What's On at UWA

Want to go on exchange to Asia? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in Asia. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from Asia.

Whilst trade and enterprise have led Australia's bilateral relations with China, education promotes mutual understanding and long lasting links. This year's forum will focus on developing Chinese language and cultural competency in schools, universities and industry. His Excellency Mr Chen Yuming, Chinese Ambassador to Australia, will provide the keynote address and a panel of business leaders and education representatives will share their experiences.

***NOW RESCHEDULED TO 18 OCTOBER***

“Individual(s) ….embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons ... . Some of these … lie outside the sphere of science entirely. Others depend upon idiosyncrasies of autobiography….” (Kuhn, 1970, p.l52). I will highlight some “idiosyncrasies of autobiography” that have led to enjoying an academic life – the opportunity to research and teach, to construct and communicate knowledge. I plan to illustrate how psychometrics, a field in which I had the opportunity to ignore or embrace an emergent, non-standard statistical paradigm, has lead beyond mathematical modelling to areas such as the philosophy of science, the sociology of knowledge and academic controversy. I plan to also illustrate the challenges in negotiating the complex world of academic research and communication.

Controversy continues to surround national student assessment in Australia. However, I argue that testing is neither good nor bad: the devil lies in what people – teachers, school, systems and even parents – do about the tests and the data they generate. I report the experiences of principals, teachers and curriculum consultants in one educational authority to describe how responsibility for interrogating, interpreting and applying data has gradually shifted from an external top-down approach to an internal bottom-up model in a planned, sustained and centrally supported manner, during the past eight years.

The Faculty of Education is proud to present an ‘Apps Fair’ at the University Club. Come and learn how to use apps for teaching and learning in your classroom

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about designing and analysing experiments.

It will cover material ranging from a review of simple one-way ANOVA, to more complex designs and analyses including crossed and nested factors with fixed and random effects.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

SEM is used widely by researchers to test complex relationships among observed (measured) and latent (unobserved) variables. This course will introduce you to SEM and also covers issues relating to model specification, identification and estimation, assessing model fit (goodness-of-fit criteria), and dealing with problem data.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The course is designed as a comprehensive coverage of applied SEM techniques using the Mplus statistical software package. Mplus offers a general modelling framework that allows both the modelling of cross-sectional and longitudinal data using observed variables that are a combination of continuous and categorical variables.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

FREE EVENT

Join us for three short, thought provoking presentations hosted by the Faculty of Education.

The Hon Peter Collier, Minister for Education, will talk about the past and future of Education in WA.

Associate Professors Grace Oakley and Christine Howitt will talk about the Graduate School of Education’s research on the use of mobile technologies such as iPads.

Professor Robert Faulkner will illustrate why singing – once considered an essential skill for all primary school teachers – really matters for young people’s development and learning and why singing songs continues to matter to us all.

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This session is part of the Alumni and Friends Weekend celebration. This weekend will present a unique opportunity to celebrate UWA's landmark 100 years through a diverse program of activities, events and reunions.

The Alumni and Friends Weekend, beginning on Friday 8 February and concluding on Sunday 10 February, is a wonderful opportunity to hear from renowned academics such as Nobel Laureate Professor Barry Marshall AC CitWA, Winthrop Professor Peter Quinn, Director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and Winthrop Professor Carlos Duarte, Director of the UWA Oceans Institute. In addition there is a wide variety of events including a cultural program, sporting activities, special lectures, reunions and tours.

The 3rd International Symposium (ISFIRE) will held in Partnership with the University of Western Australia; Society for the Provision of Education for Rural Australia and the University of New England (SiMERR)

Date: 13 – 15 February 2013

Venue: University of Western Australia Perth, Western Australia

Theme: Rural Education on the Global Stage: Connecting for Innovation

Sub Themes: Leadership, Indigenous Perspective, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Community and Inter-sectoral Networks, Initial Teacher Education

The University of Western Australia and SPERA, invite you to the 3rd International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education at UWA, Perth, Western Australia. This International Symposium will bring together international teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, academics, community groups and organizations and parents who are passionate about rural education. The 3rd ISFIRE symposium will be a key means of building and strengthening international rural networks, drawing together an increasing body of work focused on globally improving education outcomes for rural, regional and remote students. You will participate in a stimulating education program of presentations, hands on workshops and panel sessions. Social events will also be a feature of this three day event.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to basic statistics. It will cover descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations); data exploration; basic categorical data analysis; simple linear regression and basic analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Subsidised rates are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Please register online.

You are invited to join us mark the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the University of Western Australia’s Convocation.

The First meeting was held on March 4th 1913 in St George’s Hall, Hay St near the corner of Irwin Street. The historic façade including the portico, steps and tall white columns were restored when the new Perth District Court was constructed behind it at 500 Hay Street. To celebrate the Centenary of this meeting, a photo-shoot of 100 'graduates' will take place on the steps of the façade at 10am on Monday March 4th 2013.

The UWA Historical Society would be delighted if you could join us.

If you have academic robes, please bring them. If not please come anyway, as having just a few robed members will provide the ‘flavour’. Balloons for a joint release will be provided.

Monday March 4th is a public Holiday (Labour Day). There should be nearby street parking available and there is a public parking station across the road at King’s Hotel.

The UWA Centum will be there

INVITATION TO THE 2013 BIG MEET CAREERS FAIR

Every year Australia’s leading employers travel the country looking for high quality graduates and undergraduates. The Big Meet is your opportunity to meet up to 100 of these organisations in one day, in one location.

The Big Meet is the ultimate careers fair for undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates from all disciplines. Whether you're looking for graduate employment, a new job, vacation work, an international internship, a gap-year experience, voluntary work, travel, overseas opportunities, a teaching job or postgraduate education, The Big Meet can get you started. Don't miss out!

Entry is FREE, and you'll get some fantastic free stuff as well.

Register for the event via: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TheBigMeet2013Perth Further Information For more info, visit The Big Meet website www.thebigmeet.com.au

Confirmed Exhibitors To Date

ABB Australia, ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), Accenture, ACS Foundation, Alcoa of Australia, Arup, Aurecon, Aurizon, AusAID, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Federal Police, Australian Institute of Personal Trainers, Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australian Taxation Office, Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD), Chevron, Clough Projects Pty Ltd, Crowe Horwath, Defence Force Recruiting, Deloitte, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), Department of Defence, Department of Education (WA), Department of Finance (WA), Department of Human Services, Department of Mines and Petroleum, Department of Regional Development and Lands, Department of State Development , Department of Treasury (WA), Department of Veterans' Affairs, Edmund Rice Camps WA, Fulton Hogan Pty Ltd, Fortescue Metals Group, GradConnection, Graduate Opportunities, Hatch, Hays Recruitment, IBM, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Intergen, KBR, Kiewit, KordaMentha, Lawler McGillivray, Leighton Contractors Pty Limited, Linfox Logistics, Main Roads WA, Mainfreight, Monadelphous Group Limited, Meltwater Group, National Australia Bank, Navitas Workforce Solutions, Newcrest Mining, NRW Civil & Mining, PPB Advisory, Public Transport Authority WA, Readygrad, Real Gap, Rio Tinto, Shell Australia, Sinclair Knight Merz, SThree, Subsea 7, Teach For Australia, Technip, The Ride to Conquer Cancer, The Tax Institute, Thiess, Water Corporation, Woodside.

The Award recognises and celebrates the strong commitment to teaching and learning of our former Vice Chancellor, Alan Robson.

The award acknowledges Professor Robson’s own rural school experiences and honours the rural teaching career of his father.

The Faculty of Education offers $1000 each year to one student participating in a rural teaching practicum. This is to be spent on expenses incurred in undertaking the practicum.

