Visualising expertise: towards an authentic pedagogy for higher education

The development of expertise is seen as a crucial element in higher education, but the nature of expertise has been clouded by assumptions of the centrality of intuition and tacit knowledge. In this paper the authors contend that much knowledge that has been described as tacit can be surfaced for examination through the application of concept mapping techniques. This approach allows experts to articulate their practice in a way that is transparent, making it available for scrutiny by students. Expertise is described here as connecting the chains of practice that denote competence with the underlying networks of understanding that are required to support academic development. This occurs across the academic disciplines with various degrees of subtlety. It is described in the context of clinical teaching as it is in this context that the separation of chains of practice from underlying networks of understanding is most pronounced.     

Developing effective teacher beliefs about learners: the role of sensitizing teachers to individual learning differences

Effective teacher beliefs about students are an integral part of effective teaching. Teachers with interventionist beliefs about students (‘I can intervene to help a learner with difficulties’) show more effective practice than teachers with pathognomonic beliefs (‘I blame the learner for his difficulties’). A professional development (PD) course sensitized teachers (N = 234) to individual learning differences (ILDs), using five learning/cognitive styles tools. Teachers’ responses to a pre‐/post‐test question concerning their beliefs about ‘weak students’ were analyzed and correlated with their ILD scores. Before the PD, teachers with strong ILD preferences matched to traditional learning contexts were significantly more ‘at risk’ (i.e., had fewer interventionist beliefs) than the other teachers; the former teachers were significantly overrepresented in the sample. After the PD, teachers’ interventionist beliefs significantly increased, regardless of their ILD preferences. Neither the length of the PD (28 hrs. vs. 56 hrs.) nor the amount of teaching experience affected the teachers’ interventionist beliefs about students. A mediated, constructivist and collaborative PD, which sensitizes teachers to individual learning differences, can increase effective teacher beliefs about students. We conclude that developing more effective teacher beliefs about learners should become a component of teacher professional development.     

Racially liberatory pedagogy: a Black Lives Matter approach to education

Abstract

In this study, we sought to understand how Black lives matter (BLM) epistemology, as displayed through six months of social media content from official accounts, can inform a racially liberatory pedagogy in higher education for Black and other racially minoritized students. We found BLM, through Facebook and Twitter, situated intersectional Black culture in the contemporary struggle for liberation. BLM also offered information that can raise its followers’ intersectional critical consciousness. Additionally, BLM content highlighted actions that can support Black liberation. Lastly, BLM content supported the building of relationships and naming of emotions as Black people work toward their liberation. In this sense, BLM connected with elements of a racially liberatory pedagogy and offered nuances that advanced the framework. We discuss the implications of this framework for teaching in higher education.     

Extending the constructs of active learning: implications for teachers' pedagogy and practice

Active learning is a pedagogical construct widely appealed to within the global discourse of lifelong learning. However, an examination of the literature reveals a lack of clarity and consensus as to its meaning. This article provides a critical analysis of a range of dimensions underpinning the concept of active learning including policy discourses, definitions, interpretation and enactments in educational settings, and resultant pedagogical implications. A more robust theoretical framework is presented to support educator understanding which synthesises and extends current constructs and which bridges the divide between active learning considered as either theory of learning or pedagogical strategy.     

Chronicling innovative learning in primary classrooms: conceptualizing a theatrical pedagogy to successfully engage young children learning science

This article reports on an innovative pedagogical approach devised to re-envigorate primary (elementary) teachers’ practice in the United Kingdom for older children. Learning science in elementary schools for 8–11 year olds (Key Stage 2 in England) has been constrained for several decades while teachers prepared them for national tests. The recent demise of these high stakes assessments (for the 11 year olds) has opened up creative space to enable re-development of the ways that science is taught and learnt. This article describes how an innovative approach to teaching science to more mature primary children can be developed through the application of theatrical techniques. Dramatizing science can offer a more lively, none traditional way to learn, that can appeal to and involve all children in a science classroom. In this study, 17 teachers from 12 Staffordshire schools experimented with these new pedagogical approaches to explore how they might enhance their practice and augment their children’s learning. Reflective journal extracts, field notes, informal discussions, interviews and classroom observations indicated how successfully the thespian techniques were applied. Findings indicate that dramatizing science learning through various means that encourage social interaction, improvisation and reflection on historical narratives appears to not only engage and motivate learners but also aid them in grasping more challenging conceptual and procedural ideas.     

