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This study examined the extent to which relations between students' perceptions of the learning environment, academic achievement, and study approaches measured by both self-reported and process data were consistent amongst 323 engineering students in a flipped classroom course. A hierarchical cluster analysis on four self-reported scales identified deep and surface study approaches. Students reporting deep approaches obtained significantly better marks than those reporting surface approaches. An agglomerative sequence clustering on sequences of students' online interactions found four observed study approaches: two focused on content and two focused on assessment. Students adopting content-focused approaches performed significantly better than those employing assessment-focused ones. Two cross-tabulations revealed consistency of relational patterns between perceptions of the learning environment and study approaches by self-reported or process data. Amongst students with better perceptions, a significantly higher proportion of them reported deep approaches than surface approaches. Amongst students using content-focused approaches, significantly higher proportions of them held positive perceptions than negative perceptions. The study results suggest to teachers that fostering a better learning environment, helping students understand how online and in-person components are integrated, and equipping them with knowledge and principles of flipped classroom learning would be useful to enhance students' learning experiences in flipped classroom courses.

Autistic people face many challenges entering the workforce, for example, during job interviews where performance is reliant on particular social skills. To be competitive during job interviews, autistic people may experience pressure to conceal or 'camouflage' their autistic traits and behaviour. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore the job interview experiences of 10 autistic people. Based on the literature, we were curious as to whether participants would report behaviour consistent with the camouflaging hypothesis. Thematic analysis identified six themes reflecting individual and environmental factors. Participants reported engaging in camouflaging behaviour during job interviews, with external factors (e.g. avoid being treated differently) cited as the primary reason. Participants reported that camouflaging required effort, leading to stress, anxiety, exhaustion and feeling 'burnt out'. They expressed a desire for an inclusive, understanding and accommodating environment where they would feel more comfortable disclosing their diagnosis without feeling they needed to conceal their autistic traits and behaviour. These preliminary findings add to the current literature regarding autism, camouflaging and employment.

Effective collaborative problem solving comprises cognitive dimensions, in which men tend to outperform women, and social dimensions in which women tend to outperform men. We extend research on between-country differences in gender gaps by considering collaborative problem solving and its association with two indicators of societal-level gender inequality. The first indicator reflects women's underrepresentation in the labor market and politics. The second reflects women's underrepresentation in stereotypically masculine fields and men's underrepresentation in stereotypically feminine fields among university students. We use cross-country evidence on collaborative problem-solving skills among 15-year-old students from 44 countries (N = 343,326) who participated in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Girls outperform boys in collaborative problem solving in all countries. Gender gaps in collaborative problem solving in favor of girls are less pronounced in countries where women are especially underrepresented in the labor market and politics but more pronounced in countries where men and women are more likely to conform to gender stereotypes in selecting a field of study at university. Societal-level gender equality plays a bigger role in explaining between-country differences in achievement in domains with a gender gap in favor of girls--such as collaborative problem solving and, to a lesser extent, reading--and a smaller role in explaining between-country differences in achievement in domains with a gender gap in favor of boys--such as mathematics.

This study investigated the relations between students' self-reported perceptions of the blended learning environment, their observed online learning strategies, and their academic learning outcomes. The participants were 310 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory course on computer systems in an Australian metropolitan university. A Likert-scale questionnaire was used to examine students' perceptions. The digital traces recorded in a bespoke learning management system were used to detect students' observed online learning strategies. Using the data mining algorithms, including the Hidden Markov Model and an agglomerative hierarchical sequence clustering, four types of online learning strategies were found. The four strategies not only differed in the number of online learning sessions but also showed differences in the proportional distribution with regard to different online learning behaviors. A one-way ANOVA revealed that students adopting different online learning strategies differed significantly on their final course marks. Students who employed intensive theory application strategy achieved the highest whereas those used weak reading and weak theory application scored the lowest. The results of a cross-tabulation showed that the four types of observed online learning strategies were significantly associated with the better and poorer perceptions of the blended learning environment. Specially, amongst students who adopted the intensive theory application strategy, the proportion of students who self-reported better perceptions was significantly higher than those reporting poorer perceptions. In contrast, amongst students using the weak reading and weak theory application strategy, the proportion of students having poorer perceptions was significantly higher than those holding better perceptions.

Teachers' cultural backgrounds can result in challenges in establishing positive teacher-student relationships in cross-cultural settings. The context for this study is based on the everyday practice of teachers and students in the classrooms of diverse Australian schools, where issues of cross-cultural teacher-student relationships have been raised. This study involved a group of Chinese-background Mandarin teachers who had one year of volunteer teaching experiences in Australian schools. Data were collected from focus group discussions at the point of the completion of their twelve-month teaching practice, in order to access their fresh memories of their experiences. It explores their "culture" in relating to their Australian students during their teaching practice. This research draws on Chinese cultural concepts for theorizing and finds that the cultural concepts of "Guanxi"/relationship, "Dengji"/hierarchy, "Zunzhong"/respect, and "Hexie"/harmony have had a significant impact on these teachers' understanding and management of teacher-student relationships in their Australian classes.

