Meta-morphs: – being a mediator of the ‘thin’ place and ‘thin’ experience in the HE classroom. A paper on the experience of creating transformations in HE teaching and learning

The research which underpins this paper began as a doctoral project exploring archaic beliefs concerning Otherworlds and Thin Places in two particular landscapes - the West Coast of Wales and the West Coast of Ireland. A Thin Place is an ancient Celtic Christian term used to describe a marginal, liminal realm, beyond everyday human experience and perception, where mortals could pass into the Otherworld more readily, or make contact with those in the Otherworld more willingly. To encounter a Thin Place in ancient folklore was significant because it engendered a state of alertness, an awakening to what the theologian John O’ Donohue (2004: 49) called “the primal affection.” These complex notions and terms will be further explored in this paper in relation to Education. Thin Teaching is a pedagogical approach which offers students the space to ruminate on the possibility that their existence can be more and can mean more than the categories they believed they belonged to or felt they should inhabit. Central to the argument then, is that certain places and their inhabitants can become revitalised by sensitively considered teaching methodologies. This raises interesting questions about the role spirituality plays in teaching practice as a tool for healing in the twenty first century.

Teaching and learning Chinese: heritage language classroom discourse in Montreal

This paper explores issues of teaching and learning Chinese as a heritage language in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo Saturday School, in Montreal, Quebec. With a student population of more than 1000, this school is the largest of the eight Chinese Heritage Language schools in Montreal. Students participating in this study were from seven different classes (grade K, two, three, four, five, six, and special class), their ages ranging from 4 to 13 years. The study took place over a period of two years between 2000 and 2002. Focusing on primary level classroom discourse and drawing on the works of Vygotsky and Bakhtin, I examine how teachers and students use language to communicate, and how their communication mediates teaching, learning and heritage language acquisition. Data sources include classroom observations, interviews with students and their teachers, students’ writings, and video and audio taping of classroom activities. Implications for heritage language development and maintenance are discussed with reference to the findings of this study.

Using social networking tools for teaching and learning: a perspective of University lecturers and students

The use of online social networking tools (SNTs) has become commonplace within higher education. In this paper a definition and a typology of educational affordance of social networking service (SNS) are presented. The paper also explores the educational affordances whilst examining how university lecturers and students use SNTs to support their educational activities. The data presented here were obtained through a survey in which 38 participants from three universities took part; two universities in Uganda and one in the United Kingdom. The results show that Facebook is the most popular tool with 75 % of participants having profiles. Whilst most participants perceived the educational significance of these tools, social affordances remain more pronounced compared to pedagogical and technological affordances. The limitations of this study have also been discussed.

The evolution of online teaching and learning in engineering at Deakin University

This paper presents a brief history of the use of online technologies in the support of teaching and learning in the School of Engineering and Technology at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. It addresses the following topics: flexible engineering programs at Deakin University; computer-based learning in the School of Engineering and Technology; progression from individual efforts to formal, centralized control of the World Wide Web (Web); the costs of information technology; experiences with grant funded development projects; managing the development of online material; student access and equity; and staff development and cultural change. A sustainable online content development model is proposed to carry the School’s online initiatives in support of teaching and learning activities into the future.

Describing and supporting effective science teaching and learning in Australian schools - validation issues

Constructivism is a wide school of thought and its view on learning has important implications to both teaching and learning. Taking a constructivist view of learning to explain interdisciplinary education may help teachers understand the process of building concepts and learning among students as well as the implementation of assessment tasks. Based on a constructivist view of learning, this paper illustrates the assessment aspect of interdisciplinary learning using concrete examples of students' work collected from the Schools Around the World (SAW) project. SAW is an international project which was established in order to set standards for students' work and to stimulate the sharing of teaching ideas among teachers from nine participating nations or regions, with an aim to promote professional development among teachers. This paper attempts to introduce the background of interdisciplinary learning and its assessment methods and hopes to stimulate professional discussion in this respect among teachers.

A review of strategic issues in using the internet for teaching and learning

In 1998 the author published a paper entitled ‘Current Issues and limitations in using the Internet for Teaching and Learning’ [1] that acknowledged the new educational possibilities provided by the Internet, while at the same time sought to identify the limitations and related issues of going on-line in education. As predicted, the passage of time and the advancement of technology have ameliorated many of the identified limitations, and, have brought new issues to the fore. This paper re-visits the area of important strategic issues in using the Internet for education, giving an overview of equity and access, infrastructure and costs, copyright and plagiarism, content development, libraries and on-line information access, and other strategic issues. As in the earlier paper, this paper draws on the experiences of the author in conventional and off-campus university teaching in engineering.

