From art for arts sake to art as means of knowing:a rationale for advancing arts-based methods in research, practice and pedagogy

This paper advances a philosophically informed rationale for the broader, reflexive and practical application of arts-based methods to benefit research, practice and pedagogy. It addresses the complexity and diversity of learning and knowing, foregrounding a cohabitative position and recognition of a plurality of research approaches, tailored and responsive to context. Appreciation of art and aesthetic experience is situated in the everyday, underpinned by multi-layered exemplars of pragmatic visual-arts narrative inquiry undertaken in the third, creative and communications sectors. Discussion considers semi-guided use of arts-based methods as a conduit for topic engagement, reflection and intersubjective agreement; alongside observation and interpretation of organically employed approaches used by participants within daily norms. Techniques span handcrafted (drawing), digital (photography), hybrid (cartooning), performance dimensions (improvised installations) and music (metaphor and structure). The process of creation, the artefact/outcome produced and experiences of consummation are all significant, with specific reflexivity impacts. Exploring methodology and epistemology, both the "doing" and its interpretation are explicated to inform method selection, replication, utility, evaluation and development of cross-media skills literacy. Approaches are found engaging, accessible and empowering, with nuanced capabilities to alter relationships with phenomena, experiences and people. By building a discursive space that reduces barriers; emancipation, interaction, polyphony, letting-go and the progressive unfolding of thoughts are supported, benefiting ways of knowing, narrative (re)construction, sensory perception and capacities to act. This can also present underexplored researcher risks in respect to emotion work, self-disclosure, identity and agenda. The paper therefore elucidates complex, intricate relationships between form and content, the represented and the representation or performance, researcher and participant, and the self and other. This benefits understanding of phenomena including personal experience, sensitive issues, empowerment, identity, transition and liminality. Observations are relevant to qualitative and mixed methods researchers and a multidisciplinary audience, with explicit identification of challenges, opportunities and implications.

Teachers’ Knowledge, Awareness and Pedagogy of Global Education in Secondary Schools

For the last fifty years, social studies teachers have been prepared to teach from a global perspective, but since September 11, 2001 have faced a difficult challenge teaching from a global perspective. This study examines ninety secondary school teachers’ global knowledge and their disposition toward teaching from a global perspective.

Teachers' knowledge, awareness, and pedagogy of global education in secondary schools

Professor Mohammed K. Farouk, Major Professor In 1979, the Florida State Board of Education approved the teaching of global education in the state of Florida. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that contributed to teachers' global knowledge, global mindedness, and pedagogy in global education. The Hanvey model of teaching from a global perspective was the theoretical framework for the study. A total of 90 secondary teachers from Miami-Dade County Public Schools were randomly selected and placed in three groups: Globally Oriented Social Studies Program (GOSSE), Non-Globally Oriented Social Studies Program (non-GOSSE), and Teachers Who Teach Other Subjects (TWTOS). Seven teachers, two of whom team-taught a class, were selected for classroom observations and interviews. A mixed methods design that combined quantitative and qualitative data was used. ANOVA and Chi square techniques were used to determine whether the factors that contributed to teachers' global knowledge and global mindedness differ among groups. Classroom observations and interviews were conducted to determine whether the instructional strategies differ among the seven selected teachers. The findings of the study show that teachers who were trained in teaching from a global perspective differed in their global knowledge and used more appropriate instructional strategies than teachers who were not trained in teaching global perspectives. There was no significant difference in the combined global knowledge of the non-GOSSE and TWTOS groups when compared with the GOSSE group. There was no significant difference in the combined global knowledge of the GOSSE and non- GOSSE groups when compared with the TWTOS group. There was no significant difference among the teachers in their global mindedness. Observation and interview data indicate that current events, role-playing, simulations, open-ended discussion, debates, and projects were the predominant instructional strategies used by globally trained teachers. Cable networks, Internet, magazines, and newspapers were found to be the dominant tools for teaching global education. This study concluded that teachers who were trained in globally oriented programs had more global knowledge than teachers who were not. It is recommended that teacher education programs should incorporate a global perspective in the preparation of social studies teachers, with particular attention to developing their global attitudes.

Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy : a guide for ESL-EFL teachers.

Conversación y expresión oral son elementos fundamentales en el aprendizaje de idiomas. Este texto aumenta la conciencia de los profesores sobre el lenguaje hablado y sugiere formas de aplicar esos conocimientos a la enseñanza de habilidades de interacción de un segundo idioma, basado en las percepciones del análisis de la conversación. Presenta reseñas de los conceptos clave de análisis de la conversación y los resultados, conecta directamente los resultados con la pedagogía de la segunda lengua, presenta un modelo de prácticas interactivas basadas en dichos conceptos, incluye transcripciones de conversaciones reales, tareas para consolidar y ampliar su comprensión, actividades prácticas.

