Nola Alloway

Preschooler's Use of Microcomputers and Input Devices

This study measured the efficiency of use by preschoolers of common input devices including the keyboard, the joystick and the mouse. It also investigated their preferred input device in a free play setting. The manner in which the children interacted with the microcomputers and each other in this setting, including gender factors, was also considered. The subjects in the study consisted of thirty-seven children, of whom fifteen were girls and twenty-two boys, with an average age of four years, seven and a half months. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in efficiency between the three input devices, with the mouse being more efficiently used than the joystick, which in turn is more efficiently used than the keyboard. The between groups interaction of gender with input device is not significant. No pattern of preference was identified for a particular input device. The microcomputers were used extensively during free play, and from the variety of activities available, the boys selected the microcomputer activity significantly more than the girls. The present study demonstrates that unmonitored free-play allows for inequitable access to, and selection of, a microcomputer activity.

SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: BOYS, LITERACIES, AND SCHOOLING – AN AUSTRALIAN STORY

This article focuses on issues related to boys, literacies, and schooling as played out in the Australian context. It reflects on the swathe of populist discourse centring on boys, and on literacy, that drives a potentially divisive education agenda. In providing more nuanced analyses of the debates surrounding the disputed territory of boys, literacies, and schooling, the article offers examples of disaggregated literacy test data to demonstrate the importance of adopting a “which boys” and “which girls” approach to the issues. The article also provides brief coverage of the Success for Boys program, introduced in Australia in 2006, that encourages teachers to swim against the tide of populism by embracing the agenda in all of its complexity. Key words : gender, literacy achievement, schooling Cet article porte sur des questions reliees aux garcons, aux litteraties et a l’ecole dans un contexte australien. L’auteure etudie les multiples discours populistes sur les garcons et la litteratie susceptibles d’entrainer une approche fractionnelle en education. Tout en fournissant une analyse nuancee des debats entourant le territoire conteste des garcons, les litteraties et l’ecole, l’article fournit des exemples de donnees de tests de litteratie non regroupees qui demontrent l’importance de distinguer de « quels garcons » et de « quelles filles » il s’agit. En outre, l’article presente brievement un programme lance en 2006, Success for Boys, qui incite les enseignants a nager a contre ‐ courant du populisme en adoptant un point de vue qui tient compte de toute la complexite de l’education. Mots cles : genre, rendement en litteratie, education

Secondary school students' perceptions of, and the factors influencing their decision making in relation to, VET in schools

This paper addresses the issue of Vocational Education and Training in Schools — an issue that has recently attracted significant political attention particularly in light of current national skills shortage in Australia. Specifically, it investigates secondary school students’ perceptions of VET in Schools [VETiS]. It also explores the factors influencing their decision-making in relation to VETiS — that is, why one might choose, or choose not, to enrol in a VETiS course of study. In view of the findings presented, the paper argues that VET, and more particularly VETiS, is experiencing an “image problem” — one underscored by the need for curriculum design and delivery reform — and suggests that there is much work still to be done on the VET agenda.

High and Dry in Rural Australia: Obstacles to Student Aspirations and Expectations.

Abstract This paper documents the voices of Australian rural students as a means of examining students’ views of the obstacles confronting them in their endeavours to fulfil the aspirations and expectations for their future imagined lives. The paper draws upon a national research project, and more specifically, data collected in a series of focus group interviews conducted with secondary school students in thirteen rural/regional communities across Australia. In view of this data, the paper demonstrates that the influences on, and indeed the obstacles to, rural students’ aspirations and expectations, can be categorised into two dimensions – the personal and the social – that are nonetheless interconnected. Finally, in light of this, and as evident in the students’ voices, it explores the following range of issues: availability of finance; apprehension and fear; attachment to home; work opportunities, as well as, educational opportunities.

Looking “outward and onward” in the outback: Regional Australian students’ aspirations and expectations for their future as framed by dominant discourses of further education and training

This paper investigates regional Australian students’ aspirations and expectations for their future and, more specifically, the manner in which these are formulated around a view to move outward — that is, away from regional, remote and rural communities — and onward — that is, to make something of their lives. Drawing upon interview data, the paper highlights the ways in which rural students from across Australia expressed high-level aspirations, most of which centred on future careers. It explores features of student talk which demonstrates that many of them had thought about their futures in detailed ways and had accumulated knowledge and “street savvy” that would assist them in steering their futures. The paper also examines the ways in which student talk about the changing context of the world of work and the inescapability of further education emerge as a naturalised discourse in justifying their future plans. Finally, the paper explores the implications of such research findings for career advisers and teachers working in regional areas of Australia.

Poststructuralist Theory and Classroom Talk

Poststructuralist theories, with their focus on subjectivity, discourse and the plurality of textual meaning, have had much to offer in research on classroom talk. The possibility that poststructuralism offers, of understanding meaning as produced within language rather than reflected by it, has moved language study and language research into a social and political domain. Questions of authority, of power relations, and of the discursive construction and control of knowledge, become legitimate fields of inquiry within a poststructuralist paradigm, and, for research on classroom talk, this has been an important and significant shift.

Trade Barriers: To Invest, Or Not to Invest, in a Trade as a Career

Abstract This paper highlights on-going concern in Australia about the contested terrain of skills shortages, particularly as they apply to traditional trades. The paper reports on a school-based study of student career choice that was undertaken for the federal government to inform its deliberations1. Drawing on the study, the paper examines key issues related to students’ preparedness, and schools’ readiness, to pursue school-based apprenticeships in traditional trades, reflecting the hope of attenuating the much touted gaps in labour supply and avoiding the social and fiscal effects ofskills shortages, matters to which the nation has been alerted.