This research investigates a cohort of bilingual Chinese teachers' use of a multimodal approach in their Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teaching. The data include the participants' CFL teaching practices and their reflections on multimodal teaching as recorded in their theses and a focus group discussion. The theoretical underpinning of this paper is based on Paivio's dual coding theory (DCT) and Kress's social-semiotic theory (SST). This research found that the teachers' multimodal use in CFL teaching demonstrated their research-informed committed endeavour in designing content specific activities to achieve pedagogical purposes, utilizing some digital technologies as a resource. The uniqueness of the written form of the Chinese language availed these teachers the opportunity to engage the multiple modes and advance their own understanding of multimodality as a concept. This research also found the teachers' meaning making through the multimodality did not always equate to that of their students' due to their social and cultural differences.

Using expert reviews and item response theory (IRT), this study evaluated the language- and culture-related construct-irrelevant variance and reliability of the 2019 TIMSS sense of school belonging scale (SSBS) for grades 4 and 8. The five items of the SSBS, which were identical for both grades, were reviewed for the language- and culture-related construct-irrelevant variance evidence by 10 assessment experts who have expertise in Chinese and English languages and cultures. Further, the existing TIMSS 2019 SSBS data associated with the countries of China (Hong Kong), Singapore, Australia, and America were analyzed within the framework of IRT for estimating the item and scale information function values (i.e., reliability) of the SSBS. The experts did find language- and culture-related evidence in each of the five items that might lead to the construct variance of the SSBS across these four countries. The IRT results further indicated that the SSBS item and scale information function values varied considerably across these four countries. Suggestions for revising the SSBS are proposed for TIMSS program developers.

In researching student learning experience in Higher Education, a dearth of studies has investigated cognitive, social, and material dimensions simultaneously with the same population. From an ecological perspective of learning, this study examined the interrelatedness amongst key elements in these dimensions of 365 undergraduates' personalised learning networks. Data were collected from questionnaires, learning analytics, and course marks to measure these elements in the blended learning experience and academic performance. Students reported qualitatively different cognitive engagement between an understanding and a reproducing learning orientation towards learning, which when combined with their choices of collaboration, generated five qualitatively different patterns of collaboration. The results revealed that students had an understanding learning orientation and chose to collaborate with students of similar learning orientation tended to have more successful blended learning experience. Their personalised learning networks were characterized by self-reported adoption of deep approaches to face-to-face and online learning; positive perceptions of the integration between online environment and the course design; the way they collaborated and positioned themselves in their collaborative networks; and they were more engaged with online learning activities in the course. The study had significant implications to inform theory development in learning ecology research and to guide curriculum design, teaching, and learning.

Blended course designs have been increasingly adopted in medical education. However, research on the relations between the key aspects of students' learning experience and their learning outcomes often only measures students' self-reported experience, neglecting what they actually do in learning. This study combined both self-reported and observational measures of students' learning experiences and examined the relations between the two sets of measures and their contributions to learning outcomes. Australian medical students were asked to report their approaches to, and perceptions of, learning. The frequency and duration of their interactions with both online formative and summative tasks were observed and recorded. Correlation analyses showed that the learning outcome was positively related to deep approaches to using online technologies and duration of interactions with online summative tasks. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis found that the self-reported approaches and duration of interactions jointly explained the learning outcomes, accounting for 6% of the variance. The study demonstrated the complementary nature of using both self-reported and observational measures of students' learning experiences to explain the learning outcomes in blended course designs.

This article uses digital traces to help identify students' online learning strategies by making a clear distinction between the descriptive features (the proportional distribution of students' different online learning actions) and quantitative aspects (the total number of the online learning sessions), a distinction that has not been properly addressed in extant research. It also examines the extent to which the descriptive features and quantitative aspects of students' observed online learning behaviors are related to students' self-reported perceptions of the blended learning environment and the academic learning outcomes. A cohort of 317 Australian undergraduates enrolled in a compulsory engineering course participated in the study. A hierarchical cluster analysis, based on the different proportions of the types of online learning activities in which students were involved, identified two qualitatively different online learning strategies: content and practice oriented. The content-oriented learners not only had significantly more online learning sessions but also performed significantly better on both the formative and summative assessments, than their practice-oriented counterparts. Moreover, a higher proportion of students reporting more negative perceptions were observed to adopt practice-oriented strategies, whereas a higher proportion of students reporting better perceptions were observed to adopt content-oriented strategies. The study results serve as triangulated evidence for the previous self-reported research on the relations between students' perceptions and strategies. The results of the study also offer a number of ideas for teaching and curriculum design in blended courses in order to improve the quality of students' blended learning experiences.

