Constructing the academic category of teacher educator in universities’ recruitment processes in Aotearoa,New Zealand

An examination of recruitment materials and interviews with personnel involved in the employment of teacher educators to positions in university-based New Zealand initial teacher education (ITE) courses reveals three constructions of teacher educator as academic worker: the professional expert, the dually qualified, and the traditional academic. However, this study’s analysis shows how these constructions allow universities to pursue a bifurcated approach for the employment of teacher educators, an approach that maintains binaries within teacher education and hinders development in the field. Furthermore, as the spectre of a major cultural shift in the provision of New Zealand ITE arises, the extent to which the professional expert and traditional academic constructions of teacher educator might serve the scope of work required of postgraduate ITE going forth is questioned.     

When practice takes precedence: conceptions of inquiry and the link to ethical posture

Using participatory action research (PAR), this paper explores the ethical practice of students engaged in practitioner research in a higher education context. Using narrative enquiry, the paper explores the participants’ experiences of practitioner research, including ethical dilemmas that resulted from a conflict of values between the practitioner and research roles. We postulate a multi-dimensional approach to ethical practice known as ‘ethical posture’ emerging from our consideration of conceptions of inquiry that resulted in contrasting ethical behaviour.     

Girls’ active identities: navigating othering discourses of femininity,bodies and physical education

Within physical education and sport, girls must navigate discourses of valued athletic and gendered bodies that marginalise or ‘other’ non-normative performances through systems of surveillance and punishment. The purpose of this paper is to share girls’ perspectives on how these discourses affected their gender performances and activity engagement. Students aged 13–14 in one ethnically diverse UK secondary school were invited to create a photo diary of the physical activities they engaged in. Photo-elicitation interviews in small groups followed. The girls positioned themselves as physically active but had to carefully manage their activity choices and gender performances in a single-sex physical education environment that regulated deviation from the fit, slender, girly-girl. Although the girls demonstrate the difficulty of resisting, they indicate moments of positioning themselves against norms that suggest the possibilities of shifting gendering processes. The paper points out the importance of listening to ‘other’ girls’ narratives in building positive physical education engagements.     

Familial and Institutional Factors: Job Satisfaction for Female Counselor Educators

Job satisfaction based on familial and institutional factors was explored for 157 female counselor educators. Results indicate that female associate professors had lower levels of intrinsic rewards domain after controlling for institutional type. Parental responsibility and partnership status were equivocal, with significant interaction effects after controlling for Carnegie Classification.     

Teaching ‘community engagement’ in engineering education for international development: Integration of an interdisciplinary social work curriculum

This article reviews the literature on challenges faced by engineering faculty in educating their students on community-engaged, sustainable technical solutions in developing countries. We review a number of approaches to increasing teaching modules on social and community components of international development education, from adding capstone courses and educational track seminars to integrating content from other disciplines, particularly the social sciences. After summarising recent pedagogical strategies to increase content on community-focused development, we present a case study of how one engineering programme incorporates social work students and faculty to infuse strategies for community engagement in designing and implementing student-led global engineering development projects. We outline how this interdisciplinary pedagogical approach teaches students from the two disciplines to work together in addressing power balances, economic and social issues and overall sustainability of international development projects.     

Academic workload: the silent barrier to the implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies in higher education

The effect of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) strategies in higher education has arguably been transformative despite the not-insignificant barriers existing in this context. Throughout the discourse very little attention has been paid to those primarily responsible for this implementation—academic teaching staff. This paper aims to highlight the impact of academic workload allocations, an often silent barrier to the uptake of TEL strategies in higher education. We will discuss the effects of academic identity and culture, preferential time allocation to associative activities, academic technological capacity, university policies and workload and funding models on the uptake, and implementation on TEL in higher education. Our aim is to highlight the risks to staff, students and institutions should these concerns not be addressed and to propose a model for utilisation by all staff responsible for implementing flexible workload models supportive of further implementation of TEL strategies across the sector.     

Sustainability as a cross-curricular priority in the Australian Curriculum: a Tasmanian investigation

In this paper, we report on an investigation into sustainability education in schools in the Australian state of Tasmania following the implementation of the Australian Curriculum. Sustainability is one of three cross-curriculum priorities in the new national curriculum and is the focus of this research (sustainability cross-curriculum priority (CCP)). Principals and Curriculum Leaders (PCLs) from all schools in Tasmania were invited to complete a survey that asked them about their understanding of various aspects of sustainability and how the sustainability CCP was integrated across learning areas. Sixty-eight PCLs (24%) responded to the survey. They reported generally good understandings of sustainability and education for sustainability, but lesser understandings of the sustainability CCP and the nine organising ideas. Respondents’ understandings of sustainability were dominated by an environmental focus. The PCLs’ responses in relation to sustainability implementation across learning areas gave insights into ways that the sustainability CCP can serve as a pivot for cross-curricular teaching and learning, which is strongly advocated for achieving transformative sustainability education. We conclude this paper with a discussion of how the sustainability CCP is an important asset in the necessary reorientation of the Australian formal education system for a more sustainable future. We note the importance of professional support so that educators may better understand sustainability and its complexity as a cross-curricular priority and envision ways in which the sustainability CCP can be realised within education.