Towards enhancement of practicum teaching and learning: a theoretical framework to inform social work field education

During 1996 eighty social work students and 130 field educators from New Zealand were surveyed about their experiences of the teaching during students' first field placements. The sample was drawn from three schools of social work facilitating student placements with clients across nine broad types of client services. Ten percent of the total student and field educator
sample were later interviewed about these experiences and the findings related to this research have been reported elsewhere (Maidment, 2000; 1999). During the course of conducting the research it became apparent that the practicum component of social work education was somewhat bereft of learning theory that could be specifically used to understand the
unpredictable and varied nature of field education and the complexity of the student! supervisor relationship. Hence the development of a conceptual framework to both guide the research and later explain the findings on field teaching and learning became a major focus of the research. The following article traces the process used to develop a framework to understand the diverse nature of practicum education.

A window for a purpose: developing a framework for describing effective science teaching and learning

This paper describes the development of a framework – the SIS Components – for describing effective teaching and learning in science, to support a system wide change initiative. The methodology used and the analysis that led to their refinement, is traced to expose the different issues involved in constructing the notion of lsquoeffective practice.rsquo These issues have to do with purpose, politics and audience. They determine features of the framework such as specificity, elements focused on, and the support structures that are put in place to establish the particular discourse being promoted. The paper describes the different research methods used to establish, to promote and to validate the components, and outlines the different senses in which this and any framework can be seen as contingent on the setting for which it is intended.

Windows into practice: constructing effective science teaching and learning in a school change initiative

This paper outlines the development of a framework - the Science in Schools (SiS) Components - that describes effective science teaching and learning and that has become a central focus for the Science in Schools Research project that is being implemented in 225 Australian schools. The description is in a form that provides a basis for monitoring change, and which can be validated against project outcomes. The SiS Components were partially based on interviews with a small number of primary and secondary teachers identified as effective practitioners, and have been subject to a variety of validation processes. The focus of this paper is on a particular form of validation involving interviews with an expanded set of effective primary teachers, from three Australian states. Case descriptions of core elements of these teachers' beliefs and practice were constructed, and a review and mapping process used to examine the extent to which the SiS Components, as a distinct 'window into practice', align with and capture these core elements, and differentiate the practice of these effective teachers from other primary teachers in the project.

Secondary students` perceptions of a constructivist-informed teaching and learning environment for geometric optics

This article describes an exploration of a class of secondary school students perceptions of a constructivist informed teaching and learning environment for geometric optics. The students perceived the environment as one where they could freely express their ideas and be involved in activities. What was also apparent in this exploration was the students' preference for a classroom that involved small group discussions to whole class discussions that reflected a need for time to think about issues. They also have a preference for relevant, practical work that tests their ideas and a preference to have fewer notes that they construct themselves rather than notes dictated by the teacher.

NT: Refereed article. Includes bibliographical references.

The power of the 6 three model for enhancing academic teachers' capacities for effective online teaching and learning: benefits, initiatives and future directions

To gain the full educational benefits of the major new investments in corporate technologies supporting online teaching and learning it is argued that a strategic, systems based approach to academic professional development (APD) is required. Such an approach requires a clear view of the key areas of potential and enduring teaching and learning benefit which can be realised from online developments, including an understanding of the changing role of the academic teacher in higher education, the identification of the desired professional capacities to educate online, and the implementation of a number of coordinated initiatives to develop these professional capacities in order to engage constructively with the learning and technology opportunities. Based on previous work, we propose a 6three model of Academic Professional Capacities Development for effective APD of online teaching and learning. The model can help inform the actions of policy makers, executives and practitioners in ways that promote an authentic learning organisation.

Teaching and learning in collaborative group design projects

The 200 years of apprentice/master tradition that underpins the atelier studio system is still at the core of much present-day architectural design education. Yet this tradition poses uncertainties for a large number of lecturers faced with changes in the funding of tertiary education. With reductions in one-to-one staff/student contact time, many educators are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain an atelier teaching model. If these deficiencies remain unchecked and design-based schools are unable to implement strategies to reduce the resource intensity of one-to-one studio teaching programmes, then, for many higher-education providers, current architectural education may be based on an untenable course structure. Rather than spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects, an increasing number of lecturers are setting group projects. This allows them to coordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group model may reflect the realities of the design process in professional practice, the approach is not without shortcomings as a teaching and learning archetype for the assessment of individual student skill competencies. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects. The following is a position paper that describes – with a focus on effective group structures and assemblage and fair assessment models – the background, methodology and early results of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant currently running at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University in Australia.