Description:
In this paper we explore ways in which adults engage children's and young adult books in primary and secondary schools in relation to Bakhtin's (1981) posited chronotope. We base our discussion on an analysis of experienced practising teachers' own engagement with books that are offered to children and young adults as part of teachers' didactic activities in developing literacy skills and literature appreciation in classrooms, drawing on the concept of the chronotope as going beyond the didactic to embrace the artistic and cultural in children's responses to their reading and writing. The suggestive possibilities of the chronotope as an organising feature of teaching reading and writing in a number of genres and production of text types, affords new ways of approaching reading by teachers, at the same time as it invites these teachers to examine their own responses to the literature that they engage in the process. The concept of the chronotope opens up spaces for literary and pedagogical responses that derive from children's own experience of their world, but we argue that teacher responses that are restricted by their own views of the world may inhibit a full exploration by children of the possibilities that the books that they encounter as didactically bound and culturally limiting.
Description:
In this paper we explore ways in which adults engage children's and young adult books in primary and secondary schools in relation to Bakhtin's (1981) posited chronotope. We base our discussion on an analysis of experienced practising teachers' own engagement with books that are offered to children and young adults as part of teachers' didactic activities in developing literacy skills and literature appreciation in classrooms, drawing on the concept of the chronotope as going beyond the didactic to embrace the artistic and cultural in children's responses to their reading and writing. The suggestive possibilities of the chronotope as an organising feature of teaching reading and writing in a number of genres and production of text types, affords new ways of approaching reading by teachers, at the same time as it invites these teachers to examine their own responses to the literature that they engage in the process. The concept of the chronotope opens up spaces for literary and pedagogical responses that derive from children's own experience of their world, but we argue that teacher responses that are restricted by their own views of the world may inhibit a full exploration by children of the possibilities that the books that they encounter as didactically bound and culturally limiting.
Description:
Enrichment programs for Research Higher Degree (RHD) students are an endeavour undertaken by all Australian Universities. Most of these enrichment programs have in the main been centred on the generic skills required to expedite the research program, for example software skills, information gathering and collating skills, language development programs and seminars on various methodologies. There are some examples where enrichment programs have focused on leadership. These programs often assume not only that leadership can be taught, but also that a traditional seminar/lecture approaches to such a curriculum is a practical, efficient and effective approach to leadership education. This paper questions these assumptions by arguing for a more experientially-based approach to leadership education at the RHD level. This approach has demanded a consideration of pedagogical approaches outside, or peripheral, to the traditional approaches of RHD training. A specific example of a leadership program that incorporates experiential learning in is presented. The paper delineates a brief overview of experiential approaches to education, followed by a more specific review of the potential role these approaches can play in leadership education.
Description:
Enrichment programs for Research Higher Degree (RHD) students are an endeavour undertaken by all Australian Universities. Most of these enrichment programs have in the main been centred on the generic skills required to expedite the research program, for example software skills, information gathering and collating skills, language development programs and seminars on various methodologies. There are some examples where enrichment programs have focused on leadership. These programs often assume not only that leadership can be taught, but also that a traditional seminar/lecture approaches to such a curriculum is a practical, efficient and effective approach to leadership education. This paper questions these assumptions by arguing for a more experientially-based approach to leadership education at the RHD level. This approach has demanded a consideration of pedagogical approaches outside, or peripheral, to the traditional approaches of RHD training. A specific example of a leadership program that incorporates experiential learning in is presented. The paper delineates a brief overview of experiential approaches to education, followed by a more specific review of the potential role these approaches can play in leadership education.
Description:
This study will provide us with the tools to better communicate the unique attributes of learning that underpin the success we observe. It will enrich the discussion to include not only the charming insights of students and teachers, but also an intellectually rigorous framework for appreciating the innovation in learning outcomes." -- Foreword by Tim Sullivan : Deputy CEO and Museums director Sovereign Hill, page viii.
Description:
This study will provide us with the tools to better communicate the unique attributes of learning that underpin the success we observe. It will enrich the discussion to include not only the charming insights of students and teachers, but also an intellectually rigorous framework for appreciating the innovation in learning outcomes." -- Foreword by Tim Sullivan : Deputy CEO and Museums director Sovereign Hill, page viii.
