Description:
Much has been written about the complexities involved in preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to take up the challenge of educating an increasingly diverse student population and, thus, enabling them to create connections and live productive lives in a world that is rapidly changing. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning PSTs that explores potential strategies and pedagogical approaches regarding the teaching and awareness of social inclusion issues for students in Higher Education and Secondary sectors. In order to discuss these strategies and approaches I first turn to Diane Celia Hodges’ (1998) notion of dis-identification as a framework from which the subject positions and contexts of teachers, students and situations can be examined. In this investigation, teaching practices that describe and work with difference can be constructed and analysed. Then, I look to Jacqueline Darvin’s (2011) work concerning Cultural and Political Vignettes (CPVs) that I have used as a tool to open up space for PSTs to explore, analyse and act upon a number of interactions between bodies that may occupy socially, politically and culturally different positions. While CPVs have originally been used in New York City public school classrooms, I have used them in courses at a regional Australian university. This paper is, then, a case study outlining some of the work I have done with CPVs in a setting that is very different to that of the original work. In this paper I continue the international discussion concerning CPVs and their effectiveness in forging student connections and working with issues of social inclusion.
Description:
This paper focuses on the development of the academic and personal literacy and numeracy skills of pre-service teachers. It examines how an embedded enhancement framework of literacy and numeracy support named the DEER (Developing, Embedding, Extending, Reflecting) framework by the researchers was created in initial teacher education (ITE) programs in regional Victoria. The implementation of the DEER framework will be discussed and an evaluation of the impact of the DEER framework will be presented. Quantitative data draws on two test results in both literacy and numeracy, comparing the performance of students. These tests were undertaken by pre-service teachers, before and after the implementation of the DEER framework. Effect sizes for the changes in the test results are presented with the effect size for the numeracy testing calculated as 0.99, while the effect size for the literacy testing was 0.75.
Description:
This paper focuses on the development of the academic and personal literacy and numeracy skills of pre-service teachers. It examines how an embedded enhancement framework of literacy and numeracy support named the DEER (Developing, Embedding, Extending, Reflecting) framework by the researchers was created in initial teacher education (ITE) programs in regional Victoria. The implementation of the DEER framework will be discussed and an evaluation of the impact of the DEER framework will be presented. Quantitative data draws on two test results in both literacy and numeracy, comparing the performance of students. These tests were undertaken by pre-service teachers, before and after the implementation of the DEER framework. Effect sizes for the changes in the test results are presented with the effect size for the numeracy testing calculated as 0.99, while the effect size for the literacy testing was 0.75.
Description:
This paper describes an innovative cross-institutional learning partnership that was designed to foster the learning of both Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) and students and teachers from a local regional Secondary College. Around 150 Grade Nine (13-14 year old) students took part in a purpose-designed activity day at the university that was organised and conducted by 34 second year PSTs as part of their teacher education program. This project was designed as an authentic teaching experience for PSTs that would enable them to translate theory from their teacher education course into teaching practice. At the same time the secondary students were offered a range of learning experiences informed by school-derived curriculum. These specifically focused activities contributed to the students’ school based learning programs whilst also encouraging them to think of university as a future option. In this paper reflections, utilizing a self-study methodology, are provided by the lecturers who developed and implemented the program. The lecturers describe and discuss what they observed about the learning of the PSTs. Many of the PSTs indicated strongly that they were able to engage in a scaffolded, authentic teaching experience as preparation for their initial school placements. Overall, the evidence suggests that the initiative offered a powerful learning experience that enabled PSTs to connect theory with teaching practice.
