Global challenges : South African and Australian students’ experiences of emergency remote teaching
- Authors: Joubert, Michelle , Larsen, Ana , Magnuson, Bryce , Waldron, David , Sabo, Ellen , Fletcher, Anna
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice Vol. 20, no. 4 (2023), p.
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- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities worldwide to move their teaching online within an unprecedentedly short timeframe. Whilst the move online learning has increased the reach of tertiary educational delivery it has also raised significant issues of equity, accessibility and student engagement. This includes concerns around access to technology and reliable internet connectivity, academic and digital literacy, and other factors such as mental health and work-life balance. This paper examines two studies of student engagement with online learning during 2020 when then pandemic began. One study was conducted in South Africa the other in a small regional university in South-Eastern Australia. A mixed method approach was used in both studies and then student responses were analysed using the student engagement framework presented by Kahu and Nelson (2018). A key focus in this analysis is the critical importance the educational interface and shared mutually formative experience of learning between students and universities. Findings show that despite the two different contexts, student concerns around digital literacy and engagement in an online learning environment share many similarities. © 2023, University of Wollongong. All rights reserved.
A living chessboard : make your own medieval world
- Authors: Waldron, David , Donovan, Paul
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Agora (Melbourne, Vic.) Vol. 54, no. 3 (2019), p. 44-49
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- Description: Teaching through engaging students with excursions, artefacts, objects and practical projects is an effective way to communicate ideas about a past way of life. In Australia, we have a rich choice of destinations for many topics, but medieval history is not one of them. We don't want our medieval students to miss out on the benefit and excitement, simply because medieval action took place on the other side of the world, and for most schools a medieval incursion is more practical than a trip to Europe. If resources permit, you could contact a specialist company, such as History Up Close, which has years of experience in replicating historical material culture and presenting to schools, or you could take the do-it-yourself path and create a medieval world in the classroom with common craft materials.
Beyond the vale : death ritual and burial on the goldfields of Bendigo
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Vale: Mourning Remembrance and Spiritualism in Bendigo 1851-1901, p. 18-24
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Playing the ghost : Ghost hoaxing and supernaturalism in late Ninteenth-Century Victoria
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. , no. 13 (2014), p.
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- Description: On the night of Wednesday 29 May 1895, two young ladies were approached by a spectral figure clad in black robes, with arms and face covered in phosphorescent paint. This individual frequently patrolled the area around Sturt Street and Dana Street in Ballarat attempting to harass young women. A search of newspaper articles from this period indicates a wide-spread proliferation of ghost hoaxing, referred to as ‘playing the ghost’, between the 1870s and World War I, with a particular focus on the Ballarat region in central Victoria. This extraordinary behaviour occurred in the context of the rising popularity of spiritualism, which challenged traditional notions of the role of the dead, as well as a similar proliferation of ghost and monster hoaxing in Britain, perhaps best exemplified by the character of Spring Heeled Jack. This paper examines the phenomenon of ghost hoaxing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Victoria through its reportage in the print media of the era, with a focus on the causes and legacies of the phenomenon in the broader cultural context of central Victoria and the Goldfields region.
Rethinking Appropriation of the Indigenous: A Critique of the Romanticist Approach
- Authors: Waldron, David , Newton, Janice
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions Vol. 16, no. 2 (November 2012 2012), p. 64-85
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- Description: The aim of this paper is to set out the effects of romanticism on attitudes of the New Age movement to Indigenous Aboriginal culture and people. Past scholarship has clearly expounded insensitive and exploitative New Age appropriation of Indigenous culture and emphasized inequalities in the power represent one’s own group. Essentialists, romantic stereotypes detract from deep understanding of Indigenous Australians, and negotiated solutions are not really possible when the parties involved are in grossly unequal circumstances. Scholarship acknowledges diversity within Indigenous groups and the New Age movement as well as convergences and reciprocal cultural borrowing, often within romantic epistemologies. A simple dichotomy of cultural theft by New Age practitioners from Indigenous Australians is inadequate to explain the complexities of the interaction.
Roleplaying games and the christian right : Community formation in response to a moral panic
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Vol. IX, no. Spring (2005), p. 50-68
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- Description: During the 1980s, the newly established industry and youth subculture associated with role-playing games came under sustained attack from schools, churches, parents and governments, instigated by the Christian Right via organizations such as B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). While both the organization B.A.D.D and its claims linking Roleplaying games to youth suicide, drug use and Satanism eventually were discredited, the impact of these accusations lingers on to the present. This article examines the impact of the role-playing game “moral panic” on the role-playing game community and investigates the responses and coping mechanisms utilised by those directly targeted and harassed by churches, the police, schools and governments during the height of the “moral panic” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The article also investigates the effect that the shared experience of being targeted by a “moral panic” had on the formation of a roleplaying counter culture and community.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001261
Witchcraft for sale : Commodity vs community in the neopagan movement
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nova Religio Vol. 9 no. 1 (2005), p. 32-48
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- Description: The growth of the Pagan and Witchcraft revivalist movements (Neopaganism) is well documented in the Anglophone world. However, Witchcraft movements are also closely linked to a vibrant set of subcultures and a multitude of representations in popular culture. In this context investigating the relationship between Witchcraft as a religious community and its representation in consumer culture and mass media is extremely significant. This article examines the ambiguous relationship between witch and Wiccan communities and the vast array of merchandising, popular culture and media representations that surround them.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001258
Jung and the neo-pagan movement
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quadrant Vol. XXXIV , no. 1 (2004), p. 29-46
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- Description: Neo-Paganism, one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world today, has undergone a series of profound transformations in structure, belief, and symbolism over the past 50 years. One of the most significant is the appropriation of Jungian analytical psychology by broad sectors of the neo-Pagan movement and by some of its most eloquent proponents, such as Margot Adler, Miriam Simos, and Vivianne Crowley. However, the application of Jungian methodology as a means of legitimating religious belief is not as simple or unambiguous as neo-Pagan writers and conversely, critics of Jung such as Richard Noll,would attest.This paper explores the appropriation of Jungian theory by sectors of the neo-Pagan move m e n t . It also examines the neo-Pagan movement’s rather ambivalent relationship with Jung’s interpretation of the human psyche within the broader context of western modernity.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000948
Ecofeminism and the reconstruction of the burning times
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Intercultural Studies Vol. 3, no. 2 (2003), p. 36-49
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- Description: To a large extent, the romanticist image of the Witch and the accompanying mythology of the ‘Burning Times’ maintains a particular poignancy as a model of the persecution of women due to its utilization as an archetypal model of irrational and vicious persecution in enlightenment discourse.
The sign of the witch : neo-paganism and the romantic episteme
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: "The central premise of this dissertation is that the process by which representations of witchcraft are formed within the neo-Pagan movement are indicative of the broader interrelationship of Romantic and Enlightenment themes in Western culture."
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy