Alternative settings - alternative teachers? Reflections on teaching outside the mainstream
- Authors: Dyson, Michael , Plunkett, Margaret
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Joint AARE-APERA conference,Australian Association for Research in Education p. 1-12
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- Description: While alternative educational settings in Australia have expanded over the past two decades, there has been little formal research conducted into teacher perceptions of what it means to teach outside the mainstream. This paper outlines part of a longitudinal study involving the School for Student Leadership (SSL), an alternate educational setting in Victoria, Australia, which offers residential programs for Year 9 students. The SSL began operating in 2000 as the Alpine School situated at Dinner Plain and since then two further campuses have been added. A research partnership between Monash University Gippsland and the SSL began in 2001, with this component commencing in 2009 involving a mixed methods study consisting of both surveys and interviews. The focus of this paper is the qualitative findings resulting from interviews with 33 teachers across the 3 campuses. While a small body of literature relating to environmental and experiential education (Brown, 2006, Schartner, 2000, Simmons, 1988, Smith-Cabasto & Cavern, 2006) from a teaching perspective does exist, none really captures the breadth of the type of program offered through the SSL, which does not sit in isolation from broader educational, social and global discourses. While there is an ongoing debate about how we should educate young people there are some points of general agreement. One is that we live in a world of rapid global, technological and social change and education should equip young people to deal with these changes. This particular research provided an opportunity to seek teachers' perceptions about whether this goal was easier to achieve in a non-traditional setting. A particular focus was on participants' current perceptions about their role as 'teacher' and whether it differed depending on the setting. The findings provided interesting insights about the focus of the teachers that choose to become involved, with most suggesting that they were searching for more meaningful ways to connect their pedagogy and practice. They also felt that mainstream settings rarely provided opportunities for the development of substantive relationships with students. There was an acknowledgement that the alternate setting of the SSL did provide a greater opportunity for equipping students to deal with change but this also required teachers to respond differently, shifting the emphasis from content to context and from being a teacher to being an educator, facilitator or mentor.
Place and sustainability literacy in schools and teacher education
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Green, Monica
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: The Joint Australian Association for Research in Education and Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association Conference p. 1-14
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- Description: The development of sustainability literate teachers has been identified as a key challenge for the implementation of education for sustainability in Australian schools (Skamp, 2010)and elsewhere (Nolet, 2009). This paper reports on the first year of a participatory action research project that investigates the learning of school teachers, teacher educators, school children and teacher education students, in relation to the integration of place-based sustainability education across the curriculum of a low SES primary school. The methods of data collection included digital visual and audio recorded observations and reflections by teacher educators; reflective observations, focus groups, and interviews with teachers and principals; and the collection of student artefacts from school and teacher education students. A number of different conceptual and theoretical lenses are brought to the analysis of this data including 'thinking through country'; sustainability literacies and new technologies; and contemporary theories of space, place and body. In this baseline paper, the overall findings are summarised under the categories of the participating groups: - teacher, teacher educator, school student, teacher education student, and the school/place/community nexus.
Is the evolution of biochemistry texts decreasing fitness? A case study of pedagogical error in bioenergetics
- Authors: Larkins, Jo-Ann , Mosse, Jennifer , Chapman, Brian
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Australian Conference on Science and Mathematics Education (ACSME): Teaching for diversity -Challenges and strategies p. 187-192
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- Description: The initial impetus for this research was the discovery by the authors of a variety of common and consistent errors and misconceptions in pedagogical literature on the topic of thermodynamics in Biochemistry. A systematic survey was undertaken of material on thermodynamics in Biochemistry textbooks commonly used in Australian Universities over the period from the 1920s up to 2010. Four common areas of error and misconception were identified, and a number of factors associated with the initiation and propagation of troublesome pedagogical material through successive editions of Biochemistry textbooks were recognised. These factors included the introduction of multiple authors and also often the departure of the original author of a particular textbook. The very nature of Biochemistry as a rapidly expanding discipline leads to the constant introduction of new material in textbooks and the contraction of older material such as thermodynamics. Material is also often fragmented into a number of smaller sections in modern textbooks. Moreover, less development is likely to be applied to this older material, with considerable reuse of material from previous editions. The lessons learned from charting these particular errors in thermodynamics in Biochemistry textbooks may provide insight into how troublesome pedagogical material evolves in other disciplines.
Secondary teachers' use of new media in an age of accountability
- Authors: Johnson, Nicola , Bulfin, Scott
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Global Learn Asia Pacific: Global Conference on Learning and Technology 28 March 2011 to 1 April 2011 p. 1-5
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- Description: This pilot study comprises an initial exploration of secondary teachers’ use of ICTs within the current climate of testing and accountability. The project seeks to understand how teachers are coping with and negotiating the competing and complex demands of their work within these current policies. It explores how a small group of teachers’ professional practice has changed in the last few years as a result of externally imposed testing regimes and as a result of the nation-wide Digital Education Revolution. This paper will explain the rationale for this pilot project and highlight some initial findings resulting from policy analysis and preliminary investigation.
