Scholarship in Teaching Funded Projects
2012 Successful Applications
A participatory exploration into widening access through students’ participation and engagement in Higher Education
Principal Investigators: Rachael Fox, Judith Gullifer
Summary Description: This project will investigate students’ experiences and perceptions of participation and engagement in learning and teaching in Higher Education with the aim of widening inclusive access. In line with a focus on collaborative and engaging techniques of learning and teaching, the research itself will engage collaboratively with students, to collectively investigate learning and teaching, while undertaking learning and teaching itself. This research will draw upon qualitative Participatory Action Research techniques; reflecting and examining the scholarship of teaching, while engaging in practice, in a collaborative investigation with students which positions them as co-researchers. This will allow for an in-depth investigation into the ways student participation can widen access, in which students are active participants, and which simultaneously offers students reward for collaborating and well developed skills in qualitative inquiry. Findings will make possible meaningful recommendations in terms of inclusion and widening access both for CSU and Australian Higher Education more generally.
Leadership capacity building for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at institutional, disciplinary or cross-disciplinary level
Principal Investigators: Alison Gates, Tracey Green
Summary Description: This project is about developing a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of the transition from practitioner to academic. Findings from this study will draw implications for building leadership capacity and policy development in teaching and learning in higher education. Many of the academic staff at CSU have transitioned from professional practice to higher education. Because of the nature of the programs offered by CSU, we will recruit academic staff who are themselves expert practitioners. However in “coming across” to university teaching, many staff face unexpected challenges. In this study we are particularly interested in challenges related to teaching and learning, including their ideas about teaching philosophies and practice based education. Academics from the practice world often take on important leadership roles within the University, especially as gatekeepers of the relationships between the University and the outside world (including industry, workplaces and accreditation and professional bodies). Understanding their experience of the transition to academia is crucial to successfully recruiting and retaining staff and to providing relevant staff induction and development.
2011 Successful Applications
Building confidence and competency in undergraduate nursing skills: Developing an Empowering Educational Framework to guide progressive clinical skill development
Principal Investigators: Christine Haley, Renee McGill, Louise Wells, Maryanne Mozer
Summary Description: In 2009, a new nursing curriculum, approved by the Nurse & midwives Board of NSW commenced in the School of Nursing, Midwifery & Indigenous Health. This new curriculum is innovative in its acknowledgment and integration of a primary health care (PHC) philosophy, and the imbedding of these principles into nursing practices. A PHC focus aids students to understand the importance of utilising empowering strategies to promote wellness through positive changed behaviour. These strategies to name a few require teamwork, capacity building and an ability to work with current knowledge level of individuals and communities to work collaboratively to promote healthier lifestyle choices. However, in the period since introducing this new curriculum, a number of complex issues have been identified that have hindered the clinical component of the curriculum. It is with these issues in mind that the project participants set about researching and developing a framework for the implementation of strategies that reflect the philosophy imbedded in nursing content, and “mirrors” a PHC approach to health education, utilised in the health in Australia. An action research framework will be utilised to guide a pilot program implemented in the subject NRS293: Clinical Practice 1, in session 2 2011. This methodology aligns well with the chosen pedagogical framework to be implemented, Freire’s Education Empowerment Model (EEM), as it emphasises thoughtful action, constructing meaning and a reflective process. The pilot program is the first stage in larger research project which aims to remodel clinical teaching practices in nursing at Charles Sturt University.
Intergenerational learning: The place of teacher alumni in teacher education.
Principal Investigators: Marilyn Pietsch, Tracey Borg, Kristina Gottschall, Ninetta Santoro
Summary Description: Pre-service teachers come to teacher education with beliefs and values about teaching and teachers that remain largely unexplored, unaffirmed and undeveloped through course curricula. This project will explore the value of developing participatory research with alumni who have long term careers in teaching. The project will examine:
- the effect on students’ beliefs and values about teaching as a profession as a result of their participation in student-devised research projects with CSU alumni who have had long term careers as teachers;
- changes in student understandings of multi-generational teaching work;
- the capacity of students to devise, implement and report on authentic research projects in the context of assessment processes;
The project will engage students with the teaching profession outside school-based practicums and build student understandings of professional careers that extend beyond the early years of teaching. It will explore a pedagogical approach to student research which draws on CSU alumni as a rich and largely untapped resource for student learning.
