Western Australian Institute of Educational Research
The Fogarty Foundation is supporting the Western Australian Institute for Educational Research (WAIER) to provide an Annual Research Prize in a critical area of educational research.
A key activity of the Institute is the annual WAIER Forum which provides opportunities for research students and university lecturers to build networks and present their work. It is an important forum for education students, early career researchers and established researchers to receive feedback on their work in a friendly and collegial space and make connections across institutions.
The Fogarty Foundation WAIER Postgraduate Student Research Prize for 2021 was awarded to Jane Kirkham, a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Jane is researching motivational factors that underlie gendered decision-making about mathematics courses in senior secondary school students. Given that the study of mathematics has been identified as an ‘enabling discipline’ that predicts STEM aspirations and career paths, a main aim of this research is to provide an understanding of the mechanisms that influence mathematics choice decisions of Year 10 students, and to illuminate gender biases in preferences for mathematics courses.
This prize money will fund attendance at the Network Gender & STEM Conference at Universität der Bundeswehr München in July 2022 entitled, Sticking with STEM: Who comes, who stays, who goes, and why? This will provide a valuable opportunity for Jane to discuss her findings with others from the international community investigating personal and contextual influences on participation in education courses and careers in STEM.
This prize money will assist girls to remain connected and engaged with their schooling through the provision of teaching resources and a web based learning platform that help positively reframe ovulatory and menstrual health as not just a biological but also a psychosocial phenomenon.
At the 2018 Forum, the inaugural Fogarty supported grant was awarded to Dr Donna Barwood of ECU towards her research Understanding and challenging the dominant discourse in Health and Physical Education at Edith Cowan University.
Felicity Roux, winner of the 2020 Fogarty WAIER Award, also won the Curtin Innovation Award for Teaching and Learning. Felicity won this award for founding My Vital Cycles, a school-based ovulatory-menstrual health literacy program centred on the whole person.
For more information about the Annual Research Grant visit the WAIER website.
