Confronting the pedagogical challenge of cyber safety

Cyber violence and the antidote of cyber safety are fast becoming a global concern for governments, educational authorities, teachers, parents and children alike. Despite substantial funding for information dissemination on preventative strategies and the development of electronic responses to hinder perpetrators, the phenomenon of cyber violence has received little attention in the educational research literature. This review paper outlines the status on existing research into cyber violence. Documenting and summarizing the facts on the nature and extend of the issue will inform future debate. It also highlights the need for pre-service and in-service teacher education programs to prepare educators to manage this phenomenon.

Professional identity and pedagogical space : negotiating difference in teacher workplaces

This paper explores ‘spatial struggle’ in the formation of professional identities of overseas born teachers. The basis of this struggle arises from a limited number of subject positions available for them in pedagogical spaces of the Australian system of education. We argue that relations of power/professional knowledge in teacher workplaces as well as the binary strategy of ‘us’ and ‘them’ generate marginal locations for overseas born teachers within schools. This construction of marginality is informed not only by discourses of what counts as being a professional but also by the conception of workplace – spaces of the school, staffroom and classroom – as monocultural, pre-given and bounded entities (McGregor, 2003). By rethinking workplaces as relational, as spaces that are connected to other sociocultural places as well as spaces of semiotic flows, we can also rethink the professional becoming of overseas born teachers. This involves a critical understanding of their positionality, which can be conceptualised as a struggle for voice within “a cacophony of past and present voices, lived experiences and available practices” (Britzman, 1991, p.8). It is because of this polyphony of voices and multiplicity of experiences that the process of professional identity formation for ‘alien’ teachers should be seen as becoming in continual negotiation of power/knowledge relations within workplaces. Recognising this dynamic is important for re-constructing our pedagogical spaces and, in turn, for a more equitable workplace practices.

Professional identity and pedagogical space : negotiating difference in teacher workplaces

This paper explores "spatial struggle" in the formation of professional identities of overseas-born teachers. The basis of this struggle arises from a limited number of subject positions available for them in pedagogical spaces of the Australian system of education. We argue that relations of power/professional knowledge in teacher workplaces as well as the binary strategy of "us" and "them" generate marginal locations for overseas-born teachers within schools. This construction of marginality is informed not only by discourses of what counts as being a professional but also by the conception of workplace as a monocultural, pre-given and bounded entity. By rethinking workplaces as relational, as locations that are connected to other socioculturally produced places through spaces of semiotic flows, we can also rethink the professional becoming of overseas-born teachers. This involves a critical understanding of their situationality, which can be conceptualised as a struggle for professional recognition, voice and place within the real and imagined communities of teachers.

“I would rather write a thesis than a letter”: from description to inscription in feminist pedagogical enquiry

The discourses that dominate schooling and education are complicit in, and circulate reductionist and bounded understandings of social relationships (Lather, 2004; MacLure, 2003; Atkinson, 2003a). Those deeply implicated in these  relationships understand that the pragmatic discourses of teaching and learning do little to elucidate or generate understandings about pedagogy that recognise the complex and contingent. There is a need for research that gives account of the experience of learning to teach without abetting the neoliberal accountability discourses in teacher education. This paper unfolds to the reader one practitioner researcher’s ways to come to know living pedagogy (Aoki, Low & Palulis, 2001) and research through the possibilities of epistolary in pedagogical enquiry.

Semantic and pedagogical aspects of affixation in Bahasa Indonesia

This thesis analyses eleven affixes sampled from a range of contemporary writings in Bahasa Indonesia. Though assumed to be basic, these affixes cause difficulties for tertiary-level non-native learners, thus suggesting the need for alternative materials and methods of instruction.

Crash landing at INSEAD : initiating a grounded theory of the pedagogical effectiveness of simulation games for teaching aspects of entrepreneurship

A practical teaching difficulty arising in a conducive environment provided opportunity to turn the particular problem into a case study with generic implications. Little research has been conducted on the use or effectiveness of simulation games for teaching entrepreneurship. In the context of established literature critiquing the effectiveness of simulation games as teaching devices in managerial contexts and at a point where problems in using a simulation game as part of entrepreneurship course became evident, the authors designed and executed a single-case research project to generate initial theoretical propositions about the pedagogical effectiveness of simulation games for teaching various concepts and aspects of entrepreneurship. The case analysed the perceived learning environment created when the Sky-High simulation was played by 41 MBA students taking an elective entrepreneurship course at INSEAD. The research design embodied the established methodological principles specified by Yin (1989), for effective case research. Theory building was based upon the grounded-theorizing procedures articulated by Glaser and Strauss (1967). Analysis and synthesis produced a grounded theory, in the form of a normative argument, containing four attribute categories and associated properties required of a simulation game to make it an efficacious teaching device in entrepreneurship contexts. The establishment of this grounded theory has made it both desirable and feasible to contemplate creation of an ISO quality standard for educational simulation games.

