Professionals of different disciplines, including chemists and chemical engineers, engage in water research, even though they might not have been extensively trained in it during their studies. We ...describe a project-centred master level subject “Water as a Hydrogeological, Ecological, and Analytical System”, which, by focussing on waterbodies instead of a particular aspect of water quality, merges total analytical process with water research and, by a considerate choice of chemical parameters, enables students to apply water-research-specific data-treatment techniques, including the Piper and Stiff diagram, to discuss water genesis, processes in water, and influences on waterbodies. Agile management, initiated in computer engineering in 2001, is believed to contribute to better products in a shorter time. We demonstrate how its incorporation into the organisational scheme helped students self-organise, handle their projects, and collaborate within and between groups. Student’s expressions confirm their overall satisfaction, motivation, and that the omission of the final classical exam had no adverse effects on the learning outcomes. Their consent with different benefits of the project-centred collaborative approach and their self-efficacy beliefs, respectively, expressed as mean values in a five-grade Likert scale ranged from 4.26 to 5.00 and from 4.32 to 5.00. Regarding the students’ time investment, the project-centred approach as the mean grade 3 confirmed is not recognised as an easier way. We provide partially self-calculating, self-notifying Excel spreadsheet tables to ease the implementation of water research data-treatment techniques, which help students collaborate and discuss their subject extensively.
Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically. These expectations affect students ...when they are communicated by teachers through differential treatment in the class, but no qualitative research has sought adolescent students’ points of view about how they experience teacher expectation effects. This paper presents new research findings that explain
how
Grade 10 students experienced their teachers’ expectations in ways that they reflected impacted their academic outcomes. Classic grounded theory methods were used to develop this new knowledge, which has implications for how teachers are educated for, and practice, interacting with secondary school students. The findings are grounded in data from more than 100 interviews with students and 175 classroom observations in three Western Australian metropolitan public secondary schools. Students’ voices are projected, explaining how their teachers convey high academic expectations through classroom interactions that instil confidence in students. The discussion invokes a connection to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and its enduring tenants of self-efficacy beliefs and mastery learning experiences.
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