Léonie J. Rennie

Answering Back: Girls, Boys and Feminism in Schools

Answering Back exposes the volatility of gender reform in many different schools and classrooms. It tells stories in close up and from below, allowing everyone to talk: anxious boys, naughty girls, cantankerous teachers, pontificating principals and feisty feminists. This book challenges many sacred ideas about gender reform in schools and will surprise and unsettle teachers and researchers. It draws on a deep knowledge of gender issues in schools and of feminist theories, policies and practices. It is compelling and provocative reading at the leading edge.

The roles of the formal and informal sectors in the provision of effective science education

For many years, formal school science education has been criticised by students, teachers, parents and employers throughout the world. This article presents an argument that a greater collaboration between the formal and the informal sector could address some of these criticisms. The causes for concern about formal science education are summarised and the major approaches being taken to address them are outlined. The contributions that the informal sector currently makes to science education are identified. It is suggested that the provision of an effective science education entails an enhanced complementarity between the two sectors. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the collaboration and communication still needed if this is to be effective.

Using Visits to Interactive Science and Technology Centers, Museums, Aquaria, and Zoos to Promote Learning in Science.

This article received the “Implications of Research for Educational Practice” award at the 1995 meeting of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. The award is made possible by Carolina Biological Supply. An adaptation of this article, entitled “Don’t Compare, Complement: Making Best Use of Science Centres and Museums,” was published in the 1995 Set: Research Information for Teachers, Number 1, Item 1, by the New Zealand and Australian Councils for Education Research.

Children's Choice of Drawings to Communicate Their Ideas about Technology.

This study examines childrens choice of drawing to communicate their understanding of the concept “technology”. The study explored whether the childrens drawings accurately reflected the depth and range of their understanding of technology in a way that was interpretable by others. Data were collected from 314 primary school children in England and 745 children in Western Australia. Children were invited to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding about technology by responding to a writing/drawing activity and a representative subsample were then interviewed about their responses. About two-thirds of childrens responses to the activity included drawings. Children held a wide range of ideas about technology and only rarely was a drawing difficult to interpret. Although overall the drawings reflected the range of childrens ideas, sometimes they did not reveal the depth or breadth of an individual childs understanding. Consistent with the ideas represented in the drawings, the interviews found that younger children held simpler ideas about technology, while older children held more complex, and sometimes quite abstract concepts of technology. A notable difference between the two countries was the emphasis on “design and make” and a smaller proportion of no response in the English sample, reflecting the greater length of time technology education has been implemented in England compared to Western Australia.

Science Teaching and Learning in Australian Schools: Results of a National Study

This paper reports on a large scale study that investigated the quality of teaching and learning in science in Australian schools. Its purposes were first, to describe ideal practice in the teaching and learning of school science; second, to describe the nature of teaching and learning of science in Australian schools; and third, to make recommendations to move the actual closer to the ideal.Fundamental to the research was the belief that scientific literacy is a high priority for all citizens, helping them to be interested in, and understand the world around them, to be sceptical and questioning of claims made by others about scientific matters, to be able to identify questions, investigate and draw evidence-based conclusions, and to make informed decisions about the environment and their own health and well-being.Based on national and international reports and research literature, and substantial new data collected from teachers, students and other Australian stakeholders in science education, the ideal picture was described in nine themes relating to the curriculum, teaching and learning strategies, professionalism of teachers and their career path, resources and facilities, and the value of science and science education to the community. The actual picture was one of great variability, but overall, it was bleak. The actual curriculum implemented in most schools differs from the intended curriculum, which is focused on developing scientific literacy and helping students progress towards achieving the stated outcomes. Science in primary schools is generally student-centred and activity-based. When students move to high school, many experience disappointment, because the science they are taught is neither relevant nor engaging and does not connect with their interests and experiences. Disenchantment with science is reflected in the decline in science subjects taken by students in upper secondary school. Many science teachers feel undervalued, under-resourced and overloaded with non-teaching duties.The recommendations developed to improve the status and quality of science education were underlain by five fundamental premises: the purpose of science education is to develop scientific literacy, the focus for change is closing the gap between the actual and ideal, teachers are the key to change, change takes time and resources, and collaboration is essential for quality science education. Preliminary recommendations were prepared and scrutinised by members of a government-appointed Steering Committee for the project, critical friends, and teacher focus groups. Recommendations concerning awareness, teachers, resources, assessment, and national collaboration were developed incorporating feedback from the process described, each including a range of suggested actions for implementation that were feasible in the Australian context. If Commonwealth and State governments choose to act on these recommendations, the gap between the actual picture of science teaching and learning in Australia and the ideal will be significantly reduced.

