A bridge over troubling waters in education: the complexity of a "students as co-researchers" project

“Students as co-researchers” is a mode of engagement between students and teachers in school systems that has been likened to a bridge. This article explores the bridge metaphor with reference to one school’s experience of a students as co-researchers project involving students and teachers in the school and a university partner. We use the bridge metaphor, inspired by the imagist poet Ezra Pound, to explore particular challenges faced in this project, and to envision new modes of teacher/student relationships in education. We argue that the purpose of building such a bridge between students and teachers is not an instrumental one (to reach the other side), but rather that the bridge offers up zones of affective relational encounters between students and teachers.

Multidisciplinary research perspectives in education shared experiences from Australia and China

The editors of this extraordinary book, Indika Liyanage and Badeng Nima, have brought together a wonderfully wide-ranging collection of chapters. The breadth and depth of the studies of education issues in China and Australia are impressive. The topics encompass important questions concerning education policies, curricula, pedagogy, equality, parental engagement, cultural heritage, and anti-drug education. The scope of the book includes Chinese and Australian settings that range from kindergartens to higher education, and from rural to urban environments. The diversity of the book strengthens rather than weakens its coherence, because the golden thread running through all the chapters is a portrayal of the complexity of education provision when global, national and local forces interact. Written by academics with hands-on experience, the chapters provide evidence-based discussions of practical conundrums, enriched by the sophisticated use of interdisciplinary approaches. As a result, this book is powerful, challenging and ground-breaking.

Psychology in education : critical theory practice

In this book, a group of respected international scholars examine controversies presently facing the enduring relationship between psychology and education.

Collaborative reflective experience and practice in education explored through self-study and arts-based research

Eight teacher educators used self-study methodology to engage in reflective practice to overcome their isolation as individual teachers and researchers, and to facilitate professional development. Their research question asked: How can we continue to develop our teaching practice to ensure we are high quality, contemporary teacher educators? They contributed collaboratively in one overarching research project as well as through several focussed projects that explored issues in their individual teaching practices including: sustainability, creativity, curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and the learning experiences for students. This paper explores the outcomes from collaborative inquiry that five of the eight educator/researchers engaged in during a research-writing retreat. It documents their experience using arts-based strategies in which drawings were created about their experiences of engaging in a collaborative project and smaller focussed self-study projects. Analysis involved inquiring into each other’s drawings through recorded conversation. The metaphoric representations found through analysing the drawings provided insight into participants’ teaching practices and identities as teacher educators. Six months later when the participants had developed their projects further and used other artsbased methods to understand these experiences, they reflected on the key issues for their teaching practices that had arisen from undertaking this Collaborative Reflective Experience and Practice in Education research. Arts-based inquiries and reflective analysis over six months, constitute this paper. The experiences and analyses are shared to show how creating and sharing metaphoric meaning of visual representations is useful in self-study research to drill down into the real issues. Importantly, this in-depth sharing provides authentic interdisciplinary links when individual educators share their own approaches to teaching in their disciplined area. Findings suggest that gaining new insights into each other’s discipline-based approaches to teacher education through these methods, revealed different responses to pedagogical challenges and allowed for new possibilities for understanding the landscape of teacher education.

2014 Australian Association for Research in Education presidential address: educational research and the tree of knowledge in a post human digital age

The 2014, 41st Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) presidential address is both inspired and guided by the discursive genres of presidential addresses and the role of the president in a member association such as AARE. In the address, typically the president speaks to the members on an issue or issues that are to shape or conclude their term of office, as it is in my case. Like many of the 40 AARE presidents who have gone before me, I will embed some things that are professional, personal and political—not in the interests of advancing my research agenda, but to add ‘‘to the weave and pattern of the association’s history’’ (Reid 2010, p. v). Threads of my research since completing my PhD in 2000 will appear to support the broad argument. Also, I will draw on the outcomes of the 2014 Australian Research Council Discovery round (see Australian Research Council: ARC archives 2016) to encapsulate my key argument that educational research and its (ex)changes are being reshaped: in a post human digital age, the tree of knowledge is mutating. To make my argument, I will review how the thinking and doing of educational research mid-way through the second decade of the twenty-first century is constructed and ask what research endeavours might be created to make the best possible worlds for our member community and the aspirations of the association.

Microworlds and mathematics: playing with melodies

The author looks at the effects of replaying a sequence of sounds or musical notes in reverse temporal order. He presents some programming ideas which illustrate how to use MicroWorlds and Logo programming to play a tune forwards, backwards and even upside down.

School mathematics and ICT: are we doing enough? - The talk

The author discusses how to improve the use of ICT in mathematics education. A number of measures are recommended including the need to conduct an ICT-and-mathematics audit across the curriculum. The author points out that ICT is changing traditional understandings of literacy and numeracy and how it is taught. ICT approaches may help to teach things in slightly different ways, but will not necessarily do this any better than old ways. The author highlights that teaching is changing from face-to-face oral discussion to virtual talk, with ICT just the latest technology in a long line of technological innovations that have transformed teaching since the nineteenth century.