Shifting the focus in teacher education: foregrounding the value of teacher/student relationships
- Authors: Dyson, Michael , Plunkett, Margaret
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: The Australian Teacher Education Association Conference p. 1-6
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- Description: Alternate or non-traditional educational settings within Australia have undergone a period of expansion over the last decade, yet there has not been any substantive recognition of this growth within teacher education programs (Plunkett & Dyson, 2010). However, since 2000 a research partnership that has been operating between one of Victoria’s most innovative alternate educational settings - the School for Student Leadership (SSL) and Monash University, has attempted to redress the dearth of research into alternate settings and related potential change within Teacher Education. This paper reports on part of that ongoing longitudinal mixed method study, specifically highlighting the impact that reflection on practice, which is built into the program, has had on building positive relationships between staff and Year 9 students (Dyson & Plunkett, 2010). Findings support Mezirow’s (1991) contention that transformative learning occurs as the result of the reflection process, which in turn leads to a shift in the role and nature of the teacher and allows for openness in communication with students, creating enhanced relationships. As acknowledged by both Cranton (2007) and Glasser (1998) the recognition of the importance of self and ones values and beliefs in relation to others is an essential part of learning. In particular we suggest that connectedness, especially between teacher and students, promotes active engagement concomitantly enhancing transformative learning. We propose that it is important that an understanding of these factors should foreground any discussions about future developments in teacher education.
Beyond the Abaya : School reform in the Middle East
- Authors: Albon, Nerissa
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: ATEA 2009 Conference, Australian Teacher Education Association, 2009, p. 1-17
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- Description: This autoethnography focuses on a study undertaken during the writers 15 month employment in a Muslim girls’ school in the United Arab Emirates. The paper outlines a school improvement project in the Abu Dhabi Emirate and the imposition of an Australian curriculum on the schools involved in this program. The teachers in these schools were exposed to regular professional development sessions as part of an informal teacher education program. While most of the teachers had a degree related to their teaching specialism they lacked any formal teaching qualifications. The professional development the teachers were required to undertake in the schools added to their daily teaching load and did not involve credit towards a degree. School improvement strategies currently in use in Australian state education systems will be discussed in light of their recent implementation in the United Arab Emirates. In discussing the issues that schools faced implementing a new curriculum, teaching approaches, and associated school improvement strategies, it is important that the cultural context of the community and the school be explored with reference to the impact of these proposed changes in many schools across Abu Dhabi. Implementing a new curriculum and encouraging teachers to involve the students in more active learning challenged local teachers’ notions of teaching and of how students learn. An outline of my reasons for undertaking an autoethnography will be provided including the problematic nature of “cultural difference” where a western researcher is working with and observing teachers in a Muslim context. As Rosaldo (1993:202) suggests “Although the notion of “difference” has the advantage of making culture particularly visible to outsiders, it poses a problem because such differences are not absolute. They are relative to the cultural practices of ethnographers and their readers.” On-going discussions related to the western notion of school reform implementation in the Middle East continues to raise issues related to culture and long standing teaching practices that are now being challenged by those who have come from communities and cultures that have very different borders, boundaries and contexts
Are Universities stammering over stuttering?
- Authors: Meredith, Grant
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: The 12th Bi-Annual Speak Easy Convention, Adelaide 2008
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Educating generation Y in alternate settings : What seems to work
- Authors: Dyson, Michael , Zink, Robyn
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Australian Association for Research in Education
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- Description: Abstract: This paper presents one element of our research conducted in a contemporary, yet alternate, school setting. This setting provides ten-week residential programs for Year nine students. Year nine has been identified as a significant time when students become disengaged with schooling. These Year nine students also belong to a group known as Generation Y (Gen Y). This group is characterised as having difficulties with communication, developing relationships and functioning as a community. However, our research, at the 'Remote School' suggests that the students in this residential school develop skills that enable them to communicate more effectively and establish relationships with others. One of the key aspects of this appears to be the relationships they form with each other and with the staff while on the program. The environment, or the ecosystem developed in this unique setting, allows students to interact more explicitly with the complexity of life and, in doing so, recognise diversity and the shades of grey, which start to colour their worlds. The students talk about feeling challenged in forming relationships and about comprehending more about themselves, how they operate and how others operate. It would seem likely that there is a gap in understanding the capacities of Year nine students and Gen Y students, who are construed as being difficult to communicate with, form relationships with, or fail to function effectively in communities. It is this gap in understanding, based on the experiences of the young people at the Remote School, which we explore in this paper.
Students' perceptions of assessment process : questionnaire
- Authors: Waldrip, Bruce , Fisher, Darrell , Dorman, Jeffrey
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 5th International Conference on Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. Science Mathematics and Technology Education: Beyond Cultural Boundaries
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- Description: Research aimed at developing and validating an instrument to assess middle school students’ perceptions of assessment was conducted. Following a review of literature, a tentative 6-scale instrument of 48 items was trialled with a sample of 320 students in 7 Australian schools. Based on internal consistency reliability data and exploratory factor analysis, refinement decisions resulted in a 5-scale instrument called the Student Perceptions of Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ). The scales of the SPAQ are Congruence with Planned Learning, Authenticity, Student Consultation, Transparency, and Diversity. A sample of 3,098 students in 150 classrooms was used to validate the final SPAQ.
Understanding teenager technological expertise in out-of-school settings
- Authors: Johnson, Nicola
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: AARE 2007 International Educational Research Conference
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- Description: Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explored the construction of technological expertise of eight teenagers (five boys and three girls) aged 13 – 17. The qualitative study specifically employed observations and interviews and focused on home computer use, which for many of the participants was their primary site of leisure. All of the participants considered themselves to be technological experts, and their peers and/or their family supported this premise. This paper outlines findings that identify the participants’ multiple (and contradictory) understandings of expertise and the ways the participants perceive they have attained expertise and perform as experts in out-of-school settings. Traditional views of expertise are contrasted with what the teenagers think about their development of expertise, predominantly using Bourdieu’s framework for analysis. As almost all of the experts in this study gained their expertise through independent means, with minimal input from their schooling, discussion focuses on the trajectories to expertise inherent within these sites of informal learning, and what this might mean for pedagogy and formal learning.