2010 Successful Applications
Evaluating an embedded curriculum approach to enhancing the literacy and numeracy capacities of first year students
Principal Investigators: Joanne Millar, Rosemary Black, Catherine Allan, Jonathon Howard
Summary Description:This project aims to evaluate an embedded curriculum approach to enhancing the literacy and numeracy capacities of first year students in the School of Environmental Sciences which have declined in recent years. Enhancing student literacy and numeracy is considered to impact positively on retention rates, and is a high priority for CSU and many universities. The project builds on research undertaken in 2009 to evaluate the outcomes of using ACER tests followed by in class tuition, which revealed weaknesses with the delivery of the process. This project will improve the assessment and tuition process in 2010 and provide comparative data on changes in literacy and numeracy outcomes, from the perspectives of students and staff. The results will provide further baseline data for designing a longitudinal study of the process and impact of literacy and numeracy interventions for first year students. This will provide opportunities for sharing further research and scholarship in learning and teaching within the Faculty of Science and across CSU Faculties and Schools.
The impact of online resources for improving student teachers’ conceptual understanding of mathematics
Principal Investigators: Tamsin Meaney, Troels Lange
Summary Description: Prospective primary school teachers all over the world often arrive at university with limited conceptual understanding of the mathematics that they are expected to teach. This project builds on a Learning and Teaching Innovation project in the Faculty of Education in 2008 which investigated how to assess appropriately student teachers’ mathematical knowledge. It was clear from this research that some student teachers needed to do significant work to understand mathematical concepts such as fractions, decimals and percentages. In this project, we want to evaluate students’ use of a resource that links them to conceptual understandings about mathematical topics identified as being problematic in the earlier study. We would ask students keep a journal on how they used the resource, monitor their assessment results and also do focus group interviews. This will enable us to see whether our assumptions about the students’ use of the resource were appropriate.
Measure twice, cut once: How has the Virtual Learning Environment changed the teaching practices and activities of CSU academics
Principal Investigators: Rod Duncan, Kerry Tilbrook, Branka Krivokapic-Skoko, David Dowell, Felicity Small
Summary Description: The introduction of the new VLE (virtual learning environment) at CSU has resulted in changes in the tasks expected of CSU academics while teaching their subjects. As an institution, CSU has a strong interest in tracking the tasks and workloads of its academics in the areas of teaching, research and administration. We intend to develop a time diary tool to measure the teaching, research and administrative tasks that CSU academics are engaged in, as well as the length o time spent on these tasks. This project is a pilot to develop a tool to be used for CSU academics to assist academics in their own time management as well as to assist Heads of School in better managing academics and academic workloads and relating the workload to the core business of CSU.
The Constructivist Classroom Project
Principal Investigators: Linda Ireland, Annabel Matheson, Louise Wells
Summary Description: This project will examine the effects of a change in teaching practice from a traditional didactic lecture-based teaching approach to a more active, student-centred, inquiry-based approach that is supported by constructivist theory within the second year medical/surgical Bachelor of Nursing subjects NRS292 & NRS294. In particular, the project supports the constructivist principles that effective and deep learning should be student driven, authentic, based upon knowledge construction rather than reproduction, and involve students being presented with multiple representations of reality. In addition to this, and again consistent with constructivist theory, lecturers within the project take on the role of facilitator or guide, assisting students in making the paradigm shift from seeing themselves as mere receptacles to hold collected knowledge to seeing themselves as active participants in the learning process, for which they are the principal motivator.