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• Continuing collaborations between China and SOE
• New research project to support refugee students
• Students win grant to assist vision impaired students
• Innovative teaching approach: Environmental issues
• Early Childhood project in Chile
• Contact us

Issue No. 11: Nov, 2011

Continuing collaborations between China and School of Education

In July, a team of UWS researchers from our School of Education and Centre for Educational Research (CER) joined with a team of NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) Western Sydney Region (WSR) educators and school students on a short cultural exchange in the cities of Shanghai and Ningbo, China.

The group toured a number of schools and universities, reaffirming existing relationships and discussing several new agreements for collaboration. The tour involved Professor Michael Singh and Dr Dacheng Zhao from the UWS's CER, Professor Steve Wilson, Head of the School of Education, Mr David Phipps, Western Sydney's (WSR's) Regional Director, and Ms Cheryl Ballantyne, DEC's coordinator of the Ningbo-UWS-WSR language volunteer teaching and research program in WSR, Rosete.

As well as signing agreements of exchange and cooperation, the UWS and WSR delegation attended several performances of school students from WSR, Ningbo and Shanghai. Professors Wilson and Singh also conducted a graduation celebration for the first group of UWS Rosete research honours graduates who have now returned to China.

Celebration of the signing of the agreement between the heads of WSR (left), Ningbo Education Bureau (centre), and UWS School of Education (right).

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New research project on supporting university students with refugee backgrounds

School of Education academics Professor Margaret Vickers and Dr Katina Zammit have embarked on a new research project which aims to support the substantial body of students from refugee backgrounds that are now entering Australian universities.

Although these students face great challenges during their first year, customised supports for them are almost non-existent. These students need access to mentors and supportive networks, not available through current University student support programs.

The new project 'Defying the Odds' is, funded by an Australian Learning and Teaching Centre Grant, and aims to: develop a sustainable student-mentoring support system and, deliver academic and social support to all UWS students from refugee backgrounds. It will initially focus on students from South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

Student-mentors can enrol for course credit in the service-learning unit Experiential Learning in Communities to support academic staff achieve greater cultural awareness, leading to greater support for these students. It is anticipated the findings will have widespread impact and dissemination and uptake of the project outcomes will occur through the participation of partner Universities across three states.

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Students win grant to assist vision impaired students

The National Australia Bank recently awarded a $25,000 seed grant to support the work of the Ruse Vision Support team and UWS students involved in the M.Teach (Primary Education program) undertaking the subject Classrooms without Borders.

The Ruse Vision Support Team works with children in both mainstream and special schools across Campbelltown and teach braille, literacy, orientation, mobility and cane skills and, ensure that children with sight disabilities are able to access all aspects of the curriculum.

Classrooms Without Borders is a service learning subject designed to assist student teachers to learn about the complex nature of teaching. This includes learning about the diverse needs of children and their families, taking into account the time outside the usual 9.00 am to 3.00 school hours.

In partnership with the Ruse Vision Team, students Clare Willmot, Sarah Rush, Karen Stevenson, Dahlia Hijaza, Michael Shipley and Amelia Lamond have made a range of braille and tactile books for blind children and digital story books for low-vision students. The support team and UWS students worked together to record stories in braille, supported with tactile representations of colour, kites, cows, pigs, rain and birds' nests. Congratulations on a very worthwhile project.

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Innovative teaching approach: Environmental issues

As educators, we are constantly seeking interactive ways to engage our students. The challenge is even more critical when the issues are complex and demand complex interrogation. The environmental crisis facing humanity at this time is one such issue. Dr Carol Birrell, a lecturer in the Social Ecology program at UWS has introduced an innovative approach to teaching students about environmental issues in the subject 'Learning and Creativity'.

	Photo - Dr Carol Birrell: 'Ship of Fools' sculpture

The atmosphere for learning is a dimly lit lecture theatre, slides of the 'growth' of an environmental wood sculpture are shown. Each student has a 'voice' to represent, whether it be an anti-logging blockader, an Aboriginal elder, or the crazed voice of the human inhabitants in the original 1494 'Ship Of Fools' (mirroring the human species adrift and rudderless at this time on earth).

The focus of the class is a multivocal, multi-textured Theatre Ecology performance where there is no firm direction and every person is implicated. All students become part of a local community faced with the consequences of extensive logging on nearby mountains, which are also sacred sites to local Aboriginal Yuin people.

The performance itself produces a creative spontaneous community of dialogue, brings out strong emotions (including grief, anger, shame, empathy, resistance, antagonism, indifference) and allows a space to experience an event which must be devised in each and every moment by every one of us.

This approach to teaching has been successfully used in this subject to deepen students understanding of the issues at hand as well as to provide a specie and opportunity to creatively respond to our current social challenges.

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Continued Success with our Early Childhood Project in Chile

The innovative Futuro Infantil Hoy early childhood literacy, pedagogy and leadership project continues to generate widespread interest and attention.

Recently, a seminar in Santiago, Chile convened by the School of Education to showcase the project and present some of the research findings attracted a diverse audience of close to 200 people.

UWS Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Wayne Mckenna opened the seminar commenting on the extraordinary success of the pilot program. The audience heard how the project had contributed to improvements in children's learning outcomes, generated new pedagogical practices and had led to enhancing parent's understandings and participation in their children's learning.

The Australian Ambassador to Chile, Her Excellency Virginia Greville hosted a reception the following evening to celebrate the success of the program which has now expanded to a further 15 early childhood centres in northern Chile. The seminar generated a number of enquiries from organisations interested in learning more about the project.

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Contact us

Newsletter contributions:
Contact j.orlando@uws.edu.au

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Editor: Joanne Orlando, University of Western Sydney, School of Education.
Designer: Seth Mortensen, University of Western Sydney, School of Education.
Copyright © 2011 University of Western Sydney ABN 53 014 069 881