Academic literature on the topic 'Teachers' assistants Victoria Melbourne'

Beberapa tahun belakangan ini telah terjadi krisis pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia. Padahal, pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia berperan sebagai soft diplomacy yang memanfaatkan strategi kebahasaan guna membangun pengertian dan akhirnya terjalin kerja sama antarnegara. Masalah penelitian ini adalah bagaimana eksistensi program bahasa Indonesia dan krisis pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia? dan bagaimana keterlibatan diaspora Indonesia di Australia dalam menguatkan pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah mengungkapkan eksistensi program bahasa Indonesia dan krisis pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia, serta keterlibatan diaspora Indonesia dalam penguatan pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif dengan pendekatan pembelajaran bahasa kedua untuk menggali kegiatan program bahasa yang diikuti oleh diaspora dalam meningkatkan minat dan pemerolehan bahasa pemelajar bahasa Indonesia di Australia. Sumber data utama yang digunakan adalah program kegiatan diaspora Indonesia di Australia, khususnya di Melbourne, Victoria pada tahun 2017, antara lain Huntingtower Immersion day, Victorian Indonesian Language Teacher Association Immersion Day, Indonesian Food and Trade Festival, perayaan Hari Batik Nasional di KJRI Melbourne, dan program bahasa Indonesia di The University of Melbourne. Sementara itu, data pendukung yang digunakan, yaitu buku dan referensi lain terkait dengan kegiatan diaspora Indonesia dan pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui dokumen, observasi langsung, dan wawancara mendalam dengan diaspora Indonesia di Australia. Proses analisis data, antara lain mengklasifikasi data kegiatan diaspora yang mendukung pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia; menganalisis data sesuai dengan topik penelitian; dan menyimpulkan hasil analisis. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa telah terjadi krisis pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia di Australia dengan adanya penutupan program bahasa Indonesia seiring dengan penurunan minat pemelajar bahasa indonesia. Diaspora Indonesia turut mendukung penguatan pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia, antara lain melaksanakan immersion day (kelas imersi/pembauran); pemahaman budaya Indonesia melalui pagelaran batik dan festival makanan Indonesia; dan Indonesian language teacher assistant atau dosen tamu di program bahasa Indonesia. Program kegiatan yang dilakukan oleh diaspora Indonesia, baik melalui sekolah, universitas, organisasi pengajar bahasa Indonesia di Australia, maupun perkumpulan orang Australia dan Indonesia tersebut diharapkan dapat menarik minat pemelajar bahasa Indonesia.

Bicultural, personality, and pedagogical competences in the perspective of BIPA language assistantsIn 2019, there were 63.022 learners of Indonesian as a foreign language in Victorian schools, Australia. They were facilitated by 263 Indonesian Language for Foreign Speakers (BIPA) local teachers. Due to a shortage of BIPA local teachers, the Department of Education and Training Victoria had recruited language assistants from Indonesia. This study is aimed to describe the required skillsets of BIPA language assistants to support their duties. The data were collected through interviews, an inventory, observations, and stories of eight Indonesian language assistants with one year of experience. The findings reveal that the language assistants need to develop bicultural, personality and pedagogical competences. These competences should become the reference for developing workshop materials for future BIPA language assistants.Keywords: BIPA teachers, bicultural competences, personality competences, pedagogical competencesKompetensi bikultural, kepribadian, dan pedagogik dalam perspektif guru bantu BIPAPada tahun 2019 terdapat 63.022 siswa Victoria, Australia, yang mempelajari bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa asing. Mereka dibimbing oleh 263 guru BIPA. Karena jumlah guru tidak memadai, maka Department of Education and Training Victoria merekrut guru bantu (language assistant) dari Indonesia. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan berbagai kompetensi yang perlu dimiliki guru bantu untuk menunjang pelaksanaan tugasnya. Data dikumpulkan dari wawancara, inventori, observasi, dan deskripsi pengalaman dari delapan guru bantu selama satu tahun mengajar. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa guru bantu perlu mengembangkan kompetensi bikultural, kompetensi kepribadian, dan kompetensi pedagogik. Ketiga kompetensi ini sebaiknya dijadikan bahan workshop pada pembekalan guru bantu di lembaga pengirim.Kata kunci: guru BIPA, kompetensi bikultural, kompetensi kepribadian, kompetensi pedagogik

Des English was a person of great charm, innovation, and inner strength. His early death at the age of 44 in 1977 came as a bitter blow not only for his family but for the many teachers and parents he had influenced and guided in respectively providing and in seeking educational opportunities for children with disabilities. Des grew up in a small town in Victoria called Donnybrook, north of Melbourne. He was educated by the Marist Brothers at Kilmore College, and in the 50’s trained as a primary teacher at Geelong Teachers College, from which he gained an extension of one year to study as a Special Teacher at Melbourne Teachers College. His first appointment was as an Opportunity Grade teacher at North Melbourne State School. His talent for leadership surfaced early and in his second appointment he became Principal of Footscray Special School for children and adolescents with intellectual disability. Throughout the rest of his career he gained one promotion after another to the Principal positions at Ormond, Travencore and St. Alban’s Special schools. I was fortunate to work as a deputy principal with him throughout his last two appointments.