Description:
This paper describes an innovative cross-institutional learning partnership that was designed to foster the learning of both Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) and students and teachers from a local regional Secondary College. Around 150 Grade Nine (13-14 year old) students took part in a purpose-designed activity day at the university that was organised and conducted by 34 second year PSTs as part of their teacher education program. This project was designed as an authentic teaching experience for PSTs that would enable them to translate theory from their teacher education course into teaching practice. At the same time the secondary students were offered a range of learning experiences informed by school-derived curriculum. These specifically focused activities contributed to the students’ school based learning programs whilst also encouraging them to think of university as a future option. In this paper reflections, utilizing a self-study methodology, are provided by the lecturers who developed and implemented the program. The lecturers describe and discuss what they observed about the learning of the PSTs. Many of the PSTs indicated strongly that they were able to engage in a scaffolded, authentic teaching experience as preparation for their initial school placements. Overall, the evidence suggests that the initiative offered a powerful learning experience that enabled PSTs to connect theory with teaching practice.
Description:
Becoming a mother is cataclysmic. It is experienced in a myriad of ways but always the act signals change. As an academic, I turned to words, thoughts, and ideas to help me understand what I felt to be a complete and sometimes terrifying transformation of maternity. I found a copy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born and read it. Rich’s descriptions of the joys of mothering as well as her honest and critical insights into the institution of motherhood spoke about her journey into maternity. She was also speaking parts of my story of mothering. At the time that I discovered Rich’s maternal writings, I had completed a project on the “bold new territory” of cyberspace. Having enjoyed the fiery feminism of the geekgirls, grrrls, and other activists as well as being excited by Rich’s work, I turned to cyberspace, hungry for stories of mothering. What I found intriguing in this domain was the comingling of convention and subversion, and the enormous possibility for change. In the hope of finding representations of maternal bodies going beyond the normative images, I looked to an investigation of the cyber-realm and the potential of this domain to overturn dominant discourses of motherhood. "From chapter"
Description:
In uncertain contemporary times, Initial Teacher Education (ITE) educators are under considerable pressure from political, social and institutional sources to ensure that PSTs are “classroom ready”; fully equipped to prepare diverse student cohorts to lead fulfilling post-school lives in an increasingly complex and changing world. To achieve this goal, current research and policy is increasingly focusing on foregrounding inclusive teaching practice. A great deal of education literature focuses on notions of diversity and inclusion with regard to student education in schools (Blackmore, 2009, Campbell & Whitty, 2002, Nieto, 1999, Smyth & McInerney, 2007, and Smyth & McInerney, 2009). Much has also been written about the difficulties inherent in educating PSTs regarding the complexities of inclusive teaching (Blackmore, 2009, Shor, 1992, Sleeter, 2001, Smyth & McInerney, 2007, and 2018 ATEA & TEFANZ Conference: Teacher Education in and for Uncertain Times Smyth & McInerney, 2009). In addition, leading education organizations and accrediting institutions, such as the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) promote inclusion as a mandated teaching approach. While inclusion is the approach mandated in Australia for catering for diversity, the authors argue that current notions of inclusive teaching are still haunted by ghosts of integration and other non-inclusive practices in approaches that hierarchical, additive and focused on deficit thinking. In this model, students are diagnosed as having a particular condition, disorder, impairment, or other difference, which is prioritized as their chief learning characteristic. The rich complexity of a learner’s strengths, preferences, challenges and goals is then narrowed down to one major ingredient – the impairment or difference – which becomes the focus of strategies and practices recommended as appropriate for that particular condition. In this presentation, the authors ask the thorny question, how do we teach PSTs to identify the complexity of learner needs and to make pedagogic decisions to enable learning to occur for all students? The presentation contributes a way forward through the authors’ examination of a range of pedagogies used in class to facilitate PSTs’ investigation of approaches and practices that encourage teaching for inclusion. In order to facilitate PSTs’ learning concerning inclusive teaching, the authors focus on creating opportunities to enable students to work with a diverse range of learners “selecting strategies on the basis of what is to be learnt rather than what is wrong with the learner” (Florian, 2008, p. 2004). As an exploration of pedagogic decisions and teaching approaches, the paper outlines a case study that makes use of a self-study methodology as well as discourse analysis. This research mode “includes elements of ongoing inquiry, respects personal experience, and emphasizes the role of knowledge construction. The collaborative component of self-study acknowledges the important role of the social construction of knowledge (Lassonde, Galman & Kosnik, 2009, p. 10). The inclusivity of a self-study approach and its multi-faceted nature encourages reflection, collaboration and on-going dialogue between educators and PSTs providing insights into teaching practices. From observations and reflective examination of their teaching practices and course development, the authors identify and analyse the pedagogies that are being used to achieve the aims of promoting teaching for inclusion in ITE courses. In addition to a self-study methodology, discourse analysis is used to examine formal literature and policy discussing diversity and inclusion."
