Critical imagination : A pedagogy for engaging pre-service teachers in the university classroom
- Authors: Cartwright, Patricia , Noone, Lynne
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: College Quarterly Vol. 9, no. 4 (2006), p.
- Full Text: false
- Description: In this paper we consider the aspect of teacher education which takes place, not in the school, but in the university classroom. Teaching about teaching, it is argued, must be grounded in students' understanding of the present, but must foster both hope and critique. Beginning from Maxine Greene's (2000) concept of imagination, this paper develops a notion of critical imagination as a way of conceptualizing a critical pedagogy in the university classroom. Two pedagogical strategies based on critical imagination are outlined and analyzed. Writing is prioritized as a pedagogical tool. Excerpts from our professional teaching journals, together with samples of students' writing in response to these strategies, clothe the strategies in the reality of teaching practice. We argue that the use of teaching strategies based on critical imagination as a means of 'jarring' students to think differently seems to move our students to think a little more humanely and a little more critically. But this is neither a simple nor unproblematic task.
Towards a pedagogy of group work : Working the rhetoric of group work in an undergaduate curriculum and pedagogy unit at the University of Ballarat
- Authors: Zeegers, Margaret , Davis, Robert , Russell, Rupert , Menon, E.
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Learning Vol. 12, no. 10 (2006), p. 205-211
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001856
Tools to assist with HLA pedagogy
- Authors: Stratton, David , Smith, Philip , Wharington, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at SimTecT 2003, Adelaide : p. 193-198
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- Description: The High Level Architecture (HLA) offers a dramatic extension of reuse for distributed simulation components. At the same time the HLA represents a significant training and education challenge if adoption of the architecture is to proceed at an adequate pace. In this context it is appropriate to consider tools and techniques that support effective pedagogy for HLA. This paper describes two innovations that have proved useful in short courses for HLA developers. The first supports scripting of basic HLA interactions so that a significant first encounter with HLA can proceed without the cognitive overhead of program development. The second supports an extended HLA software development training exercise in which groups of students work independently on components of a complete HLA simulation. An exercise of this scope becomes problematic when incomplete and possibly incorrect components are tested against each other. The tool described offers an adaptable test harness of correct components, in various states of completion, against which students can initially test their work.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003002732
Assumption interrogation : An insight into a self-study researcher's pedagogical frame
- Authors: Brandenburg, Robyn
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Research Methods for the Self-study of Practice Chapter p. 195-211
- Full Text: false
- Description: 2003008008
Science students' perceptions of engaging pedagogy
- Authors: Darby, Linda
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Research in Science Education Vol. 35, no. 4 (2005), p. 425-445
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- Description: During their years of schooling, students develop perceptions about learning and teaching, including the ways in which teachers impact on their learning experiences. This paper presents student perceptions of teacher pedagogy as interpreted from a study focusing on students' experience of Year 7 science. A single science class of 11 to 12 year old students and their teacher were monitored for the whole school year, employing participant observation, and interviews with focus groups of students, their teacher and other key members of the school. Analysis focused on how students perceived the role of the teacher's pedagogy in constructing a learning environment that they considered conducive to engagement with science learning. Two areas of the teacher's pedagogy are explored from the student perspective of how these affect their learning: instructional pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Instructional pedagogy captures the way the instructional dialogue developed by the teacher drew the students into the learning process and enabled them to "understand" science. How the teacher developed a relationship with the students is captured as relational pedagogy, where students said that they learned better when teachers were passionate in their approach to teaching, provided a supportive learning environment and made them feel comfortable. The ways in which the findings support the direction for the middle years and science education are considered. © Springer 2005.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001317
Using imagination to engage future teachers in a critical pedagogy in the tertiary classroom
- Authors: Noone, Lynne , Cartwright, Patricia
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International journal of learning Vol. 12, no. 6 (2006), p. 325-332
