Examining preservice teachers’ applied learning experiences in the Teacher Education Done Differently (TEDD) project

Reviews have criticised universities for not embedding sufficient praxis for preparing preservice teachers for the profession. The Teacher Education Done Differently (TEDD) project explored praxis development for preservice teachers within existing university coursework. This mixed-method investigation involved an analysis of multiple case studies with preservice teacher involvement in university programs, namely: Ed Start for practicum I (n=26), III (n=23), and IV (n=12); Move It Use It (Health and Physical Education program; n=38), Studies of Society and its Environment (SOSE, n=24), and Science in Schools (n=38). The project included preservice teachers teaching primary students at the campus site in gifted education (the B-GR8 program, n=22). The percentage range for preservice teacher agreement of their praxis development leading up to practicum I, III, and IV was between 91-100% with a high mean score range (4.26-5.00). Other university units had similar findings except for SOSE (i.e., percentage range: 10-86%; M range: 2.33-4.00; SD range: 0.55-1.32). Qualitative data presented an understanding of the praxis development leading to the conclusion that additional applied learning experiences as lead-up days for field experiences and as avenues for exploring the teaching of specific subject areas presented opportunities for enhancing praxis.

The Games Concept Approach (GCA) as a mandated practice : views of Singaporean teachers

This paper reports on the views of Singaporean teachers of a mandated curriculum innovation aimed at changing the nature of games pedagogy within the physical education curriculum framework in Singapore. Since its first appearance over 20 years ago, Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), as an approach to games pedagogy has gathered support around the world. Through a process of evolution TGfU now has many guises and one of the latest of these is the Games Concept Approach (GCA) a name given to this pedagogical approach in Singapore. As part of a major national curricular reform project the GCA was identified as the preferred method of games teaching and as a result was mandated as required professional practice within physical education teaching. To prepare teachers for the implementation phase, a training program was developed by the National Institute of Education in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and well known experts in the field from the United States. For this part of the study, 22 teachers from across Singapore were interviewed. The data were used to create three fictional narratives, a process described by Sparkes (2002a) and used more recently by Ryan (2005) in the field of literacy. The stories were framed using Foucault’s (1980/1977) notion of governmentality and Bernstein’s (1996) notion of regulative discourse. The narratives reveal tales of confusion, frustration but also of hope and enthusiasm.

Recognising change and seeking affirmation: Themes for embeddding Indigenous knowledges on teaching practicum

The imperative for Indigenous education in Australia is influenced by national political, social and economic discourses as Australian education systems continue to grapple with an agreed aspiration of full participation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Innovations within and policies guiding our education systems are often driven by agendas of reconciliation, equity, equality in participation and social justice. In this paper, we discuss key themes that emerged from a recent Australian Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) research project which investigated ways in which preservice teachers from one Australian university embedded Indigenous knowledges (IK) on teaching practicum . Using a phenomenological approach, the case involved 25 preservice teacher and 23 practicum supervisor participants, over a 30 month investigation. Attention was directed to the nature of subjective (lived) experiences of participants in these pedagogical negotiations and thus preservice and supervising teacher voice was actively sought in naming and analysing these experiences. Findings revealed that change, knowledge, help and affirmation were key themes for shaping discourses around Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in the Australian curriculum and defined the nature of the pedagogical relationships between novice and experienced teachers. We focus particularly on the need for change and affirmation by preservice teachers and their teaching practicum supervisors as they developed their pedagogical relationships whilst embedding Indigenous knowledges in learning and teaching.

Complimentary collaborations: Teachers and researchers co-developing best practices in art education

Australia is currently experiencing a huge cultural shift as it moves from a State-based curriculum, to a national education system. The Australian State-based bodies that currently manage teacher registration, teacher education course accreditation, curriculum frameworks and syllabi are often complex organisations that hold conflicting ideologies about education and teaching. The development of a centralised system, complete with a single accreditation body and a national curriculum can be seen as a reaction to this complexity. At the time of writing, the Australian Curriculum is being rolled out in staggered phases across the states and territories of Australia. Phase one has been implemented, introducing English, Mathematics, History and Science. Subsequent phases (Humanities and Social Sciences, the Arts, Technologies, Health and Physical Education, Languages, and year 9-10 work studies) are intended to follow. Forcing an educational shift of this magnitude is no simple task; not least because the States and Territories have and continue to demonstrate varying levels of resistance to winding down their own curricula in favour of new content with its unfamiliar expectations and organisations. The full implementation process is currently far from over, and far from being fully resolved. The Federal Government has initiated a number of strategies to progress the implementation, such as the development of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to aid professional educators to implement the new curriculum. AITSL worked with professional and peak specialist bodies to develop Illustrations of Practice (hereafter IoP) for teachers to access and utilise. This paper tells of the building of one IoP, where a graduate teacher and a university lecturer collaborated to construct ideas and strategies to deliver visual arts lessons to early childhood students in a low Socio- Economic Status [SES] regional setting and discusses the experience in terms of its potential for professional learning in art education.

The Art of Studio Teaching

This project began in 2013, with the award of an internal QUT Teaching and Learning grant. The task we wished to undertake was to document and better understand the role of studio teaching practice in the Creative Industries Faculty. While it was well understood that the Faculty had long used studio pedagogies as a key part of its teaching approach, organizational and other changes made it productive and timely to consider how the various study areas within the Faculty were approaching studio teaching. Chief among these changes were innovations in the use of technology in teaching, and at an organizational level the merging of what were once two schools within different faculties into a newly-structured Creative Industries Faculty. The new faculty consists of two schools, Media, Entertainment and Creative Art (MECA) and Design. We hoped to discover more about how studio techniques were developing alongside an ever-increasing number of options for content delivery, assessment, and interaction with students. And naturally we wanted to understand such developments across the broad range of nineteen study areas now part of the Creative Industries Faculty. This e-book represents the first part of our project, which in the main consisted in observing the teaching practices used in eight units across the Faculty, and then interviews with the unit coordinators involved. In choosing units, we opted for a broad opening definition of ‘studio’ to include not only traditional studios but also workshops and tutorials in which we could identify a component of studio teaching as enumerated by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s Studio Teaching Project: • A culture, a creative community created by a group of students and studio teachers working together for periods of time • A mode of teaching and learning where students and studio teachers interact in a creative and reflective process • A program of projects and activities where content is structured to enable ‘learning in action’ • A physical space or constructed environment in which the teaching and learning can take place (Source: http://www.studioteaching.org/?page=what_is_studio) The units we chose to observe, and which we hoped would represent something of the diversity of our study areas, were: • Dance Project 1 • Furniture Studies • Wearable Architecture • Fashion Design 4 • Industrial Design 6 • Advanced Writing Practice 3 • Introduction to Creative Writing • Studio Art Practice 2 Over the course of two semesters in 2013, we attended classes, presentations, and studio time in these units, and then conducted interviews that we felt would give further insight into both individual and discipline-specific approaches to studio pedagogies. We asked the same questions in each of the interviews: • Could you describe the main focus and aims of your unit? • How do you use studio time to achieve those aims? • Can you give us an example of the kind of activities you use in your studio teaching? • What does/do these example(s) achieve in terms of learning outcomes? • What, if any, is the role of technology in your studio teaching practice? • What do you consider distinctive about your approach to studio teaching, or the approach taken in your discipline area? The unit coordinators’ responses to these questions form some of the most interesting and valuable material in this book, and point to both consistencies in approach and teaching philosophies, as well as areas of difference. We believe that both can help to raise our critical awareness of studio teaching, and provide points of comparison for the future development of studio pedagogy in the Creative Industries. In each of the following pages, the interviews are placed alongside written descriptions of the units, their aims and outcomes, assessment models, and where possible photographs and video footage, as well as additional resources that may be useful to others engaged in studio teaching.

‘Nothing will prevent me from doing a good job’. The professionalisation of part-time teaching staff in further and adult education

Approximately 85,000 part-time teaching staff working in further education (FE) and adult and community learning (ACL) are often seen as ‘a problem’. The intrinsic ‘part-timeness’ of these staff tends to marginalise them: they remain under-recognised and largely unsupported. Yet this picture is over-simplified. This article examines how part-time staff make creative use of professional autonomy and agency to mitigate problematic ‘casual employment’ conditions, reporting on results from Learning and Skills Development Agency-sponsored research (2002–2006) with 700 part-time staff in the learning and skills sector. The question of agency was reported as a key factor in part-time employment. Change is necessary for the professional agency of part-timers to be harnessed as the sector responds to ambitious sectoral ‘improvement’ agendas following the Foster Report and FE White Paper. Enhanced professionalisation for part-time staff needs greater recognition and inclusion in change agendas.

Making it "click": collaborative perceptions of creative practice in art education /

Making it "Click": Collaborative Perceptions ofCreative Practice in Art Education examined the teaching practice of 6 art educators who conducted their work through the Niagara Falls Art Gallery's (NFAG) in-schools and Children's Museum programmes. These community resources service the elementary levels of participatory Public, Catholic and French schools in the Niagara Peninsula. The goal of this research was to find ways in which these teachers could explore their creative potential as art educators. The "click," a term introduced by participants indicating the coming together of all positive factors towards creativity, became the central theme behind this study. Research revealed that the effective creative process was not merely a singular phase, but rather a series of 4 processes: 1 , gathering knowledge; 2, intuitive and experiential; 3, the informal presentation of information in which creativity as a process was explored; and 4, formal presentation that took the analysis of information to a deeper, holistic level. To examine the ways in which experience and knowledge could be shared and brought together through a collaborative process, this study employed data collection that used literature research, interviews, focus group discussions, and personal journal entries. Follow-up discussions that assessed the effectiveness of action research, took place VA months after the initial meetings. It is hoped that this study might assist in creative educational practices, for myself as a member of the NFAG teaching team, for colleagues in the art programmes, art educators, and other teachers in the broader disciplines of education.

An exploration of women elementary school teachers' perceptions of how their decision to return to teaching part-time from a maternity leave influences their professional and personal lives /

The purpose of this research was to explore women elementary teachers' perceptions of how their decision to return to teaching part-time from a maternity leave influences their professional and personal lives. The investigation focused on the decisions surrounding a mother's choice to reenter the teaching profession parttime in a field where each mother had previously been employed full-time. A collective case study was undertaken based on an in-depth interview with five mothers who had made the choice to return to the classroom part-time. The data collected in this study were analyzed and interpreted using qualitative methods. The following four major themes emerged from the interviews: decisionmaking process, challenges faced by mothers who teach part-time, the importance of support, and the enhancement of instructional practice from parenthood. Using these four themes, an analysis was conducted to examine the similarities and differences among the experiences of the participants. The mothers' reflections, my analysis, and the related literature were used at the conclusion of this report to compile implications for teaching practice, theory, and further research.

Evaluation of a professional development curriculum in movement education and adapted physical activity for invisible disabilities : a critical cross-case analysis

Movement education and adapted physical activity are content areas not addressed in pre-service education or in-service training for Ontario practitioners working with individuals with disabilities in physical environments. Consequently, physical activity is often overlooked by service providers in programming and intervention for exceptional young learners. A formative evaluation, multiple-case study design was employed in this research in which a purposeful sample of expert practitioners performed a guided, descriptive evaluation of a three-day professional development workshop curriculum designed to supplement these areas lacking in professional preparation within their respective cohorts. Case-by-case and comparative analyses illustrated the inherent assumptions and societal constraints which prioritize the structure of professional development within the education system and other government organizations providing services for school-aged persons with disabilities in Ontario. Findings, discussed from a critical postmodern perspective, illustrate the paradoxical nature of Western values and prevailing mind/body dichotomy that guide professional practice in these fields.

Narratives of Experience in Education: Living and Working Through Poverty in a Rural Community

In this study, I use my own experiences in education as a former elementary student, research assistant, and as a current secondary school teacher, to examine how living in a marginalised rural community challenged by poverty affected my formal education. The purpose of this study was to use stories to: (a) explore my formative elementary education growing up in a community that was experiencing poverty, and; (b) to examine the impact and implications of these experiences for me as a teacher and researcher considering the topic of poverty and education. This study used narrative inquiry to explore stories of education, focusing on experiences living and working in a rural community. My role in the study was both as participant and researcher as I investigate, through story, how I was raised in a marginalised, rural community faced with challenges of poverty and how I relate to my current role as a teacher working in a similar, rural high school. My own experiences and reflections form the basis of the study, but I used the contributions of secondary participants to offer alternative perspective of my interpretation of events. Participants in this study were asked to write about and/or retell their lived stories of working in areas affected by challenging circumstances. From my stories and those of secondary participants, three themes were explored: student authorship, teaching practice, and community involvement. An examination of these themes through commonplaces of place, sociality and time (Connelly and Clandinin, 2006) provide a context for other educators and researchers to consider or reconsider teaching practices in school communities affected by poverty.

A transversalidade do tema meio ambiente na prática pedagógica

A educação é notadamente uma das ações mais importantes de mobilização socioambiental e cada vez mais se reconhece o papel transformador da escola frente às problemáticas ambientais. No ano de 1997 o Brasil publicou os PCNs (Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais) que traziam os Temas Transversais, dentre eles o Meio Ambiente, para serem inseridos no cotidiano escolar. Esse contexto serviu de base para nossa investigação que teve por objetivo verificar como se dá a abordagem do tema Meio Ambiente, no que se refere à sua transversalidade, na prática pedagógica entre professores e alunos do ensino fundamental. Para tanto foi utilizada uma abordagem quanti-qualitativa, utilizando-se de técnicas como questionário e entrevistas, envolvendo 12 professores e 357 alunos de escolas públicas estaduais e municipais de dois municípios vizinhos, localizados no estado de Pernambuco, Brasil. A investigação esteve apoiada no pensamento de diversos autores, dentre os quais destacamos Carvalho, I. (2004, 2006, 2007); Gadotti, M. (2005, 2008, 2010); Gavidia, V. (2002); Guimarães, M. (2003, 2004, 2009); Leff, E. (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010); Loureiro, C. (2004, 2005, 2006); Reigotta, M. (2007, 2008, 2009) e Yus, R. (1998, 2002). Com a análise dos dados obtidos concluímos que o trabalho docente envolvendo o tema Meio Ambiente ainda não atingiu o patamar transversal, embora utilizando abordagens significativas, como projetos pedagógicos, a prática interdisciplinar que a transversalidade requer ainda não foi consolidada, indicando a necessidade de aperfeiçoamento profissional - teórico e prático - sobre a aplicabilidade do tema.