The successful applicant, who must show that they would not be able to consider a rural practicum without the scholarship, will gain long term benefit from a rural teaching practicum.

This event is open to both new and more seasoned staff who would like to gain a wider perspective on the joys and challenges of supervision from an Education perspective.

Topics include: Supervising at a distance/Supervising international students; and Balancing the fine line between supervision and intervention.

BYO lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.

In real life, we use contextual information from the environment to help us interpret the emotions signaled by others’ facial expressions. Yet, because emotion perception has often been studied using facial expressions in isolation, we know little about how this important social skill develops. This talk presents data that explores to what extent children (8-12 years) show early and mandatory integration of context and expression information, in a non-predictive gaze-cueing paradigm. Briefly, children and adults decided whether animals that were looked-at (or away from) by fearful and happy faces were safe or dangerous. The animal stimuli and required response (i.e., safe vs. dangerous) were designed to invoke a potentially threatening environmental context, meaning that fearful expressions were more relevant in this context than happy expressions. Integration of context and expression was measured as (a) greater gaze-cueing from fearful expressions than from happy expressions, and (b) facilitation of responses by fearful expressions to dangerous animals versus safe animals. Results indicate that 8 to 12 year old children do have some capacity for early and mandatory integration of context and expression, which can drive shifts in attention and behavioural responses. This capacity however seems to decline rapidly as processing becomes more volitional (i.e., at longer SOA duration). The difficulties children show with integrating context and expression in later volitional stages of processing may contribute to errors in emotion perception and, thus, less adaptive social responses.

The Graduate Education Officers will outline the UWA rules on formatting your thesis as a series of papers. The advantages and disadvantages of this format will also be discussed.

What is the relationship between Higher Education and Social Justice? Is there one? Does Higher Education promote social justice in society or, rather, does it create social injustice? These troubling questions are the ones we attempt to address in our recent publication ‘Social Justice and Higher Education’ (Baillie et al, 2012, Engineering and Social Justice, London). We decided to explore these questions in more detail by interviewing a range of educators from all over the world about their views on this topic. As we chose not to define what we meant by social justice the conversations were very rich and diverse, prompting many insights into the working experience of the respondents. We did not conduct these interviews as a traditional researcher might. The project became more of a long, ongoing conversation and the resulting, illustrated book, is authored by us all, including the artist whose interpretations of our conversations added extra depth and insight. The responses ranged from the belief that HE can enhance social justice in society to the view that HE is inherently based on unjust principles and alternatives are needed now. This seminar will share some of these views to provoke broader discussion about changes in the role of HE in society.

Is there a staff member you think did a fantastic job this year?

Nominations for semester one are now open until May 31.

If so, you can nominate them for an Excellence in Teaching and Learning award up to using the online nomination form see http://www.education.uwa.edu.au/students/teaching/awards/nomination-form

The faculties of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts; Education; and Law have combined to offer Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

The Awards are a way of recognising and rewarding outstanding teaching, research supervision, programs and student support within the faculties.

It is an opportunity to acknowledge those teachers and other staff members who make a real difference to the learning experience of our students.

For award categories see http://www.education.uwa.edu.au/students/teaching/awards

Nominations must be received by close of business 31 May 2013 for semester 1 nominations.

Through the UWA Health & Rehabiliation Clinic a variety of Clinical Pilates options are now available to staff and general public!

Clinical Pilates is a form of physical exercise that focuses on posture, balance, control, strength, flexibility, and breathing. It incorporates mat and equipment based exercises to optimise function, improve fitness and aid the management or rehabilitation following pain or injury. Using the experitse of Physiotherapy and Exercise Physiology trained staff to tailor exercises, Clinical Pilates is able to ensure optimal gains whilst minimising risk of injury or aggravation.

Initial assessment may be required prior to starting classes. Sessions are available Mon-Fri at various times between 6am-6pm. Private Health Rebates May Apply.