The limited research into leading STEM education in rural schools internationally tends to adopt a deficit view, with a focus on the poor achievement and aspirations of rural students, difficulties ...recruiting and retaining STEM
teachers, and issues of isolation and under-resourcing. Counter to this trend, this paper reports on research investigating leadership practices shaping STEM education at three high STEM-performing rural schools. High-performing rural
schools in Victoria, Australia were identified through analysis of state- wide final year enrolment and achievement data in STEM related senior subjects. Three rural schools with relatively high STEM subject enrolments and achievement
levels were selected for in-depth study. The theory of Practice Architectures guided thematic analysis of interviews with principals, middle leaders, and teachers, facilitating a description of the ways that leadership practices
interacted with the Practice Architectures evident at each school, which, in turn, enabled and constrained practices that contributed to each school's STEM education success. Five leadership practices were identified as contributing to
STEM education success at all three schools: leveraging community relationships, utilising local resources to enrich STEM learning, empowering STEM teaching staff, promoting the value of STEM education, and supporting STEM pathways. In
detailing these leadership practices, this paper provides guidance to rural education leaders and policy makers seeking to improve STEM education in rural schools. Author abstract
Science and science education are recognised internationally as essential for ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future. At the same time, significant equity issues are apparent in science ...education. This study used enrolment and academic result data, routinely collected from government schools in Victoria, Australia, to examine the impact of socioeconomic status and school location on patterns of participation and achievement in senior school Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physics and Psychology. This research shows that though non- metropolitan students are less likely to have the sciences provided by their school, where they are provided they enrol in similar proportions to metropolitan students. In line with other research, it shows that high SES students are more likely than other students to study senior secondary Chemistry and Physics, and outperform low SES students in all senior sciences. While the findings of this study suggest that non-metropolitan students underperform their metropolitan counterparts in senior sciences, they suggest the gap in performance is not dramatic. More promising, the variation in school performance revealed in this study suggests that non-metropolitan schools can achieve just as well as metropolitan schools in the sciences. The study also suggests location has a moderating effect on SES not noted in the current literature, where science achievement in non-metropolitan schools appears less impacted upon by SES than similar schools in urban environments. This provides impetus for further research into high science performing non-metropolitan schools as a step towards addressing some of the equity concerns in science education. Author abstract
Mathematics education is seen as a right for all children, and important to ensure a prosperous future. However, in Australia and other nations, rural students and students from low socioeconomic ...backgrounds both perform less well in
mathematics and are less likely to pursue advanced mathematics. This paper presents a case study of a low socioeconomic status, rural government school that has high engagement and achievement in senior mathematics, despite its setting.
The study uses a conceptual framework informed by Appreciative Inquiry and the theory of Practice Architectures to explore the activities and facilitatory elements that have likely contributed to the school's mathematics success. Rather
than being attributed to one or two key programmes, the school's mathematics success seemed associated with a collection of whole-school factors. Setting high expectations while providing proactive learning support, differentiating
instruction, emphasising the value of mathematics, linking mathematics to careers, and building mathematics teacher capacity were all associated with the school's higher than expected mathematics performance. Rather than hindering the
school's mathematics programme, its small size and rural context were used to enable practices that contributed to mathematics success. Author abstract
In many countries, there is pressure for schools to increase student engagement and skills in mathematics, in particular for disadvantaged students. This is certainly true in Australia. This study ...repurposes school level data to examine patterns of participation and achievement in senior secondary school mathematics in Victoria, Australia. It confirms that school socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly tied to participation and achievement in these subjects, and that nonmetropolitan schools tend to perform more poorly than metropolitan schools in these areas. It shows that nonmetropolitan schools are less likely to offer advanced mathematics subjects than metropolitan schools, and where they do, their students are less likely to choose those options. This study also reveals that correlations between mathematics performance and SES are far weaker in the nonmetropolitan school population than the metropolitan school population. This suggests that a nonmetropolitan location has a moderating effect on the impact of SES, pointing the way for potentially fruitful lines of future inquiry. Author abstract
The rise of STEM education, and the twenty first century skills movement, and the increasingly technologically driven nature of our world, has pushed technology education to the fore in recent times. ...Technology education faces a range of equity issues and there has been a particular focus on gender issues. This study considers two less explored equity issues: school location and socioeconomic status (SES). Using data routinely collected in Victoria, Australia by the Department of Education and Training, senior school technology subject provision, enrolment and achievement patterns were examined by location and SES. Though little difference was found in the academic performance of students from metropolitan or non- metropolitan locations in technology subjects, there were notable differences in participation. Non- metropolitan students were more likely to enrol in design technology and engineering subjects than students attending metropolitan schools. However, while nonmetropolitan student's enrolled in the digital technology subjects at a similar rate to metropolitan students, nonmetropolitan students were less likely to have access to these subjects. Students from lower SES schools tended to perform more poorly in technology subjects than students from high SES backgrounds. Further, the lowest SES schools were the least likely to offer technology subjects. This skewed access to, and performance in, technology subjects by SES and location, highlights significant equity issues in technology education that have attracted only limited attention in the literature. Author abstract
In Life and Works of the Reverend Father Cruchard, Flaubert makes a brilliant entry, via the Reverend Father Cerpet, into the world of parodical hagiography. His subject is less famous than Saint ...Anthony but he too lives in a world full of temptations. If one’s mind is sufficiently warped, one can try to dig up the erotic foundations of the hero’s perpetual jubilation.
