Framing student evaluations of university learning and teaching : discursive strategies and textual outcomes

Evaluation in higher education is an evolving social practice, that is, it involves what people, institutions and broader systems do and say, how they do and say it, what they value, the effects of these practices and values, and how meanings are ascribed. The textual products (verbal, written, visual, gestural) that inform and are produced by, for and through evaluative practices are important as they promulgate particular kinds of meanings and values in specific contexts. This paper reports on an exploratory study that sought to investigate, using discourse analysis, the types of evaluative practices that were ascribed value, and the student responses that ensued, in different evaluative instruments. Findings indicate that when a reflective approach is taken to evaluation, students’ responses are more considered, they interrogate their own engagement in the learning context and they are more likely to demonstrate reconstructive thought. These findings have implications for reframing evaluation as reflective learning.

A case study of teaching English and multimodality with ICTs: Constraints and possibilities

Current Australian policies and curricular frameworks demand that teachers and students use technology creatively and meaningfully in classrooms to develop students into 21C technological citizens. English teachers and students also have to learn new metalanguage around visual grammar since multimodal tasks often combine creative with critical General Capabilities (GC) with that of the of ICTs and literacy in the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E). Both teachers and learners come to these tasks with varying degrees of techno-literacy, skills and access to technologies. This paper reports on case-study research following a technology based collaborative professional development (PD) program between a university Lecturer facilitator and English Teachers in a secondary Catholic school. The study found that the possibilities for creative and critical engagement are rich, but there are real grounded constraints such as lack of time, impeding teachers’ ability to master and teach new technologies in classrooms. Furthermore, pedagogical approaches are affected by technical skill levels and school infrastructure concerns which can militate against effective use of ICTs in school settings. The research project was funded by the Brisbane Catholic Education Office and focused on how teachers can be supported in these endeavours in educational contexts as they prepare students of English to be creative global citizens who use technology creatively.

Journalism, History and the Politics of Popular Culture

I argue that a divergence between popular culture as “object” and “subject” of journalism emerged during the nineteenth century in Britain. It accounts not only for different practices of journalism, but also for differences in the study of journalism, as manifested in journalism studies and cultural studies respectively. The chapter offers an historical account to show that popular culture was the source of the first mass circulation journalism, via the pauper press, but that it was later incorporated into the mechanisms of modern government for a very different purpose, the theorist of which was Walter Bagehot. Journalism’s polarity was reversed – it turned from “subjective” to “objective.” The paper concludes with a discussion of YouTube and the resurgence of self-made representation, using the resources of popular culture, in current election campaigns. Are we witnessing a further reversal of polarity, where popular culture and self-representation once again becomes the “subject” of journalism?

Visual arts, technology and education : how can teaching and learning in high school visual arts classrooms be enriched by the use of computer technology?

Whilst a variety of studies has appeared over the last decade addressing the gap between the potential promised by computers and the reality experienced in the classroom by teachers and students, few have specifically addressed the situation as it pertains to the visual arts classroom. The aim of this study was to explore the reality of the classroom use of computers for three visual arts highschool teachers and determine how computer technology might enrich visual arts teaching and learning. An action research approach was employed to enable the researcher to understand the situation from the teachers' points of view while contributing to their professional practice. The wider social context surrounding this study is characterised by an increase in visual communications brought about by rapid advances in computer technology. The powerful combination of visual imagery and computer technology is illustrated by continuing developments in the print, film and television industries. In particular, the recent growth of interactive multimedia epitomises this combination and is significant to this study as it represents a new form of publishing of great interest to educators and artists alike. In this social context, visual arts education has a significant role to play. By cultivating a critical awareness of the implications of technology use and promoting a creative approach to the application of computer technology within the visual arts, visual arts education is in a position to provide an essential service to students who will leave high school to participate in a visual information age as both consumers and producers.