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- Description: This paper explores some of the possibilities and dilemmas that have arisen for us as tertiary teachers of future teachers as we attempt a critical pedagogy through literacy. We are interested in problematising both the so-called 'literacy problems' of current preservice teachers, and also the orthodox canonical understanding of academic literacies. Grounded in the constraints of contemporary neo-conservative socio-political circumstances of life, including education, we imagine the possibility that education could be otherwise. Our critical literacy pedagogical approach seeks to disrupt our students' taken-for-granted understandings of themselves, their world and what it is, and could be like, to be teachers in schools. The material on which this paper is based is derived from our reflections on students' written responses to our pedagogy as we engage in on-going action research about our teaching. Through the language used in the responses, we see evidence of students' engagement (or not) in the critical enterprise. Contradictions emerge regarding the varying discourses about learning, knowledge, teaching and academic literacies that the students and we, as teachers, live out in the tertiary classroom. In making visible our struggles to explore with our students that which is 'not yet', we foreground and celebrate tertiary teaching.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001868
Student response to the IT handicap
- Authors: Zeegers, Margaret , Beales, Brad
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International journal of learning Vol. 12, no. 10 (2006), p. 39-43
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- Description: This paper investigates undergraduates' innovative reflection-as a scripted and performed comedy routine in their School Revue-on their introduction as pre-service teachers (PSTs) to the discourses of Information Technologies (ITs) in teaching in schools. It is a small case study that we present here, mondful of the lack of generalisability that this presents, but we feel that it does lend itself to a close examination of a wide array of issues, experiences and outcomes in this small group that wrote and implemented the sketch in the Revue. Given the primacy of the role of language in any educational undertaking, it is perhaps not surprising that the focus of this sketch is on language, particularly as it is received by students, in that group of novice IT for Education students.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001862
Excellence through diversity : Internationalisation of curriculum and pedagogy
- Authors: Ryan, Janette , Hellmundt, Susan
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 17th IDP Australian International Education Conference, Woolongong, New South Wales : 5th December, 2003
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- Description: Recent times have seen a large increase in the numbers of international students attending Australian universities. At some universities, international students comprise up to twenty percent of the whole student cohort. Yet university teachers report that they feel ill-equipped and untrained to teach such students. International students themselves report that they feel undervalued and that their teaching and learning needs are often not well met. This paper reports on research on the experiences of both university lecturers and international students of teaching and learning at Australian universities. This research found strong evidence of a ‘gap’ in perceptions between staff and students about how well the learning needs of international students are being met and a general lack of awareness amongst university lecturers of teaching and learning issues in relation to international students. The paper will detail the impacts of these issues in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and the broader factors influencing the learning of international students. It will suggest some strategies for better internationalising not only curriculum content, but also teaching methods and assessment practices. Such strategies will be of benefit not only to international students but also all learners in a diverse learning environment.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000470
Are laboratories useful fiction? A comparison of Norwegian and Australian undergraduate nursing skills laboratories
- Authors: Wellard, Sally , Heggen, Kristin
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nursing & Health Sciences Vol. 12, no. 1 (2010), p. 39-44
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- Description: Drawing on the findings from studies in Australia and Norway that explored the use of laboratories in the preparation of nursing students for entry to practice, this article identifies the pedagogical challenges for the undergraduate education of nurses. The findings from both countries are compared and, in spite of distinct differences in the level of financial investment, there are striking similarities between the ways in which laboratories are used in the two countries. The laboratories were designed to predominately represent acute care hospital environments. The participants demonstrated a high level of commitment and strongly held beliefs in the laboratory as a safe place to facilitate self-paced learning and as an environment where students can practice until they become competent and confident. However, at the same time, there was a striking lack of evidence to support these views. The participants in both countries reported a common approach to instruction: a proce! ss of teacher demonstration, followed by student repetition and practice. Variability in students' motivation also was reported and the participants especially expressed concern for those students with a low level of interest in the basic skills associated with personal care. The possibilities and limitations of using skill laboratories as part of the practical preparation for nursing are discussed, using the metaphor of laboratories as "fiction".
