A pedagogy of larger concerns used as a lens to reflect on the design of student learning experiences

ABSTRACT

Although engineering educational endeavours are often described with regard to how well they prepare students to meet national or global engineering concerns, the purpose of this paper is to show how those efforts can also serve the larger educational goals of the educators themselves as they develop learning experiences for their students. This paper describes the reflections of four engineering educators who used a research-based ‘Pedagogy of Larger Concerns’ (PLC) as a conceptual lens for examining important aspects of their courses. A PLC is a set of teaching conceptions that was identified in a study exploring the thinking of outstanding professors in order to improve our understanding of the basis of their effectiveness.     

Students' experiences of learning in a research environment

Research into the research–teaching ‘nexus’ has undergone significant changes in focus and methodology. From an initial quantitative concern with correlating measurements of research productivity and teaching effectiveness, the empirical emphasis has shifted in favour of exploring the experiences of participants (academics and students). This paper reports the findings of interviews carried out in a New Zealand university with 34 students studying across a range of levels in physics, geography and English. In particular, it focuses on students’ understandings of the purpose of a university education and on students’ experiences of research—how ‘visible’ it is for them, where it is located and who engages in it. Analysis reveals that students’ relationship with research varies across the disciplines in both a spatial and temporal dimension according to the ways in which knowledge is conceived of and explored. Accordingly, some students have an early sense of proximity to and/or participation in a research community, while for others, research remains, through their undergraduate years, a remote phenomenon.     

Taking and teaching the test are not the same: a case study of first-year teachers’ experiences in high-stakes contexts

Background: Policymakers’ use of high-stakes exams to improve students’ academic achievement affects teachers and their tenure in the field at all levels of schooling. Novice teachers now being inducted into the field have been educated almost exclusively in these high-stakes learning environments. Yet, how their familiarity with these contexts combined with their experiences in their own classrooms affect novices’ induction into the field of teaching has not been fully examined. Aim: This article presents findings from an investigation into the experiences of two first-year teachers who were educated and trained to be teachers in the same high-stakes education system in which they taught. It examines how these first-year teachers viewed policymakers’ reforms affecting their teaching and tenure in the field. Methods: This qualitative case study centers on the experiences of two first-year teachers working in the same high-stakes standards-based accountability teaching context in which they were educated – the case. This study provides insight into the issue of how novices’ familiarity with high-stakes reform combined with their experiences in their own classrooms impacts their conceptions of their teaching and their tenure in the field. Outcomes: The findings from this case study reveal how policymakers’ high-stakes reforms impacted the development of these novice teachers in significant ways. Not only did they have to learn how to teach as they taught, but they also had to ensure they were teaching all of their students to pass the high-stakes exams. Their varied experiences also demonstrate how these high-stakes exams can ‘test’ beginning teachers out of the classroom. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that first-year teachers’ familiarity with policymakers’ high-stakes reforms is not enough to prepare them for the expectation that they immediately improve students’ academic achievement on high-stakes exams. Such findings not only challenge what it means to be a educator in these contexts, but they also shed light on how larger political and economic forces impact the teaching and tenure of novices. To support new teachers, teacher educators and mentors should rethink the education and induction processes while helping novices understand as well as prepare for the role context plays in their teaching and development as professionals.     

The story of Samantha: the teaching performances and inauthenticities of an early career human geography lecturer

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an autoethnographic account of my first academic year as a Human Geography lecturer at a ‘new’ public university in the North West of England. This research is timely and much needed, since teaching at universities in England has recently come under increasing scrutiny. The Teaching Excellence Framework is a new scheme, which aims to recognise and reward excellence in teaching, learning, and outcomes, and helps to inform student choice. This paper is theoretically framed by drawing on notions of theatrical performance, and performativity. This paper offers insight into the coping strategies, in respect of teaching, that I deployed as a new university lecturer. Findings are discussed around the themes of: performing teaching identities, and inauthenticity. With regard to performing teaching identities, this paper discusses the need for identity to be multiple and shifting, and how, as a young female, I undertook identity work, in order to perform competence. I also bring to the fore feelings of inauthenticity; that is, how I did not feel as if I was a genuine academic, and how I fabricated / falsified aspects of my academic identity in order to ‘fit in’ with the expectations of both students and staff. As the voice of a new lecturer in her first year of teaching, this paper makes a useful contribution to the scholarship on early career academics and teaching development. This paper concludes with recommendations for change in practice-based settings, in order to assist new lecturers to settle into the job role, and enhance and enrich teaching practice.     

