Developing identities in the workplace: students’ experiences of distance early childhood teacher education

In Aotearoa New Zealand, many early childhood teachers gain their teaching qualification via distance study while working in an early childhood centre. Early childhood teachers work in a team environment, and it is important to understand more about how distance students negotiate changes in their workplace practice as their professional knowledge develops. This article draws on a study that explores students’ experiences of distance teacher education as a process of changing participation in the workplace. Distance study supported increasingly confident participation as students saw more meaning in their daily work. The students’ identities and their workplace cultures and practices influenced what students paid attention to and the decisions they made when negotiating changes within their teams. Their experiences suggest that strengthening students’ relational agency at work is a useful focus for distance early childhood teacher education programmes.     

Rethinking Learner-Centred Education: Bridging Knowledge Cultures

Abstract

This article argues that learner-centred education needs to shift from a discussion only on pedagogical activities such as group-work and other cooperative learning strategies. It suggests that the focus of learner-centred education should be on the cultural world of the African child and how this influences the way in which he/she learns Western science. The African child often experiences cognitive dissonance/perturbation when learning Western science. The article draws on insights from the theory of collateral learning which was originally developed by Jegede. It argues that unless policymakers and teachers take into consideration the cultural frameworks of learners, there will not be a sound basis for improving school science and school mathematics in South Africa. Spending more on resources and increasingly testing learners, as is currently done in South Africa, will not improve school science in South Africa. Improving school science in part depends on rethinking leaner-centred education, which means critically looking at the important role that cultural frameworks of learners play in learning Western science.     

Complicating ‘student behaviour’: exploring the discursive constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’

When educators consider ‘student behaviour’, they usually think about ‘problem behaviour’ such as disruption or defiance. This limited and limiting view of ‘student behaviour’ not only fails to acknowledge children as educational actors in a wider sense, but also narrowly positions educators as either in control or out of control of their classroom. Mainstream educational psychology’s responses to ‘challenging behaviour’ point educators to numerous ways to prevent its occurrence, through, for example, changing their disciplining approaches and techniques. However, much of the advice directed at improving student behaviour fails to interrogate the core notion of ‘student behaviour’ itself, as well as the conceptual baggage that it carries. The focus is squarely on eliminating ‘problem behaviour’ and often resorts to a pathologisation of students. Meanwhile, when considering ‘student behaviour’ through a Foucauldian post-structuralist optic, behaviour emerges as something highly complex – as spatialised, embodied action within/against governing discourses. In this opening up, it becomes both possible and critical to defamiliarise oneself with the categorisation of ‘challenging behaviour’ and to interrogate the discourses and subject positionings at play. In this paper, we pursue this task by asking: what happens with the notion of ‘behaviour’ if we change focus from ‘fixing problems’ to looking at the discursive constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’? What does it become possible to see, think, feel and do? In this exploration, we theorise ‘behaviour’ as learning and illustrate the constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’. Drawing on two case scenarios, we explore how children accomplish themselves as learners and how this accomplishment links the production of subjectivity and embodied action, and illustrate how ‘student/child behaviour’ appears significantly different to what mainstream educational psychology would have us see.     

Concrete and classrooms: how schools shape educational research

The notion of ‘the school’ as a set of institutional processes and practices that shape the possibilities of educational research forms the focus of this article. It is argued that the discursive and material practices that render schools agencies of cultural reproduction also have effects for what research can be undertaken in them and how. With reference to a series of ‘episodes’ that occurred during research about young people and sexuality in New Zealand, evidence for how schools shape research endeavours is provided. These examples present a complex picture of the way in which schools simultaneously police and are regulated by symbolic boundaries of gender and sexuality. How school disciplinary power works to effect what it is possible to claim about the voluntary nature of student research participation is also explored. It is argued that through the powerful discursive and material practices that occur in schools, these institutions can impede research that attempts to transgress dominant meanings about gender and sexuality.     

Equity and social exclusion measures in EU lifelong learning policies

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to examine how EU lifelong learning policies are trying to reach the vulnerable by looking at what measures against social exclusion they offer and how equitable these measures are. It is a qualitative study that focuses on policy documents that form the European Union’s legal and political frameworks of reference in the lifelong learning area since 1992. The document analysis has been complemented by semi-structured interviews with EU lifelong learning experts. The findings show that early school leavers and migrants are the main target groups in the policies, leaving many other groups at risk of being excluded from learning opportunities. There is not enough attention to measures addressing wider social phenomena. There is also an overemphasis on basic skills which are understood in a very narrow way as literacy and numeracy when referring to the vulnerable. We argue that a greater variety of measures as well as better targeted measures are needed to address the multiple and complex needs of the vulnerable. Such measures would allow a broader understanding of lifelong learning where those that are hardest to reach are offered learning opportunities independent of their personal and social circumstances     

Three generations of technology-enhanced learning

The purpose of the present paper was to examine three generations of research on technology-mediated learning carried on by the present investigator's research group. The first generation focused on examining computer-supported collaborative learning from the cognitive perspective. The main focus was to examine to what extent knowledge-seeking inquiry elicited conceptual change. Problems of transferring inquiry learning culture from one country to another pushed us to examine social practices and other participatory aspects of learning that had been invisible to cognitive researchers. The second-generation research focused on analyzing patterns of participation in computer-supported collaborative learning. The emerging third generation research aims at overcoming the dichotomy between the cognitive (knowledge acquisition) perspective and socio-cultural (participation) perspective by means of long-standing and deliberate efforts of knowledge-creation, involving what is called objects of activity . Theoretical and methodological implications of the generations are discussed.     

Self‐regulated pupils in teaching: teachers’ experiences

This article outlines in a theoretical and practical way the concepts of self‐regulated learning, learning strategies and metacognition by looking at concrete examples in the classroom. The teachers presented in the article were taking part in a research and development (R&D) work project in which they were cooperating both with each other and a researcher who was facilitating their way through the development processes. The article focuses on how the teachers introduced learning strategies, how the strategies were adapted to the pupils, how the strategies were connected to various tasks and what the use of strategies means for the pupils’ learning in the studied context. The overall aim of the article is to illuminate how the teachers experienced the pupils’ use of strategies in their learning work. Findings from the study indicate that teachers have to adapt the introduction and use of strategies to the pupils’ development levels and that pupils from 13 to 16 years of age need help from their teachers, both in learning and in controlling their own learning processes.     

Exploring the values of writing collaboratively through a digital storytelling platform: a mixed-methods analysis of users’ participation,perspectives and practices

Digital technologies allow teachers and students to experience new pedagogical approaches leveraging on interactivity and collaboration. Among the available techniques, digital storytelling (DST) has been usually regarded as an activity that can both enrich the teaching practices and foster students’ active behaviour. This paper aims at analysing to what extent a DST platform proposing the collaborative writing of a fictional story and leveraging on an active learning technique such as role-play can affect a variety of dimensions, namely students’ performance, commitment, creativity and social skills. Combining the analysis of the data-log automatically collected by the system with the evaluations given by teachers before and after the activity, this article shows that the use of a DST tool in the teaching practice can have positive effects on students, including the ones that usually manifest moderate scores for the previously mentioned dimensions. Additionally, semi-structured interviews and direct observations provide an insight on how the benefits stemming from the use of a DST tool in the classroom can especially lie on the collaborative process that is activated.     

Contemporary Art and Art in Education: The New,Emancipation and Truth

This article assembles some ideas on equality and learning in relation to the notions of truth and emancipation. It considers learning as a political act, as defined by Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, rather than, for example, an incremental process of psychological or sociological development. Practical exemplifications will be taken from contexts of art practices and art in education, but the general argument is directed at learning and equality across all human endeavours. The article discusses the idea of the truth of learning as something which ruptures existing frameworks of practice and knowledge and ponders the kind of pedagogies we require to inform effective pedagogic action. To this end it proposes what might be termed pedagogies against the state, or pedagogies of the event, in order to respond to acts of learning that involve leaps of becoming into a new or reconfigured world.     

Taking a Long Look at Art: Reflections on the Production and Consumption of Art in Art Therapy and Allied Organisational Settings

This article draws on experiences of looking at art to consider the influence of social context on the production and consumption of art. I draw on art historical discourses and relate these to looking at art in art therapy and related organisational settings. I suggest that professional socialisation profoundly influences how practitioners look and think about what they see. I propose that attention to tacit knowledge about art, extending practices of looking to include contemporary discourse about audiencing, curating and display, and taking time for a long look at art and at the art made in art therapy and allied settings, can enliven and sustain practitioners' ‘ways of seeing’.     