The educational inclusion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be challenging, due to behavioural issues. Scant research has been conducted to investigate behavioural interventions for students with ASD in the Chinese context. Since special education in China varies greatly from that in western countries such as Australia, particularly in the area of the effective application of evidence-based practices, this must be a priority for researchers and teachers alike. The current study employed a literature review to identify effective practices to support the acquisition of appropriate behaviours of children with autism in different educational environments and contexts. These findings were then used in combination with an analysis of international, Australian, and Chinese policies to make suggestions and recommendations for special education reform in China. Results suggest that antecedent interventions, Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), social stories, and teaching self-management are the four most effective practices to decrease the challenging behaviours of students with ASD. Suggestions for further research and policy reform are provided.

This study compares the mental-state talk of infant educators in Australia and China in order to determine the nuanced differences in the ways that they use this talk with the infants in their room. Participants are 44 native English-speaking Australian educators from centres in Sydney, Australia and 30 native Chinese-speaking infant educators recruited from centres in and around Hangzhou, China. Twenty-minute samples of each educators' naturally occurring play interactions with infants during play were coded to determine the frequency of their desire, emotion, perception, cognition and modulation of assertion talk. Each mental-state term was also coded according to the referent of that mental-state. We examined the extent to which Australian and Chinese educators' use mental-state talk and how the referents of such talk differed by mental-state talk type and culture. Australian educators used significantly more mental-state talk than their Chinese counterparts. Different patterns of referent use across cultural cohorts and mental-state talk types were identified. Findings have implications for the socialisation of very young children into culturally specific ways of talking and thinking about the mind.

This study explores interpreters' role performance, lawyers' reactions to interpreters' performance, and the perceptions and expectations of the interpreter role among these two groups of professionals. It adopts an ethnographic approach to generate data from observations made in Australia of 20 authentic interpreted lawyer-client interviews and post-observation interviews with the lawyers and the interpreters respectively. The study shows that interpreters are very active participants in lawyer-client interviews, as manifested in their various forms of intervention and in their adoption of roles not stipulated in their professional ethics. The interpreters' active performance of their role relates to their perception of their function, their understanding of the relevant communicative tasks, their assumptions about lawyer's professional needs, and their previous interpreting experience. While lawyers strongly supported an understanding of the interpreter role as "impartial and faithful" and spoke against certain types of interpreter interference, such as interpreters using summarisation, yet in actual practice, very few lawyers were observed to question or stop interpreters' interference, and the lawyers' inaction may in fact be partly responsible for the interpreters' adoption of additional roles. These findings have implications for the professional development of interpreters and for lawyers in how to conduct effective interpreted legal interviews.

While collaboration is an important and key attribute for medical students in order to prepare them to perform well in health care teams, how to effectively develop and assess such skills is challenging. The current widespread practice of using Likert-scale questionnaire only to measure the quantity of collaboration at course and/or program level appears to be insufficient to provide an evidence-base for what counts desirable collaborative learning experience. Drawing on research into "student approaches to learning" and "social network analysis," this study investigates differences in collaborative learning configurations amongst 217 Australian medical students. Based on students' learning orientations (i.e., 'understanding' and 'reproducing') and their choice of collaborations (i.e., whether to collaborate or not, with whom to collaborate, and mode of collaboration), the analyses found five configurations of collaborations differing in a number of features. The most desirable collaborative experience was a configuration of collaborations formed by students with an 'understanding' orientation. This configuration revealed a strong tendency towards intensive pair work with measurable differences in how easy and effectively they collaborated. The results of the study not only have practical implications for teaching and curriculum design for collaborative learning, but also have significant implications for assessing students' collaborative learning experiences.

This study argues for the importance of using the different evidence to assess and evaluate a key graduate skill -- collaboration. To do so, it investigates the experience of 356 first-year students in a blended course design and measures their collaborative patterns. Combining research methodologies from student approaches to learning and social network analysis, the results reveal evidence of different collaborative patterns across the population sample. The investigation uncovers contrasting groupings of students with deep and surface approaches to inquiry and to online learning technologies, positive and negative conceptions of the learning environment, and relatively higher or lower academic outcomes. These are discovered to logically relate to different collaborative patterns. The most effective collaboration strategies involve collaborating only as much as tasks needed, in smaller groups, and being reciprocal by accepting and inviting peers to work together. Effective collaboration strategies also include students positioning themselves to gather information easily in their collaboration networks and to develop closely knit collaborative groups. The results offer an evidence-base to identify different experiences of student learning and collaboration to improve program design and the attribute of collaboration, and to improve the concepts underpinning policy development for quality improvement of university graduates.

One of the major objectives of precision education is to improve prediction of educational outcome. This study combined theory-driven and data-driven approaches to address the limitations of current practice of predicting learning outcomes only using a single approach. The study identified the online learning patterns by using students' self-reported approaches and perceptions of online learning and by using the observational digital traces of the sequences of their online learning events in a blended course. The study examined predictions of the academic performance using the online learning patterns generated by the two approaches separately. It also investigated the extent to which the online learning patterns identified by the two approaches were associated with each other. The theory-driven approach adopted a hierarchical cluster analysis using the self-reported data and found a 'deep' and a 'surface' online learning patterns, which were related to differences in the academic performance. The data-driven approach used an agglomerative sequence clustering and detected four patterns of online learning, which not only differed by quantity (number of learning events), but also differed by quality (the proportions of types of learning events). A one-way ANOVA revealed that the online learning pattern which had the most learning events, and was characterized by high proportions of viewing course contents and of performing problem-solving exercises, had the highest academic performance. A cross-tabulation revealed significant association between the self-reported and observational online learning patterns, demonstrating consistency of the evidence by a theory-driven and a data-driven approach and triangulating the results of the two approaches.

