edna.edu.au

Research Training for Teachers

RT4T

The Prospective Students' Office and the School of Education, The University of Adelaide are presenting a seminar series for South Australian teachers and school library staff which is intended to provide an update or booster shot of professional learning about doing research, as we start preparing students taking part in the new SACE Research Project.

Slides and video are available of Professor Tania Aspland and Meredith Coleman, School of Education who presented the first sessions.
(Presentations are not labelled as Creative Commons, but presenters stated that these could be re-used at school for further presentation to staff meetings).
I can recommend Stephanie Hester's enthusiastic pitch for humanities research when it becomes available. A couple of great messages from Stephanie:

To do HUMS research you need to be human or at least have access to a human

Qualitative research is all about you

Details of the remainder of the series at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/schools/training

As well as being very useful and timely professional learning, here's hoping that some participants get inspired to get involved in some research themselves.

Tags: sa.edu.au university of adelaide research project research
Posted at 03:14PM Jun 20, 2010 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Issues research

21st century issues in secondary school curriculum
A quick survey of South Australian secondary school teachers raised the following list of topics which they believe are not well covered in existing online (or print) resources at a level appropriate to or readily discoverable by students.
This is a challenge for those developing materials to support student research. While material such as statistics, newspaper articles, journals, television and radio interviews is available, the skills required to locate sources that represent the multiple viewpoints required are complex.

Note: these are topics set usually by teachers. It will be interesting to compare this to topics chosen by students undertaking the SACE Board Research Project in coming years.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY
For most of these topics students are asked to investigate a combination of the following elements

•  overview of the issue
•  historical background
•  Australian context
•  case studies
•  legal aspects
•  ethical issues
•  social benefit/cost comparison
•  making informed choices

Seeking source material for the following curriculum topics...

SCIENCE and MEDICINE
 stem cell research
 IVF issues at various stages, eg pre-implantation
 organ transplantation
 gene technology

PERSONAL HEALTH
 nutrition, diet and disease
 lifestyle choices
 breastfeeding
 
TECHNOLOGY
communications technologies, particularly mobile

GEOGRAPHY
 water management issues
 coastal management
 climate change
 
SPORT
 law
 women in sport
 advertising in sport
 drugs in sport
 clothing
 history of popular sports: eg football, motor racing

FINANCIAL LITERACY
Planning and budgeting
Gambling

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
 religious/faith communities in Australia
 history and impact of religious orders in Australia
  - Jesuits, Josephites, Mercy sisters, Loreto, Christian Brothers
 people of faith and contribution to community
 ethics
 religious art
 sacred texts
 contemporary religious symbols and expressions
 Australian spirituality
 
ART
 Australian women artists: eg Tracy Moffatt, biographical information and their works
 photographers
 indigenous art

SOCIAL JUSTICE

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS 

ADOLESCENT ISSUES
 cars and learning to drive, hooning
 alcohol
 drug use
 homelessness

CAREERS
 future of work
 volunteering
 
AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY

Please add your own 'hard to find' contemporary Australian issues in the comments area below.

Tags: research project curriculum libraries
Posted at 10:22PM Aug 04, 2009 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]