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Early career academics in a higher education institution may come from varied backgrounds which are not necessarily teaching based. Universities employed such academics to undertake an array of tasks including teaching administration and research. In current budgetary constraints an academic is normally required to undertake all 3 tasks. Teaching is a core activity of any university but there are enormous pressures for such academics to undertake research either through publication or undertaking research degrees and little attention is given to assisting with the philosophy and implementation of good teaching practices. This paper will examine a program at an Australian university with the use of mentoring from senior colleagues to assist not only in the teaching process but to also interweave this into research based publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current literature that investigates classroom talk, focuses on the importance of subject specific discourse and it's relationship to student thinking and learning. In visual arts education, however, there has been limited research conducted that specifically examines discourse related to aesthetics (Zander, 2003) even though curriculum document emphasise this as an area of education that needs to be fostered and developed within the classroom (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 2005). This paper reports a study, which investigated the nature of students' discourse when they were responding to visual art. The study was conducted in a metropolitan primary school in Perth, with a class of 11 and 12 year old children who had little previous exposure to specialist art education. The conversation was video taped, transcribed and analysed in order to identify the discourse features specific to responding to the aesthetic component of visual art. Those aspects of discourse found to be poorly developed were subsequently taught as a part of the visual arts program. Following this period of teaching, the students were again videoed and the language they used was analysed to determine if what had been taught allowed them to express more complex responses to the art works they discussed. Findings indicate that where teachers identify aspects of discourse that students do not control and explicitly teach these in ways that are meaningful to the students, control is then developed. In turn, the students' aesthetic responses show greater complexity, which suggest a positive relationship between control of a specialist discourse and higher level of understandings of aesthetics in visual art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]