The ability to collaborate effectively face-to-face and online represents a critical skill for university graduates. However, there are still challenges regarding how to accurately assess this skill through traditional student learning measures. To better understand the nature of effective collaboration of university students in blended courses, the current study drew on the student approaches to learning framework and social network analysis techniques. We examined how student approaches to inquiry, approaches to online learning technologies, perceptions of the blended learning environment, different learning outcomes and configurations of collaboration are related. The methodologies commonly used in student approaches to learning research identified deep and surface approaches to inquiry and technologies, positive and negative perceptions of the integration of the learning environment, and of online workload, which also showed logical alignment with relatively better and poorer academic achievement in the course. Based on approaches, perceptions, and learning outcomes, students were divided into groups orientated towards understanding versus reproducing learning. The social network analysis techniques revealed features of different configurations of collaborations by different groups of students and their choices as to whether and with whom to collaborate during the learning process. Nuanced differences were found amongst different configurations of collaborations.

Among several hydrological processes, river flow is an essential parameter that is vital for different water resources engineering activities. Although several methodologies have been adopted over the literature for modeling river flow, the limitation still exists in modeling the river flow time series curve. In this research, a functional quantile autoregressive of order one model was developed to characterize the entire conditional distribution of the river flow time series curve. Based on the functional principal component analysis, the regression parameter function was estimated using a multivariate quantile regression framework. For this purpose, hourly scale river flow collected from three rivers in Australia (Mary River, Lockyer Valley, and Albert River) were used to evaluate the finite‐sample performance of the proposed methodology. A series of Monte‐Carlo experiments and historical data sets were examined at three stations. Further, uncertainty analysis was adopted for the methodology evaluation. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed model provides more robust forecasts for outlying observations, non‐Gaussian and heavy‐tailed error distribution, and heteroskedasticity. Also, the proposed model has the merit of predicting the intervals of future realizations of river flow time series at the central and non‐central locations. The results confirmed the potential for predicting the river flow time series curve with a high level of accuracy in comparison with the benchmark existing functional time series methods. Plain Language Summary: This paper proposes a functional quantile autoregressive model of order one, which is used to predict the entire distribution of the realizations of river flow time series curve. The proposed model allows modeling the conditional quantiles of the response variable as a function of its past values of it. The proposed method for historical river flow curves is an excellent alternative to existing mean regression methods at the 0.5 quantile level (median regression). Also, as an advantage over existing methods, it offers a more thorough explanation of the connection among previous and future realizations of river flow curves at various quantile levels, providing a more extensive understanding of the relationship. Moreover, this feature of the proposed method allows for the effortless generation of pointwise prediction intervals for future realizations of river flow curves. The numerical results obtained by Monte Carlo experiments and empirical data analyses exhibit that, compared with existing methods, the proposed method produces competitive or even better forecasting results. The results also indicate that the future realizations of the river flow measurements are well covered by the prediction intervals constructed by the proposed method. Key Points: Predicting the mean and extreme values of the river flow curve is important for various applications in water resources managementThe FQAR(1) allows predicting the entire distribution of future realizations of the river flow curve as a function of its past values of itNumerical results based on river flow measurements collected from the Australia Continent confirmed the potential of the FQAR(1) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The mortality of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is rising globally, against the trend of other cancers. People with liver cirrhosis, even after hepatitis C treatment still face a high risk of HCC, requiring ongoing enrolment in HCC surveillance, and new technologies to improve diagnostic sensitivity are being explored. However, their impact on HCC survival remains uncertain relative to improving adherence to existing surveillance methods. This study uses mathematical modeling to assess how different strategies can reduce deaths from liver cancer in people with cirrhosis after being cured of hepatitis C. We compared the impact of improved adherence to ultrasound screening with increased HCC imaging sensitivity on HCC survival. Notably, we found that even modest enhancements in surveillance adherence (5–10 percentage point increases) exhibited significant survival benefits for people with hepatitis C-related cirrhosis, outperforming improvements in diagnostic sensitivity. Background & Aims: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) presents a significant global health challenge, particularly among individuals with liver cirrhosis, with hepatitis C (HCV) a major cause. In people with HCV-related cirrhosis, an increased risk of HCC remains after cure. HCC surveillance with six monthly ultrasounds has been shown to improve survival. However, adherence to biannual screening is currently suboptimal. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of increased HCC surveillance uptake and improved ultrasound sensitivity on mortality among people with HCV-related cirrhosis post HCV cure. Methods: This study utilized mathematical modelling to assess HCC progression, surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment among individuals with cirrhosis who had successfully been treated for HCV. The deterministic compartmental model incorporated Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stages to simulate disease progression and diagnosis probabilities in 100 people with cirrhosis who had successfully been treated for hepatitis C over 10 years. Four interventions were modelled to assess their potential for improving life expectancy: realistic improvements to surveillance adherence, optimistic improvements to surveillance adherence, diagnosis sensitivity enhancements, and improved treatment efficacy Results: Realistic adherence improvements resulted in 9.8 (95% CI 7.9, 11.6) life years gained per cohort of 100 over a 10-year intervention period; 17.2 (13.9, 20.3) life years were achieved in optimistic adherence improvements. Diagnosis sensitivity improvements led to a 7.0 (3.6, 13.8) year gain in life years, and treatment improvements improved life years by 9.0 (7.5, 10.3) years. Conclusions: Regular HCC ultrasound surveillance remains crucial to reduce mortality among people with cured hepatitis C and cirrhosis. Our study highlights that even minor enhancements to adherence to ultrasound surveillance can significantly boost life expectancy across populations more effectively than strategies that increase surveillance sensitivity or treatment efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional interpreters are obliged by their codes of ethics to interpret the speakers' speech faithfully, including offensive, profane or vulgar language. In order to achieve this goal, interpreters need to be pragmatically competent, so as to understand the intention and effect of the offensive remark in the source language and be able to appropriately render it into the target language to achieve the same effect in the hearer. Research has shown, however, that not all interpreters abide by this requirement, and many tend to tone down or even omit any offensive language, for a number of reasons, including attempts to protect the hearers or to save their own face. This study examined the ways in which Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish speaking interpreters interpreted offensive language by a suspect in a simulated police interview into English. Experienced qualified interpreters in the three languages, maintained the highest levels of pragmatic equivalence.

