Between work and learning: on pedagogic practice and interstitial space

In this paper I develop a response to a continuing problem in work–learning research, the connections between education, learning and work. These connections are commonly conceived in terms of the concept of transfer, integration or boundary crossing. Thinking these connections in this way, I claim, serves to consolidate a unitary, stable and fixed idea of the relationship between learning in educational institutions and work and inadvertently reduce its complexity. Drawing on empirical data collected over the course of qualitatively exploring the links between a problem-based program of teacher education (‘learning’) and the practice of participants in this program upon initial employment in schools (‘work’), and deploying actor network theory, I trace new sorts of associations between work and learning and propose a relational conception of their connection. Challenging the common counter-positioning of work and learning, empirical analysis reveals their mutual constitution and partial connection in practices, here, of a predominantly pedagogic and spatial/material kind. Practices that occupy interstitial spaces have a particular resonance with regard to challenging this counter-positioning and unsettling the hierarchies of value which often arise from it.     

Adult literacy,local languages and lifelong learning in rural African contexts

International Review of Education -     

Gendered pedagogic identities and academic professionalism in Greek medical schools

Feminist scholarship has considered how pedagogical identities and emotions are implicated in the gender politics of belonging and othering in higher education. This paper examines how gendered and embodied pedagogy is mobilised in Greek medical schools to construct notions of the ideal academic and assert women’s position women in Academic Medicine. I employ thematic analysis to illustrate that formations of pedagogy and academic professionalism are bound up with emotions and embodied practices of relating, connecting, creating learning communities and promoting virtuous academic citizenship. Women’s gendered accounts of pedagogy and their boundary practices of identification demonstrate agency, intentionality and operate as highly political actions of legitimacy and resistance within the patriarchal realm of Greek higher education. I argue that gendered discourses of pedagogy in Greek medical schools become resources for resisting neo-liberal notions of academic work, individualism and women’s exclusion in the highly prestigious discipline of academic medicine in Greece.     

Teachers' social class,professional dispositions and pedagogic practice

Through theoretically driven case studies, the research reported here considers the ways in which students in different social class settings are inducted into school knowledge. The paper brings to the centre the social class positioning of teachers in considering their role in schooling processes. The central question of the paper is whether we can establish a relationship between teachers' own social class backgrounds, their professional dispositions and their pedagogic practice. The interest emerges from a long-standing assumption that teachers are middle class, and reproduce the practices associated with that social location. The paper is exploratory and is not able to provide a definitive answer to the question of the relationship between class, professional disposition and pedagogic practice. Although it suggests a relationship between teachers' social class position and schooling practices, the main contribution of the paper is to offer a metric for exploring the issue further. That is, through a specifically selected sample, the paper provides a means for considering the implications of teachers social class background, professional dispositions and pedagogic practice for the processes of the reproduction of social inequality, and its interruption.     

Beginning literacy: links among teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student learning

Although the importance of phonological awareness has been discussed widely in the research literature, the concept is not well understood by many classroom teachers. In the study described here, we worked with groups of kindergarten and first-grade teachers (the experimental group) during a 2-week summer institute and throughout the school year. We shared with them research about learning disabilities and effective instruction, stressing the importance of explicit instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness. We followed the experimental group and a control group into their classrooms for a year, assessing teachers' classroom practices and their students' (n = 779) learning. The study yielded three major findings: We can deepen teachers' own knowledge of the role of phonological and orthographic information in literacy instruction; teachers can use that knowledge to change classroom practice; and changes in teacher knowledge and classroom practice can improve student learning.     

Embedding interactive whiteboards in teaching and learning: The process of change in pedagogic practice

This paper draws on research carried out for the UK government during 2004–2006 to evaluate the impact of interactive whiteboards for teaching and learning in primary schools in England. Multilevel modelling showed positive gains in literacy, mathematics and science for children aged 7 and 11, directly related to the length of time they had been taught with an interactive whiteboard (IWB). These gains were particularly strong for children of average and above average prior attainment. Classroom observations, together with teacher and pupil interviews, were used to develop a detailed account of how pedagogic practice changed. Results from the multilevel modelling enabled the researchers to visit the classrooms of teachers whose pupils had made exceptional progress and seek to identify what features of pedagogy might have helped to achieve these gains. It was also possible to examine possible reasons for the lack of impact of IWBs on the progress of low prior attainment pupils, despite their enthusiasm for the IWB and improved attention in class. The IWB is an ideal resource to support whole class teaching. Where teachers had been teaching with an IWB for 2 years and there was evidence that all children, had made exceptional progress in attainment in national tests, a key factor was the use of the IWB for skilled teaching of numeracy and literacy to pairs or threesomes of children. Young children with limited writing skills, and older pupils with special educational needs are highly motivated by being able to demonstrate their skills and knowledge with the tapping and dragging facilities of the IWB. These effects are greatest when they have the opportunity, individually or in small groups, for extended use of the IWB rather than as part of whole class teaching. The IWB is in effect a mediating artefact in interactions between teacher and pupils, and when teachers use an IWB for a considerable period of time (at least 2 years), teachers learn how to mediate the greatly increased number of possible interactions to best aid pupils’ learning. The IWB’s use becomes embedded in their pedagogy as a mediating artefact for their interactions with their pupils, and pupils’ interactions with one another, and this is when changes in pedagogic practice become apparent.     

