Teachers and productive pedagogies: Contextualising, conceptualising, utilising

Improving students' outcomes from schooling requires schools to be learning organisations, where both students and teachers are engaged in learning. As such, knowledge and talk about pedagogy need to be at the core of the professional culture of schools. This article argues that this will require the valuing of teachers' work, that is, their pedagogical practices, to be a central focus of educational policy. Dangers are associated with this argument in terms of understating the impacts of poverty, lack of funding to disadvantaged schools and other social factors such as the pressures of globalisation upon students' educational opportunities. Hence, while acknowledging the importance of pedagogy to students' outcomes, the article contextualises the argument through a recognition of the policy and structural conditions that work against the valuing of teachers and their work. It then conceptualises how, within this context, a focus on pedagogies can make a difference to students' academic and social outcomes from schooling. This conceptualisation utilises the productive pedagogies model of classroom practice, developed in a large Australian study of school reform, as an example of the forms of pedagogical practices that support students' achievement of academic and social outcomes. It is argued that such pedagogical practices ought to be a concern of teachers, school administrators, education systems and local communities interested in schools as learning organisations.

Pedagogies and critical reflection: key understandings for transformative gender justice

It is widely acknowledged that quality pedagogy is central to improving the educational outcomes of all students. In improving the social and academic outcomes of boys, and more specifically disengaged boys, the productive pedagogies model has been presented as a way forward. In terms of drawing on this model in socially just ways; to facilitate a broadening, rather than reinscribing of boys' narrow constructions of gender identity, this paper illustrates the imperative of teachers interacting with key feminist understandings of masculinity. Organized around the four dimensions of productive pedagogy, the paper draws on ( predominantly Australian-based) seminal work in the sphere of masculinities and schooling to discuss key strategies and initiatives for improving boys' educational outcomes. Against this backdrop, the paper demonstrates the importance of two principle understandings. The first relates to teachers understanding masculinity through feminist lenses, as constructed, regulated and maintained through inequitable social processes and the second relates to teachers understanding pedagogy as critical and transformative practice. These understandings are presented as vital to enabling gender justice.

Rich task implementation: modernism meets postmodernism

School renewal', 'productive pedagogies', 'rich tasks', 'New Basics', 'key learning areas'--these are some of the discourses of change in selected Queensland schools. This paper will report on teaching as an insider/outsider in a school's Health and Physical Education department during a time of intense pressure for structural, curriculum and pedagogical shifts. As a teacher/researcher, I spent ten weeks in a government secondary school attempting to implement rich tasks as well as collect data using formal and informal interviews, field note, and document analyses, with a focus upon teachers', students' and administrators' sense of change processes and outcomes. It is suggested that the processes of, and barriers to, curriculum change in this context are best explained in terms of tensions between modernist and postmodernist phenomena.

Resolving the puzzle of productive and destructive conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups: A communication accommodation theory approach

This study presents an investigation of the communicative behaviors and strategies employed in the stimulation and management of productive and destructive conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups. Using communication accommodation theory (CAT), we argue that the type and course of conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups is impacted by the communicative behaviors and strategies employed by group members during interactions. Analysis of data from participant observations, non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and self-report questionnaires support CA T-based predictions and provide fresh insights into the triggers and management strategies associated with conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups. In particular, results indicated that the more groups used discourse management Strategies, the more they experienced productive conflict. In addition, the use of explanation and checking of own and others' understanding was a major feature of productive conflict, while speech interruptions emerged as a strategy leading to potential destructive conflict. Groups where leaders emerged and assisted in reversing communication breakdowns were better able to manage their discourse, and achieved consensus On task processes. Contributions to the understanding of the triggers and the management of productive conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups are discussed.

Editorial: Celebrating 30 years - 1973-2003

In 2003 The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education celebrates its 30th anniversary. Beginning in 1973 as The Aboriginal Child at School, the journal was a practical response to a recommendation made at the National Workshop on Aboriginal Education held in May 1971 “that a periodical publication be commenced to provide a medium for the exchange of ideas and developments in the teaching of Aborigines, for the examination of practical implications of research findings and for the recording of Aboriginal achievements” (Watts, 1973, p. 2). Funded by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra and housed in the Department of Education and later the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, The Aboriginal Child at School was published at two monthly intervals. It aimed to provide a medium whereby teachers in the field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education could share their thinking and their strategies for successful teaching and thereby enter into a meaningful and productive dialogue with one another (Watts, 1973, p. 2). An overarching concern of the journal was to improve and optimise children’s development and the types of pedagogies employed to provide challenging and rewarding learning experiences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.The journal was enthusiastically embraced by a broad range of professionals and proved to be a useful resource for both experienced and beginning teachers, particularly in the primary sector.

Productive leaders and productive leadership: Schools as learning organisations

This paper draws on a three-year study of 24 schools involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers and principals. Through an examination of three cases, sets of leadership practices that focus on the learning of both students and teachers are described. This set of practices is called productive leadership and how these practices are dispersed among productive leaders in three schools is described. This form of leadership supports the achievement of both academic and social outcomes through a focus on pedagogy, a culture of care and related organizational processes. The concepts of learning organisations and teacher professional learning communities as ways of framing relationships in schools, in which ongoing teacher learning is complementary to student learning, are espoused.