Learning in blended environments has become a ubiquitous part of student experience in tertiary education worldwide. Although students' perceptions of learning environments are a key element in the learning process, there is a dearth of valid instruments to assess students' perceptions in blended contexts. This study described the initial development and validation of a Perceptions of the Blended Learning Environment Questionnaire (PBLEQ). The analyses, involving two cohorts of students enrolled in courses either from humanities/social sciences disciplines or from sciences/engineering disciplines, consistently supported the bifactor model over a correlated first-order model and a second-order model. The bifactor model had a single perceptions factor that underlined each of the items. Separately, there were three specific factors: the perceptions of integration between face-to-face and online learning, the perceptions of online contributions, and the perceptions of the online workload, each having its own separate set of items. The invariance tests among the two cohorts validated that the PBLEQ had invariant factor structure, factor loadings, and intercepts. The PBLEQ has potential to help unravel students' perceptions of the blended learning environment in diverse academic disciplines.

This study combined the methods from student approaches to learning and learning analytics research by using both self-reported and observational measures to examine the student learning experience. It investigated the extent to which reported approaches and perceptions and observed online interactions are related to each other and how they contribute to variation in academic performance in a blended course design. Correlation analyses showed significant pairwise associations between approaches and frequency of the online interaction. A cluster analysis identified two groupings of students with different reported learning orientations. Based on the reported learning orientations, one-way ANOVAs showed that students with understanding orientation reported deep approaches to and positive perceptions of learning. The students with understanding orientation also interacted more frequently with the online learning tasks and had higher marks than those with reproducing orientation, who reported surface approaches and negative perceptions. Regression analyses found that adding the observational measures increased 36% of the variance in the academic performance in comparison with using self-reported measures alone (6%). The findings suggest using the combined methods to explain students' academic performance in blended course designs not only triangulates the results but also strengthens the acuity of the analysis.

The study investigated the impact of professional development (PD) in Indigenous teaching on teachers' psychological and behavioural aspects, and Indigenous students' learning engagement. Adopting a multiple-indicator-multiple-indicator-cause model, frequency of PD was found to have positive paths to teachers' self-concept in Indigenous teaching and all the teaching strategies, but had a non-significant path to students' learning, suggesting the more frequently teachers are involved in PD in Indigenous teaching, the higher self-concept they had in teaching Indigenous children and the more frequently they adopted Indigenous teaching strategies. The availability of Aboriginal Education Officers (AEOs), however, had a significant and negative path on learning engagement. That is, Indigenous students' were perceived to be less engaged in learning with AEOs present in the school. An interaction effect was also found between PD and AEOs, indicating that the effectiveness of AEOs in Indigenous students' learning may depend on whether teachers actively attend PD programs.

