Projects listed are either funded by SiMERR or involved SiMERR researchers
2004-2006 ARC Linkage Grant $74,696
Developing Informed and Integrated Strategies to Address Low Female Participation Rates in Professional Information and Communication Techology (ICT) Career Pathways (not SiMERR funded)
Neil Anderson, Colin Lankshear, Mary Kline in partnership with Education Queensland and Technology One
This project proposed collaborative research to address low rates of participatin in ICT professional occupations and educational pathways. A comprehensive Queensland data set was derived from a large-scale survey and interviews with Year 11 and Year 12 high school girls, and women working in the ICT Profession. Findings from this research have informed policy and contributed toward new and coordinated stategic approaches to improve school programs to enhance female participation. Also, these girls identified their upper middle school years as the time when they became "turned off" to ICT.
2006-2008 ARC Linkage Grant $92,000
Re-engaging Disadvantaged Youth through Science (not SiMERR funded)
David Lake, Sue McGinty, Neil Anderson, Glenn Dawes, Nola Alloway, P. D. Ainsworth, D. B. Murray, in partnership with Edmund Rice Flexible Learning Centres and James Cook University.
17, 000 youth have become disconnected from the education system across Australia. The project will provide a model to reengage these youth by providing relevant scientific content where students actively interact with peers in widely dispersed locations. The groups of students will engage in investigative projects where their performances are able to extend beyond traditional literacy-based assessment techniques. Investigations of body image will be used as a vehicle to integrate academic teaching, promoting good health and well-being within a social values framework to develop citizenship and social awareness with scientific skills. The research will help us understand the factors required to reengage at-risk youth with their community.
2008 - 2010 ARC Linkage Grant $119,753
Girls and Information Communication Technology (ICT) Career Pathways: Tackling the Upper Middle School "Turn Off" (not SiMERR funded)
Neil Anderson, Colin Lankshear in partnership with Sonja Bernhardt, CEO of ThoughtWare, and Technology One
This project aims to develop evidence-based strategic responses to factors associated with girls forming such negative perceptions of ICT during their upper middle school years that they overwhelmingly reject ICT as an option for advanced study and future careers. Previous research indentified the middle school years an especially promising intervention point for tackling gross under-representation of women in the ICT idustry. This project will contribute towards Australia's National Research Priority 3 of building and transforming frontier technologies to maximize creative, technological capability by collaboratively developing a strategic model for responding to factors identified as "turning girls off ICT".
Curriculum Development for Disadvantaged Aboriginal Boys in the Cape and Gulf (Not SiMERR funded)
Associate Professor Neil Anderson with Dr. Pauline Taylor
Research and writing of strategies and materials for the education of boys in indigenous communities in the Cape and Gulf - 2005-2006.
EIDOS Mapping and Scoping (not SiMERR funded)
Associate Professor Neil Anderson with Lyn Courtney
Created ‘Research Seeker’ SQL database driven website and begin mapping the education and social science research expertise across Queensland universities and industry partners. Forming and sustaining collaborative research partnerships across multiple universities and industry partners is a challenging activity. These partnerships often need to be formed rapidly in response to external funding opportunities. Currently education and social research in Queensland and Australia is not well-integrated and there has been no mechanism for positioning the State’s centres of expertise to take advantage of the current and future challenges and developments in research, teaching and policy. In order to develop strategies for building research capacity, it is necessary to account for the research skills, projects and partnerships that currently characterize the landscape of Queensland to identify opportunities for collaboration and synergy in education and social research. To accomplish this task, James Cook University, (contracted by research consortium, Eidos), created ‘Research Seeker’ a SQL database driven website that enabled the mapping of existing areas of education and social research strengths in Queensland universities along with a means of rapidly assembling appropriate teams.
EIDOS Research Training (use of software) for QLD Universities’ staff (minus UQ) to provide training on use of ‘Research Seeker’ to other universities in 2006 (Not SiMERR funded)
Associate Professor Neil Anderson with Lyn Courtney
The database is useful to mobilize collaborative teams across Queensland universities and government policy makers for rural and remote education issues and research.
Professional Development in Cairns Schools for the Success for Boys Project (Not SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson with Dr Colin Baskin
Providing Professional Development for teachers in a cluster of regional Schools in Cairns. Including:- Smithfield State High School, Kuranda State School, Machans Beach, Redlynch State School, Freshwater State School, Yorkey's Knob, Trinity Beach.
