Description:
We argue in this paper that the experience of reading is an intricate and dynamic weaving of connections much like the tentative construction of a spider's web. We also use the metaphor of the web to examine a professional learning experience for Australian secondary school English teachers who over the course of a year, and by working in Communities of Practice, find and renew passion and purpose in their teaching of reading. The professional learning project, beginning in 2015, is conducted in Victorian schools under the auspices of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English (VATE) and is funded for six years by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. In five years it has involved 36 schools. In this paper we focus on the experiences of teachers involved in the first three years of the project. The project begins by drawing attention, through an examination of literature, to disturbing levels of disengagement with reading at school and to a culture of pedagogy in English that has shifted over recent times toward transactional teaching and away from a focus on meaning-making. Drawing upon teacher interviews, the paper examines how teachers find passion and purpose in their teaching of reading through an initial focus on student experience revealed in drawings, which they find surprising and moving. In Communities of Practice and with the support of an external Critical Friend, the teachers explore a complex understanding of reading that has imaginative, dialogic, emotional, critical, metacognitive and embodied dimensions and design and trial reading activities with the aim of deepening students' reading experiences. Through a focus on what teachers say, the paper explores what is learned through this experience and examines some of the challenges associated with sustaining change in schools.
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
This paper reports on the results of a study of the learning preferences of adult males in small, rural Australian towns. The researcher employed a survey of men in each of ten towns in 2004 to explore and compare their learning experiences and preferences-in adult and community education (ACE) programs on one hand, and in community-based volunteer organisations (fire services, landcare senior citizens and football clubs) on the other. The research confirms the considerable importance for men of regular learning experienced in less formal learning contexts as community volunteers, and highlights the barriers ICT poses for older men.
Description:
This paper reports on the results of a study of the learning preferences of adult males in small, rural Australian towns. The researcher employed a survey of men in each of ten towns in 2004 to explore and compare their learning experiences and preferences-in adult and community education (ACE) programs on one hand, and in community-based volunteer organisations (fire services, landcare senior citizens and football clubs) on the other. The research confirms the considerable importance for men of regular learning experienced in less formal learning contexts as community volunteers, and highlights the barriers ICT poses for older men.
Description:
This paper justifies the presentation of a Ph.D. thesis about computer-assisted Ndjebbana on a digital video disc (DVD). Ndjebbana is a language spoken by 200 Kunibidji, the indigenous landowners of Maningrida on the north coast of Arnhem Land, Australia. Simple digital talking books about the community were created in Ndjebbana and then presented on touch-screen computers located in Kunibidji houses. Kunibidji social practice and discourse around the computer were recorded on digital video, and the traces of what the screen displayed were recorded on the computer and later synchronized with the video. Using DVD technology, the Ndjebbana talking books and the digital video can be integrated into a scholarly text for academics and an Ndjebbana-narrated report for the Kunibidji, which can be combined to present a thesis. From a theoretical perspective, a thesis on a DVD can be located in the center of critical literacy, a critical theory of technology, and critical research methodologies. There are also logistical, semiotic, and ideological reasons for presenting a thesis about computer-assisted Ndjebbana on DVD. Such a presentation will link the tools and data of the research with academic discourse and will also support the empowerment of the Kunibidji by making them more informed about the research process.
Description:
This paper endeavours to examine the challenges that introducing sustainability into the curriculum brings for academics, students and engineering programs. The paper addresses the various international, national and regional drivers for increasing curriculum sustainability content and environmentally responsive behaviour by Universities. Finally, the consideration of triple bottom line reporting within a common first year engineering subject at The University of Ballarat is discussed as a recent curriculum development to incorporate current sustainability thinking.
Description:
Adults in Australia have tended to return relatively recently to learning in patterns that are significantly different by gender. These patterns of gender segmentation for adults are particularly noticeable in the findings of recent research by the author into adult, community and vocational learning in small and remote towns in Victoria. The issues associated with such patterns form the basis of this exploratory paper.
Description:
The overall aim of this portfolio is to discuss [...] understanding of the curriculum process surrounding the development of the Health and Physical Education Curriculum and Standards Framework II (HPE CSFII) and its implementation in a Victorian secondary school. The unit of analysis was a group of physical educators from Newviews Secondary College. Throughout 2002, interviews, surveys and document analysis were used to see how 'how and if' the HPE CSFII was being adopted and 'implemented' by the group.
Description:
This article examines how the St Trinian’s films (1954–1980) engage with shifts in the social organization of gender and class, while celebrating the defiance of social constraints on women. Focusing on the films’ depiction of unruly female behaviour, the article addresses the historical and social dimensions of the films in relation to carnival, adolescence and education. The films express public responses to the increasing public significance of female youth, and celebrate the predominantly female environment of the girls’ school.
Description:
This article examines how the St Trinian’s films (1954–1980) engage with shifts in the social organization of gender and class, while celebrating the defiance of social constraints on women. Focusing on the films’ depiction of unruly female behaviour, the article addresses the historical and social dimensions of the films in relation to carnival, adolescence and education. The films express public responses to the increasing public significance of female youth, and celebrate the predominantly female environment of the girls’ school.