Scholarship recipient to investigate engaging students with science

University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Early Childhood Education Student Karla Cook has won a $4,000 Apple University Consortium (AUC) scholarship for her research into approaches to teaching and learning science.

Awarded to students in their honours year, the scholarships are given to students who are undertaking a full-year research project that in some way depends on or uniquely uses Apple technologies.

Mrs Cook's case study aims to examine upper-primary student engagement with science and will involve filming students' reactions to multi-modal teaching in classrooms and collating the data using the Apple program Studiocode.

'The aim of my research is to increase understanding of how multi-modal representations are used and how they contribute to learning in science,' Mrs Cook said.

Multi-modal representations involve using a range of techniques to portray a particular concept to appeal to different styles of learning.

'In a classroom with 16 to 25 children they are going to be learning in different ways and going to need different ways of representing the same concept.

'The use of a range of teaching modes means you cover everybody and can validate what is already seen or heard by giving a different visual.'

Recordings will be played back to students to prompt them to discuss what they were thinking about a particular concept and why they chose to respond in a certain way.

'This is where Studiocode is helpful as it allows you to categorise specific sections of recordings as they occur or afterwards. It makes collection and categorising the footage so much easier,' she said.

'I will then use the data to find out what the perceptions of teachers and students are as a case study of multi-modal representations in science.'

Mrs Cook said the project is expected to promote more effective learning and more positive student attitudes to science.

The first AUC consortium scholarship recipient from USQ, Mrs Cook said she was surprised and honoured by the award.

'I was confident that I was doing a good research subject but I was not really expecting to be selected.

'The number of recipients was reduced to eight this year; being the first at USQ is mind-blowing.

'It is a big thing to be part of it and is even more of an incentive to do a good job and be successful.'

Mrs Cook plans to use her research project as a case study for teachers.

She is supervised by Professor Bruce Waldrip, an international expert in learning through representations.

Media Contact: Jane Urquhart USQ Media +61 7 4631 2559