Projects - ARC Discovery Grants

The Faculty has enjoyed a long history of success at winning national competitive grants.
The following are current ARC Discovery grants, for which members of the Faculty are principal researchers:

Food, Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge and the Expansion of the Settler Economy

Professor Lynette Russell; Professor Marcia Langton; Dr Zane Ma Rhea

ARC Discovery Grant 2008-2010 - $210,000

Project Summary:

This project will strengthen our understanding of Australian Indigenous‑settler history by focusing on the role of food and traditional Aboriginal food knowledge.  It will also represent a timely engagement with worldwide debates about the role of Indigenous knowledge in a modern world.  As well as producing scholarly outcomes including books the project will establish and maintain a data‑base of this knowledge which will be accessible to Indigenous communities, scholars, land users and managers.  A further benefit will be the repatriation of knowledge and information located in archives and other repositories to    descendant Aboriginal communities in culturally sensitive, socially and historically contextualised Community Reports.

Generating Science Content Knowledge through Digital Animation in a Knowledge building Community of Preservice Teachers

Associate Professor Garry Hoban; Professor John Loughran; Associate Professor Brian Ferry; Dr Amanda Berry; Professor Galeen Erickson; Associate Professor Anthony Clarke

ARC Discovery Grant 2008 - 2010: $240,000

Project Summary:

Sustaining Australia's growth and prosperity is dependent on continuous innovation in the teaching of science. Yet science is one of the least taught subjects in the primary curriculum because teachers lack content knowledge and confidence. This research engages preservice primary teachers in using new technologies to develop their understanding of science content knowledge through digital animation and to collaborate with other preservice teachers interstate and internationally. The products and processes of digital animation will help maintain and expand Australia's base as a knowledge economy as well as provide a social benefit of improved science teaching in schools.

The Chinese knowledge diaspora and the international knowledge network - Australian and Canadian universities compared

Associate Professor Tony Welsh & Dr Rui Yang

ARC Discovery Grant 2007-2009:  $193,182 

Project Summary:

For Australia, one of the key contemporary challenges is to understand China, in ways that maximise mutualbenefits. This includes the key arena of education, where the growing number of Chinese intellectuals working inAustralian (and Canadian) universities, can assist in replenishing an ageing domestic academic work force,as wellas forging international research networks. The bi‑cultural, bi‑lingual expertise of this Chinese knowledge diasporaconstitutes a key resource with which to build trans‑national research and knowledge networks,with the diverse and growing Chinese scholarly community, worldwide. The advantages, prospects and difficulties of such trans‑national networks are explained.

The development of emotion regulation strategies and their relationships with psychological wellbeing: A long term follow up study.

Associate Professor Eleonora Gullone; Associate Professor Neville King

ARC Discovery Grant 2007-2009: $280,100

Project Summary:

A largely neglected area, emotion regulation in young people will be comprehensively examined. The first of itskind worldwide, this research will provide a rich understanding of the development of emotion regulation over thecourse of development from late childhood to early adulthood. An understanding of the role played by emotionregulation in wellbeing will provide important foundations for the development of intervention and preventionstrategies that incorporate emotional functioning processes. This is predicted to result in a marked increase in theefficacy of existing prevention and intervention efforts which will lead to significant health care cost savings andsocial benefits, particularly for our youth.

Bubbles on the surface: a place pedagogy of the Narran Lakes

Professor Margaret Somerville

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008 - $148,000

Project Summary:

The project will provide Aboriginal, ecological humanities, and pedagogical input into the problem of environmental sustainability in the Murray‑Darling Basin, complementing current physical science initiatives. It will have immediate national benefit in the production of educational resources based on alternative and previously invisible stories of water in the Narran Lakes area, an icon site in the Murray‑Darling Basin.  The findings will have longer term national benefit by identifying the elements of a general pedagogy of place, drawn from the specific local case study of the Narran Lakes, which will be applied in adult and community education.

Link to project website

Enabling place pedagogies in rural and urban Australia

Professor Margaret Somerville, Professor Bronwyn Davies; Dr Kerith Power; Dr Sue Gannon

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008 - $160,000

Project Summary:

This project will tell us how children and adults learn about place in the local areas where they live and work. The findings will be applied in action research with teachers in early childhood, school, and adult education settings, and in the preparation of teachers. It will address two Research Priority areas, 1: An Environmentally Sustainable Australia and 2. Strengthening Australia's economic and social fabric, which we argue are inseparable. Incorporating the findings into the curricula of teacher education will ensure that the project will have sustained long term benefits as well as the immediate application built into the study.

Link to project website

Moving ideas: Mobile policies, researchers and connections in the social sciences and humanities - Australia in the global context

Professor Jane Kenway

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2010 - $317,000

Project Summary:

Researchers are increasingly moving across national borders to work and live. Around the world, their countries of origin seek to benefit from the exchanges of knowledge and culture and the new connections that arise. There is scant research on this topic, particularly with regard to social sciences and humanities researchers. This study identifies the new configurations of knowledge, culture and connection that come about through such researchers' movements. It will enrich socio cultural studies of contemporary knowledge flows and global research governance. It will also identify the most fruitful research policies on researcher mobility in Australia.

Motivations for choosing teaching as a career and development in the profession: A multicohort longitudinal study of beginning teachers

Dr Paul Richardson, Dr Helen Watt and Professor J Eccles (University of Michigan)

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2009 - $185,000

Project Summary:

The research addresses problems of recruitment and retention in the current climate of teacher shortages. It will establish profiles of motivations for career choice at teaching degree entry, trace changes in perceived competencies and professional commitment from degree exit through to early professional experiences, and identify factors and contextual processes conducive to or inhibitory of retention. This agenda is interdisciplinary, involves complementary methods, multiple cohorts from five institutions across two nations, within a strong longitudinal design.

Link to project website