Schematic pedagogy: supporting one child's learning at home and in a group

In this paper, we identify ways in which the learning of very young children can be supported by practitioners developing a schematic pedagogy which focuses on structures of children's thinking. First, we provide a critical overview of relevant literature on schemas and schematic approaches to pedagogy. We then outline an original study undertaken to identify and support the learning of seven young children. Taking one child, whom we call Annie, we illustrate how her attention to the fine detail of elements of her home and group environments as she played offered strong clues to her pedagogues about her persistent interests (schemas). We show how careful observation by practitioners can be used to understand and support future learning encounters through a schematic pedagogy, and we consider implications of such an approach for practice in toddlers’ early learning.     

Participatory action research as pedagogy: investigating social and ecological justice learning within a teacher education program

A research collective comprised of teacher candidates, graduate students, and faculty set out to investigate the role and impact of social and ecological justice learning in a teacher education program. Amidst the tensions, negotiations, and articulations of the research design, the collective came to recognize the spaces of participatory action research as sites of growth and efficacy toward justice learning. And, each began to perceive themselves as both impacted by educational structures and as agents enacting their own visions of professional practice. These outcomes are discussed in the context of the growing body of participatory action research, emphasizing the dynamic learning precipitated within the intersections of the research collective. The empirical analysis, involving survey and interview data, brought to bear the rarity of events participants (teacher candidates) recognized as invoking meaningful social and ecological justice learning, and goes some way to describe such learning in terms of embodied experience. The paper closes with a selection of testimonials provided by members of the research collective, offering personal accounts of what was gained through participating in the research process.     

Reconceptualising higher education pedagogy in online learning

The purpose of this collaborative inquiry project was to examine teacher education practices in two early childhood degree programmes in a school of education at a regional university in Australia. All students are enrolled in these online courses as distance learners. The reconceptualised online pedagogy immersed students, peers and their lecturers in ‘teaching through assessment’ (Edwards, 2010) in a collaborative online environment that mirrors the complexity that students are experiencing in their workplaces. This article describes the pedagogical and conceptual underpinnings we used to reconceptualise our degree programmes. It also outlines our evolving conceptualisations of learning as knowledge creation (Hong & Sullivan, 2009) in the context of our teaching and learning in online courses.     

Threshold concepts about online pedagogy for novice online teachers in higher education

ABSTRACT

The use of threshold concepts to define key points of curricula is a relatively recent development in educational research. Threshold concepts represent crucial stages of learning, the acquisition of which enables learners to progress from one level of achievement to another. In this context, the learner is described as passing through an unsettling liminal space in which they may encounter troublesome knowledge and experience uncertainty or anxiety. When applied to online pedagogy in higher education contexts, academic staff become the learners as they extend their on-campus teaching knowledge into the online realm. In this setting, the identification of threshold concepts has the potential to inform the content of professional development (PD) programmes for novice online teachers. Because little research has yet been reported on threshold concepts associated with online teaching, this study identified these threshold concepts and investigated their specific nature. Funded by an Office for Learning and Teaching Australia Grant, the project employed a mixed-methods research approach. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative data was gathered from responses to questionnaires and reflective journal entries provided by university educators who were teaching in online contexts. Also, experts in the fields of PD, online teaching and threshold concepts were consulted using a modified Delphi technique that incorporated two rounds of surveys. Results of this study are discussed in association with potential applications to PD design for novice online educators, informed by the most fundamental learning experiences encountered by their more experienced colleagues.     

