Educational Investigations

Our group is comprised of Ashley Groch, Hamish Campbell and Luke Blacklock and we are three passionate beginning educators who enjoy engaging in classroom discussions. We have chosen to focus on the difficulties that surround the discussion of controversial issues in the classroom. During practicum, we encountered issues of self-efficacy and discomfort when students wished to discuss recent events such as the coronavirus, black lives matter movement, climate change, and global politics. As teachers, we value the diversity within our classrooms and strive for students to feel recognized and represented. Following this line of research, we have focussed on the factors that influence teacher self-efficacy in facilitating these discussions with our students and the personal and educational benefits for overcoming these. We also provide a number of strategies and considerations that teachers can use to feel more confident discussing these topics to ensure that valuable teaching moments are not lost.

Our names are Abby Knoester, Bailey Lutton, Celeste Tunnecliffe and Samuel Duggan. We are a group of primary educators specialising in the Creative Arts. We are deeply passionate about the Creative Arts and their role in a quality education system. As such, this poster explores a profound problem that has been neglected for decades; the undervaluing of The Arts generated by a societal trend we have come to label as the “the dreaded death cycle”. We hope this poster and its complementary materials enlighten you to the issues facing Arts education to create a brighter future for our 21st century youth. 

As fourth year students preparing to graduate, our group felt that opportunities to engage with the parent community during our degree are limited and this leads to an area of apprehension as a new career teacher. Parents play a vital role in the educative process so we made it our mission to find the most effective ways to facilitate professional communication as a teacher, with parents.  

Our poster aims to share strategies and insights into key aspects of ‘Engaging Parents and Teachers in Effective Communication’. As well as seeking strategies, we also explored the barriers that can affect parent-teacher communication. Working collaboratively as a team enabled us to consider many facets of the topic with Brianna researching parent-teacher communication in rural and low socio-economic contexts, Hayley researching how communication with parents of diverse students and students with EAL/D may vary, Annina considering parent’s preferred modes of communication and Bianca researching parent’s perceptions of teachers.

All of these topics then culminated into our final poster in which we address both teacher and parent issues and suggest strategies for a beginning teachers to consider. From our research we have also created an example of a ‘communication flowchart’ and ‘parental survey’ that can be used by new or veteran teachers.

Welcome to our poster; we are David, Taylor and Karmen and we are pre-service primary teachers.  David and Karmen are in their final semester and Taylor is in her third year.

We share a common interest in the role that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has in education, especially the ability to enrich and enhance learning experiences by providing equitable access to information and resources. Accessing such information is reliant on people having the relevant tools and capabilities to do so. 

Our research examines the literature, theories and pedagogical models related to effective integration of ICT into the classroom.  We identify and examine barriers relating to accessibility, support and user confidence, prompting us to investigate solutions to these issues.  This poster includes a range of practical strategies and recommendations to integrate ICT into the classroom.

Thanking you in advance for your feedback, questions or comments, and most importantly, your time.

Our group is made up of four pre-service teachers in the final stages of their Undergraduate Education degrees. These members include Anna Barlin, Courtney Wowk, Luke Burger, and Brittany Morrison, who are all studying a Bachelor of Education (Primary). As four pre-service teachers who are on the forefront of being beginning teachers, we each have a deep passion for supporting the welfare and mental wellbeing of new educators. As a result of this passion, we have designed a poster that includes a multitude of information and various resources that promote and support a positive school culture, as this element of education plays a key role in supporting the welfare of beginning teachers and promotes the potential for developing strong pedagogical skills and attributes.

The members of our group are Lachlan Dean, Daniel Glenn and Mathew Bailey. We are preservice teachers with two members of our group in their final semesters of their teaching degrees. The problem for our poster was originally focussed on all diverse learners within the classroom. However, as we continued, we found it was important to narrow the focus. Our problem is now centred around ensuring equitable learning opportunities for students on the autism spectrum in Australia. We chose this topic because of our desire to achieve equitable classrooms for all of our students and because of interest that was gained through research and teaching placements.

For our poster all group members worked on the key points. Lachlan worked on the understanding section, Daniel worked on the communication section, and Mathew worked on the support/resources section.

We have chosen to look at the issue of schools’ aversion to risk-taking. This topic is of interest to us as over the years we have noticed an increase in precautions taken by schools to minimise risk in the playground. We considered the possible implications of this on students, both immediately and in the long term, focusing on behavioural, intellectual and emotional factors.

We are excited to become passionate new educators in the Canberra community. We look forward to continuing our learning and knowledge of education, collaborating with others and demonstrating our ability to work as part of a professional team.

Our poster is focused on the negative culture that graduate teachers are exposed to surrounding the teaching profession. As fourth year students, we are concerned that our mindset and wellbeing are being negatively influenced before entering our chosen careers. Our poster identifies common contributing factors to the negative perceptions and offers an insight to potential solutions with the intended result to diminish the negative culture constructed by in-service teachers and the broader public. 

Our poster uses multimodal literacies to present our problem statement through links to supplementary content and interactive audio files. The use of illustrations supports our communication of effective preventative measures in a simplistic manner.