Museum Studies Borderlands: negotiating curriculum and competencies

Given ICTOP‘s work on revising the curriculum guide using the competencies approach (2000-2008), the author asks whether it is possible to reflect some of the issues and conceptual underpinnings that are at play in the discourse of museology/museum studies as a field of study and pedagogy when designing curriculum when taking the competencies approach. Until we address this question, ICTOP‘s work will have little relevance for the design of syllabi/curriculum by post-secondary institutions. This presentation lays out some of the professional issues underlying and the role for critical reflexive professionalism which can bridge theory and practice, competencies and epistemological knowledge and s how a way forward. Then it moves to address some of the territories where critical discussion is at work that would extend the curriculum discussions of ICTOP, while pointing to some developments that offer a museology of possibilities.

Scaffolding and bilingual shared reading experiences: Promoting primary school students' learning and development

This paper explores the connections between scaffolding, second language learning and bilingual shared reading experiences. A socio- cultural theory of cognition underpins the investigation, which involved implementing a language and culture awareness program (LCAP) in a year 4 classroom and in the school community. Selected passages from observations are used to analyse the learning of three students, particularly in relation to languages other than English (LOTE). As these three case study students interacted in the classroom, at home and in the community, they co-constructed, appropriated and applied knowledge form one language to another. Through scaffolding, social spaces were constructed, where students learning and development were extended through a variety of activities that involved active participation, such as experimenting with language, asking questions and making suggestions. Extending these opportunities for student learning and development is considered in relation to creating teaching and learning environments that celebrate socio-cultural and linguistic diversity.

Learning to 'understand backwards' in time: children's temporal cognition and the primary history curriculum

This study examines children’s temporal ways of knowing and it highlights the centrality of temporal cognition in the development of children’s historical understanding. It explores how young children conceptualise time and it examines the provision for temporal cognition at the levels of the intended, enacted and received history curriculum in the Irish primary school context. Positioning temporality as a prerequisite second-order concept, the study recognises the essential role of both first-order and additional second-order concepts in historical understanding. While the former can be defined as the basic, substantive content to be taught, the latter refers to a number of additional key concepts that are deemed fundamental to children's capacity to make meaningful sense of history. The study argues for due recognition to be given to temporality, in the belief that both sets of knowledge, the content and skills, are required to develop historical thinking (Lévesque, 2011). The study addresses a number of key research questions, using a mixed methods research design, comprising an analysis of history textbooks, a survey among final year student teachers about their teaching of history, and school-based interviews with primary school children: What opportunities are available for children to develop temporal ways of knowing? How do student teachers experience being apprenticed into the available culture for teaching history and understanding temporality at primary level? What insights do the cognitive-developmental and sociocultural perspectives on learning provide for understanding the dynamics of children’s temporal ways of knowing? The study argues that the skill of developing a deeper understanding of time is a key prerequisite in connecting with, and constructing, understandings and frameworks of the past. The study advances a view of temporality as complex, multi-faceted and developmental. The findings have a potential contribution to make in influencing policy and pedagogy in establishing an elaborated and well-defined curriculum framework for developing temporal cognition at both national and international levels.

Decolonizing Pedagogies: Interrupting the Settler Colonial Narrative of Landownership in Ontario Social Science and History Curriculum

Drawing upon Ontario Social Science and History curriculum documents and textbook imagery and language, this paper examines how narratives of settler landownership strategically present Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples within the Canadian grand narrative. The curriculum and text material educators and learners are guided by ignore ongoing colonial violence towards Indigenous peoples and perpetuate the ideology of inevitable ‘peaceful’ interrelationships in national contexts. Learners develop identities in relation to land and how land is acquired. They come to understand themselves as part of a just nation in the particular sequence of Canadian Social Science and History teaching and learning. To go beyond simply adding content about Indigenous peoples in the classroom, educators and learners must adapt a decolonial approach to instead learn from Indigenous perspectives. Such a methodology would require the opening of a “third space” where the transmission of western curricular knowledge is interrupted. Educators and learners must create a space for problematizing the source itself and deconstruct the national grand narrative using inquiry, questioning and reflection, rather than repetition and regurgitation. This analysis reveals that particular placements of Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians in curriculum and classroom text material must be challenged by educators and learners to disrupt colonial narratives and to seek ongoing reconciliatory opportunities in and beyond the school walls.