Identifying threshold concepts: case study of an open catchment hydraulics course

The Threshold Concept Framework is used to initiate a dialogue on an empirically supported pedagogy that focuses on students’ conceptual understanding required for solving application-based problems. The present paper uses a triangulation approach to identify the threshold concept in a third-year undergraduate civil engineering course on open channel hydraulics. Evidence from teachers, students, and assessment data point to ‘critical flow’ as the threshold concept – a concept that is transformative, integrative, and troublesome. Identifying the threshold concept by engaging various course stakeholders in a dialogue about conceptual understanding and capabilities makes learning visible for all participants in the process. Implementing this approach can result in an empirically driven rationale for adjusting pedagogies and assessments to foster enhanced student learning outcomes.     

Action research and the assemblage: engaging Deleuzian pedagogy and inquiry beyond the constraints of the individual and the group in education settings

Drawing upon the author’s previous attempts to engage the work of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari with contemporary pedagogic practices and research, this paper offers a conceptually tentative reworking of the theory and practice of action research, both as a means of challenging antecedent positions and as a way of proposing a volatile and incisive approach that, it will be argued, can help in generating a more plural, reflexive and methodologically relevant pedagogy/research praxis. In this, it is hoped that the mobilisation of a Deleuzian conceptualisation of assemblage as a form of inquiry will open up the animation of revitalisation as event.     

Relational play-based pedagogy: theorising a core practice in early childhood education

A commitment to long-standing child-centred ideologies and recent emphases on academic outcomes have both perpetuated narrow interpretations of play-based pedagogy in early childhood education. Instead, teachers might proactively and spontaneously deepen children’s thinking and understandings related to children’s own interests and motivations during thoughtful pedagogical interactions that arise from play. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative case study in Aotearoa, New Zealand where teachers used their professional expertise to engage with children’s thinking and understandings. We analyse the professional knowledge, strategies and skills teachers brought to these relational and play-based interactions. We offer new conceptualising of teaching in highlighting the need to position a sophisticated blending of play, learning and teaching within participatory and relational pedagogies as a core practice of early childhood education. Further, we argue that two constructs – everyday and scientific concepts, and the zone of proximal development – position theoretically ways in which teachers’ knowledge, expertise and engagement might contribute to these ‘in the moment’ rich, thoughtful understandings of what we term relational play-based pedagogy.     

Identifying pedagogy and teaching strategies for achieving nationally prescribed learning outcomes

With the globalisation of university education, national frameworks are commonly used to prescribe standardised learning outcomes and achieve accountability. However, these frameworks are generally not accompanied by guiding pedagogy to support academics in adjusting their teaching practices to achieve the set outcomes. This paper reports the results of a scoping review of health science literature aimed at identifying pedagogy and teaching strategies relevant to achieve the learning outcomes specified by the Australian Qualifications Framework at a master's degree level. Eight practical teaching messages emerged from the review and three broad pedagogical trends were identified: the need to use authentic disciplinary-based learning activities; ensure that students are able to discover different perspectives about future practice and bring student reflection about their own knowledge into curricula. More critically, the review highlights that academics attempting to translate national learning outcome frameworks into their teaching practices face a complex and time-consuming task which may involve searching beyond their own disciplinary focus to identify practical teaching strategies to meet prescribed learning outcomes.     

Shifting relations with the more-than-human: six threshold concepts for transformative sustainability learning

Using the iterative process of action research, we identify six portals of understanding, called threshold concepts, which can be used as curricular guideposts to disrupt the socially constituted separation, and hierarchy, between humans and the more-than-human. The threshold concepts identified in this study provide focal points for a curriculum in transformative sustainability learning which (1) acknowledges non-human agency; and (2) recognizes that the capacity to work with multiple ways of knowing is required to effectively engage in the process of sustainability knowledge creation. These concepts are: there are different ways of knowing; we can communicate with non-human nature and non-human nature can communicate with us; knowing is relational; transrational intuition and embodied knowing are valuable and valid ways of knowing; worldview is the lens through which we view reality; and the power of dominant beliefs (represented in discourse) supports and/or undermines particular ways of knowing and being as in/valid.     

