iPed : pedagogy for digital text production

Reading and writing are being transformed by global changes in communication practices using new media technologies. This paper introduces iPed, a research-based pedagogy that enables teachers to navigate innovative digital text production in the literacy classroom. The pedagogy was generated in the context of a longitudinal digital literacy intervention in a school that services low-socioeconomic and ethnically diverse students. iPed synthesizes four key pedagogies that were salient in the analysis of over 180 hours of lesson observations – Link, Challenge, Co-Create, and Share. The strengths of the pedagogy include connecting to students’ home cultures, critical media literacy, collaborative and creative digital text production, and gaining cosmopolitan recognition within global communities.

Assessing architectural design processes of diverse learners

Given that what students learn is so strongly related to how they learn, the modes of delivery and assessment that we as teachers provide them with have a major impact on their ability to learn. As this paper shows, good learning environments are constructed from a range of modes that respond to student learning styles and seek to align activities and learning outcomes with assessment tasks, to better accommodate a diversity of student learning styles and backgrounds. This paper uses a number of models of learning to critique and analyse the traditional practices of assessment in an architectural design class, and then proposes and reports on an alternative pattern of assessment. It discusses the issues of accommodating a group of first-year architecture students at Queensland University of Technology in 2009. These students arrived with diverse prior learning backgrounds, the group being evenly split between those with drawing capabilities and those without. They also had a variety of learning style preferences. The experiment in alternative assessment patterns presented here shows that what has traditionally been considered a diverse and difficult cohort of students can benefit from the assessment of a range of task types at different stages in the learning cycle.

Assessing and learning in internships: Reflecting on pedagogy and progress

An elective internship unit as part of a work integrated learning program in a business faculty is presented as a case study. In the unit, students complete a minimum of 120 hours work placement over the course of a 13 week semester. The students are majoring in advertising, marketing, or public relations and are placed in corporations, government agencies, and not for profit organisations. To support and scaffold the students’ learning in the work environment, a range of classroom and online learning activities are part of the unit. Classroom activities include an introductory workshop to prepare students for placement, an industry panel, and interview workshop. These are delivered as three workshops across the semester. Prior to commencing their placement, students complete a suite of online learning modules. The Work Placement Preparation Program assists students in securing obtaining a placement and make a successful transition to the work environment. It provides an opportunity for students to source possible work placement sites, prepare competitive applications, develop and rehearse interview skills, deal with workplace issues, and use a student ePortfolio to reflect on their skills and achievements. Students contribute to a reflective blog throughout their placement, with feedback from academic supervisors throughout the placement. The completion of the online learning modules and contribution to a reflective blog are assessed as part of the unit. Other assessment tools include a internship plan and learning contract between the student, industry supervisor, and academic supervisor; job application including responses to selection criteria; and presentation to peers, academics and industry representatives at a poster session. The paper discusses the development of the internship unit over three years, particularly learning activities and assessment. The reflection and refinement of the unit is informed by a pedagogical framework, and the development of processes to best manage placement for all stakeholders. A model of best practice is proposed, that can be adapted to a variety of discipline areas.

Spatial stimulus : Model making in the architectural design studio

This action research examines the enhancement of visual communication within the architectural design studio through physical model making. „It is through physical model making that designers explore their conceptual ideas and develop the creation and understanding of space,‟ (Salama & Wilkinson 2007:126). This research supplements Crowther‟s findings extending the understanding of visual dialogue to include physical models. „Architecture Design 8‟ is the final core design unit at QUT in the fourth year of the Bachelor of Design Architecture. At this stage it is essential that students have the ability to communicate their ideas in a comprehensive manner, relying on a combination of skill sets including drawing, physical model making, and computer modeling. Observations within this research indicates that students did not integrate the combination of the skill sets in the design process through the first half of the semester by focusing primarily on drawing and computer modeling. The challenge was to promote deeper learning through physical model making. This research addresses one of the primary reasons for the lack of physical model making, which was the limited assessment emphasis on the physical models. The unit was modified midway through the semester to better correlate the lecture theory with studio activities by incorporating a series of model making exercises conducted during the studio time. The outcome of each exercise was assessed. Tutors were surveyed regarding the model making activities and a focus group was conducted to obtain formal feedback from students. Students and tutors recognised the added value in communicating design ideas through physical forms and model making. The studio environment was invigorated by the enhanced learning outcomes of the students who participated in the model making exercises. The conclusions of this research will guide the structure of the upcoming iteration of the fourth year design unit.

Pedagogy and participation : literacy education for low-literate refugee students of African origin in a western school system

For ESL teachers working with low-literate adolescents the challenge is to provide instruction in basic literacy capabilities while also realising the benefits of interactive and dialogic pedagogies advocated for the students. In this article we look at literacy pedagogy for refugees of African origin in Australian classrooms. We report on an interview study conducted in an intensive English language school for new arrival adolescents and in three regular secondary schools. Brian Street’s ideological model is used. From this perspective, literacy entails not only technical skills, but also social and cultural ways of making meaning that are embedded within relations of power. The findings showed that teachers were strengthening control of instruction to enable mastery of technical capabilities in basic literacy and genre analysis. We suggest that this approach should be supplemented by a critical approach transforming relations of linguistic power that exclude, marginalise and humiliate the study students in the classroom.

Narrative on a doctoral narrative : reflections on postgraduate study and pedagogy

This paper explores the stages of one student’s intellectual journey through a Doctor of Philosophy program of study in an Australian university. It outlines the theoretical and methodological insights made as she came to understand that data was discourse, entailing a politics and position of power that ran contrary to the aims of the study that the student was undertaking in and on her own community. The article is a reflective narrative produced from the experience of having to come to terms with some of the personal and professional tensions and contradictions that postgraduate study can, and maybe should, engender if it is to be any of real value.

Experiencing higher degree research supervision as teaching

This article describes research higher degree supervisors’ experiences of supervision as a teaching and learning practice. While research education is considered central to the HDR experience, comparatively little is known to date of the pedagogical lenses adopted by supervisors as they go about their supervision. We worked with 35 supervisors engaged in discipline-specific and interdisciplinary research across architectural design, science, engineering, computer science, information systems and librarianship. Several of these supervisors conducted projects which interfaced with the social sciences and humanities. The pedagogies, constructed through the discussions and phenomenographic analysis, offer a picture of supervisors’ collective awareness of supervision as a teaching and learning practice. Supervision as a teaching and learning practice was experienced as: Promoting the supervisor’s development, Imparting academic expertise, Upholding academic standards, Promoting learning to research, Drawing upon student expertise, Enabling student development, Venturing into unexplored territory, Forming productive communities, and Contributing to society.

Teachers' work and pedagogy in an era of accountability

A great deal of educational policy proceeds as though teachers are malleable and ever-responsive to change. Some argue they are positioned as technicians who simply implement policy. However, how teachers go about their work and respond to reform agendas may be contingent upon many factors that are both biographical in nature and workplace related. In this paper we discuss the work of middle school teachers in low-socioeconomic communities from their perspectives. Referring to reflective interviews, meeting transcripts and an electronic reporting template, we examine how teacher participants in a school reform project describe their work - what they emphasise and what they down-play or omit. Using Foucaultian approaches to critical discourse analysis and insights from Dorothy Smith's (2005) Institutional Ethnography, we consider the 'discursive economy' (Carlson, 2005) in teachers' reported experiences of their everyday practices in northern suburbs schools in South Australia in which a democratic progressive discourse exists alongside corporate and disciplinary discourses.

Pedagogy of feedback on student academic writing : research supervisor practices for the end of the research degree candidature

All academic writing is advanced with the benefit of feedback about the writing. In the case of the academic writing genres of the research proposal and the dissertation, feedback is usually provided by the research supervisor. Given that academic writing development is a process, and in the case of the research proposal and dissertation, writing which develops over time, it seems likely that the nature of feedback on drafts written early in the candidature may be different from feedback provided by the research supervisor later in a student’s candidature. ----- ----- When a research supervisor has been reading a student’s writing over a period of time, their own familiarity with the writing generates a risk to their ability to provide critical and objective feedback. Particularly by the end of a student’s candidature, the research supervisor’s familiarity with the work may cause them to miss elements of writing improvement. ----- ----- The author, as a research supervisor, has developed a feedback grid to facilitate feedback on the final drafts of a dissertation. This feedback grid is generated by the embedded promises in the early sections of the dissertation, which are then used to audit the content of the final sections of the dissertation to ascertain whether promises made have been fulfilled. This provides a strategy for the research supervisor to step back from the work and read the dissertation with the agenda of a dissertation examiner. ----- ----- The grid is one strategy within a broader pedagogy of providing feedback on writing samples.