Research,writing, and racial identity: Cross‐disciplinary connections for multicultural education

Abstract

This paper describes a classroom‐based research study designed to determine how students in an undergraduate multicultural education course experience difficult and emotional content about racism. Samples of students’ reflective writing were used as sources of data, and Janet Helms’ theory of racial identity development served as the framework for analysis. Findings suggest that coursework in multicultural education can influence white students’ racial identities. In addition, the experiences of one white student are highlighted as she grappled with issues of white privilege and multicultural teaching. This study illustrates how reflective writing in combination with teaching practices informed by psychological theory helped to expand students’ understanding of racism while facilitating the development of their racial identities.     

Storylines in the physics teaching content of an upper secondary school classroom

ABSTRACT

Background: Physics is often seen as a discipline with difficult content, and one that is difficult to identify with. Socialisation processes at the upper secondary school level are of particular interest as these may be linked to the subsequent low and uneven participation in university physics. Focusing on how norms are construed in physics classrooms in upper secondary school is therefore relevant.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify discursive patterns in teacher–student interactions in physics classrooms.

Design and methods: Three different physics lessons with one class of students taught by three different teachers in upper secondary school were video-recorded. Positioning theory was used to analyse classroom interaction with a specific focus on how physics was positioned.

Results: We identified seven different storylines. Four of them (‘reaching a solution to textbook problems’, ‘discussing physics concepts in order to gain better understanding’, ‘doing empirical enquiry’ and ‘preparing for the upcoming exam’) represent what teaching physics in an upper secondary school classroom can be. The last three storylines (‘mastering physics’, ‘appreciating physics’ and ‘having a feeling for physics’) all concern how students are supposed to relate to physics and, thus, become ‘insiders’ in the discipline.

Conclusions: The identification and analysis of storylines raises awareness of the choices teachers make in physics education and their potential consequences for students. For example, in the storyline of mastering physics a good physics student is associated with ‘smartness’, which might make the classroom a less secure place in general. Variation and diversity in the storylines construed in teaching can potentially contribute to a more inclusive physics education.     

‘I’m not like that,why treat me the same way?’ The impact of stereotyping international students on their learning,employability and connectedness with the workplace

A significant body of literature on international education examines the experiences of international students in the host country. There is however a critical lack of empirical work that investigates the dynamic and complex positioning of international students within the current education-migration nexus that prevails international education in countries such as Australia, Canada and the UK. This paper addresses an important but under-researched area of the education-migration landscape by examining how the stereotyping of students as mere ‘migration hunters’ may impact their study and work experiences. It draws on a four-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council that includes more than 150 interviews and fieldwork in the Australian vocational education context. Positioning theory is used as a conceptual framework to analyse how generalising international students as ‘mere migration hunters’ has led to the disconnectedness, vulnerability and marginalization of the group of international students participating in this research.     

Corporal punishment and the pain provoked by the community of enquiry pedagogy in the university classroom

Abstract

Education for transformation and social justice calls for critical, reflective, imaginative and independent thinkers with enquiring minds and a strong sense of curiosity – the ends and means of what Jonathan Jansen calls a ‘pedagogy to disrupt’ and Gert Biesta a ‘pedagogy of interruption’. For this reason, I introduced an innovative pedagogy in some of my courses at the School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg – the internationally established ‘community of enquiry’ pedagogy. I report on how in an Ethics course the pedagogy opened up a space for undergraduate students to disclose their own experiences of corporal punishment in the schools where they were placed for teaching practice. The pedagogy made room for a critical incident to emerge that was painful for both tutors and students, but, as I argue, crucial for participation, inclusion and the demands of open-mindedness, critical thinking and also solidarity required in a deliberative democracy.     