Receptive Vocabulary of CLIL and Non-CLIL Primary and Secondary School Learners

CLIL instruction has been reported to be beneficial for foreign language vocabulary learning since CLIL students show higher vocabulary profiles than students of their same age in traditional EFL contexts. However, to our knowledge, the receptive vocabulary knowledge of CLIL and non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary education has not been examined yet. Hence, this study aims at comparing the receptive vocabulary size 79 CLIL primary learners with the receptive vocabulary knowledge of 331 non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary school. Sex-based differences were also analysed. The 2k Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) was used for the purposes of the study. Results revealed that learners’ receptive vocabulary sizes lie within the most frequent 1000 words, non-CLIL secondary school students throw better results than primary students but the differences between the secondary group and the CLIL group are not statistically significant. As for sex-based differences, we found no significant differences among the groups. These findings led us to believe that the CLIL approach offers a benefit for vocabulary acquisition since CLIL learners have been exposed to the foreign language for a shorter period of time and the results are quite similar to their non-CLIL secondary school partners.

Towards guidelines for curriculum design and development in English language teacher education in Cambodian higher education institutions

In the current Cambodian higher education sector, there is little regulation of standards in curriculum design of undergraduate degrees in English language teacher education. The researcher, in the course of his professional work in the Curriculum and Policy Office at the Department of Higher Education, has seen evidence that most universities tend to copy their curriculum from one source, the curriculum of the Institute of Foreign Languages, the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Their programs fail to impose any entry standards, accepting students who pass the high school exam without any entrance examination. It is possible for a student to enter university with satisfactory scores in all subjects but English. Therefore, not many graduates are able to fulfil the professional requirements of the roles they are supposed to take. Neau (2010) claims that many Cambodian EFL teachers do not reach a high performance standard due to their low English language proficiency and poor background in teacher education. The main purpose of this study is to establish key guidelines for developing curricula for English language teacher education for all the universities across the country. It examines the content of the Bachelor‘s degree of Education in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (B Ed in TEFL) and Bachelor‘s degree of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BA in TESOL) curricula adopted in Cambodian universities on the basis of criteria proposed in current curriculum research. It also investigates the perspectives of Cambodian EFL teachers on the areas of knowledge and skill they need in order to perform their English teaching duties in Cambodia today. The areas of knowledge and skill offered in the current curricula at Cambodian higher education institutions (HEIs), the framework of the knowledge base for EFL teacher education and general higher education, and the areas of knowledge and skill Cambodian EFL teachers perceive to be important, are compared so as to identify any gaps in the current English language teacher education curricula in the Cambodian HEIs. The existence of gaps show what domains of knowledge and skill need to be included in the English language teacher education curricula at Cambodian HEIs. These domains are those identified by previous curriculum researchers in both general and English language teacher education at tertiary level. Therefore, the present study provides useful insights into the importance of including appropriate content in English language teacher education curricula. Mixed methods are employed in this study. The course syllabi and the descriptions within the curricula in five Cambodian HEIs are analysed qualitatively based on the framework of knowledge and skills for EFL teachers, which is formed by looking at the knowledge base for second language teachers suggested by the methodologists and curriculum specialists whose work is elaborated on the review of literature. A quantitative method is applied to analyse the perspectives of 120 Cambodian EFL teachers on areas of knowledge and skills they should possess. The fieldwork was conducted between June and August, 2014. The analysis reveals that the following areas are included in the curricula at the five universities: communication skills, general knowledge, knowledge of teaching theories, teaching skills, pedagogical reasoning and decision making skills, subject matter knowledge, contextual knowledge, cognitive abilities, and knowledge of social issues. Additionally, research skills are included in three curricula while society and community involvement is in only one. Further, information and communication technology, which is outlined in the Education Strategies Plan (2006-2010), forms part of four curricula while leadership skills form part of two. This study demonstrates ultimately that most domains that are directly and indirectly related to language teaching competence are not sufficiently represented in the current curricula. On the basis of its findings, the study concludes with a set of guidelines that should inform the design and development of TESOL and TEFL curricula in Cambodia.

Integrating Visual and Verbal Literacies in the Early Childhood Classroom

Young children have the strong desire to use all of the communicative tools their cultures and families offer them. They want to be able to do all of the things that the powerful people they admire can do, including talking, writing, drawing, using the computer, and otherwise creating and sharing ideas, memories, solutions, even jokes and feelings. Today, we live in a time when the communicative tools are changing rapidly, practically exploding before our eyes in terms of the formats and media available to us in complex combinations not seen before. What do these technological changes mean for how we can support children's development toward literacy? An integrated arts curriculum has long been favored by many educators, but today there are more reasons than ever to implement such a philosophy. From communications theory comes a new understanding of how modern technologies demand that children learn to "read" and "write" messages involving complex combinations and integrations of visual and verbal formats. From psychology come insights about intelligence being multiple not unitary, as well as ecological perception theory offering a well-accepted framework for analyzing the affordances and expressive possibilities of different media. From education come fresh approaches to integrated curriculum, including a philosophy and pedagogy from Reggio Emilia, Italy, that combines well with current thinking by North Americans. Altogether, we have many rationales and exciting strategies at hand for launching young children toward an integrated visual and verbal literacy that involves substance, challenge, and discipline, as well as innovation, creativity, and freedom.