The constraints-based approach to motor learning : Implications for a non-linear pedagogy in sport and physical education

Recently, a constraints- led approach has been promoted as a framework for understanding how children and adults acquire movement skills for sport and exercise (see Davids, Button & Bennett, 2008; Araújo et al., 2004). The aim of a constraints- led approach is to identify the nature of interacting constraints that influence skill acquisition in learners. In this chapter the main theoretical ideas behind a constraints- led approach are outlined to assist practical applications by sports practitioners and physical educators in a non- linear pedagogy (see Chow et al., 2006, 2007). To achieve this goal, this chapter examines implications for some of the typical challenges facing sport pedagogists and physical educators in the design of learning programmes.

“What’s going on here?” The pedagogy of a data analysis session

Data analysis sessions are a common feature of discourse analytic communities, often involving participants with varying levels of expertise to those with significant expertise. Learning how to do data analysis and working with transcripts, however, are often new experiences for doctoral candidates within the social sciences. While many guides to doctoral education focus on procedures associated with data analysis (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010; McHoul & Rapley, 2001; Silverman, 2011; Wetherall, Taylor, & Yates, 2001), the in situ practices of doing data analysis are relatively undocumented. This chapter has been collaboratively written by members of a special interest research group, the Transcript Analysis Group (TAG), who meet regularly to examine transcripts representing audio- and video-recorded interactional data. Here, we investigate our own actual interactional practices and participation in this group where each member is both analyst and participant. We particularly focus on the pedagogic practices enacted in the group through investigating how members engage in the scholarly practice of data analysis. A key feature of talk within the data sessions is that members work collaboratively to identify and discuss ‘noticings’ from the audio-recorded and transcribed talk being examined, produce candidate analytic observations based on these discussions, and evaluate these observations. Our investigation of how talk constructs social practices in these sessions shows that participants move fluidly between actions that demonstrate pedagogic practices and expertise. Within any one session, members can display their expertise as analysts and, at the same time, display that they have gained an understanding that they did not have before. We take an ethnomethodological position that asks, ‘what’s going on here?’ in the data analysis session. By observing the in situ practices in fine-grained detail, we show how members participate in the data analysis sessions and make sense of a transcript.

Practices for teaching moral values in the early years : a call for a pedagogy of participation

Schools have long been seen as institutions for preparing children for life, both academically and as moral agents in society. In order to become capable, moral citizens, children need to be provided with opportunities to learn moral values. However, little is known about how teachers enact social and moral values programs in the classroom. The aim of this paper is to investigate the practices that Australian early years teachers describe as important for teaching moral values. To investigate early years teachers’ understandings of moral pedagogy, 379 Australian teachers with experience teaching children in the early years were invited to participate in an on-line survey. This paper focuses on responses provided to an open-ended question relating to teaching practices for moral values. The responses were analysed using an interpretive methodology. The results indicate that the most prominent approaches to teaching moral values described by this group of Australian early years teachers were engaging children in moral activities. This was closely followed by teaching practices for transmitting moral values. Engaging children in building meaning and participatory learning for moral values were least often described.

Bouncing back : the role of design in facilitating students to understand and deal with adversity

After state-wide flooding and a category-5 tropical cyclone, three-quarters of the state of Queensland was declared a disaster zone in early 2011. This deluge of adversity had a significant impact on university students, a few weeks prior to the start of the academic semester. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that design plays in facilitating students to understand and respond to, adversity. The participants of this study were second and fourth year architectural design students at a large Australian University, in Queensland. As a part of their core architectural design studies, students were required to provide architectural responses to the recent catastrophic events in Queensland. Qualitative data was obtained through student surveys, work design work submitted by students and a survey of guests who attending an exhibition of the student work. The results of this research showed that the students produced more than just the required set of architectural drawings, process journals and models, but also recognition of the important role that the affective dimension of the flooding event and the design process played in helping them to both understand and respond to, adversity. They held the ‘real world’ experience and practical aspect of the assessment in higher regard than their typical focus on aesthetics and the making of iconic design. Perhaps most importantly, the students recognised that this process allowed them to have a voice, and a means to respond to adversity through the powerful language of design.