While it is well established that non-native speakers differ from native speakers in their perception and/or production of Mandarin lexical tones, empirical studies focusing on non-native "learners" are still limited. The objective of this study is to add to the current understanding of lexical tone perception by comparing native speakers of standard Korean from the Seoul/Kyunggi area differing in Mandarin experience (NK1, NK2) with native speakers of Mandarin. NK1 (n = 10) had no experience with Mandarin whereas NK2 (n = 10) consisted of highly advanced learners of Mandarin. A group of 10 native Mandarin (NM) speakers was included as controls. Accuracy of perception of six tone pairs (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4, T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4) was assessed in a four-alternative forced-choice discrimination test. As expected, the NK2 group with extensive Mandarin learning experience resembled the NM group to a greater extent than did the NK1 group. T2-T3 was the hardest pair for both NK groups, but NK2 had the largest advantage over NK1 for this pair. Apart from T2-T3 which is generally considered difficult, tone pairs involving T1 caused some misperception by the NK groups. This may be related to the difficulty with perceiving a level tone which shows the least fundamental frequency (F0) movement and possibly has limited perceptual salience.

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65-83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.

Collaboration is an increasingly important and difficult skill for graduate engineers to develop. While universities provide some measures of collaboration ability of students on graduation, there is still some dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of students for collaborative activity in the workplace. This paper presents a case study of a first year engineering cohort of more than 350 students to discuss the value of improving both the measures and definitions of collaborative ability on graduation of engineering students in a blended learning context. Research methods from student approaches to learning research and social network analysis are adopted to provide experiential and mathematical evidence of successful collaboration. The results provide a characterization of groups of students with respect to their approach to collaboration and the features most common in productively collaborative students. The discussion has implications for teaching, course design, and how universities define and measure collaborative ability of students.

This study investigated the manner in which 56 infant educators used language to direct the behaviour of infants (defined as children aged birth to two years), on the basis that the ways in which educators frame their commands represent an important component of young children's learning experiences. Underpinned by systemic functional linguistic theory, the study analysed the frequency and type of command produced by educators with university, diploma and certificate qualifications. "Suggestive" and "indirect" commands convey a sense of negotiation, as if the addressees' subjective opinions and thoughts are considered, while "nonsuggestive" and "direct" commands foreground the speakers' power and authority. The findings demonstrate that commands feature frequently in educators' talk to infants, with nonsuggestive and direct commands being most commonly used. Individual differences were related to the qualifications of staff. University-qualified early childhood teachers used significantly fewer nonsuggestive and direct commands than did diploma and certificate-qualified educators, and they were more likely to provide infants with a reason for the command. These findings have implications for the way in which learning opportunities are created by the language that educators use, and for the overall quality of infant early childhood programmes.

Research Findings: This study examines the frequency of reasoning talk used by 56 educators during their naturally occurring play interactions with infants in their early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers. Using Hasan's semantic framework, reasons were coded as social (based on social rules) or logical (based on rules of nature). The communicative function of reasoning talk was coded as regulatory (when the reason served to regulate infants' behavior) or non-regulatory. On average, educators' reasoning talk comprising only 4.43% of their total talk, with social reasoning used slightly more frequently than logical reasoning. Educators used significantly more social reasoning when regulating infants' behavior, whereas logical reasoning occurred more frequently during non-regulatory interactions. Educators' qualification level explained individual differences. Bachelor-qualified educators used significantly more reasoning talk than lower-qualified educators, and this finding was explained by their more frequent use of both social and logical reasoning when regulating infants' behavior. Practice or Policy: The study identifies reasoning talk as an important element of language environment quality in ECEC infant rooms, and highlights the learning potential of language used for different communicative purposes. Findings demonstrate that well-qualified educators appear well versed to capitalize on the educative potential of this type of talk.

