title: Moving towards normalising CALL: A case study from Timor-Leste

authors: Field, Jennifer

subjects: Timor-Leste

abstract: It is now widely understood that teachers are the main decision makers in the classroom, so when an innovation is introduced into a teaching and learning setting it seems that teachers‟ beliefs and attitudes may be a major determinant in the success or otherwise of that investment.

This case study examines the process of a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) application being introduced into a university setting. Bax (2003) posited that a new technology is „normalised‟ when it is invisible and fully integrated, just as pens and books have been, into everyday classroom use. To gain further insights into the process of an innovatory CALL application moving „towards normalisation‟ (Chambers & Bax 2006), the present study solicited university teachers‟ opinions and impressions towards the innovation over a period of five months.
       The innovation is a software application developed in the Computer Science Department at the University of Waikato (http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax). The Flexible Language Acquisition Device (FLAX) uses digitalised libraries to provide language learning tasks for students, both texts and tasks being written by teachers or more able students. The English Department at the National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL) was the setting selected for the study, as the researcher had spent fourteen months there as a volunteer teacher in 2005-6. The case study is framed within a wider (2006-2011) collaborative curriculum project between UNTL and the University of Waikato.
       It was decided to collect oral, rather than written, data in order to align with the oral traditions of Timor-Leste. Thus, oral reflective journals captured participants‟ perceptions in audio-recorded discussions with a peer over three occasions. Focus groups of participants reflected on key issues at entry and exit points, and the researcher wrote her own daily reflective journal.
       The findings showed that the participants moved from a position of excitement tinged with concern to a position of confidence and readiness to implement FLAX during the reseacher‟s visit, indicating a positive move towards normalisation. A powerful insight gained by the researcher was that teachers were able to co-construct a range of ways of using the programme with their students in terms of autonomous learning, peer scaffolding and the importance of the affective domain in language learning. These findings reinforced the notion that the introduction of technologies is a social construct, not just a technological one (Bax, 2011). A further lens of investigation of the innovation was provided by Activity Theory, (Engeström 1987), which showed that the process of curricular normalisation is influenced by activity outside the classrom, and may strengthen or reduce the object of activity, in this case improved learning outcomes.
       The implications of the case study may have resonance in relatable settings. It seems that encouraging a collaborative approach may enable teachers to envision and ideate new ways to teach and learn, and incorporate new technologies into their own settings. This study may also have implications for external change agents as they contemplate assisting learning communities to normalise curriculum innovation.

text: Moving towards normalising CALL: A case study from Timor-Leste It is now widely understood that teachers are the main decision makers in the classroom, so when an innovation is introduced into a teaching and learning setting it seems that teachers‟ beliefs and attitudes may be a major determinant in the success or otherwise of that investment.

This case study examines the process of a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) application being introduced into a university setting. Bax (2003) posited that a new technology is „normalised‟ when it is invisible and fully integrated, just as pens and books have been, into everyday classroom use. To gain further insights into the process of an innovatory CALL application moving „towards normalisation‟ (Chambers & Bax 2006), the present study solicited university teachers‟ opinions and impressions towards the innovation over a period of five months.
       The innovation is a software application developed in the Computer Science Department at the University of Waikato (http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax). The Flexible Language Acquisition Device (FLAX) uses digitalised libraries to provide language learning tasks for students, both texts and tasks being written by teachers or more able students. The English Department at the National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL) was the setting selected for the study, as the researcher had spent fourteen months there as a volunteer teacher in 2005-6. The case study is framed within a wider (2006-2011) collaborative curriculum project between UNTL and the University of Waikato.
       It was decided to collect oral, rather than written, data in order to align with the oral traditions of Timor-Leste. Thus, oral reflective journals captured participants‟ perceptions in audio-recorded discussions with a peer over three occasions. Focus groups of participants reflected on key issues at entry and exit points, and the researcher wrote her own daily reflective journal.
       The findings showed that the participants moved from a position of excitement tinged with concern to a position of confidence and readiness to implement FLAX during the reseacher‟s visit, indicating a positive move towards normalisation. A powerful insight gained by the researcher was that teachers were able to co-construct a range of ways of using the programme with their students in terms of autonomous learning, peer scaffolding and the importance of the affective domain in language learning. These findings reinforced the notion that the introduction of technologies is a social construct, not just a technological one (Bax, 2011). A further lens of investigation of the innovation was provided by Activity Theory, (Engeström 1987), which showed that the process of curricular normalisation is influenced by activity outside the classrom, and may strengthen or reduce the object of activity, in this case improved learning outcomes.
       The implications of the case study may have resonance in relatable settings. It seems that encouraging a collaborative approach may enable teachers to envision and ideate new ways to teach and learn, and incorporate new technologies into their own settings. This study may also have implications for external change agents as they contemplate assisting learning communities to normalise curriculum innovation.