Being together in classrooms at the interface of the physical and virtual: implications for collaboration in on/off-screen sites

This article contributes to thinking about collaboration in classroom/virtual environments by considering how children (aged 10–11) engage in the process of ‘being together’ at the interface of the physical and virtual. It argues that, if educators are to develop effective pedagogies that capitalise on opportunities for collaborative and participatory learning, there is a need for nuanced accounts of the ways that children and young people relate to one another across on/off-screen sites and for new ways of conceptualising their interactions. Using a four-part story based on an illustrative episode from a longitudinal classroom-based study, the article explores how a focus on what Schatzki terms a ‘practice meshwork’ can highlight how relationships are shaped by and shape diverse practices. In particular it explores how embodied relations with things in classrooms mediate ways of ‘being together’ around classroom/virtual environments. It suggests that different timespaces are consequently evoked as children play together on and around screens in class. Drawing on these ideas, the article advances five propositions about ‘being together’ that arise from seeing relationships as entangled with multiple practices. It ends by arguing that, in planning for and researching collaboration, it is important to acknowledge how these five dimensions interface.     

Scaffolding teachers to foster inclusive pedagogy and presence through collaborative action research

Teachers can be influential change agents in transforming their schools if they regularly reflect on their pedagogical practices, looking for improvements that will help all learners reach their full potential. However, in many sub-Saharan African countries, teachers seldom get an opportunity to collaboratively reflect on their practices. Action research, as an in-service professional development strategy, can be an ideal means of empowering teachers to collaboratively reflect on and improve their pedagogy to be more inclusive. Drawing from collaborative action research projects conducted by teachers in two primary schools in Zanzibar, Tanzania, this article explores the role of collaborative action research in developing the capacity of teachers to inform improvements in their pedagogical practices. The findings show how the participating teachers, with scaffolding influence from a critical friend (research facilitator), developed professionally along their zones of proximal development by promoting their pedagogical and research skills to enhance the presence, participation and achievement of all learners in their schools. Based on the findings, the article shows both the advantages and disadvantages of using collaborative action research in teacher professional development in the study context. The article also discusses the significance of organisational learning in in-service professional development in order to foster inclusive pedagogy through collaborative inquiry among teachers.     

Trainee teachers’ experiences of classroom feedback practices and their motivation to learn

While different theoretical frameworks have been proposed to characterise the nature of feedback and the conditions under which feedback contributes to student learning, few empirical studies have examined the usefulness of these theoretical frameworks to understand student feedback experiences in classrooms particularly in a pre-service context. This article explores what classroom feedback practices trainee teachers experience, and how their feedback experiences relate to their learning motivation. The paper presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted with 276 pre-service ESL trainee teachers in a BEd English education programme. The study found that trainee teachers in this study experienced predominantly activity-based feedback and teacher evaluation feedback, while peer/self feedback and longitudinal-development feedback were relatively infrequently used in the classroom. However, peer/self feedback and longitudinal-development feedback appeared to be most powerful in predicting positive motivational processes, followed by activity-based feedback and teacher evaluation feedback.     

Uncovering ‘unwelcome truths’ through student voice: teacher inquiry into agency and student assessment literacy

Learner agency is often seen unproblematically as an integral aspect of ‘twenty-first century lifelong learning’. Agency and instrumentalist forms of teacher professional development are problematised through this qualitative case study that explores a teacher’s inquiry into assessment for learning practices. This article illustrates how Teaching as Inquiry can be located as either a process that is purely technicist or replete with potential for teachers to engage with ‘unwelcome truths’. Student voice data that reveal ‘unwelcome truths’ can provide a catalyst for teacher reflection on student positioning in learning relationships. Findings focus on practices of assessment for learning, assessment literacy, agency as a neoliberal construction and the need to interrogate power relations in the classroom for student agency to flourish. Issues around student voice and the democratic participation of students in schooling improvement are discussed. Teaching as Inquiry, that explicitly targets wider non-instrumental goals associated with teacher learning, can be a critical process that addresses the growth of assessment literacy and learner agency in classrooms. It can transcend a linear obsession with easily measured quantifiable shifts in student achievement data.     