New Basics and ICT (not SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson with Dr Colin Baskin
Research and training involving the application of the Productive Pedagogies Framework to teacher professional development and teacher preparation for the use of ICT in classrooms – 2005-2006.
Combining the QLD SiMERR focus groups with ARC statewide data (SiMERR funded)
Associate Professor Neil Anderson with Carolyn Timms
Combining the QLD SiMERR focus groups with ARC statewide data to produce a high quality research paper for the most prestigious journal for Rural and Remote education – ‘Journal of Rural Education Research’.
Re-engaging Disengaged Youth Through the Science of the Kitchen (SiMERR Funded)
David Lake, Kellie Stemp & Paul Ainsworth
Edmund Rice Education (the Christian Brothers), with the active support of Education Queensland, is establishing a network of five flexible learning centres across metropolitan and regional Queensland, The network responds to the complex needs of disadvantaged young people who have been marginalised from mainstream education by building honest and authentic relationships with students and their families. All Flexible Learning Centres provide holistic learning experiences that address the social needs of students, and promote their emotional, cognitive and academic development. The purpose of the learning experiences is to empower young people to take personal responsibility for their actions and learning, achieve greater autonomy and self-reliance.
The school is keen to break from the ‘alternative school’ stereotype where science is peripheral to basic literacy and social education. However, the requirements of a science programme for this group are extremely demanding. In particular it must cope with:
- Low literacy and numeracy levels resulting from large breaks during a frequently interrupted school history
- Considerable cultural disparities between school and home life. (A large proportion of students – roughly half- are Aboriginals or Torres Strait Islanders)
- High levels of life experience (although not always satisfying or rewarding for the student)
- The fragile self esteem of many students and their suspicion of educational settings.
The inquiry model that will be trialed will be structured around a set of ten concrete experiences, each using a different familiar household chemical from the kitchen (such as salt, water, detergent, sugar). The content will be directly linked to life-skills such as cooking, kitchen hygiene and the like. Students will have the opportunity to experiment by controlling variables and making comparisons. Instructional materials to accompany the worksheets will largely replace text with various forms of graphic material.
At the conclusion of the programme their teacher will form a focus group of students to determine specific features of the activities, and the instructional materials, to determine the most effective means to engage this cohort. Particular attention will be paid to:
- The importance of literacy demands of the materials;
- Preference for photographs, line drawings or diagrams in instructional material;
- The desirability (from the student’s perspective) of various levels of autonomy in planning and inquiry;
- The value of cognitive dissonance from discrepant events in stimulating curiosity (versus the psychological discomfort of uncertainty created by unexpected events);
- The role of team collaboration in inquiry design and implementation; and
- The value of useful products (eg pancakes from the activities).
Maths and Science Spectacular for Rural and Regional Students $6,500 (SiMERR funded)
Neil Anderson, David Romagnoto, Tony Fuller and Lyn Courtney
- The Spectacular is a two-hour hands on series of investigations. It brings together maths, science in a motivating and fun way;
- The show targets rural and regional students from Year 5 to 10 and provides PD for teachers;
- The show involves class teachers to provide valuable professional development. JCU will provide the coordination of the show with a coordinator who will inservice the teachers on the investigations. Teachers then conduct the investigations with the students; and
- The show is developed from the JCU maths and science excellence programme which in one year has had 420 enrolments from 30 schools. It has been the subject in 6 news articles, 2 journals, 3 TV stories and has won a regional award and a ministerial visit.
- Activities are designed to be high interest, engaging all students to use maths as part of a spectacular investigation. These are the investigations planned:
- Launch a high speed, high altitude water rocket;
- Smelt red lead oxide powder into lead metal using the heat of an open flame;
- Make a clay mould of a letter and cast it in metal;
- Mix chemicals so reactive they bubble and fizz so no test tube contains them;
- Experiment with amazing dry ice as it bubbles, changes colour and explodes; and
- Use a radar speed gun to measure how fast you can kick or throw a ball.
- The first series of shows will be in Schools in Innisfail. To date six schools have committed to eight shows. This commitment translates to funding to the value of approximately $4600. They have agreed to allow smaller schools in the district to send students to the shows staged at their schools. Every school that was approached has agreed to host a show. In this initial phase 640 students and 48 teachers will experience the show;
- The show will also be offered to other schools in the Cairns and Cape district with cyclone affected areas on the Atherton Tableland the next area targeted; and
- After the development phase of the project, it will be self-funding with the medium term plan to take the show to rural and regional schools in North Queensland.