Background: More than 50% of people who die by suicide have not been in contact with formal mental health services. The rate of people who fly 'under the radar' of mental health services is higher among men than women, indicating a need to improve engagement strategies targeted towards men who experience suicidal thoughts and/or behaviours. In Australia, a range of mental health support services exist, designed specifically for men, yet, a substantial proportion of men do not use these services. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether a brief online video-based messaging intervention is an effective approach for encouraging men with suicidal thoughts and/or behaviours to engage with existing support services. Methods: Informed by a literature review, surveys, and consultation with men with a lived experience of suicidal thoughts and/or behaviours, we designed five video-based messages that will be used in this five-arm randomised controlled trial. A total of 380 (76 per arm) men aged 18 years or older with suicidal thoughts who are not currently accessing formal mental health services will be recruited online and randomly assigned to watch one of the five web-based video messages. After viewing the video, men will be presented with information about four existing Australian support services, along with links to these services. The primary outcome will be help-seeking, operationalised as a click on any one of the four support service links, immediately after viewing the video. Secondary outcomes include immediate self-reported help-seeking intentions in addition to self-reported use of the support services during a 1-week follow-up period. We will also use the Discrete Choice Experiment methodology to determine what aspects of support services (e.g. low cost, short appointment wait times) are most valued by this group of men. Discussion: This study is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of a brief web-based video messaging intervention for promoting engagement with existing support services among men with suicidal thoughts who are not currently receiving formal help. If found to be effective, this would represent a scalable, cost-effective approach to promote help-seeking for this at-risk population. Limitations and strengths of this study design are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing methods that allow for more focused management of wildlife under predator pressure may increase the efficiency of managing problematic predators. Non‐invasive dietary analysis and identification of conservation‐sensitive prey in the diet of 'culprit' predator individuals could help to facilitate this and is worthy of exploration. Recently on Phillip Island, Australia, Little Ravens Corvus mellori have emerged as a prominent predator on the clutches of burrow‐nesting Little Penguins Eudyptula minor. We tested the feasibility of using non‐invasive PCR approaches targeting the penguin mitochondrial 16S rRNA marker gene to establish whether penguin DNA could be detected in raven faecal samples, potentially enabling the identification of culprit ravens missed by extensive field observation. Using a metabarcoding approach, we examined the feasibility of non‐invasively establishing other dietary items via high‐throughput amplicon sequencing. We documented components of raven diet using the universal mitochondrial 16S rRNA, insect‐specific 'Chiar' 16S rRNA and plant ITS2. The assemblage of dietary items did not differ with raven culprit status (i.e. a raven previously observed preying upon penguin), sex or date. Penguin was detected in the diet of some individuals classified observationally as non‐culprits. Although some cases may conceivably have been false detections, other explanations include missed depredation events, consumption via scavenging or through secondary consumption (e.g. eating invertebrates that have consumed penguin). While this study found metabarcoding unreliable for unambiguous assigning of raven culprit status, at least as we implemented it, it may hold promise complementing observations if consumption via scavenging can be distinguished from direct depredation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pregnancy in kidney transplant recipients has become increasingly common. However, pregnancy carries higher risks to these patients compared to the general population. Aims: To describe pregnancy outcomes in kidney transplant recipients. Materials and Methods: We conducted a single‐centre retrospective cohort study of kidney transplant recipients who delivered after 20 weeks gestation at a quaternary hospital in Victoria, Australia, between 2000 and 2022 inclusive. Results: The study included 37 pregnancies from 27 patients, accounting for 38 infants. Over half of recorded pregnancies occurred in the past five years (56.8%, n = 21). There were high rates of pre‐existing hypertension (75.7%, n = 28). Pregnancy‐induced hypertension and pre‐eclampsia were common antenatal complications (21.6%, n = 8 and 48.6%, n = 18 respectively). Soluble fms‐like tyrosine kinase‐1 / placental growth factor ratios were elevated in all patients who developed severe pre‐eclampsia (16.2%, n = 6). The median gestational age at birth was 36.4 weeks (range 20–40.4, Q1 32.9, Q3 37.6) and 59.5% (n = 22) of births were preterm. Unplanned caesarean without labour was the most common mode of birth (35.1%, n = 13). The overall caesarean rate was 62.1% (n = 23). Post‐partum haemorrhage complicated over half of pregnancies (56.8%, n = 21). Fifty percent (n = 19) of infants were admitted for neonatal care, in particular neonatal intensive care, and had low birthweights under 2500 g. While there was a transient deterioration in kidney function, there was no graft rejection within one year of birth. Conclusions: Clinicians should consider the high rates of pre‐existing hypertension, preterm birth, and caesarean birth when counselling and managing pregnant kidney transplant recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: COVID-19 and related travel and social restrictions caused significant stress for university students in Australia and globally. Learning quickly moved online and many students (particularly international students) were separated from social and economic support. This study examined the impact of the pandemic from pre-pandemic (2019) to the COVID-19 Omicron wave (2022) on domestic and international students' mental health. Methods: Participants were 1540 students (72% females, 28% international) in four first-year cohorts (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). We screened for mental health concerns (% positive) and symptom scores for depression, anxiety and somatic distress using the PsyCheck, and general wellbeing using the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale. Results: From pre-COVID (2019) to the first wave of COVID-19 (2020), the proportion of students screening positive for mental health problems rose in both domestic students (66–76%) and international students (46–67%). Depression symptoms and wellbeing were worse in 2020 than in 2019, 2021 and 2022. Anxiety symptoms increased from 2019 to 2020 and continued to rise in 2021 and 2022. Somatic symptoms did not show an effect of cohort. Contrary to expectations, domestic students reported higher distress and lower wellbeing than international students across cohorts. Conclusion: The pandemic was associated with a marked increase in psychological distress in first-year university students, not all of which settled with the easing of restrictions. Post-pandemic recovery in the Australian university sector must include university-wide access to mental health information and support for incoming students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, oral conditions remain the most prevalent of all non-communicable diseases. Among the broad range of target goals and recommendations for action by the World Health Organization's Global Oral Health Strategy, we call out three specific actions that provide an enabling environment to improve population oral health including: (i) enabling population oral health reform through leadership, (ii) enabling innovative oral health workforce models, (iii) enabling universal health coverage that includes oral health. The aim of the article is to outline how leadership, regulatory approaches and policy in Australia can strengthen health promotion practice and can inform global efforts to tackle the complex wicked problems associated with population oral health. Examples in Australia show that effective leadership, regulatory approaches and well-designed policies can address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases, and are made possible through public health advocacy, collaboration and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine intraday abnormal returns associated with rights issue announcements in the Australian equity market over the period January 2000 to December 2022. Consistent with prior studies, we find significant abnormal returns ranging from −2.9% to −2.7% on the event day. We provide the first evidence on intraday price reactions pertaining to rights issues in Australia. Within 15 min of an announcement, we find significant abnormal trade returns of −1.2%. However, market participants are unable to profit by trading on these announcements due to transaction costs. Our results imply that the information content is fully impounded within 90 min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the practicum experience of a group of bilingual student-teachers who taught Chinese using English to learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in Western Sydney schools. Specifically it explores how these student-teachers used English as the instructional language in class and what strengths and weaknesses they demonstrated compared to their host teachers. Data were collected through observing and audio-recording the participants' teaching, aiming to capture the actual features of their English use in class. The data were structurally-coded employing the ELM categories. Discourse analysis was employed to interpret and understand the language use of the bilingual student teachers and also their supervising teachers. The bilingual student-teachers in this research, whose English proficiency was at IELTS 7.5, and who had experienced six months of intensive teaching practicum, were found able to demonstrate grammatically and discursively acceptable expressions throughout their teaching. The difficulties experienced by this cohort were more due to their lack of skills and flexibilities in teaching and classroom management rather than their inappropriate use of instructional English. (Contains 3 tables.)

