SSA ACT Branch will be holding its next meeting in 2025 on Tuesday 27th May in person and via Zoom. There will be the opportunity to meet for dinner afterwards in Canberra City.
[From collaboration with Tasha Riley, Troy Meston, Chesley Cutler, Brittany McCormack, Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Sonal Nakar & Daniela Vasco (GIER). Funded by an Education Horizon grant, Queensland Department of Education]
Our work on the Weaving Stories of Strength project aimed to understand how to support teachers, who have professional obligations to incorporate Indigenous perspectives in their teaching. They face several challenges, including Western-centric priorities in schools, which means that Australian students may not be gaining the benefits of Indigenous knowledge. We combined research methods—Indigenous and Western—qualitative and some with quantitative origins—to reveal practical ways to help teachers build confidence when incorporating Indigenous knowledge into classrooms. Overall, our findings highlighted the importance of listening to Indigenous voices, so that schools may promote intercultural understanding and meet the diverse needs of learners.
Today, Samantha Low-Choy will unpack how statistical thinking influenced the methodology, illustrated using a few diagrams summarising some stories of strength. These diagrams emerged from our analysis of yarns with 16 Indigenous educators from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Here she hints at the work underlying these diagrams: mixed and multi-methods combining method/ologies for systematic literature review*, yarning, expert elicitation*, thematic analysis, concept mapping*, all embedded within a 4R’s Indigenous Research Methods framework. Notably, the statistical thinking involved in this project is not overtly statistical, but instead reflects the somewhat “hidden” facets of statistical thinking, which were applied to help capture meanings expressed using words rather than numbers.
The presentation will be quite interactive, so it may take 30 – 45 minutes, depending on the number and intensity of questions during/after the talk, which are very welcome!
Core Reference
Tasha Riley, Troy Meston, Chesley Cutler, Samantha Low-Choy, Brittany A. McCormack, Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Sonal Nakar, Daniela Vasco (2024). Weaving stories of strength: Ethically integrating Indigenous content in Teacher education and professional development programmes, Teaching and Teacher Education, 142: 104513, 14pp.
Biography: Samantha Low-Choy, Senior Biostatistician, Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence, Mater Research Institute—University of Queensland and Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Institute of Education Research (GIER), Griffith University
Sama recently joined Mater Research Institute—University of Queensland, as senior biostatistician across the Stillbirth Centre of Excellence and the Genesis perinatal research team in Mater Hospital. This continues a career-long tendency to collaborate with researchers to answer their questions, typically in the realm of applied statistics, with occasional excursions into computation. This builds on experience in university research hubs to help researchers better understand and apply statistical methods, at Bond University, QUT, and Griffith University. She’s also worked outside the higher education system, working in Queensland’s EPA and the CRC on national plant biosecurity.
Her contributions have spanned several fields, with highly cited and/or impactful publications in ecology, environment, psychology, education, criminology, and health. Sama’s main research interests—on novel applications or methodology in the statistical realm—lie in conceptual modelling and causal science, Bayesian statistical modelling and modelling complex systems. This includes working in the “borderlands” where statistical methods overlap with other paradigms, such as mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methods, finding structured ways to elicit expert knowledge, and multiversing.
Please forward to any non-members who may be interested.
Zoom link:
https://anu.zoom.us/j/87542671367?pwd=QwDV4eb9Wos6kWoaAogZta1Ut3UxYW.1
The zoom link will be open at 5.30pm. RSVP is not required. Full zoom details given at the end of the email.
Dinner:
After the talk we will be holding a dinner at 7.15pm at Banana Leaf Restaurant, 2 Akuna Street, Canberra City (Banana Leaf)
If you are interested in attending the dinner, please let us know by 5pm Monday 26 May by entering your details at SSA Canberra Branch dinner attendance sheet or contacting Luca Maestrini (luca.maestrini@anu.edu.au ; 0415 609 961). Please regard this as a firm commitment, not just an intention. For withdrawals after the deadline, please remove your name from the sheet and phone or text Luca (0415 609 961).
NOTE: We are offering discounts to SSA early career and student members who attend dinner! For this meeting, dinners will be a fixed charge of $10 for student members and $20 for early career members.
Zoom link:
Topic: SSA ACT branch meeting
Time: May 27, 2025 05:45 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
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