Karen Murcia - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Karen Murcia

Thinking Skills and Creativity, Mar 1, 2023

Children’s Creative Inquiry in STEM, 2022

Issues in Educational Research, Jun 19, 2021

In Semester 1 of the 2020 academic year, face-to-face higher education students in many instituti... more In Semester 1 of the 2020 academic year, face-to-face higher education students in many institutions were instructed to not attend classes or lectures on campus soon after the semester commenced, due to precautions put in place to limit the spread of Covid-19 in institutions across Australia. To sustain education and course progression, students were rapidly transitioned to learning-platforms, and synchronous or asynchronous online instruction. Although this action was needed to help ensure undisrupted learning, little consideration was given to the impact this would have on the students who had chosen to study in the face-to-face mode. The instrumental case study reported in this paper sought to capture the lived experiences of students enrolled in initial teacher education (ITE) programs in mathematics, science, and technology (STEM) units in on-campus, face-to-face mode as they moved to emergency fully online instruction. An initial online survey, constructed in Qualtrics and using a 4-point Likert scale, was sent to these students in Semester 2, and this was followed by semi-structured interviews with those who indicated their willingness to participate. Thirty-two students participated in the survey and 11 in the interviews, and these data were examined through the lens of selfdetermination theory. The majority of participants preferred the face-to-face mode, yet some were surprised about the affordances of fully online. Although the respondent group was small, the insights gained are of interest to educators in higher education and have the potential to inform new ways of designing and delivering authentic and engaging online and blended learning in these programs. 422 How have Covid-19-related changes to tuition modes impacted face-to-face initial teacher education students? Research gap Research to date on the impact of emergency remote online teaching on ITE students has not been framed in terms of the needs of these students, and this research contributes to the field by investigating ways in which these needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) are undermined or can be met. This has been examined through the selfreported lived experience of the participants. Research questions The study reported in this article focused on initial teacher education students who had chosen to study their STEM-discipline units (science, technology and mathematics) in the on-campus, face-to-face mode.

Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

Creativity is recognised as a key facet of the suite of 21st century skills driving education wor... more Creativity is recognised as a key facet of the suite of 21st century skills driving education worldwide. Understanding its existence outside of The Arts is vital for recognising young children’s creativity. However, what constitutes creativity and what it ‘looks like’ is not always clear. As a result, inconsistency and lack of efficacy when educators and parents attempt to encourage the development of young children’s creativity is possible. To investigate implicit theories of creativity relating to what creativity is and who is considered creative, parents and educators of four to eight-year-old children in four early learning contexts in Perth, Western Australia, were invited to complete a questionnaire. Findings suggest there may not be a strong tendency towards recognising creativity in The Arts but there may be an inclination to recognise eminent men’s creativity more than women’s. Additionally, there appears to be a lack of recognition of ‘daring’ as a creative behaviour.

The Australian Educational Researcher

Across Australia, early years learning frameworks recommend digital technologies be integrated in... more Across Australia, early years learning frameworks recommend digital technologies be integrated into early years centres. Introduced in 2009, the Early Years Learning Framework, requires educators to foster children’s use of technologies for accessing information, investigating ideas, and representing their thinking. The National Quality Framework also encourages children to engage with digital technology for experimentation. Using a researcher created Digital Technology Activity Framework for early years centres, this study examined broad digital technology integration in a sample of Australian early years centres. Using desktop audits, interviews and observations, the study found that while digital technologies were widely embedded, there were significant opportunities evident for further promoting children’s agency with devices. These findings suggest that to support children’s achievement of learning outcomes with digital technologies, greater sector-wide professional learning an...

Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, 2021

Sociocultural Explorations of Science Education, 2022

$Research paper thumbnail of Science in the news: An evaluation of students\u27 scientific literacy$

Understanding and evaluating reports of science in the media is frequently stated as an attribute... more Understanding and evaluating reports of science in the media is frequently stated as an attribute of a scientifically literate person, with some researchers suggesting it should be fundamental to any study of scientific literacy. Constructive engagement with science news briefs requires individuals to understand the terms used, take a critical stance and to make links from the report to the broader science discipline and social context. Yet the research reported in this paper indicates that more than fifty percent of the first-year university students surveyed did not demonstrate the ability to critically engage with science reported in the news. The students demonstrated minimal engagement with the reported methods and a lack of sensitivity to the fact that scientific research takes place within a social community. The findings of this study highlight the need for explicit teaching, with appropriate scaffolds and modeling to develop students\u27 ability to critically engage with sc...

STEM, Robotics, Mobile Apps in Early Childhood and Primary Education

This chapter reports on the design and trial of a virtual reality transformational game aimed at ... more This chapter reports on the design and trial of a virtual reality transformational game aimed at promoting the study of nanotechnology among secondary science students. Nanocity is a prototype game purposefully designed to create an engaging and immersive learning environment. The game was tested with 87 lower secondary students in two Western Australian schools. After the experience, these students were surveyed and some participated in focus group interviews. These data, along with observation of the students using the game, provided evidence that the experience was not only engaging but had a transformational effect on the attitudes and perceptions of students towards nanotechnology as a field of study and work. These results supported the suggestion that transformational games can be used to support the learning of students in science and in particular improve their attitudes and perceptions of future engagement with science.

Teaching science, Dec 1, 2020

Learning and Teaching Primary Science

Issues in Educational Research, 2020

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and... more We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children’s creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding technologies? and (2) what does creativity look like in young children’s engagement with digital coding technologies? After firstly discussing the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) context of the research, we explore the meaning of creativity in the early years and establish the conceptual framework for analysing children’s play and learning with a BeeBot coding toy and iPad app. Importantly, our review and synthesis of significant literature led to the development of an innovative framework, the ‘A’ to ‘E’ of children’s creativity. This framework includes five proposed characteristic clusters of children’s creativity, inc...

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Educational Technologies 2019, 2019

This article is an exploratory analysis and comparison of the demographic distributions of data c... more This article is an exploratory analysis and comparison of the demographic distributions of data collected from the 2016 New Coder Survey, with that obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). In comparing the data sets, the findings suggest that overall females were more likely to engage in online self-paced coding education, particularly when they had no background or previous study in an IT discipline. This contrasted strongly with females having an existing IT qualification. When looking at ethnicity, the research identified that those students who identify as an ethnic minority were more likely to undertake formal tertiary education in IT, rather than engage in online coding study. The research also confirmed that the average age was higher, and diversity of age groups was larger for those undertaking online study, when compared with those undertaking formal tertiary study. The practical implications of this analysis to diversity in Information Tech...

Issues in Educational Research, 2018

Science centres generally strive to increase awareness, interest, capability and participation by... more Science centres generally strive to increase awareness, interest, capability and participation by citizens in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This review of Scitech’s professional learning (PL) strategy was designed to analyse quantitative and qualitative feedback about the professional learning activities delivered by Scitech consultants and drew from 2014 and 2015 data. We aimed to determine the social impact of Scitech professional learning programs on participants and their students across three specified programs. Concepts used as indicators of potential social impact that informed and framed this evaluation included integrated STEM, transversal competencies, scientific literacy, numeracy and social constructivism. A mixed method data collection was adopted and included face to face interviews, documented school visits, classroom observation, review of PL resources and presentations, review of PL feedback and follow up telephone interviews. We found tha...