Frailty in transition? Troubling the norms,boundaries and limitations of transition theory and practice

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on ‘transition’ and how it is understood within higher education. Drawing on data from concept map-mediated interviews at two institutions, we examine the conceptions of transition held by academic and professional staff, who work to support students’ learning into and through higher education. We suggest that normative understandings of transition often draw upon a grand-narrative that orchestrates and reiterates a stereotypic understanding of students’ experiences. Often this narrative involves students’ interpellation into a field of discourse where the subject is constructed as both homogeneous and in deficit: ill-prepared, lacking in independence, as vulnerable and in need of support. However, this study suggests that beneath this discourse lies a more nuanced picture: one where students’ experiences can be conceptualised as diverse and fluid. Moreover, we employ the concept of pedagogic ‘frailty’ to expose the significance of the environments and wider contexts in which students ‘transition’, and to explore the impact of systemic tensions upon students’ experiences. This article further argues that future research should shift discussions away from the deficits of students, and examine how we can make underlying environmental and systemic challenges more explicit, in order to widen our understanding and discussions of these constraints.     

Children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ in the Key Stage One classroom: life on the ‘tricky table’

ABSTRACT

Within the wealth of research on ‘ability’ in education, there is a missing perspective: the perspective of the child. Whilst ‘ability’ informed practices such as ‘ability’ grouping are commonplace in the UK, how these are experienced by the young child has previously received only limited attention in research. Using case study evidence, this article demonstrates that children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ are highly individual and shaped by a broader range of social, structural and pedagogic aspects of classroom life than previously thought. Implications are that a wide range of teaching choices can potentially affect a child’s experience of ‘ability’ and that the impact of these are particularly profound for some children, shaping their perceptions of themselves and others. Children’s perspectives therefore offer a challenge to the hegemonic discourse of ‘ability’ in education and the classroom practices upon which it is based.     

Provoking contingent moments: Knowledge for ‘powerful teaching’ at the horizon

Background: Teacher knowledge continues to be a topic of debate in Australasia and in other parts of the world. There have been many attempts by mathematics educators and researchers to define the knowledge needed by teachers to teach mathematics effectively. A plethora of terms, such as mathematical content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, horizon content knowledge and specialised content knowledge, have been used to describe aspects of such knowledge.

Purpose: This paper proposes a model for teacher knowledge in mathematics that embraces and develops aspects of earlier models. It focuses on the notions of contingent knowledge and the connectedness of ‘big ideas’ of mathematics to enact what is described as ‘powerful teaching’. It involves the teacher’s ability to set up and provoke contingent moments to extend children’s mathematical horizons. The model proposed here considers the various cognitive and affective components and domains that teachers may require to enact ‘powerful teaching’. The intention is to validate the proposed model empirically during a future stage of research.

Sources of evidence: Contingency is described in Rowland’s Knowledge Quartet as the ability to respond to children’s questions, misconceptions and actions and to be able to deviate from a teaching plan as needed. The notion of ‘horizon content knowledge’ (Ball et al.) is a key aspect of the proposed model and has provoked a discussion in this article about students’ mathematical horizons and what these might comprise. Together with a deep mathematical content knowledge and a sensibility for students and their mathematical horizons, these ideas form the foundations of the proposed model.

Main argument: It follows that a deeper level of knowledge might enable a teacher to respond better and to plan and anticipate contingent moments. By taking this further and considering teacher knowledge as ‘dynamic’, this paper suggests that instead of responding to contingent events, ‘powerful teaching’ is about provoking contingent events. This necessarily requires a broad, connected content knowledge based on ‘big mathematical ideas’, a sound knowledge of pedagogies and an understanding of common misconceptions in order to be able to engineer contingent moments.

