Making sense of difference? Teaching identities in postmodern contexts

How do teachers make sense of ethnic and classed differences? Frequently students from non-mainstream cultures and of lower socio-economic status are constructed in the literature and through practice as ‘deficit’ and consequently become marginalised. A range of short-term, ‘quick fix’ policy and curriculum approaches have aimed to address the ‘problems’ of those ‘othered’ from the mainstream due to their perceived difference. These have had little effect on improving educational results for students of specific ethnic and/or class backgrounds whose outcomes remain below the national average.

Poststructural theories offer opportunities to think about how teachers are positioned within discourses of identity. Our research (and others’) suggests the need for teachers to interrogate their assumptions about class and culture and how these are played out in their pedagogical relationships with students.

In this paper we report on a small research project that investigates the professional practices and personal beliefs of teachers. Empirical data from this study will build knowledge about how difference is constructed and diversity is ‘taken up’ by teachers as they engage with secondary students who have Language Backgrounds Other Than English and who are economically disadvantaged.

The classmate PC 1:1 eLearning project in Australia

Increasingly on the agendas of governments and educational leaders is an impetus to increase the number of computing devices in schools across Australia. There is much expected, promised and hoped for in developing 1:1 eLearning pedagogies, or ubiquitous approaches in ICTs. In 2008, the Intel Classmate PC 1:1 eLearning Project investigated the effects on classroom practices which arose from the provision of low-cost mobile learning devices for each student to use in a collaborative learning environment. The overall goal of the research was to provide evidence and understanding about the impact of 1:1 eLearning on student/teacher and student/student interactions, pedagogical and curriculum practices and student learning. This presentation draws from six primary school case studies, across three States of Australia. Significant successes and challenges were experienced across the diverse sites of these studies. Through these schools’ participation in this pilot study, five key factors have been identified as contributing to, or hindering the adoption and implementation of the devices. These included: ICT infrastructure, connectivity and hardware; Teacher attributes; Pedagogical and curriculum approaches; Teacher professional knowledge, and; School leadership.

Analysing curriculum change : some reconceptualised approaches

Curriculum developments in Australia.

Diverse approaches : a study of Australian journalism educators' use of web-based curriculum modules for reporting cultural difference

The Reporting Diversity website provides four curriculum modules to assist journalism educators to teach students about the issues and practice of reporting on cultural difference. The researchers co-ordinated the second round of trials of these resources in 2009, which involved the participation of academics and students from five Australian universities. A further 30 academics were surveyed to gauge their level of awareness of the materials. This paper reports on the educators’ evaluation of the resources and reveals the innovative ways in which the modules are being used and adapted in different classroom settings. The researchers argue that sharing different teaching approaches to the materials through the Reporting Diversity website would assist other academics to adapt the resources for their own use.

Relationships between civil engineering students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality

BACKGROUND: Deakin University graduated its first cohort from four-year undergraduate civil engineering course/program in 2012. The internal annual Course Experience Survey, which has been running annually since 2012, targets to identify the graduating students’ learning approaches and students’ perceptions of the curriculum and teaching quality. Literature suggests that students’ learning outcomes can be achieved more efficiently when the students’ perceptions of curriculum and teaching quality are closely aligned with their learning approaches. Where the students’ approaches to learning and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality are mismatched, a series of frustrations can result for the students that may not only negatively impact their learning achievement but also their learning experience.
PURPOSE OR GOAL: This study explores the relationships between students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality in an undergraduate civil engineering program/course. This will help understand whether the curriculum and teaching quality provided by the university have actually accommodated ‘all’ enrolled students in the similar way.
APPROACH: To uncover these relationships, this study adopts questionnaire survey approach to collect response data over a two year period by asking students about their perception through a series of statements. 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) is developed and responses are collected. The responses are then statistically analysed in order to uncover the relationships between students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality provided by the university.
DISCUSSION: Deep learners and surface learners had a statistically different perception of curriculum and teaching quality. These results contradict the assumption that learners will have uniform preferences on the curriculum, teaching quality and the way they deal with the demands of specific learning situations. Anecdotal belief that ‘good course/program curriculum and good teaching approaches are good for all students and vice-versa’ may not be strictly true for contemporary heterogeneous student cohorts.
RECOMMENDATIONS/IMPLICATIONS/CONCLUSION: This finding highlights the challenge for curriculum designer to design appropriate course curriculum and teaching staff to implement efficient teaching strategies that benefit both surface and deep learners, who are usually enrolled together. It may be beneficial to provide diversity and flexibility in the curriculum and teaching approaches (rather than a uniform approach). However, this may demand additional resources and may also be questioned for equity and consistency of education. It is also important to note that due to relatively a small dataset, these results may not be generalised.

