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To determine the forces applied by coil springs used to open spaces for blocked out lateral incisors, and to compare the actual forces used with clinicans’ concepts of an ‘ideal’ force.

Orthodontic treatment can result in root resorption.

Well-finished orthodontic treatment begins with accurate positioning of the brackets on the teeth.

This qualitative study looked at the instructional, curricular and organizational factors impacting on the adoption of mobile learning in a higher education institution. Academics expressed their views on a variety of educational issues likely to enhance or hinder the effectiveness of the innovation. Teachers requested more professional development in a number of key areas including the integration of the technology into teaching and learning. Likewise, resolving vital issues such as workload, equity to access and effective policy making were seen as key to successful adoption. Technical issues such as having good wireless connectivity, need for efficient technical support, access to mobile devices and an understanding of their operational limitations with respect to desk/laptops were also highlighted. The study revealed a number of alternative perceptions and misconceptions, about articulating effective mobile learning pedagogies. For instance, staff expressed concerns about the risk of exposing students to superficial learning when mobile learning experiences were not well designed, the prospect that the devices might distract students from learning, as well as a possible deterioration of the quality of interaction between academics and students. Recommendations to reconcile those alternative conceptions with best practice principles are outlined.

There is continuing debate about how best to teach ethics to students in business, that is, how best to help them to develop the ethical aspects of their future profession. This debate has covered whether to teach ethics, what to teach and whether it has any effect on students' views or future behaviour. For the most part, the views of the students themselves are in the minority. Yet it seems likely that the most effective pedagogical approaches would be those based on students' own ideas of the nature of ethics and the role of ethical considerations in their studies and professional lives. The research we report here investigates the nature of such ideas in a cohort of students studying business at an Australian university. We discuss the pedagogical implications of our findings and conclude that approaches that encourage students to become ethically-aware professionals are likely to be most useful.

We have been investigating university student conceptions of mathematics over a number of years, with the goal of enhancing student learning and professional development. We developed an open-ended survey of three questions, on "What is mathematics" and two questions about the role of mathematics in the students' future. This questionnaire was completed by 1,200 undergraduate students of mathematics in Australia, the UK, Canada, South Africa, and Brunei. The sample included students ranging from those majoring in mathematics to those taking only one or two modules in mathematics. Responses were analysed starting from a previously-developed phenomenographic framework that required only minor modification, leading to an outcome space of four levels of conceptions about mathematics. We found that for many students modelling is fundamental to their conception of "What is mathematics?". In a small number of students, we identified a broader conception of mathematics, that we have labelled "Life". This describes a view of mathematics as a way of thinking about reality and as an integral part of life, and represents an ideal aim for university mathematics education. (Contains 1 table and 1 footnote.)

The difficulty of staffing rural and remote schools has become a global phenomenon. Educational agencies in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have addressed this issue by developing and implementing creative recruitment models. While many studies have documented reasons why teachers decide to work in rural and remote schools very little has been written about how the relationship between teacher personal demographics and why teachers move to rural regions and the intrinsic factors leading to their decision. One hundred and ninety-one secondary teachers from 27 rural and remote schools in the State of New South Wales, Australia, participated in this survey study. The findings reveal a number of factors making possible their attraction to rural and remote communities not only by the opportunity to secure a permanent position, but also because of the attraction of a rural ambiance, a stronger sense of collegiality and gaining experience/exposure in rural education. Constraints factors in teaching in a rural or remote school included a number of logistics and instructional reasons. In addition, the study found that respondents were more likely to move to rural and remote schools because they (a) grew up in a rural area with family connections in rural areas, (b) were female with family connections in rural areas, and (c) were in the 18-30 year age range and wanted to have rural teaching experience. The study theorises that the choice to work in a rural and remote school is influenced by a set of interacting possibilities and constraints creating a zone of decision-making free movement. Implications for teachers' recruitment and retention are discussed.

Creativity is viewed in different ways in different disciplines: in education it is called "innovation", in business it is "entrepreneurship", in mathematics it is often equated with "problem solving", and in music it is "performance" or "composition". A creative product in different domains is measured against the norms of that domain, with its own rules, approaches and conceptions of creativity. However, learning in any discipline area consists of both product and process. While the product may be quite different in different domains, there are general principles of pedagogy that encourage creativity of process. "Creative teaching" could be said to consist of setting up a learning environment that encourages students to see the essence as well as the detail of the subject, to formulate and solve problems, to see the connectedness between diverse areas, to take in and react to new ideas, and to include the element of surprise in their work. Such a learning environment involves not only appropriate materials and assessment techniques, but also methods of learning that address the important affective dimensions of creativity.