Pour Brigitte et Denis Hüe L’argot, parole des autres « Un mazagran n’est pas de la langue de M. Mure, lequel est un magistrat. Pourquoi ainsi parler argot ? » « M. Flaubert n’est pas un écrivain. ...Descriptions à part, son style est indécis, incorrect, vulgaire, et son école, si elle venait à prévaloir, serait l’invasion dans la langue du daguerréotype, du parler de la rue, et bientôt après du patois, sous prétexte d’exactitude et de naturel. »J. Habans « … on ne parle pas à l’entresol comm...
Cardiac electrical activity is often altered by administration of anesthetic drugs. While the effects of propofol in this regard have previously been described in dogs, to date, there are no reports ...of the effect of alfaxalone. This study investigated the impact of both propofol and alfaxalone on the ECG of 60 dogs, after premedication with acepromazine and methadone. Heart rate increased significantly in both groups. The PR and QRS intervals were significantly increased following propofol while with alfaxalone the QRS duration was significantly increased and ST segment depression was observed. The QT and JT interval were significantly shorter following induction with alfaxalone, but, when corrected (c) for heart rate, QTc and JTc in both groups were significantly greater following induction. When comparing the magnitude of change between groups, the change in RR interval was greater in the alfaxalone group. The change in both QT and JT intervals were significantly greater following alfaxalone, but when QTc and JTc intervals were compared, there were no significant differences between the two drugs. The similarly increased QTc produced by both drugs may suggest comparable proarrhythmic effects.
Science education is essential for sustainability and prosperity. However, students from rural communities, arguably the future custodians of our environment and significant drivers of our economies, ...underperform in science education. In Australia, rural students generally lag behind metropolitan students in science achievement and engagement. However, this is not the case for all rural schools. This paper reports on one case study of a rural school performing much better than expected in senior science subjects. Counter to trends of lower expectations, limited resourcing and restricted pathways afflicting rural science education, this school maintained high expectations backed by proactive support, used local resources to offer rich science learning and creatively maintained a broad array of science learning pathways. Further, the school actively raised the profile of science, and built the capacity of their science teaching team. This case study demonstrates that rural schools, by capitalising on their local resources, relatively small size and strong community relationships, can succeed in science education. This case, along with similar cases, has implications for school leaders, teachers and policy makers seeking to improve rural science education.
Fire is an integral part of savanna ecology and changes in fire patterns are linked to biodiversity loss in savannas worldwide. In Australia, changed fire regimes are implicated in the contemporary ...declines of small mammals, riparian species, obligate-seeding plants and grass seed-eating birds. Translating this knowledge into management to recover threatened species has proved elusive. We report here on a landscape-scale experiment carried out by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) on Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in northwest Australia. The experiment was designed to understand the response of a key savanna bird guild to fire, and to use that information to manage fire with the aim of recovering a threatened species population. We compared condition indices among three seed-eating bird species--one endangered (Gouldian finch) and two non-threatened (long-tailed finch and double-barred finch)--from two large areas (> 2,830 km2) with initial contrasting fire regimes ('extreme': frequent, extensive, intense fire; versus 'benign': less frequent, smaller, lower intensity fires). Populations of all three species living with the extreme fire regime had condition indices that differed from their counterparts living with the benign fire regime, including higher haematocrit levels in some seasons (suggesting higher levels of activity required to find food), different seasonal haematocrit profiles, higher fat scores in the early wet season (suggesting greater food uncertainty), and then lower muscle scores later in the wet season (suggesting prolonged food deprivation). Gouldian finches also showed seasonally increasing stress hormone concentrations with the extreme fire regime. Cumulatively, these patterns indicated greater nutritional stress over many months for seed-eating birds exposed to extreme fire regimes. We tested these relationships by monitoring finch condition over the following years, as AWC implemented fire management to produce the 'benign' fire regime throughout the property. The condition indices of finch populations originally living with the extreme fire regime shifted to resemble those of their counterparts living with the benign fire regime. This research supports the hypothesis that fire regimes affect food resources for savanna seed-eating birds, with this impact mediated through a range of grass species utilised by the birds over different seasons, and that fire management can effectively moderate that impact. This work provides a rare example of applied research supporting the recovery of a population of a threatened species.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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