Complex learning theory-Its epistemology and its assumptions about learning: Implications for physical education
- Authors: Light, Richard
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Teaching in Physical Education Vol. 27, no. 1 (2008), p. 21-38
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- Description: Davis and Sumara (2003) argue that differences between commonsense assumptions about learning and those upon which constructivism rests present a significant challenge for the fostering of constructivist approaches to teaching in schools. Indeed, as Rink (2001) suggests, initiating any change process for teaching method needs to involve some understanding of the theories supporting it. Although there has been considerable discussion about constructivism in the physical education literature over the past decade, there has been less attention paid to the assumptions about learning and knowledge that underpin it. This article makes a contribution toward redressing this oversight in the literature by examining the epistemology and assumptions about learning that constructivist theories of learning rest upon. Drawing on the work of Davis and Sumara (2003), I suggest that the term "complex" learning theories may offer a more useful description of the sometimes confusing range of constructivist approaches. I provide examples of, and suggestions for, the application of constructivism in practice and within which the body forms a prominent theme.
Promoting learner voice in VET: developimg democratic, transformative possibilities or further entrenching the status
- Authors: Foley, Annette , Golding, Barry , Angus, Lawrence , Lavender, Peter
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Vocational Education and Training Vol. 65, no. 4 (2013), p. 560-574
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- Description: In order to critique the notion of ‘learner voice’ in vocational education and training (VET) policy, this paper draws from a project conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC). The term ‘learner voice’ is used extensively throughout NVEAC documentation to describe the engagement of ‘disadvantaged’ students within the VET system. However, the concept of ‘voice’ being advocated, we argue, is a particularly ‘thin’ one which is linked to notions of client feedback, managed participation and the commodification of training rather than any broad sense of democracy, equity or social transformation. The paper critically examines current practices in relation to learner voice within the VET policy framework and their implications for the contested role of VET in contributing to social equity and redress of social and economic disadvantage.
Prevailing pedagogies for classes in low SES contexts and the implications for standards-based reform in Australia
- Authors: Fenwick, Lisl , Cooper, Maxine
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Educational Researcher Vol. 39, no. 3 (2012), p. 349-361
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- Description: Current curriculum and assessment reform for schooling in Australia is based on ideas and practices associated with the setting of standards. Detailed descriptions of levels of achievement for each year of schooling are being ascribed the dual role of measuring the effectiveness of school systems and helping teachers to ensure all students are supported to gain common outcomes. The use of standards to inform teaching and learning has developed from research on differentiation practices and is associated with specific pedagogies designed to support students at risk of not succeeding in schooling. This project aimed to investigate the extent to which the ideas and practices associated with standards-based curriculum reform are currently influencing teachers' thinking and practice in three Victorian primary schools situated in low socio-economic status contexts. Teachers' beliefs and practices associated with supporting students from backgrounds traditionally linked with low achievement were collected before and after trialling units of work designed by pre-service teachers. The results reveal that the ideas and strategies currently used by teachers in three schools largely conflict with the pedagogies associated with standards-based reform and the findings question the extent to which current national agendas in Australia will influence classroom practices and student outcomes. © 2012 The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc.
Confronting the pedagogical challenges of online asynchronous discussion groups
- Authors: Edmondson, Elizabeth
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The International Journal of Learning Vol. 14, no. 12 (2008), p. 101-108
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- Description: This paper argues that online asynchronous discussion groups suffer from inherent pedagogical limitations, in spite of their abilities to provide sites for content focussed discussion and support for students. Discussion groups cannot overcome their structural limitations in constructing question and answer trees because they create end of learning cycle outputs rather than facilitating learning processes. In distance education, online discussion groups suffer an additional pedagogical weakness by constructing student-teacher discussions as semi-public discussions. Their mediated environment contributes implicit ‘veils of uncertainty’ that limit meaningful connectedness between learners and teachers. Developing an awareness of these problems can assist teachers and designers in identifying appropriate supports to student learning.
Place matters: pedagogies of food, ecology and design
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Environmental Education Research Vol. 19, no. 2 (2013), p.
