through emails and IRC, and self-expression in the form of web-pages, fan sites, blogs and other venues for cultural production and exchange. Many teenagers lead particularly active online lives. These are in part structured by the kinds of identities and use patterns made available to them. The character, potential and limitations of consumer software and hardware play an important part in this as do the agendas of organisations seeking to capitalise on young people’s use of the medium whether for financial or political gain, or to achieve other social or cultural objectives.
Teachers investigate unequal literacy outcomes: Cross generational perspectives (2002-2004)
Barbara Comber (UniSA) and Barbara Kamler (Deakin University)
Funded by ARC Discovery grant
Unequal outcomes in literacy remains the most intractable problem facing our educational community. This research will investigate both historical and contemporary literacy practice in terms of its differential effects on primary school children. It recognises the teacher as the most significant factor in improving student outcomes and builds teacher researcher communities to document teaching that makes a difference for 'at risk' children. Its unique cross generational methodology will make over links between one generation of teachers and the next and produce new knowledge about literacy and disadvantage. Practical applications for teacher education and professional mentoring across generations will be developed.
Critical literacy, social action and children's representations of 'place' (2003)
Pat Thomson, Barbara Comber (UniSA) & Hilary Janks (University of Witwatersrand)
Funded by
Divisional Research Performance Funds (DRPF)
We will work with three teacher researchers in South Australia and two in South Africa to explore how children understand their material and social "place" in the world. The project is a pilot for an international study on locality, social class and just schooling. Specific aims are to:
- develop critical literacy approaches where children investigate and take neighbourhood action
- further our understandings about how children in disadvantaged schools represent their "place" and their "practices of neighbourhood"
- connect with international research on children, "habitus" and "habitat"
Cyberkids and cyberworlds: New literacies, identities and communities information (2003)
Helen Nixon (UniSA) and Catherine Beavis (Deakin University)
Funded by ARC Discovery Grant
Little is known of the online cyberworlds of young Australians. Yet they are the highest users of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This project theorised that the cyberworlds of 15-16 year olds are sites for the development of new forms of literacy, identity and community. This study used a multidisciplinary approach to examine new literacies and communities generated online and their consequences for literacy and ICT education practice.
Nothing left to chance: Literacy and numeracy outcomes evaluation (2003)
Pat Grant, Lynne Badger, Anna Rodgers (UniSA) and Lyn Wilkinson (Flinders University)
This project aims to identify and document exemplary practices in what the South Australian Department of Education, Training and Employment is describing as high performing disadvantaged schools. The project will document a profile detailing school structures, policies and practices, classroom practices, home/school community links and the professional development activities in which teachers have been involved. The project will be developed in stages by the research team. The first stage is to conduct a search of the relevant literature which will help to inform and frame the data collecting methods for the next stage. Data collected in this second stage will be both quantitative and qualitative and will include surveys, interviews and the collection of relevant school documents. Follow up interviews and/or observations may also be conducted after some initial analysis of the survey data. Data will be analysed in the third stage. This will lead to the development of the profile which will describe school structures, programs and teaching practices deemed effective in improving literacy and numeracy outcomes for students. The profile will be trialled by the participating schools and during this time the research team will act in an advisory capacity. It is envisaged that the profile will be used to promote and support other disadvantaged schools to plan for improved literacy and numeracy outcomes for their students.
Tracking success for Indigenous children: How the Essential Learnings can function (2003)
Jenny Barnett and Marie-Louise Bennett (UniSA)
Funded by DETE and DRPF grant
The research project will track success in Indigenous children's learning associated with the implementation of the South Australian Curriculum, Standards and Accountability (SACSA) framework. The focus will be on how the school community takes up the Essential Learnings and the ways in which school practices related to the Essential Learnings are supporting or providing opportunities for the development of Indigenous students' learning. Classroom observation and focus groups of key participants will be the main research methods in developing a participatory model of research in a limited number of sites.
