Karen B. Moni

‘I never imagined I’d have to teach these children’: providing authentic learning experiences for secondary pre‐service teachers in teaching students with special needs

This article describes a collaborative and cross‐curricula initiative undertaken in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The project involved developing an integrated approach to providing professional year pre‐service secondary teacher education students with experiences that would assist them to develop their knowledge and skills to teach students with special needs in their classrooms. These experiences were undertaken in the authentic teaching and learning context of a post‐school literacy program for young adults with intellectual disabilities. In preliminary interviews pre‐service teachers revealed that they lacked experience, knowledge and understanding related to teaching students with special needs, and felt that their teacher education program lacked focus in this field. This project was developed in response to these expressed needs. Through participating in the project, pre‐service teachers’ knowledge and understanding about working with students with diverse learning needs were developed as they undertook real and purposeful tasks in an authentic context.

English in primary education in Malaysia: policies, outcomes and stakeholders’ lived experiences

This paper examines English language-in-education policy and planning (LEPP) in Malaysia from macro- and micro-language planning perspectives over the past 50 years. Specifically, it focuses on English language policies at the primary level and investigates their outcomes and consequences at different levels of education. The major focus of this paper is a case study that was conducted on samples of students, lecturers and administrators in a public university providing an illustration of how macro-level policies are enacted at the micro-level. The analysis of the participants’ views and perceptions suggests that macro-level planning alone may not produce the desired changes in language behaviour and that national-level planning needs to be complemented by micro-level work to create desirable language policy outcomes. This suggests that Malaysian LEPP needs to take micro-level realities, perceptions and stakeholders’ experiences into consideration while promoting and strengthening the mastery of English if macro-level planning is to contribute to successful outcomes.

Broadening the conceptualization of literacy in the lives of adults with intellectual disability

Current pedagogical approaches recognize literacy as a social practice and yet school-based conceptualizations continue to dominate understandings of literacy learning of individuals with intellectual disability. Such understandings lead to local or everyday literacy practices being devalued and overlooked. Thus, for adults with intellectual disability who might not possess a high level of proficiency in school-based literacy, it is important to develop understandings about their everyday literacy uses for such practices to be recognized as being socially and culturally significant. Approaches to research are needed, which enable collection of rich, detailed information about literacy use by adults with intellectual disability that go beyond standardized scores and rankings and outside of the classroom. This paper presents a view of methodologies that can be used to conduct future research in this area that will broaden the conceptualization of literacy for adults with intellectual disability.

Teachers’ perceptions of and responses to student evaluation of teaching: purposes and uses in clinical education

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) only becomes an effective tool for improving teaching and learning when the relevant stakeholders seriously consider and plan appropriate actions according to student feedback. It is common practice in medical education to provide clinical teachers with student feedback. However, there is limited evidence about how teachers in higher education, and medical education in particular, systematically apply student feedback to improve the quality of their teaching practice. The focus of this case study was to examine clinical teachers’ perceptions of and responses to SET with respect to its purposes and uses for enhancing their teaching. An explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from the clinical coaches. These clinical coaches perceived the main purpose of student evaluation as quality assurance, and were moderately receptive to student feedback. Four key factors enabling or inhibiting their responses were revealed: institutional requirements, operational practices, personal biases and provision of support. Future research should further explore the interrelationships among the above factors as the core mechanism in influencing clinical teachers’ perceptions of and responses to student evaluation.

Negotiating knowledge in a researcher and teacher collaborative research partnership

In this article the authors report the findings of a collaborative partnership between university researchers and school teams of administrators and teachers and how different kinds of knowledge were negotiated during the process of undertaking action research. The authors’ analysis sheds light on the subtle and complex negotiations that occur so that both groups can display their expertise in a variety of areas, while at the same time allowing the other the space to be experts themselves. They believe that this study contributes to the development of more complex understandings of how researchers and teachers develop and negotiate knowledge while engaged in collaborative research.

Literacy Assessment and Student Diversity: An Australian case study

This article describes the reported practices in literacy assessment, recording, and reporting in 12 Australian schools characterised by populations of diverse learners. The findings indicate the problems and challenges teachers face in providing socially just and inclusive literacy assessment in heterogeneous classrooms. We make a number of suggestions related to enhancing assessment, recording, and reporting at the classroom level and argue for systemic support for teachers.

Unanticipated ethical issues in a participatory research project with individuals with intellectual disability

The conduct of a participatory research investigation into the everyday literacy of adults with intellectual disability within the context of a PhD thesis highlighted issues related to the ethics of participatory research and the need to revisit and reconsider ethical guidelines around working with individuals with intellectual disability. Tensions were identified between participatory research ideology and the reality of research experiences, with additional issues arising due to disability in the first author.

Investigating the Development of Foreign Language Anxiety: An Autobiographical Approach.

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been found to exist in tertiary students learning foreign languages in many countries; however, limited research has explored how it develops. This study investigated how anxiety developed in students of English as a foreign language (EFL), focusing on changes in their feelings about EFL learning as they learned, using an autobiographical approach. Participants were 49 undergraduates identified as anxious based on their scores on the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, and drawn from a sample of 419 non-English major students from five schools in a university in Vietnam. Data were analysed with NVivo using a content analysis approach. The findings indicate that EFL students learned to be anxious, and that four issues affecting FLA included pedagogy, assessment, student–teacher relationships and curriculum structure. The study indicates a need to convince students of the importance of EFL learning across all levels of education so that they become persistent and develop a strong sense of need to study English.

The personal response: A novel writing assignment to engage first year students in large human biology classes†

The teaching of highly valued scientific writing skills in the first year of university is challenging. This report describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel written assignment, The Personal Response and accompanying Peer Review, in the course, Human Biology (BIOL1015) at The University of Queensland. These assignments were the first assessment tasks of the course and were set early in the first semester of university. BIOL1015 had a diverse cohort of 319 first year students from five bachelor degree programs, primarily from Pharmacy and Human Movement Studies. Audio files in the form of interviews with eminent biomedical scientists were obtained from a leading public radio program. Students used these files as triggers to submit a short but highly structured assignment written from a personal perspective and in an expressive style. Evaluations revealed that overall, students found the task interesting and challenging. Students performed well, regardless of their background knowledge, disciplinary interest, or preference for topics within human biology. This study demonstrated that The Personal Response was an appropriate task for these first year students of human biology. It represents an alternative to traditional essay writing.

Choosing a school: parental decision-making when special schools are an option

Parental rights to choose a school are widely acknowledged. School choices for parents of children with disability have been discussed in the academic literature; however, the decision-making process itself is largely hidden. It is vital to understand parental decision-making around school choice more deeply, given the high regard with which this is viewed. Six focus groups were held in Queensland, Australia in 2013 to explore parental decision-making. Data were collected from 30 parents with children of different ages, some of whom were eligible for special school enrolment. Most parents felt constrained in choosing a school yet eager to make decisions themselves. Most described the process as rational. Findings suggest that when special school was an option, decision-making felt more restricted and complex. Factors such as difficulty accessing reliable information and pressure from professionals added to the complexity. It was concluded that final school selection did not reliably reflect parental preferences.