Numeracy across the curriculum: recognising and responding to the demands and numeracy opportunities inherent in secondary teaching

The 1998 Report of the National Standards and Guidelines for Initial Teacher Education Project, 'Preparing a Profession' illustrates the emphasis being placed in Australia on the development of numeracy skills amongst not only primary but also secondary school pupils. This report demands that graduates of all initial teacher training courses should not only be numerate themselves, but should also understand the contribution of numeracy to education and daily life, and be able to identify and respond to pupils' numeracy learning needs. This report and its implementation in Victoria through the 'Guidelines for the Evaluation of Teacher Education Courses' led to the introduction in 1999 of a compulsory unit 'Numeracy across the curriculum' for all Deakin University students in the final year of their secondary teacher training course. This paper discusses the nature of the current emphasis on numeracy. It also describes the rationale, development and delivery of the first year of the 'Numeracy across the curriculum' unit, provides a brief evaluation from the perspective of staff and students, and discusses what impact such teacher education programs might have on secondary schools' approaches to numeracy.

SOSE curriculum structures : where to now?

SOSE curriculum structures have changed dramatically over the last few decades. Teachers who once taught history, geography and economics have found themselves teaching in the SOSE KLA which many perceive as a generic mish-mash of former school subjects. Some saw this as the death of their disciplines whilst others saw it as an opportunity to explore transdiciplinary and inter-disciplinary teaching and learning. Regardless of opinion, many teachers and tertiary education students often asked a familiar question - What am I supposed to teach and how am I supposed to teach it?

Whilst NSW retained a disciplinary structure for the teaching and learning of SOSE in secondary schools, all other Australian States and Territories adopted a Key Learning Area [KLA] approach. In recent years Victorian curriculum change has seen the re-emergence of a disciplinary approach to the teaching and learning of SOSE in upper primary schools and secondary schools and we can only wonder what curriculum change in other States and Territories will bring. In this paper we explore disciplinary, transdiciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to SOSE and critique these in relation to effective teaching and learning.

Intertextual turns in curriculum inquiry : fictions, diffractions and deconstructions

This thesis is based primarily on work published in academic refereed journals between 1994 and 2003. Taken as a whole, the thesis explores and enacts an evolving methodology for curriculum inquiry which foregrounds the generativity of fiction in reading, writing and representing curriculum problems and issues. This methodology is informed by the narrative and textual 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences - especially poststructuralist and deconstructive approaches to literary and cultural criticism - and is performed as a series of narrative experiments and 'intertextual turns'. Narrative theory suggests that we can think of all discourse as taking the form of a story, and poststructuralist theorising invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a text; this thesis argues that intertextual and deconstructive readings of the stories and texts that constitute curriculum work can produce new meanings and understandings. The thesis places particular emphasis on the uses of fiction and fictional modes of representation in curriculum inquiry and suggests that our purposes might sometimes be better served by (re)presenting the texts we produce as deliberate fictions rather than as 'factual' stories. The thesis also demonstrates that some modes and genres of fiction can help us to move our research efforts beyond 'reflection' (an optical metaphor for displacing an image) by producing texts that 'diffract' the normative storylines of curriculum inquiry (diffraction is an optical metaphor for transformation). The thesis begins with an introduction that situates (autobiographically and historically) the narrative experiments and intertextual turns performed in the thesis as both advancements in, and transgressions of, deliberative and critical reconceptualist curriculum theorising. Several of the chapters that follow examine textual continuities and discontinuities between the various objects and methods of curriculum inquiry and particular fictional genres (such as crime stories and science fiction) and/or particular fictional works (including Bram Stoker's Dracula, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and Ursula Le Guin's The Telling). Other chapters demonstrate how intertextual and deconstructive reading strategies can inform inquiries focused on specific subject matters (with particular reference to environmental education) and illuminate contemporary issues and debates in curriculum (especially the internationalisation and globalisation of curriculum work). The thesis concludes with suggestions for further refinement of methodologies that privilege narrative and fiction in curriculum inquiry.