The Ruminative Thought Styles Questionnaire (RTS) conceptualizes rumination as repetitive, recurrent, intrusive, and uncontrollable thinking. This article outlines the development and validation of a Chinese language version of the RTS, the RTS-CH. Following independent translation, back translation, and final translation checking, the factor structure, convergent and divergent validity, and item-level congruence of the RTS-CH was examined and improved. The resultant scale showed equivalence to the RTS and had attractive psychometric properties. The RTS-CH is the first Chinese language rumination measure that does not have inherently negative or depressive content.

Integrating an online component into a university course is typically done to improve the student experience. However the intent of the teacher's blended design may not always align to the students' experience of it. Their experience may be mediated by a number of factors including student perceptions of the online environment and their approach to engaging in the experience. In this study, an investigation into student learning experience of 200 engineering students found that the extent of their engagement and academic success was related to how integrated they perceived the online environment to be with the whole course design, the perceived amount of workload and benefits they found when engaging online and their preference for which mode of learning they chose. The outcomes of the associations amongst their perceptions, preferences and levels of engagement have important implications for university course design and teaching.

Research Findings: This study investigated the prevalence of pedagogical questions posed by 27 early childhood educators as they interacted with infants in each of two naturally-occurring contexts: book-focused interactions and educator mediated play. The pedagogical questions expressed by educators to infants were coded as "confirm" (yes/no), "specify" (what, who, where, when) or "explain" (why, how) on the basis that these question types present infants with different opportunities to use their developing communication skills to provide information to others. We sought to determine associations between question use, activity context and educators' qualification levels. Explain questions were used very rarely, while confirm and specify questions were more frequent, comprising 7.60% and 8.32% respectively of the messages expressed by educators to infants. A 2 (activity context) × 2 (qualification level) mixed factorial MANOVA, supplemented with post-hoc qualitative analyses, demonstrated that, in specific activity contexts, degree qualified early childhood teachers used pedagogical questioning in ways which differed from their less-qualified counterparts. Practice or policy: The findings provide much needed data on how educator questioning is used with children under two, how questioning affords context-specific language learning opportunities for infants in ECEC centres, and how educator qualifications may be implicated in these opportunities.

This study investigated the quantity of audible and intelligible ('near and clear') educator talk directly experienced by under-two-year-old infants attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) programmes and examined whether the quantity of educator talk was related to characteristics of quality in their ECEC room. Participants were 57 infants attending separate infant rooms in and around the Sydney metropolitan area, Australia. Each infant was observed for 3 h, wearing a small, custom-designed digital language processor (DLP) which digitally recorded and generated measures of 'near and clear' adult talk, unclear talk and infant vocalisations. Structural quality indicators include educator qualification, group size and educator-infant ratios, and Interaction Quality was assessed using the ITERS-R Interaction and Listening and Talking subscales. Infants' experience with 'near and clear' talk was predicted by Interaction Quality, the presence of a degree-qualified teacher and group size. 'Near and clear' talk was also significantly and positively related to the quantity of infant vocalisation and, negatively, to their level of exposure to unclear talk. Findings are discussed in terms of conceptualisations of quality in infant ECEC rooms, as well as the potentials and limitations of the 'near and clear' talk measure for use in future studies of language development in this context.

Claims of the importance of having positive perceptions and expectations of students with learning disabilities (LD) have been repeatedly made over recent years. This article aims to raise awareness of the importance of attributional beliefs in relation to the educational outcomes of students with LD in Australia and China. Australian and Chinese trainee teachers (N = 240) who were at the end of their training were surveyed with vignettes and Likert-scale questions to ascertain their responses to students with and without LD. Overall, the findings suggest that Chinese trainee teachers' attributional pattern is more positive than that of their Australian counterparts. Implications and recommendations for research and practice are also presented.