Awards and Achievements

ARC Successful Grants 2013

Details of successful Discovery Grants:

 

Professor Sue Dockett and Professor Bob Perry - Continuity and change in curriculum and pedagogies as children start school

  • This project considers the impact of the Early Years Learning Framework and the Australian Curriculum on transition to school in Australia. Through extensive interviews and surveys, it gathers evidence to influence theoretical, policy and practice approaches to transition to school and, hence, the future schooling of all Australian children.

  

Professor Tom Lowrie - Processing mathematics tasks: the nature and role of visual and non-visual reasoning in digital and non-digital environments

  • Within the next four years, it is likely that the National Assessment Plan for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) will be administered in a digital mode. This project identifies differences between the delivery of mathematics assessment in pencil-and-paper and computer-based modes. Primary students' mathematics reasoning is compared across these modes and to cohorts from Singapore.

This project will consider students’ mathematics reasoning when solving tasks in a digital form and the extent to which teaching practices accommodate such reasoning.

 

Professor Sharynne McLeod, Elise Baker, Jane McCormack, Yvonne Wren and Sue Roulstone - A sound start: innovative technology to promote speech and pre-literacy skills in at-risk preschoolers

  • One in five Australian preschoolers have speech impairment and without specialist services face an increased risk of reading difficulties and life-long consequences. Given that demand for services exceeds supply, this project will determine if a preschool computer-based service can promote speech development and reduce risk of reading difficulty.

 

Professor Jennifer Sumsion as part of a team from Queensland University of Technology - Sue Grieshaber, Felicity McArdie and Paul Shield - Education meets play: a sociological study of how the new compulsory national learning framework for children zero to five years influences educators' practice

  • New theorising about play and education in early childhood settings has challenged traditional notions of play. This project investigates how educators respond to the requirement for play-based learning by identifying characteristics of successful educators and professional leaders, and strategies and practices that merge education and play.