Description:
Abstract: This paper examines the position and role of 'place' in primary school curriculum. Drawing on the research literature and preliminary data the paper analyses a re-imagined environmental education program at a primary school. Innovative and collaborative processes that depict children as integral designers of a new garden place are discussed. Focus is given to the school ground as an important site for teaching and learning. The role of an ecological centre designed to teach children about sustainable building principles is discussed. Attention is drawn to the importance of children as place makers via endeavours that encourage and support children's fascination and affinity with outdoor places in the school ground. Tending a food garden is proposed as a significant pedagogical pathway for nurturing children's sense of wonder and enabling familiarity and a love of the natural world. Keywords: place, place makers, children, school ground, natural world, gardening
Description:
Abstract: This paper examines the position and role of 'place' in primary school curriculum. Drawing on the research literature and preliminary data the paper analyses a re-imagined environmental education program at a primary school. Innovative and collaborative processes that depict children as integral designers of a new garden place are discussed. Focus is given to the school ground as an important site for teaching and learning. The role of an ecological centre designed to teach children about sustainable building principles is discussed. Attention is drawn to the importance of children as place makers via endeavours that encourage and support children's fascination and affinity with outdoor places in the school ground. Tending a food garden is proposed as a significant pedagogical pathway for nurturing children's sense of wonder and enabling familiarity and a love of the natural world. Keywords: place, place makers, children, school ground, natural world, gardening
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.
Description:
The recognition of the authentic voice(s) of people with intellectual disability has been an emerging trend over the last decade and a half. Less often, however, have these voices been heard in relation to research, and directions for the future. dal Gourmet Café and Catering, which provides training in the hospitality industry for young people with disabilities in Geelong received funding to establish an action research project to develop, implement, monitor and reflect on a variety of strategies and innovations to support transition from this training and development setting into open employment. A committee of critical friends consisting largely of people with disability was established, and consultation carried out with schools, staff in training, and community employers. The committee, once educated in the action research process, designed a training program that was trialed and evaluated in three action research cycles. The program was deemed successful, but with modifications and changes as decided by the committee, and with the addition of a fourth cycle. This paper strongly argues that such inclusive research addresses significant and fundamental debates about inclusion and the rights of people with disability to exert agency and take direct grassroots action for their future.
Description:
The recognition of the authentic voice(s) of people with intellectual disability has been an emerging trend over the last decade and a half. Less often, however, have these voices been heard in relation to research, and directions for the future. dal Gourmet Café and Catering, which provides training in the hospitality industry for young people with disabilities in Geelong received funding to establish an action research project to develop, implement, monitor and reflect on a variety of strategies and innovations to support transition from this training and development setting into open employment. A committee of critical friends consisting largely of people with disability was established, and consultation carried out with schools, staff in training, and community employers. The committee, once educated in the action research process, designed a training program that was trialed and evaluated in three action research cycles. The program was deemed successful, but with modifications and changes as decided by the committee, and with the addition of a fourth cycle. This paper strongly argues that such inclusive research addresses significant and fundamental debates about inclusion and the rights of people with disability to exert agency and take direct grassroots action for their future.
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.