This paper aims to observe how the Australian COVID-19 restrictions influenced higher education, teachers’ and students’ lives. Before the pandemic, the higher education sector was the largest serviced based sector in Australia and overly depended on international students’ fee income. The academic year of 2020 started as usual with 141703 higher education enrolments of overseas students, mainly students from Asia. However, they did not arrive due to the strict border closure. Travel restrictions were put in place from China from 1 February 2020, later from other countries worldwide. That significantly affected international students' travel from Asia directly before the start of the new academic year. Consequently, many institutions have transitioned from campus-based courses to online delivery. Besides, numerous academic lecturers and professional staff have been invited to the expression of interest in a voluntary and, of course, involuntary redundancy program. Most vacant positions have been frozen, and various saving programs have been implied. Owing to the toughest rules and strictest restrictions, Australian borders remained closed for over 600 days. Melbourne was under six lockdowns totalling 265 days since March 2020, which resulted in the author’s experience of three semester-long remote teaching at one of the biggest and most prominent universities in Melbourne without any personal contact with international students. The author lived and worked in Melbourne during the COVID-19 era, so this study is based on her perspectives and experiences extended with a wide empirical evaluation of secondary data about the Australian academic sector between 2020 and 2021.

This year marks the first decade of operations for the Gene Technology Access Centre (GTAC). The decade has seen a grassroots initiative by a small group of eminent research scientists and dedicated personnel from the University High School in Melbourne grow into a specialist education centre in cell and molecular biology that attracts over 6000 students and their teachers each year. GTAC has not only refocused student and teacher attention on the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary biology, but has also highlighted how a ?centre model for learning?, based upon collaboration and partnerships, can exist within ?the school system? and meet the needs of students and teachers from across Victoria and beyond.

Research highlights that early childhood teachers (ECTs) hold varied opinions on the value of superhero play (SP) to young children’s learning and development. This study sought to investigate how ECTs in Victoria are responding to superhero play, and to examine the beliefs that underpin their responses. Interviews were conducted with eight ECTs from the Bayside area in Melbourne. The study revealed that while the majority of the teachers interviewed responded to children’s superhero play in a variety of ways, there were a number of barriers to supporting superhero play in early childhood education and care settings. This paper concludes by identifying the value of ECTs engaging in critical reflection to ensure that their responses to superhero play are based on professional knowledge that is informed by theory and research.

Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization (Ed.) 1994: Insects- a World of Diversity. - C.S.I.R.O., Information Services, 314 Albert Street, East Melbourne, Victoria 3002, Australia. CDROM Version 1.0 and printed Teachers' Guide, 104 pp (A4 size, alternatively spiralbound 17.5 x 24.5 em). CD-ROM available for both Windows and Macintosh versions. System requirements: Windows: IBM-compatibel computer 386-33 or faster, super VGA video card and monitor; 4Mb of RAM, Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later, Microsoft Windows compatible digital audio card and CD-ROM drive. Macintosh: Apple Macintosh computer, 13 inch colour monitor (or larger), 4Mb of RAM, CD-ROM drive and Quicktime 1.6 or later(providedonCD).Price: CD-ROM: AUD 109.-,CD-ROMandTeachers' GuideAUD 129.-.

BackgroundHumans are by nature a social species, with much of human experience spent in social interaction. Unsurprisingly, social functioning is crucial to well-being and quality of life across the lifespan. While early intervention for social problems appears promising, our ability to identify the specific impairments underlying their social problems (eg, social communication) is restricted by a dearth of accurate, ecologically valid and comprehensive child-direct assessment tools. Current tools are largely limited to parent and teacher ratings scales, which may identify social dysfunction, but not its underlying cause, or adult-based experimental tools, which lack age-appropriate norms. The present study describes the development and standardisation of Paediatric Evaluation of Emotions, Relationships, and Socialisation(PEERS®), an iPad-based social skills assessment tool.MethodsThe PEERS project is a cross-sectional study involving two groups: (1) a normative group, recruited from early childhood, primary and secondary schools across metropolitan and regional Victoria, Australia; and (2) a clinical group, ascertained from outpatient services at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne (RCH). The project aims to establish normative data for PEERS®, a novel and comprehensive app-delivered child-direct measure of social skills for children and youth. The project involves recruiting and assessing 1000 children aged 4.0–17.11 years. Assessments consist of an intellectual screen, PEERS® subtests, and PEERS-Q, a self-report questionnaire of social skills. Parents and teachers also complete questionnaires relating to participants’ social skills. Main analyses will comprise regression-based continuous norming, factor analysis and psychometric analysis of PEERS® and PEERS-Q.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval has been obtained through the RCH Human Research Ethics Committee (34046), the Victorian Government Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (002318), and Catholic Education Melbourne (2166). Findings will be disseminated through international conferences and peer-reviewed journals. Following standardisation of PEERS®, the tool will be made commercially available.

Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) results play an important role in academic staff performance evaluation, but also in promotion processes. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the SET used in most universities across the Anglosphere has traditionally penalised female academics. As universities manage the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, they will also need to take into account the effect of remote teaching on the validity of student evaluation data. Given SET are critical to promotion success, it is important to then understand the gendered effect of remote teaching on student evaluations. We aimed to evaluate how intrusions of family life, academics’ home environment and competence with remote teaching technology of female academics were viewed by students and if there were noticeable differences in SET data. We analysed 22,485 SET data over 2019 (pre-COVID, face-to-face teaching) and 2020 (COVID-lockdowns, remote teaching) for female and male academics, matched with student gender, in the multidisciplinary First Year College at Victoria University, Melbourne Australia. Our results showed that there were no differences in the score ratings for teacher gender. However, the qualitative data showed that whilst overall there were overwhelmingly positive comments for both male and female teachers, there was an increase in the negative comments on teaching style by male students toward their female teachers during remote teaching and overall more comments relating to attitude. We speculate that this would have a negative impact on the confidence of teaching-intensive female academics hindering their leadership aspirations and career progression in academia.

There is growing recognition that literacy learning takes place in the years prior to formal schooling and that young children develop literacy-like behaviours through exposure to interactions in shared contexts in which literacy is a component. Despite this, there are few assessments that measure the very early literacy skills that children develop before 36 months of age. This article reports on the design and validation of a new instrument – the Early Literacy Engagement Assessment (ELEA). This tool was developed to provide insights into the impact of Conversational Reading, a key pedagogical strategy implemented at Families as First Teachers playgroups, on young children’s early receptive and expressive vocabulary and literacy skills. The instrument was trialled with 104 children living in locations across Melbourne, Victoria, and 39 Aboriginal children living in remote communities in the Northern Territory. The trial process was undertaken in two phases: (1) a technical assessment to test item consistency, characteristics and placement and (2) concurrent validity testing against items from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool-2 tool. The findings from the trial and validation process indicate that overall the ELEA discriminates well between children of high and low ability, and it is a useful tool in the authentic assessment of expressive and receptive vocabulary skills in young children.

This research project examines perceptions and attitudes towards science of a group of Technical and Further Education students studying Beauty Therapy at Victoria University. Many members of this group displayed a high level of science anxiety as described by Mallow, (1978). They lacked confidence in their science ability and were very anxious about passing the science units in their Beauty Therapy courses, despite having successfully passed science subjects at school. Previous observations on Beauty Therapy students showed that most succeeded in their science units but still lacked confidence in their ability to apply their knowledge. The science units in Beauty Therapy are complex and require a detailed knowledge of Human Biology, Anatomy, Physiology, Skin Biology, Cosmetic Chemistry, and Microbiology. The participants in the study were interviewed using a semi-structured interview working together with a questionnaire to establish background information. The probes covered the participants’ experiences in science at school together with their attitudes towards science and influences from other areas. The aim was to identify factors which undermined the confidence of these participants. The interviews were recorded and the transcripts were analysed for themes using a progressive coding process. The themes were grouped into clusters. The study showed clearly that the participants’ confidence in their science ability was undermined by their school experiences in science. It related to attitudes and pedagogies employed by a particular science teacher in their secondary school. Participants described enjoying science previously. Particular aspects identified were an inability to get help when they needed it; the use of sarcasm or derogatory remarks to discourage questions; boring lessons mostly composed of copying notes from the board or textbooks; lack of relevance and a lack of enthusiasm displayed by the teacher. This led to a situation where participants dreaded their science lessons and in some cases truancy.

This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the debate about the role of ICT in education, by exploring schooling and pedagogical perspectives, identifying elements demanding systemic attention and defining a vision that is relevant and challenging to Australian education. Examining the notion of what e-confidence means for students, teachers, school leaders and schools enables a consideration of what strategies can be deployed for achieving this in all Australian schools.