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- Description: This study uses theories of place inhabitation, relationships to food, place ecologies, and place-based pedagogies to examine the educational value of food gardens and related environmental and health initiatives in primary (elementary) schooling in Australia. It assumes that food gardens and their school ground contexts are important ecopedagogical sites for renewing children’s relationships with proximal, everyday places. The study highlights how schools are engaging with socioenvironmental challenges through pedagogical frameworks that support education for sustainability. These frameworks are significant in that they position children as active agents who experience deep levels of embodied learning. A key premise of the thesis is that young learners are experientially capable of developing an ecoethical awareness if they are to become ecologically proactive subjects and citizens. Empirical work drew on case study approaches and arts-based auto-ethnographic methodologies to identify the pedagogical potential of food gardens and school ground ecologies. Fifty-three children aged 8–12 years, three gardening/environmental education teachers and three principals from three Australian primary schools (2×Victoria; 1×Tasmania) worked ethnographically with the researcher during 2007–2009. Data were primarily derived from semi-structured, face-to-face interviews. Other key sources included children’s mapping work, field notes, photos, and the researcher’s journal. Key features of the data collection were: many of the students participated in ‘walking interviews’ that encouraged garden- and school ground-based stories at sites of their choice, coupled with 15 days of participant observation of garden and classroom-based lessons to provide further contextualization. Analysis of interviews and lessons involved a ‘storyline’ approach to interpreting findings. Theoretically informed discussions of the empirical data highlight the following: across the three schools, recognizing the role and significance of teachers’ work and the value of integrated approaches to pedagogy are central requirements for designing, implementing, and evaluating place-oriented curricula. In each case study, relational pedagogies of connection and responsibility afford learning opportunities that can bring children into deepened contact with local places and people. Collectively, the initiatives undertaken by the schools and their wider communities are ‘positive’ and ‘hopeful’, and their examples show how school garden-based ecopedagogies can play a critical role in the renewal of more sustainable people–place relations.
Sustainability education : Researching practice in primary schools
- Authors: Green, Monica , Somerville, Margaret
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Environmental Education Research Vol. 21, no. 6 (2015), p. 832-845
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- Description: Many teachers are keen to implement sustainability education in primary schools but are lacking the confidence, skills and knowledge to do so. Teachers report that they do not understand the concept and cannot integrate sustainability into an already overcrowded curriculum. Identifying how teachers successfully integrate sustainability education into their teaching practice can offer important insights into how these perceived problems can be overcome. The paper is based on data from the third year of a longitudinal study about teacher education and teacher professional learning for sustainability in primary education. The third year of the study investigated teachers’ understandings of sustainability and how sustainability education is manifested in eight rural and regional primary schools in Victoria, Australia. Data included photographs of school grounds and sustainability projects, audio recordings of focus groups with teachers and principals, and field notes of meetings with school staff. Sustainability education was found to be an emergent practice necessarily constituted in the relation between teachers, students and community members and the materialities of local places. Partnerships were found to be an essential part of integrated sustainability programmes which extended into communities and places beyond the schools. The processes of learning involved pedagogies of creative problem-solving and inquiry learning that enabled children to lead the way. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Learning to be men : Masculinities, pedagogy, and science fiction
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies series) Chapter 3 p. 39-50
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- Description: Like many cultural studies practitioners, my research, learning, and teaching are concerned with critiquing and contesting taken-for-granted assumptions that posit that human identities and social structures are fixed, natural, and inevitable. These are assumptions that can contribute to social disadvantage, oppression, and inequity. My research has focused in particular on problematizing hegemonic ideals of masculinity and in exploring the potential for science fiction to critique and offer alternatives to these dominant models. This chapter reflects on the embodied experience of doing this form of cultural studies in the classroom, of exploring these ideas in the context of a pedagogical exchange with undergraduate university students enrolled in a fantasy and science fiction course. Both the experience of masculinity— for men and women—and the activities of learning and teaching are deeply embodied. The purposes of this chapter are therefore twofold. First, I argue that science fiction is a useful tool for encouraging students to develop their awareness of how popular culture functions as a form of public pedagogy that frames how each of us experience masculinity. While some science fiction takes hegemonic ideals of gender for granted and encourages us to do the same, other texts problematize these assumptions by showing us the potential for bodies to be lived and experienced differently. Second, by reflecting on my own embodied experience of teaching science fiction in a university classroom, this chapter aims to encourage teachers to think about how we actually do cultural studies with our students and to move beyond conceiving of the classroom as a purely intellectual space to also embrace the bodily dimension of our practice.