Welcome to our group poster, 'Overcoming Practice Shock'. We are in the final stages of our primary education degrees and discovered we all have a similar concern. We all often hear statistics about the high number of Australian teachers leaving the profession within the first five years. We spoke of our concerns, specifically about how we are going to navigate our first years as 'real teachers,' while maintaining our enthusiasm, wellbeing, and sanity. A common discourse surrounding the perceptions of being a new educator was revealed through the research, namely that new educators feel unprepared for the scope of teaching as a profession. This led our research to the notion of 'practice shock'. We developed a series of potential solutions at three different levels. Our solutions highlight key elements that can build new educator resilience and reduce practice shock based on comprehensive research.

Our group is Ashlyn, Laura, Mollie and Viviana and our project focus is gender narratives in school-based conflict. Our group had a clear direction of creating an informational poster and resource that would be helpful for experienced and early career educators. Our research poster explains gender narratives as well as discussing how cultural narratives impact conflict in the classroom and how we can address this differently. We have also included links to helpful resources for further reading for those interested.

Hello and thank you for taking the time to look at and engage with our poster. Our names are Catherine, Ofek and Chelsey. As beginning teachers we are aware of daunting challenges in the industry and we’ve researched and suggested ways to deal with one we felt was overlooked: Grief. Everyone experiences grief at some stage in their life and due to the nature of our jobs we have a higher chance of encountering it, and its effects are extra disruptive. Our poster suggests actions we thought were important when dealing with grief in schools, including individual strategies, school climate, and recommendations for schools and staff. We hope that you see the value in sharing this poster and would like to support us in getting it where it’s needed. Thank you!

Our group consists of Courtney, Sam F, Brooke, and Sam W all of whom are finishing our studies in Primary Education Specialising in Creative Arts. We are all passionate about The Arts, and the caring and nurturing of children, which is what drew us to the profession of teaching. As fourth year students, we found, both in our placements and in our workplaces, that we have experienced compassion fatigue when caring for children who have traumatic backgrounds. Our project explores our concerns for teachers’ wellbeing when caring for students’ wellbeing and strives to share what we found in a field that lacks a depth of knowledge and research.

Hello! Our names are Hayley, Chloe and Brittney and we are all about to graduate at the end of the year. Graduating has greatly influenced our thinking into what challenges we may face next year as beginning teachers, and what support networks are out there to assist us in achieving an effective teaching environment. In this research project we decided to focus on the problem that beginning teachers need a variety of professional supports as they enter the profession. There is research to say that 25% of beginning teachers leave the profession within the first five years and that was a concern for us. Throughout our research we have established many branches of support that beginning teachers can turn to.

Hello and thank you for taking the time to check out our groups poster! The members in our group are Callum, Hayley and Sharnah. After getting to know each other and sharing our thoughts and ideas we realised we shared the same concerns about entering the teaching profession and the potential for burnout. Additionally, we were curious to know more about the support networks available to us and what they may look like. Research has led us to creating this poster which aims to inform and support beginning teachers, and to suggest ways in which school networks and those in them can assist and foster this.

When members of a learning community work together to increase student learning and engagement, successful collaboration is occurring. Our group; Johanna Rowcliffe, Alex Rose Batista, Amy Corver and Dahlia Cerro, all shared a similar interest in the different aspects surrounding collaboration in primary schools. As fourth year primary preservice teachers, we wanted to grasp a stronger understanding about what is involved in creating a strong and supportive teaching team and how collaboration benefits educators. Our group was intrigued by the feedback and outcomes that surrounded teams with a lack of collaboration and how this affected students, teachers and school communities. Our investigation led us to discover 3 main solutions that have the potential to lead to successful collaborative teams. These solutions were team teaching, professional development and support networks.

Erin focused on teacher attitudes and their self-efficacy around ICT use and implementation in classrooms. Through research Erin discovered that lacking self-efficacy was something that proficient and new educators both experience and has provided some information on how to address self-efficacy. Erin has also worked on the design of our poster and ensured that it was cohesive and engaging. 

Angus is a fourth-year student who is graduating at the end of this semester. Angus focussed on investigating resources that teachers could use to implement ICT in the classroom and what support was accessible to enable teachers to effectively use ICT.

Josh studies a Bachelor of Primary Education, majoring in STeM, and technology is something he is passionate about. Over the course of our research Josh has come to learn the willingness to teach with ICT seems to stem from a lack of confidence in educators' own ability to do so. Therefore, Josh researched professional development courses to provide teachers with the opportunity to enhance their teaching ability.

Collective experiences led us to investigate beginning teachers’ self-efficacy, including how it impacts wellbeing and teacher attrition rates. We wanted to identify supports available and find solutions to combat declines. 

William researched solutions to manage self-efficacy once a discrepancy was identified. Strategies studied included the effectiveness of peer observation and feedback, collaborative planning and teaching, as well as self-directed professional development based on accurate self-reflection. 

Jade researched the causes and impacts of heightened or decreased efficacy on well-being and attrition. This included exploring reality shock experienced by beginning teachers. Strategies studied were teacher led workshops, Bandura's sources of efficacy and self care aims. 

Angela researched factors in induction programs that positively impact retention rates; mentor-mentee relationships and supports available for both parties; scales used to monitor teacher self-efficacy; and possible applications as tools for self-monitoring, recording and reflecting.