SiMERR/James Cook University: Project 5 - $3,150 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson, David Romagnolo, Tony Fuller and Lyn Courtney
This project extended earlier work undertaken through the Maths Excellence Program and the Maths Spectacular Program. In this series of the program, nine after school courses were offered to junior and senior students across a variety of subject: Science Experiements and Music/Movement (grades 1 through 4); Maths and Science Excellence; Art; Food Science; Fashion Design; Music Recording/Production; Computing/Multimedia; Engineering/Design (students in grades 5 and above). This program generated over $40K in gross income and secured a $30K sponsorship from the Defence Force.
Parent's Views and Value for the Study of Maths and Science - $7,500 (SiMERR funded)
Dr. Helen Boon with Matilda Loban and James Munro
The purpose of this project was to investigate the knowledge and value of indigenous and non-indigenous parents of students entering secondary school for the study of science and mathematics. Parent's views compared and contrasted to providing insight for the development of a program to promote the study of science at secondary level by informing and helping parents support and encourage their children's application to study, subject selection and career aspirations.
Podcasts, Blogs and Robotics: Professional Development for the Longreach School District - $8,000 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson, Gemma Cameron and Lyn Courtney
This project involved the delivery of professioinal development for teachers with respect to robotics and communication via podcasts and blogs. A one-day workshop was delivered to Longreach teachers in October, 2007 and these teachers are now able to provide similar podcasts, blogs and robotics workshops for teachers in the nearby rural school districts: Muttaburra, Ilfrancombe and Isisford.
Groote Island Project - $1,200 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson, Professor Colin Lankshear, Alan Clough, Juanita Sellwood and and Lyn Courtney
The Groote Island community in the Northern Territory are struggling with issues such as absenteeism in schools, lack of community engagement with modern technologies and lack of interest in maths, science and a variety of literacies. The community expressed a desire to form a partnership with the university to explore the use of ICT, in particular to enhance learning in schools and to provide increased motivation for students. Other perceived spin-offs from increased knowledge, skills and ICT infrastructure would be the use of ICT to improve community health and well being. In order to pursue this idea further, the Groote Island community funded a trip to JCU, Cairns on 6th March by the Groote Island elders and council (including chair of the council) to attend a one day workshop where the community members could examine examples of social computing tools, educational games and robotics. The day also involved sessions of information sharing by members of the Groote Island community to share ideas about the community needs and current resources. This initial submission is to enable further planning and consultation with the community and to involve our SiMERR partners in the Northern Territory in order to develop specific on-going plans. The project does hope to achieve the delivery of some robotics workshops in Groote Island schools in the first phase. This project fits very well with SiMERR aims as it provides professional learning in one of Australia’s most remote communities. The community has very extensive needs in improving outcomes in maths, science and ICT. It also affords an opportunity for two state hubs to work together to make a real difference to the quality of life for the community on Groote Island.
Study of Science and Maths (SiMERR funded)
Dr Helen Boon
The purpose of the research is to investigate the knowledge and value of Indigenous and non-Indigenous parents of students entering secondary school for the study of science and maths. These are to be compared and contrasted with a view to provide a program to promote the study of science at secondary level, by informing and helping parents support and encourage their children’s application to study, subject selection and career aspirations. The decline in the study of science is a critical national issue and it is envisaged that parental support for the pursuit of a scientific career will have significant effects. Empirical studies have demonstrated the influence of parental aspirations and values for education in international studies. Approximately 300 Year 7 going into Year 8 parents drawn from 3 regional Townsville schools will be surveyed for their knowledge, understanding and value for science and maths education.
Mathematical Backgrounds of Pre-service Teachers in Rural Australia: A Regional Comparative Study - $5,400 (SiMERR Funded)
Stephen Tobias and Diane Itter
This study investigated the nature and depth of pre-service teachers' mathematical competencies, attitudes and beliefs of students entering teacher education courses in rural and remote areas. The study was simultaneously duplicated in two regional universities: James Cook University (JCU Townsville) and La Trobe University (LTU Bendigo), both of which draw many students from rural and isolated parts of Australia. The study provided insights into the backgrounds of preservice teacehrs in their first year of tertiary study.