Trajectories in teacher education: Recognising prior learning in practice

This article analyses the trajectories into teacher education of a group of child minders who are studying to become pre-school teachers. The specific focus is what impact their prior experiences and learning from pre-school have on their trajectories, and how these experiences and learning are recognised in the first year of teacher education. A situated learning perspective is applied, with a focus on participation and trajectories in the two communities of practice in which teacher education is situated – the university and the pre-school. The data consist of transcribed interviews with ten student teachers, and additional data are gathered from stakeholders in the program. The results show that prior experiences and learning are given implicit and indirect recognition. In the practice of the pre-school, the trajectory means a shift in identity, from child minder to student teacher and pre-school teacher. In the practice of the university, prior experiences and learning help students in their trajectories from peripheral to fuller participation.     

Understanding work,learning and the remaking of cultural practices

This paper focuses on dualities in both the process and outcomes of participation in work. Firstly, the process of participation in work activities and interactions draws on contributions of both individuals and the social world in ways that are variably interdependent, that is, relational. The affordances of workplaces shape the array of experiences individuals are able to access and, they in turn, elect how they engage, construe and construct what is afforded them. Both the social and individual contributions are exercisable with different degrees of intensity, focus and intentionality, thereby making the process of participation in work a relational one. Secondly, and consistent with these processes, the outcomes of workplace participation also comprise dualities. These are individuals’ learning or change, on one hand, and the remaking and transformation of cultural practice that comprises work, on the other. In illuminating and elaborating these concepts, this paper draws upon the initial findings of an inquiry that is mapping the working lives of groups of three workers in each of four workplaces. The aim is to understand how these relational interdependences shape the participation, learning and remaking of work practices in these workplaces. Further, the paper identifies the exercise of both affordances and engagement for each participant within their workplaces. The findings emphasise the distinctive bases by which the groups of workers engage with their work and construct meaning and remake practice as a result of that engagement.     

How can organisations learn: an information systems development perspective

This article sets out to argue that organisations can learn but that they cannot do so in their own right without infrastructural support. This article further examines the notion that individuals in organisations also require the cognitive participation of the organisation itself as a learning entity to learn. The close reliance and affiliation required between individuals and organisations to enable their learning from one another are discussed. In continuation of this, specific examples are provided through the industry sector of information systems development (ISD) projects to illustrate of how organisations can learn. Finally, the question of how one identifies organisational learning is analysed. Following on from the ISD and its use in the analogy of organisational learning, the article discusses an organisational empirical research project currently being undertaken by the authors, which utilises blogs. Though there are many potential organisational learning connotations associated with blogs, they could be perceived as a type of information system. The ongoing research being undertaken with the company using the blogs will attempt to identify indicators of learning at the individual, group and organisational levels. The significance of the issues explored in this article lies in the fact that it addresses an ISD approach to study how an organisation learns, and why this perspective is useful towards understanding the process of organisational learning. This article contributes to the organisational learning debate through an illustrative industry example of ISD projects. In doing so, we wish to argue that though individual learning can occur in ISD projects, the collective nature of projects primarily engenders the interpretive aspect of organisational learning. We further believe that it is the interactive nature of an ISD project that allows an organisation to learn in tandem with project members as exemplified through the stages of a project life cycle. We feel that this article contributes to the ISD and organisational learning literature in terms of linking both concepts together.     

Assessment and student participation: ‘choice and voice’ in school principal accounts of schooling territories

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decision-makers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced through interrelationships, where youth participation is associated with power, voice, democratic citizenship, legal entitlement, empowerment, motivation and self-confidence. Recognising the growing pedagogical emphasis on locating students as responsible for their own learning, we consider how assessment practices constitute enabling and constraining schooling territories. Assessment for learning (AfL) can be linked with emancipatory practices in schooling territories where learner agency is co-produced through socio-material classroom relations. We use principal comments to map a range of interrelated schooling territories as a relational cartography of spatialised practices and student participation in AfL. Mostly, these territories are teacher imagined and defined, constructed through schooling and policy frameworks, and determined through the use of student achievement and student voice data. These conceptualised schooling spaces are interrogated to consider the positionality of students within AfL-related territories. While choice and participation may seem emancipatory, we reveal that AfL practices can serve a rarely acknowledged process of affirming territorial power.