A dynamic learning concept in early years’ education: a possible way to prevent schoolification

In early childhood education and care, Nordic social pedagogy approach is challenged by a learning orientation that often results in unproductive ‘either/or’ thinking. Therefore, based on the two approaches and by analysing several dimensions of Froebel’s ideas and prevailing social-historical activity (play) theory, the author deduces four generally accepted play criteria that form the basis for the construction of a dynamic and play-based learning concept that has the three following cornerstones as focal points: (1) learning happens in activities where the child is an active participant and interacts and communicates with other people; (2) meaningful activities pave the way for children’s learning; these are activities where the child’s motive aligns with the goal of the activity; and (3) learning is seen as a productive and creative activity characterised by imagination.     

Language learning through critical pedagogy in a “Brave New World”

After passing their university entry exam, students who wish to study a subject at one of the Turkish universities offering English-medium courses attend a one-year preparatory class. At the end of this, they need to pass an English language proficiency exam in order to be admitted to their chosen course of study. The existing curriculum for such preparatory classes is designed to be taught in English only and very much oriented towards passing the concluding standardised language proficiency exam at the end. This approach does not teach the students any of the skills they will need for their further study, such as how to think critically or to question their own conditioning and political attitudes. Using a different methodology, the author of this paper conducted an in-class project with students learning English in a Turkish state university’s preparatory class. The project was carried out within a framework of critical pedagogy and used both Turkish and English during the phases of research and discussion. Evaluating the students’ own reflections on the experience as well as their final presentations which were prepared in English, the author suggests that the critical pedagogy approach in combination with a maximum use of students’ means of expression and language resources led to a more meaningful learning experience – both for the students and for herself – as well as a more efficient and lasting English language proficiency.     

Getting beyond “gut feeling”: understanding how mentors judge readiness to teach

Assessing whether or not a teacher candidate is ready to take their own class is a high-stakes decision that requires consideration of multiple, often competing, sources of information. Three research instruments were designed to explore how mentors judge readiness to teach during final practicum placements. This article describes the three instruments. It discusses how the three tasks worked as ways to understand how people judge readiness to teach and as ways to develop mentors’ judgement making. While there was broad agreement about what was important in this judgment, the data from all three instruments suggest that individual judges rely on their own experience and frames of reference when deciding about readiness to teach, leading to variability in the decisions they make.     

Education for disability equality through disabled people’s life stories and narratives: working and learning together in a school-based professional development programme for inclusion

This paper reports on the findings of an action research project that took place in a primary school in Cyprus. A professional development programme was devised with contributions from teachers involved in the research. The programme was aimed at helping teachers to map the difficulties they encounter when working with their students on disability-related issues (e.g. attitudes towards disabled children and adults, disabled people’s rights, disabled people’s views about social inequalities). Theoretical concepts from Inclusive Education and Disability Studies informed the design of a programme in which disabled people’s own views and narratives of their lives or significant life incidences (e.g. found in interviews and published work) were used to help teachers confront their preconceptions about disability issues and think of new approaches to discuss disability with their students. The findings suggest that this is a promising approach. These include teachers’ understanding of disability as a social rather than a medical issue, increased confidence in discussing disability issues with students and curriculum enrichment through the use of disabled people’s narratives. This discussion maps the process through which teachers learn and teach using disabled people’s life stories, and draws links with international research and theoretical standpoints.     

Portfolios as ‘learning companions’ for children and a means to support and assess language learning in the primary school

This article explores the idea of portfolios as a way to collect evidence of pupils' learning and achievement in their language learning in the primary school. The emphasis is on portfolio work as an active and reflective process to underpin and support learning and to show evidence of achievement and progression. Pupil choice and reflexivity are essential in the process. The process can encourage learners to draw on their learning experiences across the curriculum. Whilst a means of providing evidence of learning, and for showcasing work pupils are proud of, portfolios are seen as central to and embedded in the day-to-day learning and underpinned by the principles of formative assessment. Designed to be used with other modes of assessment including the European Languages Portfolio, portfolios are in essence flexible, inclusive and a dynamic record of learning, achievement and potential for every learner. In this article, the use of portfolios from an early age as a means to promote development and learning and a way of assessing learning are inextricably linked. Teachers working to develop portfolio work, and some of their pupils, add their voices to the discussion of portfolio development towards an enhanced dialogic assessment culture.     