Conclusions: In order to place genuine problem-solving at the heart of learning, this paper argues for the idea of planning for contingent events, provoking them and ‘setting them up’. The proposed model attempts to represent that process. It is anticipated that the new model will become the framework for an empirical research project, as it undergoes a validation process involving a sample of primary teachers.     

‘Am I Like a Scientist?’: Primary children's images of doing science in school

A considerable body of evidence highlights how inquiry-based science can enhance students' epistemic and conceptual understanding of scientific concepts, principles, and theories. However, little is known about how students view themselves as learners of science. In this paper, we explore primary children's images of doing science in school and how they compare themselves with ‘real’ scientists. Data were collected through the use of a questionnaire, drawing activity, and interviews from 161 Grade 4 (ages 9–10) students in Singapore. Results indicate that ‘doing science as conducting hands-on investigations’, ‘doing science as learning from the teacher’, ‘doing science as completing the workbook’, and ‘doing science as a social process’ are the images of learning science in school that most of the students held. In addition, students reported that they need to be well behaved first and foremost, while scientists are more likely to work alone and do things that are dangerous. Moreover, students often viewed themselves as ‘acting like a scientist’ in class, especially when they were doing experiments. Nevertheless, some students reported that they were unlike a scientist because they believed that scientists work alone with dangerous experiments and do not need to listen to the teacher and complete the workbook. These research findings further confirm the earlier argument that young children can make distinctions between school science and ‘real’ science. This study suggests that the teaching of science as inquiry and by inquiry will shape how students view their classroom experiences and their attitudes towards science.     

Estranged students in higher education: navigating social and economic capitals

ABSTRACT

Family is widely regarded as a cornerstone of student support. When family support exist as an essential form of social capital making, rupture of family ties places students in a disadvantageous position. This paper focuses on estranged students’ accounts of their experiences of higher education, highlighting how capital dynamics shape their academic trajectories. Based on interviews with 21 estranged students, our research uncovers different dimensions of estranged students’ struggles and successes as they move through academia. This paper explores the social imagination that surrounds the university student, or ‘student experience’, as resting upon family support. The authors propose that widening participation policies and practices need to be more attuned to the realities that mark estranged students’ experiences, as they are not only impacted by the scarcity of either economic or social capital, but also by the instability of interrelated capitals that contribute to precarious and volatile experiences.     

What academic language and learning advisers bring to the scholarship of teaching and learning: problems and possibilities for dialogue with the disciplines

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of ‘quality assurance’, to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an ‘academic literacies’ approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of ‘‐ography’ (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)—including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language—yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers’ work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers’ access to insights into students’ experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching.     

Quality lies in the eyes of the beholder: A mismatch between student evaluation and peer observation of teaching

Abstract

The study described in this article was prompted by the poor performance of students in an ‘at risk subject’ in a science faculty at a university in South Africa. Teacher performance could contribute to poor performance among students, therefore the performance of one of the science teachers whose students were performing poorly was evaluated by his students and through peer observation of his teaching. The article draws on a merger between Bernstein's ideas on framing as well as deep and surface approaches to learning to form a theoretical framework that underpinned the study. Peer observation showed that the teacher employed predominantly teacher-centred, passive approaches to teaching, and the facilitation of active learning was minimal, that is, framing was strong. Students, however, evaluated their teacher positively, indicating that he was an ‘effective’ teacher. Therefore, the perception of what constitutes ‘quality teaching’ is viewed differently by peers and students. This is most likely due to the incompatibility between peers' conception of teaching and students' conception of learning. Therefore, students' feedback on teaching is not necessarily accurate or useful.     

Finding ‘my kind of teaching’: How a drama project became a teacher’s expressive teaching moment

This case study examines how a teacher defined ‘my kind of teaching’. We focus on a dramatic production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and frame the teacher’s discussion with Dewey’s significant moments of experience. Findings indicate the teacher shifted her role to a facilitator position, learned alongside her students, and connected her past experiences with acting. Implications point to expressive teaching moments as experiences in which teachers might extend state‐mandated curricula, connect with their personal lives, and find delight in teaching.     

