New publications

WA Teacher Demand and Supply Projections is a new report published by the Western Australian Government, covering long-term teacher supply and demand across all sectors. The report analyses trends and projections to 2017, and has revealed public and private schools will continue to face significant challenges over the coming decade. Due to changes to the school starting age announced in 1996 and implemented in 2001, the student group now in Year 6 is half as big as a normal year group. As this group moves into secondary school and the primary sector experiences a full class load across all year groups, the demand for primary school teachers is expected to increase substantially. The demand for secondary school teachers is expected to decrease as the half cohort moves through years 8 to 12, leading to predictions of an excess of secondary teachers in 2010. Over the past year, the State Government introduced 17 separate initiatives on teacher supply. They include early recruitment of graduates ‘and giving them a pay rise, making them among the highest paid in the country (outside the current EBA process)’; offering 1,300 university teaching scholarships; recruiting teachers interstate and overseas; and introducing changes to the Government Superannuation Scheme to allow teachers aged 55 and over to access their super while continuing to work. The Department of Education and Training is also modernising its recruitment processes and practices and simplifying selection processes. See media statement 24 April 2008 from Mark McGowan, Western Australian Minister for Education and Training.

This series introduces young readers to the works of William Shakespeare, featuring stories based on twelve of Shakepeare's best-known plays. The 32-page booklets are targeted to readers aged 7 to 11, in language designed to be accessible and in a format intended to be easy for children to read and hold. Also included are notes on the themes within the stories and a background to the Globe Theatre. The series is edited by Andrew Matthews and illustrated by Tony Ross. Individual titles were published between 2003 and 2007. The stories are based on the plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing, Richard III, Henry V, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See review by Claire Cowling on Suite101.com. Available in Australia from Book and Volume and other retailers.

The report reviews evidence on social mobility for children born in Britain between 1970 and 2000. The report identifies persistent inequalities in academic achievement between income groups. It found that wealthier people were much more likely to acquire degrees than poorer ones. Three-year-olds from poor backgrounds who did well in cognitive tests did much less well in performance rankings by age five. The reverse was true of initially poor-performing children from wealthy backgrounds, and the report noted that these children would overtake the first group by age seven if the trend were to continue. Adapted from publisher's description, which includes an extensive list of links to media commentaries.

There is a growing emphasis on creating and maintaining professional teaching portfolios, which enable teachers to play a more active role in charting their own professional growth and demonstrating their competence and achievements. This manual provides step-by-step guidelines and tips for professional portfolio development that can be followed by teachers at all stages of their careers. Topics include how to organise the portfolio, types of evidence to be included, the audience to be addressed, creating working and presentation portfolios, and organising portfolios around US teaching standards. The book also covers the issues of adapting instruction to individual needs, motivation and communication skills, instructional planning skills, assessment of student learning, use of the portfolio during interviews for a teaching position, using the portfolio during inservice teaching, and artefacts to be included. Adapted from publisher's description and table of contents.

Children's reading and writing worlds are informed by multiple resources, combining different modes of communication and including speech or sound, still or moving images, writing and gesture. Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing aims to help teachers understand how to include multimodal approaches in their writing instruction. The book reviews multimodal text design and the relationships between texts and images. Designed for primary teachers, literacy specialists, and preservice teachers, the text includes suggestions for planning a teaching sequence leading to specific writing outcomes; using sample teaching sequences for developing work on narrative, non-fiction, and poetry content; and applying formative and summative assessments of multimodal texts for judging student development. The accompanying CD-ROM contains a range of examples of children's work, along with electronic versions of the activities and material designed for use with interactive whiteboards. Adapted from publisher's description.

Cooperative Learning in the Classroom is designed to demonstrate how to structure lesson activities that encourage students to support each other and improve learning by working collaboratively in pairs or small groups. The book gives a step-by-step approach to implementing cooperative learning in the classroom and covers key factors that make cooperative learning work, advice on measuring the effectiveness of cooperative learning, ideas for practical activities, and an action plan for whole-school professional development. Adapted from publisher's description.