ERA Education Peer Reviewed Conference Papers Copyright (c) 2013 University of Notre Dame Australia All rights reserved. http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/era_edu_conference Recent documents in ERA Education Peer Reviewed Conference Papers en-us Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:32:54 PST 3600 When Old Is New: Exploring The Potential Of Using Indigenous Stories To Construct Learning In Early Childhood Settings http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/era_edu_conference/3 http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/era_edu_conference/3 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:02:56 PDT Incorporating traditional indigenous stories in the Early Childhood Curriculum carries a powerful message of cultural diversity and change - from the past denigration of Indigenous South-African and Aboriginal cultures to appreciation and reinstatement of such cultures today. Storytelling has the ability to create the right learning environment for early childhood students. In this paper a report is given of an exploratory study of the traditional South African and Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, which are seen as possible vehicles and innovations to educate students in Early Childhood in Australia and South Africa. These stories will also be used to find links with different Learning Areas in the Early Childhood Curriculum. Exemplars of such exercises are illustrated by means of the South-African, "Wolf who wants to fly" and Australian, "Banjora, Uwappa and the Mundurras," indigenous stories. The reason for working across two continents is that in South Africa, as well as Australia, indigenous stories were kept alive over generations by transmitting them orally. Some comparisons between these two.

]]> Christina Van Staden et al. Videoconferencing as a Professional Development Learning Environment http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/era_edu_conference/1 http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/era_edu_conference/1 Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:56:31 PDT Reports show that numeracy standards of K-7 students living in geographically-isolated areas of Western Australia are lower than those of their metropolitan counterparts (Nelson, 2005). One significant reason for this is that teachers of students in rural locations have less exposure to best practices and fewer opportunities for professional development. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that country schools tend to attract recent graduates who are most in need of support to establish sound teaching practices. Despite exposure to these practices in their pre-services courses, the pressures of the first year result in many new teachers teaching from texts rather than to clearly-defined numeracy needs.

This paper discusses the findings of a project that aimed to support newly-appointed rural teachers in implementing mathematics curriculum with students in Years 2 to 7. Following face-to-face assistance in the identification of their students' numeracy needs, seven teachers in three schools were then supported by means of fortnightly videoconference sessions on mathematics curriculum that addressed these needs. It was anticipated that regular contact with teacher educators would give them confidence in implementing a task-based (rather than a text-based) curriculum. Qualitative methodology was used to obtain insights into the value of this form of professional development. Data were collected via teacher interviews and transcribed videoconference sessions over two terms. Findings suggest that, while not without its problems, videoconferencing can be used to support recent graduates teachers develop professionally.

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