Teaching the "Other" : Curriculum "Outcomes" and digital technology in the out-of-school lives of young people
- Authors: Auld, Glenn , Johnson, Nicola
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Critical perspectives on technology and education p. 163-181
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The research on sociocultural approaches to pedagogy is full of teachers who attempt to draw on "historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills" (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992, p.133) to engage their students in learning in the classroom. In the field of educational technology, research examining young people's lives largely focuses on school contexts, and tends to ignore the value of informal learning outside of the school gate. In this chapter, the "other" (Lévinas, 1979) concerns the formal curriculum outcomes performed in the out-of-school lives of young people's practices with digital technologies.
African higher education : the renaissance and reformation of language
- Authors: Muzoora, Michael , Terry, Daniel
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Linguistics and Language Education in New Horizons: The Link between Theory, Research and Pedagogy p. 197-209
- Full Text: false
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- Description: African higher education plays a central role for social, economic and cultural transformation. This is achieved by advancing knowledge and developing human resource to meet the labour force needs. In addtion, universities are the guardian of people's culture and heritage. This chapter outlines a historical overview to provide context to higher education development in Africa. It highlights the continued dominance of western intellectual, linguistic and cultural imperialism in African higher education. In addition, it examines the language used within African higher education to maintain the status quo in the era of student =massification', democratisation of institutional reform, and the transformation to knowledge based societies. What is evident is that African higher education is in the shadow of foreign hegemonic associations maintained through cultural and intellectual domination and well-established ideological conditioning to capitalism. As such, it remains indifferent to the broader political and socio-economic challenges on the continent and detached from the societies in which they are located. The chapter advocates African higher education to embrace an epistemological view which is rooted in an indigenous linguistic and social-cultural approach to reform the university's relationship within society, to fulfill its roles of knowledge production, research and service. Thus, African higher education must refocus and rewrite its approach to become an institution which preoccupies itself almost entirely on gathering, processing, storage and dissemination of knowledge that empowers its society. © 2015 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
iPod therefore I can : Enhancing the learning of children with intellectual disabilities through emerging technologies
- Authors: Marks, Genee , Milne, Jay
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ICICTE 2008: International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education, Corfu, Greece : 10th-12th July 2008
- Full Text:
- Description: This paper explores the pedagogical and social potential of emerging technologies, in particular the iPod, in facilitating the learning of young Australians with severe intellectual and social disabilities. The study, which was carried out in a segregated educational setting in Victoria, Australia, sought to establish whether the intrinsic portable, multi-media capabilities of the iPod particularly lent themselves to a practical application for students with severe disabilities. It was concluded that such new technology has considerable power and potential as an emerging pedagogy with students with severe intellectual and physical disabilities.
- Description: 2003006449
Critical imagination : A pedagogy for engaging pre-service teachers in the university classroom
- Authors: Cartwright, Patricia , Noone, Lynne
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Education, Honolulu, Hawaii : 6th-9th January 2007 p. 610-629
- Full Text:
- Description: In this paper we consider the aspect of teacher education which takes place, not in the school, but in the university classroom. Teaching about teaching, it is argued, must be grounded in students' understanding of the present, but must foster both hope and critique. Beginning from Maxine Greene's (2000) concept of imagination, this paper develops a notion of critical imagination as a way of conceptualizing a critical pedagogy in the university classroom. Two pedagogical strategies based on critical imagination are outlined and analyzed. Writing is prioritized as a pedagogical tool. Excerpts from our professional teaching journals, together with samples of students' writing in response to these strategies, clothe the strategies in the reality of teaching practice. We argue that the use of teaching strategies based on critical imagination as a means of 'jarring' students to think differently seems to move our students to think a little more humanely and a little more critically. But this is neither a simple nor unproblematic task.