Relationships with school: Parents' stories of the impact of race, class and locality (2003)
Barbara Comber and Von Sanderson (UniSA)
Funded by DRPF
Success at school is affected by class, race and locality. Studies identify poverty as a critical factor in children's literacy performance. Another is parental educational histories. The higher the educational outcomes of parents, the greater the likelihood of their children's academic success. Some schools in very poor areas are working to change these patterns of failure and they are making a difference. Smithfield Plains Junior Primary is one such school. Parents who were previously alienated from education are returning to school through and with their children and taking on prominent school roles. This trend is equally true of many of the Aboriginal parents. This project will investigate and document parents' accounts of their relationships with schooling with a view to identifying strategies for further change.
Doing teacher research: Documenting, disseminating and connecting (2001-2003)
Barbara Comber (UniSA)
Funded by Spencer Foundation Practitioner Research, Communication and Mentoring Grant
Funded through a Spencer Foundation Practitioner Research, Communication and Mentoring Grant, this project focuses on building the capacities of teacher researchers with regards to disseminating their findings and building their knowledge as researchers. Barbara Comber has been working with Anne Simpson, Rosie Kerin and Greg Restall along with teacher researchers, to prepare teacher research papers for publication and develop an online clearing house. Work has recently started with independent film-maker Mr Paul Ryan to produce a documentary on teacher research.
Schooling Australia: A curriculum history of English teaching, teacher education and public schooling from Federation to World War 2 (2001-2003)
Phil Cormack (UniSA), Bill Green (Charles Sturt University) and Joanne
Reid (Charles Sturt University)
Funded by ARC Discovery grant
This project mapped and analysed the interrelationships among English teaching, teacher education and public schooling in Australia in the period from Federation to World War II. Important continuities and discontinuities were examined between this period and the present, with regard to issues of literacy, culture, identity, public education and nation (re-)building. A key focus was on the figure of the Teacher as a potent symbolic resource in the project of schooling Australia. The project worked across two states involving key researchers in New South Wales (Bill Green and Jo-Anne Reid) and in South Australia (Phil Cormack).
Schooling Australia Project Website
Locality and community: Issues impacting on literacy teaching and learning (2000-2002)
Pat Grant (UniSA) and Lyn Wilkinson (Flinders University)
Funded by Spencer Foundation
Practitioner Research, Communication and Mentoring Grant
This project seeks to extend participation in teacher-research to colleagues in one country region of South Australia (the South East), drawing on the pool of teacher research expertise that has been established in the city. Currently in Australia there are a number of projects being conducted into issues of community and locality. In the main these investigations are being carried out by University researchers. This project, whilst drawing on the work of academics, seeks to put the locus of control back with classroom teachers. It will support them to identify the literacy issues which seem to be particular to their localities and communities. It will support them to develop methodologically sound investigations, to maintain their energy and enthusiasm for research, to network with other researchers, and to disseminate their findings to the wider educational community, both within the region and the State.
Investigating the mainstream: VET sector managers' understandings of whiteness as a feature of decision making factors in managing a VET sector program (2000-2002)
Sue Shore (UniSA)
Funded by UniSA
This project examines the relationship between manager's understandings of features of 'the mainstream', the social category whiteness, and management strategies developed to improve educational opportunities for adults. The study aims to map understandings of 'mainstream culture' that emerge in discussions with vocational education and training sector managers. It will document participants' responses to interdisciplinary literature about mainstream education and studies about 'whiteness' and. analyse their responses to participation in memory-work workshops. Finally, it will explore the opportunities for influencing policy and decision-making forums to improve the viability of VET access courses.
Questioning development in literacy: Preschool to Year 2 (2000-2002)
Sue Hill, Barbara Comber (UniSA), William Louden, Judith Rivalland (Edith Cowan
University) & Jo-Anne Reid (University of New England)
Funded by Large ARC grant
This project will explore the literacy development of groups of children in Australian early childhood settings and schools. Its purpose is to describe successful literacy learning experiences in the year prior to school and the first 18 months of schooling. This study aims to investigate the complexity of literacy development for diverse groups of children in five research sites across three states. It builds conceptually on the previous DEETYA funded Children's Literacy National Project entitled 100 children go to school and intends to make a theoretical contribution to the field of literacy education by offering a new take on development.