Measuring affective outcomes from a visit to a Science Education Centre

One of the problems in measuring affective outcomes from visits to science education centres like the CSIROSEC laboratories, is that different students have quite different experiences. They attend to different sets of activities or exhibits for different lengths of time, they have different amounts of previous knowledge and they may interact in different ways. Measurement of affective outcomes must take account of this diversity and, if it is to be useful for teachers, a measuring instrument must be brief, easy to understand and to score. This paper reports the results of a pilot study which devised a way of measuring affective outcomes from visits to a CSIROSEC. Specifically, students responded in terms of how easy they found various aspects of the activities, their enjoyment of what they did, and how helpful they found the visit in terms of their wider views and understanding about science and scientists.

The communication of science and technology: past, present and future agendas

Community learning of science and technology has undergone radical review in the past few years. This paper outlines changes that have taken place in research methods that have addressed the informal learning of science, particularly in the museum sector. We discuss the shift in perspective that has occurred over the past three decades in the public understanding movement, examine some current issues, and suggest future directions for research. The paper concludes with a personal vision for the future of community learning about science and technology.

Three approaches to measuring children's perceptions about technology

Abstract This paper reports the development and use of three instruments which comprise a comprehensive technique for describing childrens perceptions about technology. The instruments are a questionnaire for upper primary school children, a quiz using pictures instead of written items for lower primary school children and, for both age‐groups, a combined writing/drawing activity which complements the questionnaire or quiz. The instruments are designed to cater for children from a range of age levels, provide information helpful to teachers about childrens perceptions of technology, and be suitable for use in research. The instruments were trialled in a total of 28 classes in Western Australian schools and construct validity established by examining the pattern of responses between pairs of instruments completed by the same children. The teachers stated that participating in the processes of developing and administering the instruments was useful and gave them valuable information about childrens views...

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Re-Searching the Conditions for Curriculum Integration in the Middle Years of Schooling

In Australia, and internationally, integration is a widely promoted middle school curriculum reform strategy. Integration is claimed to engage students by providing opportunities to work on a few cross-disciplinary objectives, to apply knowledge across the subject boundaries and to work on tasks with meaning and relevance. While these curriculum goals enjoy a certain popularity among middle school reformers and curriculum integration adherents, in practice, the prevalence of integration is patchy and provisional. In this article, we (re) examine two of our studies of middle school integration over the past decade to explore the reasons for this apparent disparity between the rhetoric and the reality. In our re-search for integration, we look back at our data to identify enabling and inhibiting conditions for curriculum reform and develop a list of key program characteristics. Finally, we look forward, drawing on the notion of institutional resilience to speculate on the reasons why some middle school programs seem to flourish while others wither.

Bridging the Boundaries of Compartmentalised Knowledge: Student learning in an integrated environment

The integration of content from the science, mathematics and technology learning areas is well grounded in the philosophy of middle schooling. However, there is a notable absence of recent empirical research to show if and/or how students learn science and mathematics concepts in integrated settings. This paper presents a case study of a Year 9 class that participated in a technology project constructing a solar boat involving science and mathematics components on electric circuits, statistical analysis, critical pathways and the reading of sun charts. The case study focuses on three pairs of students in the class and the results consists of three learning episodes that made up part of the students’ learning experience. The discussion explores the nature of the students’ learning and concludes that learning was enhanced as a result of the students’ involvement in the solar boat project.