Freire,literacy and emancipatory gender learning

The contributions to education of one of the great Latin American thinkers, Paulo Freire, have been enormous. His voice and wisdom have inspired educators globally. Three particular contributions – to emancipation, to literacy, and to dialogue – are explored in this article through a critical lens. From a gender perspective, Freire’s path to consciousness-raising is crucial for emancipation but so also is empowerment, a notion contributed by the women’s movement. Adult literacy, Freire’s vehicle to raise consciousness, has been challenged by a recognition of the complexity underlying its acquisition, a factor we still have to incorporate in training and teaching programmes. Dialogical approaches in adult education, essential as they are to the attainment of deeper understanding of social phenomena and the possibility of consensual social action, build on a long trajectory of efforts to use public space for collective advancement. Situating Freire against a denser historical background enables the recognition of his merits and at the same time rescues the confluence of similar perceptions as well as different ideas in the construction of our contemporary world.     

Gender and Education: public policy and pedagogic practice

This paper serves two purposes. The first is an examination of a public policy, the Queensland Department of Education's Equal Opportunity Policy for Girls and Boys (1981) and the Implementation Guidelines (1988) for that policy within the context of the pedagogical practices of one secondary school. The second purpose is to answer a criticism often levelled at structural theories of education. This criticism centres around the inability of structural theories to account for the real life experiences of teachers and students. Bernstein's (1986) theory of Pedagogic Discourse and Fernandes’ (1988) work on Resistance theory are applied to three levels of educational practice; public policy, school practices and the everyday experiences of a group of female students. Through this analysis, movement towards a more satisfactory explanation of the intersection of gender and education is made.     

Using research to improve literacy practice and practice to improve literacy research

The disconnection between research and practice is not a new phenomenon, but as researchers and educators look toward the future of deaf education, it seems crucial to look back at the reasons behind this disconnection with the goal of creating a professional milieu in which we use research to improve literacy practice and practice to improve literacy research with deaf students. This article examines the issues underlying the relatively insignificant impact of research on literacy practice from the perspectives of the fields of literacy, special education, and deaf education.     

Teaching like an artist: the pedagogic identities and practices of artists in schools

This article reports findings from an ethnographic study of the arts curriculum and pedagogy in a British primary school. The policy context for the study is the school's involvement in promoting creative partnerships between teachers and artists. The pedagogies of three different artist‐led projects are analysed, using a Bernsteinian framework, and are characterised in relation to notions of ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ pedagogies. These characterisations are then used to consider the impact of the artists' pedagogies on teachers in the school, and the extent to which the different pedagogies promote inclusion. Broad conclusions are drawn about the relative difficulty of adopting competence pedagogies in the current educational culture of British schools; more specific conclusions are drawn about the importance of time, text, discourse and interpretation in arts pedagogies.     

Teachers,teaching and educational exclusion: Pupil Referral Units and pedagogic practice

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project carried out in a UK Pupil Referral Unit during the 2000/01 academic year. It describes and analyses the strategies adopted by a small group of Behaviour Support Service teachers in order to achieve their everyday occupational goals. It is argued that despite their commitment to the reintegration of excluded pupils into mainstream schools, the pedagogic practices adopted by these teachers served to contribute to an amplification, rather than a moderation, of pupil disaffection and misbehaviour. Teachers' perceptions and understandings about the nature and aims of lesson content varied whilst concerns and preoccupations about classroom control remained constant. Within the context of ongoing government debates in the UK surrounding ‘social exclusion’ and, more specifically, educational exclusion, these findings call for a widening of the research agenda in these areas to include more detailed investigations of occupational circumstance and practitioner needs within non‐traditional school settings.     

Contorting identities: figuring literacy and identity in adolescent worlds

This paper explores connections and disconnects between identity and literacy for a group of adolescents in a second level classroom setting. We build on Mead and Vygotsky’s conceptualisations of identity formation as an intricate emergent happening constantly formed/reformed by people, in their interactions with others [Mead, G. H. 1999. Play, School, Society. Edited by M. J. Deegan. Oxford: Peter Lang; Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press]. This paper will set to explore the impact of this on adolescent literacy practice, student choice and agency [Lewis, C., P. Ensico, and E. M. Moje. 2007. “Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power.” The Electronic Journal of English as a Second Language 12 (3): 1–205]. The concept of figured worlds plays a fundamental role in our theorisation of adolescent literacy and identity. Literacy and identity remain interwoven in very complex ways for adolescents as they attempt to make sense and meaning from in and out of school experiences [Burnett, C., J. Davies, G. Merchant, and J. Rowsell. 2014. New Literacies Around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge; Davies, J. 2013. “(I’m)Material Girls Living in (in)Material Worlds: Identity Curation Through Time and Space.” Presentation at UKLA Conference, Liverpool]. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research was used in carrying out this exploration with a thematic approach to data analysis. The findings of the exploration identify that there is a disconnect between identity in and out of school. We then see the struggle students have in coming to terms with their various figured worlds, and varying identities in given scenarios. There is an emphasis on the dated nature of some prescribed texts for study on the English course and the need for a review of these to bridge the scholastic and social divide evident from the findings. This paper explores the literacy and identity experiences of one group of adolescents alongside their opinions about the English literacy curriculum.