Research in student learning can be based on a theoretical framework, observations of students' learning, the products of this learning, and students' own conceptions of the subject and of learning. In the final analysis, such investigations have a clear purpose--to improve student learning. We report on using the results of research into student learning in statistics to improve the learning environment in a university class on regression analysis. We believe this is an effective method of becoming "researchers of practice" in statistics education.

Morphophonological alternations can make target-like production of grammatical morphemes challenging due to changes in form depending on the phonological environment. This article explores the acquisition of morphophonological alternations involving the interacting patterns of vowel deletion and stress shift in Russian-speaking children (aged 4;0-7;11) using a "wug" test with real and nonce words. Depending on the phonological context, participants were expected to either delete vowels (e.g. ko'mok[subscript Nom,sg] -- kom'ka[subscript Gen,sg]) or preserve them (e.g. p[superscript j]i'lot[subscript Nom,sg] -- p[superscript j]i'lota[subscript Gen,sg]). The results showed that children's sensitivity to morphophonological patterns increases with age: 4-year-olds tended to preserve underlying vowels and stress across conditions, whereas older children demonstrated growing accuracy, at least with real words. Stressed vowels were more appropriately alternated and preserved across conditions, suggesting suprasegmental effects on the acquisition of segmental alternation patterns in Russian.

Opening Real Science (ORS) is a three-year government initiative developed as part of the Mathematics and Science Teachers program. It is a collaboration across universities involving teacher educators, scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and educational designers aimed at improving primary and secondary pre-service teachers' competence and confidence in mathematics and science. The ORS project has developed 25 online learning modules for pre-service teacher programs. Statistical literacy is prioritised. The Statistical Literacy Module for Primary Teachers (SL-P) adopts an inquiry-based approach and uses resources and contexts relevant to their practice. This paper documents the development and evaluation process of SL-P from its conception to implementation, and reviews the initial trials.

International and national testing of numerical and language skills has become a regular part of educational systems in many countries. In Australia, the "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN) has been used since 2008 to carry out regular tests of literacy and numeracy amongst school students nationally. Since the numeracy components of this program are based on work carried out in school mathematics classes, it seems reasonable that tests represent an evaluation of mathematical ability, albeit at the simpler and introductory levels. However, there has been little investigation of students' ideas about numeracy, and the role that their attitudes towards numeracy may have on their results on the numeracy components of NAPLAN tests. This study carries out an empirical investigation of ideas about and attitudes towards numeracy, and their relation to NAPLAN scores for a sample of 735 lower secondary students from two schools in New South Wales, Australia. Attitudes are measured using a modified form of the "Students' Attitudes Towards Statistics," (SATS-36) test (Schau in Survey of attitudes towards statistics, http://www.evaluationandstatistics.com, 2003), and conceptions of numeracy are obtained from phenomenographic analysis of an open-ended response item. The overall conclusion, that students' understanding of the concept of numeracy and their attitudes towards numeracy are related to their performance in numeracy tests, represents a potentially important result both for students and their teachers.

The purpose of this article is to explore the "value" of creative workers' work from their perspective. The work of this group is often ephemeral and intangible, contributes to the development of society, and is often very poorly remunerated. Qualitative responses from a large survey of creative workers' work experience and attitudes have provided the material analyzed for this paper. The data were analyzed using a naturalistic coding process leading to the emergence of themes describing the data. Five "elements of worth" emerged which included identity representation, motivation, catalysts of creativity, interactions with society, and recognition. Knowing how creative workers experience these five elements provides educators and local/national policy makers data on which to base their pedagogical and financial judgments. To date, there has been no other study that examines how creative workers perceive the value of their work and how that notion of value is derived from their lived experience.

This study validated the semantic items of three related scales aimed at characterising the perceived worth of mathematics-education-related mobile applications (apps). The technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model was used as the conceptual framework for the analysis. Three hundred and seventy-three preservice students studying primary school education from two public and one private Australian universities participated in the study. The respondents examined three different apps using a purposively designed instrument in regard to either their explorative, productive or instructive instructional role. While construct validity could not be established due to a broad range of variability in responses implying a high degree of subjectivity in respondents' judgments, the qualitative analysis was effective in establishing content validity.