Understanding adolescent purpose in the context of high-performance schooling in Singapore

ABSTRACT

International education achievement indicators potentially obscure students’ localised experiences of school. This paper examines adolescent purpose to understand what drives students’ learning experiences in high-performance schooling in Singapore. Purpose is a long-term intention to engage with the world in ways meaningful to oneself and to others. Using clinical interviews, the authors analysed students’ perspectives of the purpose of schooling and learning against the tensions of preparing students for performance-focused outcomes in schools. Findings indicated purpose clusters with prevalent self-oriented academic achievement goals. About one-third of the students with forms of support had nascent beyond-the-self life goals. To think about teaching and learning in a more integrated manner, this study shows it is important to look closely into students’ learning experiences, as these provide critical insights into how policies are implemented in schools, and how curricula can be made significant and meaningful in a more humanising vision of what schools might become.     

Linking teaching and research in an undergraduate course and exploring student learning experiences

ABSTRACT

In this case study, we first describe how teaching and research are linked in a master’s course on tissue engineering. A central component of the course is an authentic research project that the students carry out in smaller groups and in collaboration with faculty. We then explore how the students experience learning in this kind of discovery-oriented environment. Data were collected through a survey, reflective writing, and interviews. Using a general inductive approach for qualitative analysis, we identified three themes related to the students’ learning experiences: learning to navigate the field, learning to do real research, and learning to work with others. Overall, the students strongly valued learning in a discovery-oriented environment and three aspects of the course contributed to much of its success: taking a holistic approach to linking teaching and research, engaging students in the whole inquiry process, and situating authentic problems in an authentic physical and social context.     

Pedagogical reasoning: the foundation of the professional knowledge of teaching

ABSTRACT

Much of the debate about that which comprises teachers’ professional knowledge has been important in the academic literature but does not necessarily reflect the reality of how they think as they construct the knowledge that underpins their practice. Typically, teachers are not encouraged to spend time talking about teaching in ways that are theoretically robust, or to unpack their teaching in order to show others what they know, how and why. Because they are busy ‘doing teaching’ they are not commonly afforded opportunities to ‘unpack’ their practice to explore and articulate the reasoning underpinning what they do. This paper argues that the essence of teachers’ professional knowledge is bound up in the teaching procedures they employ and that knowledge is accessible and demonstrable through the pedagogical reasoning that underpins their decision-making, actions and intents; all of which come to the fore when their pedagogical reasoning is examined. If teaching is to be more highly valued, it is important to more closely examine the nature of teachers’ pedagogical reasoning as it offers a window into the complex and sophisticated knowledge of practice that influences what they do, how and why.     

Withholding answers during hands-on scientific investigations? Comparing effects on developing students’ scientific knowledge,reasoning, and application

As more concerns have been raised about withholding answers during science teaching, this article argues for a need to detach ‘withholding answers’ from ‘hands-on’ investigation tasks. The present study examined students’ learning of light-related content through three conditions: ‘hands-on’ + no ‘withholding’ (hands-on only: HO), ‘hands-on’ + ‘withholding’ (hands-on investigation with answers withheld: HOW), and no ‘hands-on’ + no ‘withholding’ (direction instruction: DI). Students were assessed in terms of how well they (1) knew the content taught in class; (2) reasoned with the learned content; and (3) applied the learned content to real-life situations. Nine classes of students at 4th and 5th grades, N?=?136 in total, were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. ANCOVA results showed that students in the hands-on only condition reasoned significantly better than those in the other two conditions. Students in this condition also seemed to know the content fairly better although the advance was not significant. Students in all three conditions did not show a statistically significant difference in their ability to apply the learned content to real-life situations. The findings from this study provide important contributions regarding issues relating to withholding answers during guided scientific inquiry.