Sandy Muspratt

Beyond Generic Knowledge in Pedagogy and Disciplinarity: The Case of Science Textbooks

This article addresses relations among curricular material, pedagogy, and disciplinarity. This article promotes the view that disciplines provide the bases for systematic variations in reasoning practices, logical structures, ways of establishing and representing knowledge, dispositions of inquiry, and ways in which teachers and students might relate and interact. In support, this article presents a summary of a study of high school science textbooks, outlining results of multivariate analyses of various linguistic and textual features and showing clear and interpretable distinctions between the disciplines of science–physics, biology, chemistry, and other subjects. The study concludes that these variations offer distinct programmes for understanding the world, just as these variations can underpin different ways of interacting in classrooms.

Asian Childhoods: Exploring the Lifeworlds of Students in Contemporary Hong Kong

In this article, the authors discuss the findings of two surveys that were conducted with 10-year-old primary students and their parents in Hong Kong. They sought to gather empirical data about how the students spend their time in out-of-school contexts in order to interrogate the view that Asian students often spend much of their time studying, with little leisure time. The authors were concerned that there was an absence of empirical data on this topic. Increasingly, there is a recognition that Asian students perform well in high-stakes international tests, and a widely held view is that this is because they dedicate so much time to intensive academic study in contrast to their ‘Western’ counterparts. The social and cultural capital derived from doing well in school systems is an established feature of many global contexts. In the competitive environment that characterises education in Hong Kong, progression through the system is based solely on examination scores, and justified on the basis that this is both equitable and allows the best students to thrive. Tutorial schools that train attendees in the art of testing are multimillion-dollar industries – but who are the clients? In this article, the authors reveal that at 10 years of age, the out-of-school lives of the students surveyed contain many and varied activities. They attend school and, in out-of-school contexts, complete homework, participate in activities that both incorporate new media (for example, television and computers) and others (for example, indoor and outdoor play), and do not.

Implementing a new model for teachers’ professional learning in Papua New Guinea

This article reports on a study that investigates the possibilities of developing a professional learning model based on action research that could lead to sustained improvements in teaching and learning in schools in remote areas of Papua New Guinea. The issues related to the implementation of this model are discussed using a critical lens that questions the use of ‘western’ constructs about ‘successful’ professional learning and ‘quality’ education in Papua New Guinea. In the article, we discuss the notion of ‘professional learning’ and how action research can be conceived as a model for professional learning. Then, we discuss some of the issues and difficulties that are arising during the implementation of our study. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for future developments of professional learning for teachers in countries such as Papua New Guinea.

Examining Learner Engagement Strategies: Australian and Canadian Teachers' Self-Report.

The Learning and Engagement Questionnaire (LEQ) measures instructional and environmental variables associated with learner engagement. The present study sought to determine the suitability of the LEQ to measure learner engagement with a sample of Canadian teachers and to further investigate the factorial structure in comparison with the Australian context. Canadian teachers (N = 739) from Kindergarten to Grade 12 responded to the LEQ in ways that are explained by two factors identified as “Instructional Cycle” and “Student-Directed Learning.” The previously reported factor structure of the LEQ identified five factors in the Australian study: “Goal Directed Learning,” “Task Selection,” “Intensive Teaching,” “Teacher Responsiveness,” and “Planning and Learning Environment.” There is a discussion of the cross- cultural differences between the Australian and Canadian participant groups and their dominant pedagogical approaches. The LEQ has the potential to raise teachers’ awareness of the strategies they can use to facilitate inclusive practice through differentiated student engagement.

Understanding the Disciplines of Science: Analysing the Language of Science Textbooks

Following some decades of empirical and theoretical attention on the acquisition of the generic skills of reading and writing, in particular as they are dealt with in the early years of schooling, significant interest has resurfaced in the ways in which each curriculum domain puts literacy to work in distinctive ways. Motivating this interest is a reaction to an apparent belief that explicit pedagogical work on the generic, content-free elements of reading and writing (decoding, encoding, comprehension and so on, as exemplified in the US National Reading Panel, 2000) is enough to prepare students adequately for the increasingly complex and specialised reading and writing demands of the secondary school’s curriculum domains. Researchers, like teachers, have found that this belief amounts to a policy of leaving many students behind and a systematic misreading of literacy difficulties as a lack of aptitude or effort (Freebody, Chan, & Barton, in press; Moje, 2007).

'A game isn’t a game without interaction’: students’ thoughts about the use of digital games in school

Literacy, Learning, and Digital Games is a comprehensive account of the possibilities and challenges of teaching and learning with digital games in primary and secondary schools. Based on an original research project, the book explores digital games’ capacity to engage and challenge, present complex representations and experiences, foster collaborative and deep learning, and enable curricula that connect with young people today. These exciting approaches illuminate the role of context in gameplay as well as the links between digital culture, gameplay, and identity in learners’ lives, and are applicable to research and practice at the leading edge of curriculum and literacy development.Children are often positioned as consumers of digital games, but what happens when they become the creators and producers of their own games? This chapter describes a digital game-making project in a Year 3/4 classroom where young students made their own digital games using the block coding program Scratch. While this project cuts across several curriculum areas, it was primarily designed as a Language and Literacies project with written composition at the centre.The case study data used in this chapter was collected from one teacher, Nick, and his Year 3/4 classes over a three-year period. While coding work in schools is generally located in Science, Technology and Mathematics education (STEM), Nick drew upon the affordances of Scratch to develop a strong language arts/ literacies focus through a game-making unit. In this way, the unit cuts across the curriculum, addressing many of the STEM standards in addition to those of Language and Literacy.For the Cook-Fort Worth Childrens Medical Center, David Schwarz offers a successful blend of comfort and delight.