Tobias, S. Itter, D (2007). Mathematical beackgrounds of preservice teachers in rural Australia: A regional comparative study. Paper presented at the AARE Conference (Perth, WA).
Potential of Robotics in Rural and Remote Schools: Professional Development for the Mareeba School Cluster - $7,050 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson, Max Rivett and Lyn Courtney
This project involved the delivery of professional development for teachers with respect to robotics. A one-day workshop was delivered to teachers at the Mareeba State School who then provided similar robotics workshops for teachers in the nearby rural school cluster of: Walkaman, Bilboohra and Mutchilba.
One Teacher Schools and Science - $8,500 (SiMERR funded)
Dr David Lake
One teacher schools are widespread around rural and regional Australia, yet very little work has been undertaken to ascertain how students perceive science lessons in multi-level, isolated classes. It has been suggested that rural students have less clear understanding of academic scientific careers (as opposed to trade careers) and this study will seek to ascertain what students feel are the important attributes of school science. Students from within a cluster of 10 one-teacher primary schools centred around Ayr (North Queensland) will be interviewed to ascertain their perceptions of:
- School science curriculum
- School science practice
- The nature of science: knowledge, cognitive and manual skills, attitudes and values
- The nature of secondary science
- Scientific careers and the required training
Creating a Sustainable Pedagogical Culture in the Canecutter Cluster of Schools - $3,500 (SiMERR funded)
Dr. David Lake
This project focused on creating and extending a sustainable pedagogical approach to the new Queensland Mathematics and Science syllabi to provide an intellectually challenging environemnt inclusive of all students regardless of ability or past achievement.
Successful Indigenous Scientists: Inversting the Coconut - $5,500 (SiMERR funded)
Dr. David Lake and Max Lenoy
This project involved an investigation of indigenous scientists' perceptions of what they need to succeed in studying science. Five male and five female indigenous scientists were interviewed about their experiences as students including their strengths, adaptations they needed to make, aspects of science that they found most difficult, starategies employed to voercome these difficulties, what they could have done differently, what they would recommend to young indigenous students and recommendations to science teachers in order to enhance indigenous student's performance in science subjects.
Potential of Robotics in Rurl and Remote Schools: Professional Development for the Mareeba School Cluster - $7,050 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson and Dr Colin Baskin
Delivered Professional Development (PD) for teachers regarding the potential of robotics. A one- day PD workshop will be delivered to Mareeba State School teachers who will then be well placed to provide similar robotics workshops for teachers in the nearby rural school cluster of Walkaman, Bilboohra and Mutchilba State Schools.
Gaining Knowledge and Understandinf of Year 10 Students with Regard to Climate Change and Ozone Depletion - $7,900 (SiMERR funded)
Dr Helen Boon, Matt Bulger, James Munro and Willhelmina Rawlings
The purpose of the research is to investigate the knowledge and understanding of Year 10 students with regard to climate change and ozone depletion. This is to be compared and contrasted with a previous survey conducted in 1991 on these issues and with similar school cohorts. The topics are currently debated in the political arena and are of importance and relevance to rural students as well as regional and urban students. Despite the recent media attention, little work has been conducted recently to explore current student knowledge surrounding these issues. Approximately 600 Year 10 students drawn from 8 schools, 3 urban (Brisbane), 3 regional (Townsville) and 3 remote will be surveyed upon their knowledge and understanding of global warming and ozone depletion. The perceived level of importance for these issues will also be ascertained.
Investigating Computer Usage and Perspectives of Middle School Students and Teachers in Rural and Regional Queensland - $4,000 (SiMERR funded)
Professor Neil Anderson and Lyn Courtney
This project investigated declining participation rates of girls in ICT subject and pathways to ICT professional careers with a focus on Middle School girls and boys use of computers in rural and regional Queensland and how ICT teachers/Heads of Departments (HODS) perceive the ICT climate in their aschools. A survey was administered to students and focus group interviews were conducted in to rural/remote middle schools.
BirdNet: Creating an Online Science Community for Far North Queensland Students - $68,000 (ASISTM funded)
Dr Hillary Whitehouse, Dr Ruth Hickey, Kay Bergil and Shane McKray
Developed an interactive and innovative website http://www.birdnet.com.au for primary school children.
Science on the Oval (ASISTM Funded)
Dr Hillary Whitehouse