The steady decline of students’ competency in mathematics has become known as the “Mathematics Problem”. Researchers identified that the level of student engagement is one of the most important factors affecting the academic performance of mathematics students. Strong link between students’ attitudes towards the use of technology for learning mathematics and their achievements also has been identified by recent studies. The mathematical problems have a multidimensional source and are initiated from the students’ personal characteristics and attitudes. Thus attitude is important educational concept about learning mathematics with technology. The association between student engagement and the use of ICT suggests that a positive attitude toward the use of ICT in learning mathematics is an important outcome in itself, especially when ICT is used. Student engagement can be influenced by a plethora of factors. These factors include student personal characteristics, learning experiences, perceptions, three aspects of engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioural) and attitudes towards the use of technology in learning of mathematics. This study is aimed at further investigating the factors that might be affected by the use of ICT with two major purposes: (1) to investigate the complex interrelationships between students’ demographic factors, mathematics confidence, access to technology outside university, confidence with technology, perception towards the use of technology for learning and attitude towards learning mathematics with technology, cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement; and student achievement and (2) to determine if the use of ICT impacts on the level of student engagement and achievements in mathematics.

The Australian Catholic University (ACU National at www.acu.edu.au) is a public university funded by the Australian Government. There are six campuses across the country, located in Brisbane, Queensland; North Sydney, New South Wales; Strathfield, New South Wales; Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT); Ballarat, Victoria; and Melbourne, Victoria. The university serves a total of approximately 27,000 students, including both full- and part-time students, and those enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Through fostering and advancing knowledge in education, health, commerce, the humanities, science and technology, and the creative arts, ACU National seeks to make specific and targeted contributions to its local, national, and international communities. The university explicitly engages the social, ethical, and religious dimensions of the questions it faces in teaching, research, and service. In its endeavors, it is guided by a fundamental concern for social justice, equity, and inclusivity. The university is open to all, irrespective of religious belief or background. ACU National opened its doors in 1991 following the amalgamation of four Catholic tertiary institutions in eastern Australia. The institutions that merged to form the university had their origins in the mid-17th century when religious orders and institutes became involved in the preparation of teachers for Catholic schools and, later, nurses for Catholic hospitals. As a result of a series of amalgamations, relocations, transfers of responsibilities, and diocesan initiatives, more than twenty historical entities have contributed to the creation of ACU National. Today, ACU National operates within a rapidly changing educational and industrial context. Student numbers are increasing, areas of teaching and learning have changed and expanded, e-learning plays an important role, and there is greater emphasis on research. In its 2005–2009 Strategic Plan, the university commits to the adoption of quality teaching, an internationalized curriculum, as well as the cultivation of generic skills in students, to meet the challenges of the dynamic university and information environment (ACU National, 2008). The Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) Program at ACU Canberra Situated in Australia’s capital city, the Canberra campus is one of the smallest campuses of ACU National, where there are approximately 800 undergraduate and 200 postgraduate students studying to be primary or secondary school teachers through the School of Education (ACT). Other programs offered at this campus include nursing, theology, social work, arts, and religious education. A new model of pre-service secondary teacher education commenced with the introduction of the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) program at this campus in 2005. It marked an innovative collaboration between the university and a cohort of experienced secondary school teachers in the ACT and its surrounding region. This partnership was forged to allow student teachers undertaking the program to be inducted into the teaching profession with the cooperation of leading practitioners from schools in and around the ACT. In the preparation of novices for the teaching profession, an enduring challenge is to create learning experiences capable of transforming practice, and to instill in the novices an array of professional skills, attributes, and competencies (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Another dimension of the beginning teacher experience is the need to bridge theory and practice, and to apply pedagogical content knowledge in real-life classroom practice. During the one-year Graduate Diploma program, the student teachers undertake two four-week block practicum placements, during which they have the opportunity to observe exemplary lessons, as well as to commence teaching. The goals of the practicum include improving participants’ access to innovative pedagogy and educational theory, helping them situate their own prior knowledge regarding pedagogy, and assisting them in reflecting on and evaluating their own practice. Each student teacher is paired with a more experienced teacher based at the school where he/she is placed, who serves as a supervisor and mentor. In 2007, a new dimension to the teaching practicum was added to facilitate online peer mentoring among the pre-service teachers at the Canberra campus of ACU National, and provide them with opportunities to reflect on teaching prior to entering full-time employment at a school. The creation of an online community to facilitate this mentorship and professional development process forms the context for the present case study. While on their practicum, students used social software in the form of collaborative web logging (blogging) and threaded voice discussion tools that were integrated into the university’s course management system (CMS), to share and reflect on their experiences, identify critical incidents, and invite comment on their responses and reactions from peers.