Negotiating curriculum work in ESL

Conducting applied research in workplace settings on and/or with colleagues raises a host of ethical and procedural issues about research. Empiricist, interpretive, and critical approaches all have a place in understanding, describing and changing curriculum perceptions. As one moves from one paradigm to the other the voices of the agents in the curriculum process become increasingly prominent. With reference to some of my own workplace research under the three paradigms mentioned above, I describe ways in which educational research in workplace settings represents curriculum reality and can act as an engine of change.

Picturing Currere towards c u r a : rhizo-imaginary for curriculum

This critical inquiry in curriculum studies uses poststructuralist and Deleuzian rhizomatic approaches alongside an original 'picturing' methodology. The author genealogically maps historical and contemporary curriculum theorising to deconstruct curriculum 'development' and foreground currere (curriculum reconceptualising). In performing Deleuzian philosophy, his proposed c u r a reimagines curriculum via currere to envision generatively living-learning

As if they could be otherwise...finding spaces for creativity in the enacted curriculum

This chapter inquires into four very different Australian middle-school classrooms where teachers are innovating their practices and developing new approaches to aspects of English curriculum. These classrooms from diverse settings (one middle-class urban, one elite private inner urban, one regional disadvantaged, one middle-class regional) have all taken imaginative leaps and reworked their curricula to put the students’ needs at the centre. At one school, Year 8 students design, make and play their own computer games, at another Year 6 students script, design, craft and shoot their own claymation film; at another, Year 9 students use videogames as texts in their literature studies; and at another, a group of Year 6 students work with a theatre company and their teachers to rework Shakespeare into a contemporary, accessible, enjoyable performance. The chapter considers how in each case these different approaches engage and extend the students in meaningful and relevant ways. The chapter includes a mix of teacher and student interview data, principal data and teacher writing. The chapter investigates how each of these projects worked to achieve its aims and discusses how the single national curriculum might be re-envisioned in local contexts.

Youth literacy development through applied learning and the national curriculum

The introduction of a national curriculum into Australian schools coincides with an increasing body of research emphasising the importance of completing Year 12 or its equivalent if young people are to achieve successful transitions beyond school. This research is reflected in Australian government policy targets to achieve secondary school completion rates to at least 90% by 2015. State governments across the country have also embraced these targets, with some states already achieving above this level thanks to innovative curriculum and pedagogical initiatives that are more attuned to applied ways of learning.

In this chapter we examine the challenges faced by school leaders and teachers as they re-conceptualise approaches to youth literacy development through applied learning pedagogy. We begin by exploring definitions and applications of applied learning and examining the relatively recent growth of applied learning in secondary schools. We discuss the impetus for using applied learning approaches to literacy development and consider the challenges manifest in the day-to-day professional practices of secondary school teachers who use applied learning to engage young people who may otherwise leave school early. We conclude by exploring tensions emerging from the use of applied learning approaches to youth literacy development in Australia and the new demands created by a national curriculum.

Approaches to improving teaching

This paper discusses a few issues related to teaching improvement that are commonly found in tertiary education, such as curriculum development, student engagement, and ethical considerations. Scholars re- search on resolving these issues are investigated. Corresponding approaches to improving teaching of a year one information technology unit are proposed and experience is shared. The importance of teaching scholarship is also emphasized at the end of this paper.

The teacher education evolution : the shift from online to mobile learning in curriculum, assessment and delivery

Most teacher education programs have online applications. Increasingly teacher education programs are expanding their distance education applications with mobile learning, or m-learning. Although related to online learning, m-learning focuses on the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. Mobile learning is a big step towards providing flexible teacher education; it has brought about a new forum for learning, decreased limitations of learning location, and provided learners with choices about how and when they access learning materials. Universities are finding themselves grappling with how best to utilize mobile technologies for learning, while staying within their educational missions and resources. In this paper the mobile devices used in higher education and the current status of mobile technologies as learning tools at universities are described. The background of approaches and methods which are currently in use are also discussed, plus universities and teacher readiness for this transformation are also reviewed. Affordances and constraints are considered.