Developing new “Professionals”: Service learning in marketing as an opportunity to innovate in higher education

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) promotes the use of student-centered participatory methodologies and the design of curricula focused on the acquisition of competences. The objective of this paper is to identify the categories of competence that contribute the most to achieving learning outcomes through the practice of Service Learning (SL) in the teaching of marketing. Using the categories described in the Tuning model, we design a model to analyze the relationships between perceived learning outcomes and competences. The main findings are: 1) there is no evidence of any relationship between perceived interpersonal and systemic competences and perceived learning outcomes, 2) there is a relationship between perceived instrumental competences and perceived learning outcomes and, 3) students do not perceive that achievement of learning outcomes is the cause of the grades they obtain. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications.     

Firefighter training in Sweden: from face-to-face learning in training grounds to distance learning – a challenge for exercise instructors?

When distance learning supported by digital technologies was introduced in firefighter training in Sweden some years ago, training exercise instructors accustomed to face-to-face teaching in the field had to adapt their professional roles to an electronic landscape with a number of new opportunities and constraints. Based on activity theory and comparisons between campus and distance mode, this study was aimed at increasing the understanding of how the training exercise instructor role is affected by the shift towards technology-enhanced distance learning. An analysis of interviews with instructors and students, and observations of response exercises, show that contradictions are emerging in the distance mode between instructors’ motives, their technology tools and the object of the training they provide, and also between the two types of training, that is, the campus and the distance modes. Structural tensions and personal motives contribute to changes in the division of labour with instructors tending to adopt a much more passive role in the distance mode compared to their more active role in the campus mode.     

Correction to: Expanding the interpretive functions of framing for understanding marginalized students’ participation in collaboration and learning

Cultural Studies of Science Education -     

Contribution to activity: a lens for understanding students’ potential and agency in physics education

In this paper I argue for using the concept of contribution to activity to understand student engagement with science education and its transformational potential in formal settings. Drawing on transformative activist stance, I explain contribution as how individuals take part in and transform collective practices according to their own life agendas and get transformed themselves. As contribution to science education is a concept based on transformation, not adaptation, it can be especially informative when examining how underrepresented students in science can be more engaged in science education and eventually science. Using survey, interview and group conversations, and field observations in an undergraduate physics course, I put forward Zoey’s case to illustrate my argument and show how her contribution to the activities in the course initiated change in the activity among her peers.     

“I want to speak like the other people”: Second language learning as a virtuous spiral for migrant women?

This article contributes to scholarship on migrant women’s second language (L2) education in North America and Europe. Questioning reductionist understandings of the relationship between female migrants, their receiving communities and L2 education, the authors consider existing literature as well as their own qualitative work to investigate the challenges, opportunities and agency of migrant women. Weaving together and thematically presenting previous scholarship and qualitative data from interviews, participant observations and classroom recordings from a mixed-gender L2 adult migrant classroom in Austria and an all-women L2 migrant classroom in the United States, they trouble conceptualisations which position women primarily as passive recipients of education and in need of emancipation, while simultaneously elevating communities as agentic providers of these. Specifically, the authors emphasise that (1) L2 proficiency is not a guarantee for migrant women’s social inclusion or socioeconomic advancement; (2) migrant women’s complex challenges and agency need to be recognised and addressed; and (3) all involved in L2 education of migrant women do well to become learners of their own experiences of oppression, including their complicity in it.     

“There’s got to be a better way to do this”: a qualitative investigation of informal learning among instructional designers

This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate informal learning among practicing instructional designers. Prior research has examined how instructional designers spend their time, make decisions, use theory, solve problems, and so on, but no published research has explored the nature and role of informal learning in instructional design work. Based on intensive interviews of practitioners in the field, this study produced eight themes organized according to two metathemes: (a) the nature of informal learning in instructional design practice and (b) instructional design as informal learning. Specific themes concerned what instructional designers learn through informal practical experience, how they learn it, and the meaning of this kind of learning for various aspects of their work. Overall, these results suggest that informal learning is a vital part of instructional design practice and that design itself can be thought of as a specialized type of informal learning. Other conclusions regarding informal learning in design are discussed and future directions for research are offered.     