Description:
In this paper I report on a project designed to enhance student teacher engagement in learning by developing an explicit pedagogy of affective learning, traditionally ignored in teacher education as discipline-based studies have dominated the field. Strategies investigated are based on reading engaged on affective levels, intertwined with current approaches to academic reading, with metacognitive responses recorded by the students as part of student evaluation of their own learning. Reading has been structured around literature reading circles (affective reading component), and academic reading circles (professional reading component). The project uses strategy in relation to the identifiable stages in a teaching sequence which help students to realise a learning goal, so that they use learning strategies and respond to teaching strategies that scaffold their learning. The reading program pushes the boundaries of their discipline-based learning, engaging what Schön refers to as ‘indeterminate zones of practice’ as giving an affective dimension, having wider implications for student engagement in discipline-based units than straight academic encounters with discipline-based literature allows. The reading is designed to integrate discipline-based knowledge, the implications of this for professional lives, and the affective dimensions of professional practice. The results of this project indicate that, according to student evaluations, their capacities for self monitoring and self evaluation was enhanced at the same time as their own engagement with relevant literature deepened their understandings of issues that emerged from that engagement.
Description:
In this paper I report on a project designed to enhance student teacher engagement in learning by developing an explicit pedagogy of affective learning, traditionally ignored in teacher education as discipline-based studies have dominated the field. Strategies investigated are based on reading engaged on affective levels, intertwined with current approaches to academic reading, with metacognitive responses recorded by the students as part of student evaluation of their own learning. Reading has been structured around literature reading circles (affective reading component), and academic reading circles (professional reading component). The project uses strategy in relation to the identifiable stages in a teaching sequence which help students to realise a learning goal, so that they use learning strategies and respond to teaching strategies that scaffold their learning. The reading program pushes the boundaries of their discipline-based learning, engaging what Schön refers to as ‘indeterminate zones of practice’ as giving an affective dimension, having wider implications for student engagement in discipline-based units than straight academic encounters with discipline-based literature allows. The reading is designed to integrate discipline-based knowledge, the implications of this for professional lives, and the affective dimensions of professional practice. The results of this project indicate that, according to student evaluations, their capacities for self monitoring and self evaluation was enhanced at the same time as their own engagement with relevant literature deepened their understandings of issues that emerged from that engagement.
Description:
In this paper we focus on the production of a local Catholic primary school Annual Concert by Grade 3-4 students, which took as its theme, Wauthaurong Heritage in the Region. The school approached the local University's School of Education to suggest one of its Bachelor of Education students who might be willing to work with the school on this production. With this initiative, we were presented with the basis for a community-based project which would incorporate the local Aboriginal Collective, a private Catholic primary school, and a School of Education within the University of the city in the form of the annual school concert. Combining the knowledge, expertise and experience from each of these organisations to deal with a variety of issues involved in education and community perceptions, the project was set to explore the ways in which these were to be dealt with.
Description:
This paper focuses on the unique contribution by Lu Xun in the development of Chinese Children’s Literature in the 20th Century, particularly as to ways in which Lu Xun’s ideas influenced the children of that period and its effects on the development of modern Chinese children’s literature. It examines a number of Lu Xun’s representative writings—about children, his essays, his novels, his poems, his scribbles—as not only his criticising the evils of constructs of childhood as feudalistic and inhumane, but also as his revealing the essence of such constructs as fostering children as obedient slaves in their adult years. This paper thus explores Lu Xun’s view of children developing as complete persons based on the twin aspects of spiritual and physical existence, which implies not only gaining freedom but also changing the social world so that this could happen.
Description:
This paper explores features of secondary school English as Second Language textbooks in use in China. It examines a number of textbooks in relation to surface and deep learning approaches,particularly as these relate to western constructs of Chinese learners.
Description:
This paper explores features of secondary school English as Second Language textbooks in use in China. It examines a number of textbooks in relation to surface and deep learning approaches,particularly as these relate to western constructs of Chinese learners.
Description:
In this paper we canvass three case studies of unique research partnerships between universities and schools in the wider community. In doing so, we consider those areas of indeterminate zones of professional practice explored by academics in their research activities within the wider community. We discuss three cases: an artist-in-residence program designed to engage primary school children with new understandings about local Indigenous Australian issues in their pedagogical and physical landscapes; an assessment of pedagogical concerns in relation to the use of physical space in classrooms; and the pedagogical underpinnings of a costumed museum school program. In doing so, we engage issues of research as playing an integral part in the development, implementation and maintenance of academic engagements with wider community issues.
Description:
This paper details a project, funded by the University of Ballarat in Victoria, which addresses a local problem of schools' lack of acknowledgement of their being positioned on traditional owners' land. In addressing this issue, I am using two texts, My Place (Wheatley and Rawlins 1987) and Who am I? The Diary of Mary Talence (Heiss 2004) to engage the participants in discussions to make visible what has been invisible; that is, the issue of traditional Indigenous Australian ownership of the land on which the school is placed. Taking up notions of deconstruction from poststructuralist theory, I have looked to these texts as ways of disrupting the taken-for-granted occupation of public space, that is, I examine the language used to position the readers and 'yield up the ideologies that inform them' (Bradford 2001, p.9).