year: 2012

title: New ensemble methods for evolving data streams

authors: Bifet, Albert

subjects: computer science

abstract: Advanced analysis of data streams is quickly becoming a key area of data mining research as the number of applications demanding such processing increases. Online mining when such data streams evolve over time, that is when concepts drift or change completely, is becoming one of the core issues. When tackling non-stationary concepts, ensembles of classifiers have several advantages over single classifier methods: they are easy to scale and parallelize, they can adapt to change quickly by pruning under-performing parts of the ensemble, and they therefore usually also generate more accurate concept descriptions. This paper proposes a new experimental data stream framework for studying concept drift, and two new variants of Bagging: ADWIN Bagging and Adaptive-Size Hoeffding Tree (ASHT) Bagging. Using the new experimental framework, an evaluation study on synthetic and real-world datasets comprising up to ten million examples shows that the new ensemble methods perform very well compared to several known methods.

text: New ensemble methods for evolving data streams Advanced analysis of data streams is quickly becoming a key area of data mining research as the number of applications demanding such processing increases. Online mining when such data streams evolve over time, that is when concepts drift or change completely, is becoming one of the core issues. When tackling non-stationary concepts, ensembles of classifiers have several advantages over single classifier methods: they are easy to scale and parallelize, they can adapt to change quickly by pruning under-performing parts of the ensemble, and they therefore usually also generate more accurate concept descriptions. This paper proposes a new experimental data stream framework for studying concept drift, and two new variants of Bagging: ADWIN Bagging and Adaptive-Size Hoeffding Tree (ASHT) Bagging. Using the new experimental framework, an evaluation study on synthetic and real-world datasets comprising up to ten million examples shows that the new ensemble methods perform very well compared to several known methods.

year: 2009

title: Listening to the Winds of Change: Assessing culturally responsive and relational pedagogy

authors: Thin-Rabb, Polly

subjects: Culturally responsive and relational pedagogy

abstract: This thesis examines how the Rongohia te Hau tools were used to capture a snapshot of the extent that culturally responsive and relational pedagogies were occurring within classrooms in two English-medium secondary schools in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In this study, school leaders used Rongohia te Hau to measure changes in the educational experiences of Māori learners over twelve to eighteen-months, to prioritise next steps in addressing the educational inequities that were evident. 

With the contribution of teachers, leaders and kaitoro (Kia Eke Panuku facilitators), this research investigates the purpose and place of Rongohia te Hau within the Kia Eke Panuku professional learning and development context. It also presents and discusses the pedagogical shifts that occurred in these two schools over the period of this research, as evidenced by quantitative and qualitative Rongohia te Hau data. Furthermore, the learning implications that arose out of this research are analysed to help generate new questions and considerations, to enable continuing conversations for these schools, other schools, professional learning and development providers and researchers.

text: Listening to the Winds of Change: Assessing culturally responsive and relational pedagogy This thesis examines how the Rongohia te Hau tools were used to capture a snapshot of the extent that culturally responsive and relational pedagogies were occurring within classrooms in two English-medium secondary schools in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In this study, school leaders used Rongohia te Hau to measure changes in the educational experiences of Māori learners over twelve to eighteen-months, to prioritise next steps in addressing the educational inequities that were evident. 

With the contribution of teachers, leaders and kaitoro (Kia Eke Panuku facilitators), this research investigates the purpose and place of Rongohia te Hau within the Kia Eke Panuku professional learning and development context. It also presents and discusses the pedagogical shifts that occurred in these two schools over the period of this research, as evidenced by quantitative and qualitative Rongohia te Hau data. Furthermore, the learning implications that arose out of this research are analysed to help generate new questions and considerations, to enable continuing conversations for these schools, other schools, professional learning and development providers and researchers.

year: 2017