Developing “deliberate analysis” for learning mathematics and for mathematics teacher education: how the enactive approach to cognition frames reflection

We illustrate and exemplify how the idea of reflection is framed by the enactive concept of “deliberate analysis”. In keeping with this frame, we do not attempt to define reflection but rather work on the question of “how do we do reflecting?” within such a frame. We set out our enactivist theoretical stance, in particular pointing to implications for how we can learn from experience and showing the role of “deliberate analysis”. We then describe, drawing on education literature, what is generally seen as the purpose of reflection and review some existing conceptualizations in mathematics education, pointing out where we draw distinctions. To illustrate how we do reflecting, we offer excerpts from two lessons of an expert teacher and the writing of a prospective teacher. We exemplify how reflecting as deliberate analysis leads to a way of working with teachers supporting them in handling multiple views and ambiguity, their actions being contingent upon their students’ actions in learning mathematics.     

Global learning partnerships in the Café: peer feedback as a formative assessment tool for animation students

This paper reports on a global learning partnership using the Café: the collaborative application for education as an e-learning environment within the Facebook framework, for first-year animation students at the University of South Australia (USA) in Australia and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “The Café” has been designed based on five principles of user interface design – visibility, usability, relevance, accessibility, and interactivity – and aims to provide institutions with an established, structured, and dedicated e-learning environment that meets the needs of modern-day tertiary students and teaching staff. From July to November in 2013, 71 students participated within the e-learning environment. Students submitted work-in-progress imagery related to major assignments, and provided feedback and critiques to their local and global peers. A post-semester survey provided students with the opportunity to critically reflect on the learning experience. The results are discussed in light of the use of peer feedback as a formative assessment tool.     

Canadian contexts in educational leadership: a hermeneutic approach to distributed leadership for teachers’ professional learning

Educational leadership in Canada has traditionally been conceptualized as a solo activity. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the distributed character of leadership. Like any other theory or concept, distributed leadership has attracted praise as well as criticism. In this chapter, we conceptualize distributed leadership as concerted actions that happen in everyday practices in schools and through relationships among various partners such as principals/heads and teachers. The chapter is divided into four sections. In Section 1, we trace historical and theoretical antecedents of distributed leadership in general with respect to questions of representation, legitimation and praxis, with specific references to social impetuses. Section 2 considers Canadian educational contexts in terms of current conditions and trends in distributed leadership. The third section deals with the global perspective in terms of social, political and aesthetic forces. The fourth section speculates upon the future of distributed leadership in terms of utopian/dystopian possibilities. In this final section, we experiment with what philosophical hermeneutics may offer to a re-conceptualization of distributed leadership. Through Gadamer’s notion of praxis, we discuss concerted action of distributed leadership. We highlight the importance of this form of leadership in an era of unprecedented global interconnectedness, and how it may facilitate teachers’ professional learning and development.     

Adopting a “satisficing” model for school performance in students' views of learning

In many countries it has been noticeable how students’ use of information technology (IT) in education is often sporadic and inconsistent; at odds with the esteemed status that IT is afforded in educational rhetoric and policy. The traditional approach to the uneven take-up of IT in education has been to concentrate on the deficiency of the student in not using computers. In this way students’ avoidance of IT use is often framed in terms of a psychological inability or deficiency to react with computers. However, this article attempts to look beyond this traditional ‘discourse of deficiency’ and explore the myriad factors influencing students’ decisions not to use computers during their education. On the basis of data gathered from focus group interviews with 96 UK students, three main constructs underlying students’ rejection of educational computing are identified. The article discusses how educational computing can be ‘re-constructed’ in the light of these factors. Résumé Dans de nombreux pays, on a remarqué combien l’usage que font les étudiants des technologies de l’information (IT) en éducation est souvent sporadique et inconsistant, très loin du statut des IT généralement attribu? dans le discours rhétorique et politique sur l’éducation. L’approche traditionnelle de la difficulté a été? focalisée sur les déficiences de l’étudiant qui n’utilise pas l’ordinateur. Dans ce sens, le fait que l’étudiant cherche à éviter l’usage des IT est souvent formul? en termes d’inaptitude psychologique ou de déficience dans les réactions face à l’ordinateur. Cette étude cherche à voir plus loin que ce discours traditionnel de déficience de l’étudiant et explore la myriade de facteurs qui influencent les décisions de l’étudiant de ne pas utiliser l’ordinateur pour étudier. Sur la base de données recueillies lors d’interviews touchant 96 étudiants de Grande-Bretagne, trois types de rejets sous-jacents de l’informatique éducationnelle ont été identifiés. Le document discute la manière dont celle-ci peut être ‘re-construite’ à la lumière de ces facteurs.     

Looking for “us”: power reimagined in mathematics learning for Black communities in the pandemic

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In this reflective essay, a BlackCrit lens is used to explore new and evolving possibilities for Black teachers, families, leaders, and students in ways that...