Teacher education pedagogy: disrupting the apprenticeship of observation

Teacher educators are challenged to enact a pedagogy that helps facilitate conceptual transitions in preservice teachers away from the naïve notions formed during their long apprenticeships of observation. This study examines one ‘educative experience purposefully embedded in meaningful pedagogical experiences’ using the three-level model of teacher learning. Findings indicate preservice teachers derived a range of learning from the educative experience, and most were found to be surfacing, confronting, and beginning to replace naïve notions of teaching, learning, and assessment. Findings also suggest several characteristics of teacher education pedagogy that disrupt the apprenticeship of observation, including the presentation of dramatically new ideas to elicit the awareness of unexamined assumptions about teaching and learning; the usefulness of affect in awakening that awareness; and opportunities to develop metacognition and process reactions through writing that surfaces prior ideas and articulates new understandings.     

Pedagogy in practice: the pedagogy of a learning setting as students experience it

This paper opens a theoretical discussion regarding the pedagogy of a learning setting as students experience it. Students’ experience of learning deserves particular attention because it may differ from the pedagogy that is designed and campaigned for by the school, or even from the one that is ‘experienced’ by the teacher in the same situation. In order to open up such a discussion, we introduce the term ‘pedagogy in practice’ (PiP). This new term describes the pedagogy that actually acts on students’ thought and affects; it relates to the interaction between the school’s pedagogy and students’ experience of it. In this paper, we define the concept of PiP and examine its implications and differentiation from related pedagogic concepts. By doing so, we question educators’ and policy makers’ ability to understand, evaluate, make sense of, and eventually improve pedagogies or curricula in general without looking at PiP in particular.     

A critical pedagogy of empathy: making a better world achievable

Based on the results of a large-scale study regarding the role of secondary education teachers, we tried to develop an emancipatory teaching programme within the framework of a critical pedagogy of empathy. This teaching strategy is a three-stage process, during which a constant teacher–student interaction, attentive listening and interchange of roles are emphasised, so as to foster empathy. The first stage includes understanding the students’ perspectives and giving value to their experiences. When the channels of communication are open and teachers get into their students’ shoes, material relevant to the students’ experiences is presented at the second stage, while students are encouraged to question the prevailing status quo and to raise their voices in institutional contexts in which they have traditionally been silenced. Finally, during the third stage, students disseminate self-gained knowledge and thoughts with a view to creating a better future and a different society, as part of the broader mission of informed, democratic, critical, empathetic and active citizens.     

Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning

Lave and Wenger have greatly influenced existing views of learning and teaching, but relatively little has been written about the implications for the understanding of teacher behavior and teacher learning, and for the pedagogy of teacher education. Based on their work, a three-level model of learning is used to analyze the friction between teacher behavior in practice and the wish to ground teachers' practices in theory. Supported by empirical data on teacher learning and brain research, this model reconciles the situated learning perspective with traditional cognitive theory, and leads to concrete implications for the pedagogy of teacher education.     

Wise academic development: learning from the ‘failure’ experiences of retired academic developers

ABSTRACT

Informed by Constructive Developmental Theory and the Threshold Concepts Framework, we interviewed retired academic developers from four continents and asked them to describe their processes of learning from perceived failures and how they see the role of academic developers in supporting academics through failures. Findings regarding participants’ definitions of failure, ways of making sense of and learning from failure, and recommendations for supporting academic colleagues’ learning from failure are shared through tables, quotations, and poetry. Findings show that ‘wise academic development’ embraces curiosity about failure, integrates the (sometimes) transformative nature of failure, shares the load of sense-making, and cultivates connectedness.