Adult Literacy and Numeracy Australian Research Consortium (ALNARC: 1999-2002)
Sue Shore and Ruth Trenerry (UniSA)
Commissioned research: Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs
This national project was undertaken by the Adult Literacy and Numeracy
Australian Research Consortium (ALNARC) and represents a collaboration of
five Australian universities. The project moved from a stated-based
practitioner research focus in previous years (see ALRN 1996 – 1998 in this
section) to a national project spanning all states and undertaking an
analysis of adult literacy policy and provision over the past decade. The
project provided an analysis of developments with a view to informing
federal government policy in this area. The South Australian centre was
staffed by Sue Shore (Director) and Ruth Trenerry (Researcher). Sue Shore
provided leadership as Chair to the National Committee of Directors during
the period 2001-2003.
Reports from all the national and state projects are available for download
from
www.staff.vu.edu.au/alnarc
Electronic writing in the middle years literacy/English curriculum (2001)
Helen Nixon (UniSA) and Lee Sansom (DETE SA)
Funded by Australian Technology Network
This study investigates what happens when teachers in an upper primary and lower secondary classroom design and implement literacy/English curriculum that engages students with new forms of ‘electronic writing’ made possible by information and communication technologies (ICTs). It explores: processes that teachers use to design new curriculum that requires students to use ICTs for expression and communication in digital multimedia features of digital texts that students create as they engage with the curriculum resources that students have to describe their processes and achievements when producing this ‘new writing’ processes that teachers use to ‘assess’ these new texts and student ‘products’.
Country boys in uncertain times and places: Implications for education and gender reform (1999-2001)
Jane Kenway (UniSA)
Funded by Large ARC Grant
This project explored what it means to grow up male in local places in globalising times. It addressed this theme through an examination of two crisis and risk discourses that have, over recent years, gained high public profile in the press and in public and political sensibilities in Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA. These are the boys in crisis/boys at risk discourse and the rural/regional crisis discourse. Together and separately these can be understood as manifestations of some of the major changes and upheavals of our times. As such they offer powerful, provocative and sometimes poignant examples of the complex contemporary links between place, time, change, identity, relationships and inequality. This study of youthful masculinities in places outside of Australia's capital cities, considers young males on the coast, in the bush, the outback and in a 'country city'.
100 children turn 10: A longitudinal study of literacy development from the year prior to school to the first four years of school (1999-2000)
Sue Hill, Barbara Comber (UniSA), William Louden, Judith Rivalland (Edith Cowan University) & Jo-Anne Reid (University of New England) Funded by Children’s Literacy National Projects, DETYA
This project extended the National Literacy Project - Connections between literacy development in the prior to school period and the first year of schooling - published in the report, 100 children go to school. This longitudinal study provided important insights into the kinds of literacies and pedagogies made available to children in very different contexts over a period of time. The study used a combination of the standardised and specially developed assessment measures used in the original study to assess the children's contexts and progress.
The technology-enriched principal (1999/2000)
Helen Nixon and Pat Thomson (UniSA)
Collaborative project between UniSA and
Technology School of the Future, DETE SA
Funded by Divisional Research Performance
Funds
Using the case of a $600,000 Principals Development Program for school principals, deputy and assistant principals presented by DETE SA and Technology School of the Future, this project aimed to investigate what kind of learning about information and communications technologies (ICT) school principals take up and find useful. It then looked at how this learning about ICT informed and changed educational leadership and management practices.
