Transformative pedagogy: Dinka playgroups as spaces for cultural knowledge productions of Western science

Cultural Studies of Science Education - As increasing numbers of families migrate from a range of countries into communities where Western science is viewed as valued curriculum content, a need for...     

Peered and tiered learning: action research as creative cultural pedagogy

This article presents and problematizes a peered and tiered model of creative and educational knowledge transfer piloted in Culture Shack, a community-based arts education program in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on Eisner and Sefton-Green and Soep, I argue the value of this approach as a potential new pedagogical strategy in both secondary learning and teacher education courses, refocused on collaborative and process learning rather than outcome-focused pedagogy and assessment. Because education is a key factor for successful integration of those from refugee-background and emerging communities, self-reliance and creative problem-solving can be enhanced through arts programs such as Culture Shack that increase participation in continuing, collaborative educational pathways. In this paper I argue that this peered and tiered collaborative learning model offers possibilities for working cross-sectorally, interdisciplinarily, and interculturally for effective pedagogical outcomes and for the value of arts-based action research-as-pedagogy.     

Claiming unclaimed spaces: virtual spaces for learning

The purpose of this study was to describe and examine the environments used by teacher candidates in multi-user virtual environments. Secondary data analysis of a case study methodology was employed. Multiple data sources including interviews, surveys, observations, snapshots, course artifacts, and the researcher’s journal were used in the initial case study, while using the resulting narratives of each student’s experience for the secondary data analysis. All data were coded and reviewed iteratively to inductively deduce the key considerations for virtual world environmental design. Five assertions were derived from the data to help guide the development of virtual learning environments. These five assertions focus on: novelty, the role of realism, fantastical and outdoor environments, maneuverability, and design for movement.     

Acting as accountable authors: Creating interactional spaces for agency work in teacher education

In this paper, relying on the sociocultural framework of learning, we report on the results of an ethnographically-grounded investigation of agency work among nine pre-service teachers: The main objective is to determine how agency emerges and is constructed in situated discourse practices within the context of a teacher education program embedded in the collective inquiry approach. Our study identifies the forms of agency that emerged in the collective discussions of the classroom community, evidencing pre-service teachers’ transformative agency, relational agency and epistemic agency. This study also shows that the negotiation and framing of agency, and acting as accountable authors, involves changes in teacher-student positions, such as crossing and transforming traditional expert-novice boundaries, as well as recognizing and crediting this crossing of boundaries. The methods and conditions for supporting students’ agency work in teacher education are discussed.     

Uncomfortable pedagogy: experiential learning as an anthropological encounter in the Asia-Pacific

This paper features a discussion of how educators can channel anthropological practices towards the enhancement of experiential learning (EL) teaching methods, particularly on the topic of religion across the Asia-Pacific. I argue that our capacity to achieve curricular objectives through EL calls for an attentiveness to the affinity between the empirical challenges confronted by ethnographers, who work to create rapport between researcher and subject, and classroom teachers who seek to cultivate a conducive learning environment beyond the classroom walls. I show the pedagogical implications of the ways anthropologists have operationalized their discipline’s “critical turn” by highlighting two experiential domains: (1) through activities of “uncomfortable” stereotype self-inventory and (2) through a dialogic pedagogy that pursues meaningful learning outcomes through the “struggle” to recognize inter-cultural and religious agency among students.     

Protest as pedagogy: Exploring teaching and learning in Indigenous environmental movements

This article reports on a recent study into the experiences of Indigenous and allied environmental activists with teaching and learning during and as a result of Indigenous environmental movements. This inquiry is grounded in a theoretical framework informed by decolonization and cultural revitalization, social movement learning, and repressive tolerance. Interviews with 10 participants across Canada produced rich insights related to significant life experiences, the tensions encountered by activist educators, the complexity of inter-activist relationships, interaction with police agencies, the plurality of protest, and the revitalization and sharing of Indigenous traditions as the ultimate form of resistance.     

Open learning: Politics or pedagogy?

This paper is intended to contribute to the discussion of the meaning of open learning. The trend in higher education in Australia towards open learning is seen to be politically driven. We argue that the lack of educational debate over its meaning and implications allows us to presume that open learning is of social value, while in reality it may have the power to create anew binary divide in higher education or to re‐fashion entirely what constitutes knowledge within society. In order to ‘de‐reify’ the term we argue that a critical examination of its meaning, from a political as well as pedagogical perspective, is necessary.     

Transformative learning approaches for public relations pedagogy

Public relations educators are frequently challenged by students' flawed perceptions of public relations. Two contrasting case studies are presented in this paper to illustrate how socially-oriented paradigms may be applied to a real-client project to deliver a transformative learning experience. A discourse-analytic approach is applied within the case studies as a technique for identifying changes in students' understandings of the ideological structures, power relations and knowledge systems that underpin public relations and for determining whether transformative learning has taken place. The discourse engagement and normative/critical/ethical paradigmatic orientations examined in this paper provide conceptual foundations for developing civic responsibility that needs to be underpinned by salient social theory.     

Towards a critical pedagogy: Creating 'thinking schools' in Singapore

A distributed perspective offers a new and important theoretical lens through which leadership practice in schools can be reconfigured and re‐conceptualized. However, contemporary discourse about distributed leadership theory remains a way of analysing rather than describing leadership practice. While the research suggests that distributed forms of leadership can assist capacity‐building within schools, further work is needed to investigate the nature of the relationship between distributed leadership and improved school/student outcomes.     

Creating opportunities for untethered learning

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the use of mobile devices by teachers in two Australian schools. It builds on a theoretical framework which considers the location of mobile learning with respect to time and space. The research used a qualitative methodology in which observations, interviews and document analysis were conducted. The study found that the physical and virtual spaces that were used were different from those used in other lessons. Mobile learning facilitated autonomous learning by students, collaboration with their peers and engagement in topics of interest to them. The study found that students and teachers adopted new roles when using the devices, and were untethered from their conventional learning spaces of the classroom. Learning changed in nature and was aligned with contemporary practices in education.     

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.     

Service-learning in engineering: a valuable pedagogy for meeting learning objectives

Service-learning is an educational practice that has been used successfully in many disciplines, and is defined as ‘a credit-bearing, educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility’ (Bringle, R. and Hatcher, J., A service-learning curriculum for faculty. Michigan J. Community Service-Learning, 1995 Bringle, R. and Hatcher, J. 1995. A service-learning curriculum for faculty. Michigan J. Community Service-Learning, 2: 112–122.  [Google Scholar], 2, 112–122). This research examines a first-year biological engineering design course that incorporated a service-learning project. Students participated in a survey and in focus groups to explore how well the service-learning project helped them to meet EC 2000 a–k objectives. Results showed that the service-learning project was a useful teaching method for accomplishing the learning objectives set forth by the instructor and by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology. Women and non-white participants in this study generally assessed their learning outcomes to be greater than white males, which could have important implications in the recruitment and retention of such students in engineering.     

Innovative learning spaces: class management and universal design for learning

Learning Environments Research - Recent and important changes in pedagogy design include flexible learning methods that address student diversity (universal design for learning–UDL) and...