Teacher change in exploring representational approaches to learning science

The researcher worked closely with two biology-trained teachers to plan three teaching sequences in the topics of forces, substances and astronomy that were subsequently taught to Year 7 students. The sequences sought to develop a model of classroom practice that foregrounds students’ negotiation of conceptual representations.

The difficulties encountered by individuals in learning science point to the need for a very strong emphasis of the role of representations in learning. There is a need for learners to use their own representational, cultural and cognitive resources to engage with the subject-specific representational practices of science. Researchers who have undertaken classroom studies whereby students have constructed and used their own representations have pointed to several principles in the planning, execution and assessment of student learning (diSessa, 2004; Greeno & Hall, 1997). A key principle is that teachers need to identify big ideas, key concepts, of the topic at the planning stage in order to guide refinement of representational work. These researchers also point out the need for students to engage with multiple representations in different modes that are both teacher and student generated. A representation can only partially explain a particular phenomenon or process and has both positive and negative attributes to the target that it represents. The issue of the partial nature of representations needs to be a component of classroom practice (Greeno & Hall, 1997) in terms of students critiquing representations for their limitations and affordances and explicitly linking multiple representations to construct a fuller understanding of the phenomenon or process under study. The classroom practice should also provide opportunities for students to manipulate representations as reasoning tools (Cox, 1999) in constructing the scientifically acceptable ideas and communicating them.

Research question: What impact was there on the participating teacher’s practice through the adoption of a representational focus to teaching science?

Data collection included video sequences of classroom practice and student responses, student work, field notes, tape records of meetings and discussions, and student and teacher interviews based in some cases on video stimulated recall. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation.

The teachers in this study reported substantial shifts in their classroom practices, and in the quality of classroom discussions, arising from adopting a representational focus. The shifts were reported by them as a three-fold challenge. First, there was an epistemological challenge as they came to terms with the culturally produced nature of representations in the topics of force, substance and astronomy and their flexibility and power as tools for analysis and communication, as opposed to their previous assumption that this was given knowledge to be learnt as an end point. The second challenge was pedagogical, in that this approach was acknowledged to place much greater agency in the hands of students, and this brought a need to learn to run longer and more structured discussions around conceptual problems. The third challenge related to content coverage. The teachers sacrificed coverage for the greater depth offered by this approach, and were unanimous in their judgment that this had been a change that had paid dividends in terms of student learning.

Critique and creativity : the pedagogical nexus between literary studies and creative writing

This paper will explore the nexus between literary studies and creative writing on the basis of Stanley Aronowitz’s and Henry Giroux’s work on the democratic potential embedded in a critical literacy education, which provides ‘a language of critique’ and ‘a language of possibility’ (1993: 46). This paper argues that literary studies and
creative writing, as cognate disciplines focused precisely on languages of critique and possibility, are uniquely positioned to cooperatively enact this pedagogical agenda.

An Arakawa and Gins experimental teaching space - a feasibility study

Many researchers and practitioners currently teaching at Universities use the works of Arakawa and Gins within their courses and some go as far as structuring entire courses on their work. This indcates the value of Arakawa and Gins’ insight which offers many opportunities to intensify the relationship of theory to practice, disciplinary inquiry to knowledge and art to life. Having spent time in each of Arakawa and Gins’ built works, I have experienced and evaluated the benefits of constructing relationships among bodily movement, tactically posed surrounds and the discursive sequences that best constrain them. Based on my experience, I advocate going beyond the study of finished products towards the practice of coordinating history, community, person and body that occurs when inventing and assembling architectural procedures. This paper will outline my efforts over the last eighteen months to produce a feasibility study for building an experimental teaching space at my University (Griffith University, Australia). The experimental teaching space that I am proposing would commission and enact the architectural procedures of Arakawa and Gins in a constantly changing built (in-the-process-of-being-built) environment, where the guided construction of the teaching space is the curriculum. This approach would offer an alternative to the design trend in teaching and learning environments toward technologically driven smart spaces. An experimental space based on “perceptual learning”, “sited awareness” and “daily reserach” would address the disconnection between current research from the life sciences, developmental psychology, rehabilitation science and blended learning—and the enrivonments in which learning occurs. My discussions will address two issues: the link between pedagogical concerns of advanced study with the production of commual space (organism-person-surrounds) and how these goals can be implemented within the institutional planning processes while adhering to new federal funding guidelines, new performance indicatiors, and public tender guidelines. Throughout my paper, I argue that an experimental teaching space would accentuate multidisciplinarity and offer budding teachers, life scientists, sociologists, historians, and artists the enactive tools by which to affect change and provide grounded cultural leadership.

The waterhole : using educational drama as a pedagogical tool in a foreign language class at a public primary school in Japan

This study investigates Japanese primary school students’ and teachers’ responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. Along with the participants’ responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The study was conducted in Japan as ateacher-researcher using participatory action research methods. The participants of the study are three Year Six classes and their teachers in a public primary school in Japan. Educational drama is introduced as an alternative teaching and learning method to these participants who have had no experience of drama in education.