Gender and IT : ongoing challenges for computing and information technology education in Australian secondary education

# 1. Introduction. Exploring the gender and IT problem and possible ways forward /​ Julianne Lynch
# 2. The imagined curriculum: who studies Computing and Information Technology subjects at the senior secondary level? /​ Margaret Vickers and My Trinh Ha
# 3. A question of attention: challenges for researching the under representation of girls in Computing and Information Technology subjects /​ Leonie Rowan
# 4. The nature and purpose of Computing and Information Technology subjects in the senior secondary school curriculum in New South Wales /​ Toni Downes
# 5. The social construction of Computing and Information Technology subject subculture /​ Catherine Harris
# 6. Boy nerds, girl nerds: constituting and negotiating Computing and Information Technology and peer groups as gendered subjects in schooling /​ Kerry Robinson and Cristyn Davies
# 7. CIT teachers' cultures in a globalising world /​ Carol Reid and Jose van der Akker
# 8. Perceptions of changing pedagogies in Computing and Information Technology /​ Susanne Gannon

Critical teachers as early adopters of technology : agency and structures of indifference in higher education

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The continued underrepresentation of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses : a direct challenge to teacher education

The participation rates of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses of Australian universities and high schools have remained low (less than 30%), despite three decades of research and analysis. In seeking to better understand this phenomenon, this paper draws upon data collected during an Australian Research Council Linkage project to investigate first, the reasons that teachers and students in contemporary Australian high schools put forward to account for girls' underrepresentation; second, the assumptions about gender that underpin these explanations; and third, the extent to which teachers appear able to respond to the full range of factors shaping girls' decision making. The paper argues that attempts to improve girls' participation rates might continue to falter unless teacher education programs explicitly prepare teachers to conceptualise educational reforms based on understandings of post-structural perspectives on gender; perspectives that challenge the more common explanations for girls' behaviour associated with both essentialist and socialisation mindsets.

Adoption vs. usage of interactive white board technology by teachers in higher education institutions

This research investigates teaching faculty’s adoption and usage of Interactive White Board Technology (IWBT) in teaching in UAE University (UAEU). The research extended the technological innovation theories and proposed a model made of different contexts. The research model was partially supported and highlighted interesting insights pertaining to adoption and usage of IWBT in teaching. Contrasting findings pertaining to the same factors across adoption and usage proved to be both insightful as well as challenging at the same time. Implications arising from significant and insignificant factors lead to a conclusion that IWBT is evolving in UAEU. The research discusses theoretical as well as professional contributions and implications emerging and portrays different research areas in this field.

Seeking industry perspectives to enhance experiential education in university-industry partnerships: going beyond mere assumptions

Setting up and running a program with an industry experiential learning component is based on certain core assumptions. A shared vision of what constitutes a satisfying placement is essential. In this paper we present findings from research into the operation of an Australian Bachelor of Business Information Technology program. In-depth interviews were held with 10 experienced industry sponsors/mentors and one member of a relevant professional body. Industry mentors identify pragmatic reasons for industry involvement in experiential learning programs. They identify some seven skills required of a good industry mentor, and report eight features of a meaningful/satisfying placement

The scholarship of teaching: risky business in ICT education

The idea of the scholarship of teaching was reinvigorated twelve years ago by Boyer's (1990) book, Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Since then a considerable body of literature has developed, discussing what the scholarship of teaching might look like, why it is desirable and how it might be encouraged. The scholarship of teaching has been described as including the activities involved in designing, implementing and evaluating teaching and learning, and associated dissemination activities. Over the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role that scholarship might play in the promotion, recognition and reward of good university teaching.

This paper draws on qualitative data that were collected as part of a national study of the major university discipline of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to generate a framework for describing the context of university teaching and for examining how conducive this context is to the scholarship of teaching. The framework comprises two domains: that of the individual educator and that of the organisational environment in which the educator works. The paper highlights the importance of, and interaction between, these domains, and the role they play in promoting or discouraging the scholarship of teaching.

Flexible learning for quality in higher education

This keynote presentation is in two related parts. The first deals deal with the issue of the background, context and issues concerned with the emergence of flexible learning and flexible delivery in education, especially in higher education and its interrelationships with the background, context and issues concerned with the emergence of' quality' in higher education. The second explores the issues concerned with the use of online media to facilitate quality flexible learning in higher education.

These presentations draw on authors teaching and research in these fields. In particular they draw on their work on the interrelationships between educational technology, interaction and dialogue in the development of 'quality' education. It is shown that, at institutional and individual levels, decisions are made to implement flexible and online forms of education that have significant curricula and pedagogical implications, not only for those institutions and individuals (teachers), but most importantly for the learners and their contexts. The rhetoric that advocates the implementation of flexible learning and online education may well be grounded in positive ideas for change, but the institutional and individual consequences the costs and benefits- are not always clearly understood from the outset.

The recent developments in information and communication technologies have enabled many institutions to provide courses flexibly using online learning. Maintaining quality in course provision, online teaching and support infrastructure has proved an important issue in higher education, as provision of technology alone is only a small part of ensuring quality in flexible learning. The possibilities of higher education without borders means that such issues of online quality be addressed and these presentations wiII draw on experiences from both international and Deakin University perspective.