Description:
This paper details a project, funded by the University of Ballarat in Victoria, which addresses a local problem of schools' lack of acknowledgement of their being positioned on traditional owners' land. In addressing this issue, I am using two texts, My Place (Wheatley and Rawlins 1987) and Who am I? The Diary of Mary Talence (Heiss 2004) to engage the participants in discussions to make visible what has been invisible; that is, the issue of traditional Indigenous Australian ownership of the land on which the school is placed. Taking up notions of deconstruction from poststructuralist theory, I have looked to these texts as ways of disrupting the taken-for-granted occupation of public space, that is, I examine the language used to position the readers and 'yield up the ideologies that inform them' (Bradford 2001, p.9).
Description:
In this paper we canvass a shift in professional practice for teachers and teaching and learning as it focuses on Design Education. We acknowledge that changes in formal educational settings result from the scope and rapidity of changes in emerging technologies and understandings of pedagogical influences on teaching and learning. In canvassing the changes, in this paper we identify issues that emerge in relation a number of proposed solutions in dealing with gaps in teacher education in the field of Design Education. We suggest that these same solutions draw on traditional disciplines which ignore the possibilities of Design to engage 21st Century problems in teaching and learning. We draw attention to a neglect in current teacher education programs in relation to teachers of design and what this may imply for classrooms, teachers, and their work.
Description:
In this paper we canvass a shift in professional practice for teachers and teaching and learning as it focuses on Design Education. We acknowledge that changes in formal educational settings result from the scope and rapidity of changes in emerging technologies and understandings of pedagogical influences on teaching and learning. In canvassing the changes, in this paper we identify issues that emerge in relation a number of proposed solutions in dealing with gaps in teacher education in the field of Design Education. We suggest that these same solutions draw on traditional disciplines which ignore the possibilities of Design to engage 21st Century problems in teaching and learning. We draw attention to a neglect in current teacher education programs in relation to teachers of design and what this may imply for classrooms, teachers, and their work.
Description:
Global student mobility has placed pressure on western universities to recruit students from non-western, non-English-speaking backgrounds. In this article, we argue that language requirements such as the International English Language Testing System bands are underpinned by discourses that privilege western modes of thought. We go on to argue that English language proficiency underpins discourses of deficit that construct non-western students as less able to undertake research programmes. In exploring pedagogical possibilities, we draw on a published story of an international higher degree research student, called Mei, at an Australian university. We question the idea that a research higher degree is more about linguistic skills than it is about research skills, and we argue that rigour, scholarship, and new knowledge constitute the assessable factors in what international higher degree research students produce.
Description:
China has experienced a number of reforms in EFL teaching and learning since 1949, when The People’s Republic of China was established after years of struggle between the losing Chiang Kai Shek Nationalists and the winning Mao Zedong Communist forces. Given the association of the English language with the western imperialism that China had just fought so hard against, competence in English was regarded as unpatriotic. A number of English-speaking countries, notably the United States of America (USA) insisting on a strong support of the Nationalist Party which had fled to Taiwan in 1949, did not recognise China. Indeed, the new Chinese government had its own concerns with illiteracy in mother tongues, at the time around 80% (Dietrich, 1986; Ministry of Education, 2002; Yang, 2010). English was hardly a priority for government then, although it had been in schools since the 19th century, the result of China’s encounters with the west at that time (Wang & Gao, 2008). Having eschewed all things western in 1949, the authorities took up Soviet models to inform their activities, receiving economic aid from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Yang, 2010). After the enormous upheavals of the revolution itself, China was in a period of reconstruction. The strong political influence of the relationship with the USSR on China’s foreign language education meant that Russian became the dominant foreign language taught throughout the country, with English removed from the secondary curriculum (Hu, 2002). Turning its attention to education, China found itself faced with problems that could be addressed through reconstructionism.
Description:
This article explores community (primary) school teacher education in the subject, English, at a Papua New Guinea (PNG) teachers' college as manifested in end-of-year English lessons in practicum rounds of pre-service community school teachers. English is the official language overlaid on 700 indigenous languages in this country where reconstructionism informs policy decisions. Given this, the importance of success in English in schools is not to be underestimated. The research focuses on the implementation the knowledge, skills, strategies and materials acquired by pre-service English teachers in a coastal province in PNG in the context of a number of public statements on educational policy and practice. It examines the impact of these as indicated in lesson plans and supervisors' reports