Developing a visible research culture in the adult literacy field in South Australia (1999-2000)
Sue Shore and Ruth Trenerry (UniSA)
Funded by Spencer Foundation Practitioner Research:
Communication & Mentoring Grants (United States of America)
This project extended work in developing a visible research community in adult literacy. University staff in an existing network (ALRN) aim to provide the opportunity for further research training by replicating research training workshops to assist teachers to investigate the theoretical and practical issues associated with learning teacher research, and at the same time build the financial and time management skills necessary for completion of a project. Specifically the project aimed to run research training workshops for new researchers to benefit from professional development. Throughout these workshops novice researchers will learn to manage their own research as they work on their particular projects.
Socio-economically disadvantaged students and the development of literacies in schools: A longitudinal study (1998-2000)
Barbara Comber, Jenny Barnett, Lynne Badger, Helen Nixon (UniSA) and Jane Pitt (DETE
SA)
Funded by ARC Strategic Partnership with Industry Research and Training (SPIRT)
grant
This project investigated the literate repertoires children assemble in the middle years of primary schooling – particularly Years Four and Five – in schools serving disadvantaged communities. The project aimed to better theorise the relationship between the development of student literacies, the provision of literacy curriculum and the assessment of literacy outcomes. Specific aims were: to explore which literate practices children in socio-economically disadvantaged schools are given access to and practice in to analyse what individual children take from classroom literacy curricula to analyse assessment information from sources available in the system, including teachers, students, national and state literacy tests.
Information technology, literacy and disadvantage (ITLED) research and development project (1997-1998)
Barbara Comber (UniSA) and Bill Green (University of New England)
Funded by DETE
(SA)
This project used university, teacher and student researchers to explore the integration of ICT into English/literacy curriculum in six South Australian schools serving socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.
Adult Literacy Research Network (ALRN: 1996-1998)
Sue Shore and Adeline Black (UniSA)
Commissioned research: Department of Employment Education and Training.
A commonwealth funded project to promote the development of adult literacy practitioner research networks at a state and national level. Visit the archived website at www.unisa.edu.au/alrn/
Diversity and discipline: The impact of punishment on Indigenous students' attitudes towards schooling
Von Sanderson and Pat Thomson (UniSA)
Funded ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant
This research focused on punishment as an organising principle of schools and from empirical research, constructed a discourse within which discipline as power could be discussed. The research offered a new approach to investigations on the disciplinary practices of schools and challenged the concept of regimes of punishment as a necessary adjunct to learning. At the same time, it developed an Indigenous methodology which called on participants as co-researchers to tell their stories as a critical aspect of grounded research.
The following paper was presented at the Crime Prevention Conference Hilton Hotel, Sydney 12-13 September 2002, and is based on the Diversity and discipline research project, which was conducted in a remote community in South Australia and in the western suburbs of Adelaide. The paper critically reviews the relationship between education, punishment in schools and juvenile crime particularly in relation to Indigenous students. Sanderson discusses the over representation of Indigenous students in school suspensions; narratives of power which construct Aboriginal young people as criminals; inhibitors to Indigenous education, including 'shaming' factors and various forms of racism; how Indigenous parents see the school constructing their children as students; narratives of power and social control versus student resistance; and problematising the 'at risk' concept.
Stronger schools/stronger communities
Robert Hattam and Lew Zipin (UniSA)
Funded by Australian Education Union
Tea Tree Gully District Leadership Team Professional Development
Barbara Comber, Robert Hattam & Lew Zipin (UniSA)
Funded by Tea Tree Gully District & DECS
(SA)
Teacher-as-Researcher Mentoring (TARM) project
Jenny Barnett (UniSA)
Funded by
Anangu Education Services
The TARM Project was a collaborative project involved in developing and supporting school-based research in literacy and English language development for Indigenous students in Anangu schools. Each of the seven schools undertook one or more research projects designed to support Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal teachers and education workers in improving learning outcomes for their students and contribute to the development of a cohesive approach to English language and literacy development across the schools. The role of university participants was to act as research mentors and assist the teachers in the establishment, pursuit and reporting of their research.