Description:
This paper describes an initiative that was designed to forge strong connections between Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) at the University of Ballarat, a regional university in Victoria, Australia and students and teachers at a local regional Secondary College (students aged 12-18). A group of around 150 year nine (13-14 year old) students took part in a day of learning activities at the university that were organised and conducted by second year PSTs as part of their teacher education program. This initiative aimed to provide the secondary students with a range of learning experiences at the university, thus allowing them to consider University study as a future option while contributing to their school-based learning program. At the same time, the PSTs were able to engage in an authentic teaching experience and to put theory from their teacher education course into practice. In this paper, some of the reflections from the PSTs, that describe what they learnt from the experience, are discussed. Most of the PSTs valued the opportunity to engage in a scaffolded, authentic teaching experience as preparation for their initial school placements. Overall, the initiative seemed to have contributed to the learning of the PSTs in powerful ways.
“Undoing” Gender: how the School of Science, Engineering and Information Technology SEIT Women’s group works across university and community lines to promote inclusive STEM
Description:
Research on gender and education in industrialised and developing countries suggests that schools and universities are sites of ‘doing’ rather than ‘undoing’ gender. Deutsch (2007) contends that ‘doing gender’ refers to social interactions that reproduce conventional and limiting notions of gender construction and that ‘undoing gender’ refers to social interactions that reduce gender difference and open up other possibilities. In this paper we consider how educational institutions can be strategic sites of influence in undoing gender and we investigate some ways that gender is ‘undone’ through the example of the work of the Science, Engineering and Information Technology Women’s Group (SEITWG) located in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Federation University Australia. For this purpose, a self-study methodology understood as a professional reflection was used. The paper explores how the informal coalition of SEITWG works as ‘wilful subjects’, on the one hand, coming up against some of the ‘brick walls’ of dominant discourse that attempt to limit women’s participation in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). On the other hand, SEITWG attempts to move beyond the restrictions of conventional gender narratives to encourage more women to participate in STEMM by foregrounding the presence of women already active in the area; mentoring women students and staff; supporting a range of their colleagues’ endeavours to research and teach for inclusion; embedding gender analysis into the curriculum; and promoting workplace cultural change.
Description:
Research on gender and education in industrialised and developing countries suggests that schools and universities are sites of ‘doing’ rather than ‘undoing’ gender. Deutsch (2007) contends that ‘doing gender’ refers to social interactions that reproduce conventional and limiting notions of gender construction and that ‘undoing gender’ refers to social interactions that reduce gender difference and open up other possibilities. In this paper we consider how educational institutions can be strategic sites of influence in undoing gender and we investigate some ways that gender is ‘undone’ through the example of the work of the Science, Engineering and Information Technology Women’s Group (SEITWG) located in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Federation University Australia. For this purpose, a self-study methodology understood as a professional reflection was used. The paper explores how the informal coalition of SEITWG works as ‘wilful subjects’, on the one hand, coming up against some of the ‘brick walls’ of dominant discourse that attempt to limit women’s participation in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). On the other hand, SEITWG attempts to move beyond the restrictions of conventional gender narratives to encourage more women to participate in STEMM by foregrounding the presence of women already active in the area; mentoring women students and staff; supporting a range of their colleagues’ endeavours to research and teach for inclusion; embedding gender analysis into the curriculum; and promoting workplace cultural change.