Orientação sexual como tema transversal em escolas públicas de Curralinhos-PI

Este estudo objetivou analisar a prática docente relacionada à orientação sexual enquanto tema transversal em escolas públicas no munícipio de Curralinhos-PI, e neste encalço, identificar as formas de práticas docentes relacionadas à orientação sexual enquanto tema transversal; caracterizar os fatores condicionantes para a realização da abordagem da orientação sexual em sala de aula; verificar a contribuição das oficinas do Programa Saúde e Prevenção na Escola (SPE) na formação continuada da prática docente e, a percepção de professores e alunos, quanto à relevância da abordagem do tema em questão de forma sistemática e transversal nas referidas escolas. Trata-se de um estudo com abordagem qualitativa e quantitativa com função de complementaridade, realizada em duas escolas públicas (X e Y) do município de Curralinhos-PI, de ensino fundamental e ensino médio, respectivamente, envolvendo uma amostra de 8 (oito) professores, que participaram das oficinas do SPE e 116 alunos, sendo 54 da escola X e 62 da escola Y. Os instrumentos da coleta de dados foram a entrevista e o questionário semiestruturados, originários de um roteiro de questões-guia. A coleta de dados foi realizada no segundo semestre de 2011, nos meses de agosto a setembro. Os resultados apontaram que é grande a necessidade de se discutir e implementar a orientação sexual no espaço escolar, pois embora a maioria dos professores entrevistados reconheçam a importância de se trabalhar a orientação sexual como tema transversal e demonstrarem conhecer esta proposta dos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (PCNs), ainda são difusas as práticas incorporadas em suas atividades pedagógicas. Quanto aos alunos, evidenciaram que ainda se fazem presentes dúvidas e angústias, assim como dificuldades para a lida com o tema da sexualidade.

Consciência corporal e educação física escolar: possibilidades de intervenção

The investigation about the body consciousness in school Physical Education had as main objective reporting a possibility of intervention, linking it directly to the contents of Physical Education and considering it as a crosscutting theme in this research. In this scope, we worked specifically with two contents of Physical Education - knowledge about the body and fights. During the study, we are going to discuss about teaching strategies for the themes of body awareness. To develop this work, we used the following study questions: how is treated the body consciousness in Physical Education and how it has been addressed in educational interventions? What are the difficulties found to the themes of body awareness on different issues of school Physical Education? How body awareness thematized in contents in Physical Education is received by the students and what are the attitudes demonstrated by them during the development of these lessons? Based from questions of study, we used the following methodological tools: participant observation, interviews, photographic records, debates, films, dramatizations and dynamics, which they were performed to stimulate students' critical thinking about their body and the other children s one. The research with ethnographic characteristics was conducted in two schools: one elementary school I, in Natal and one elementary school II, held in the municipality of the João Câmara, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. We developed a structure in order that the three dimensions of contents conceptual, procedural and attitudinal were experienced by students. The work is structured in five chapters. At first, we made an introduction to justify the motivations that led us to write about body awareness at school. In the second chapter, we discussed reflection about the body and its possibilities of understanding, reflecting on the body and how this awareness was being treated in physical education classes at school. In the third chapter, dealing with the body awareness and dialogue with the Physical Education, we had made a theoretical approach, from authors such as CLARO (1988), NÓBREGA (2000), ARAGÃO (2004), MELO (2006), LORENZETTO and MATTHIESEN (2008) in order to situate the body consciousness and its relationship with physical education. In the fourth chapter, we talked about body awareness thematized in physical education contents: knowledge about the body and fights. We introduced the teaching experience developed in the school and we discussed with authors such as OLIVIER (2000), DARIDO AND RANGEL (2008), among others, about how was the reflection about the body leaving of these experiences. The fifth chapter was intended to closing remarks, in which we concluded that the body awareness, treated in physical education in school by sociocultural and historical aspects, it will contribute in building a man, a body and a society. Although the body consciousness is crafted in a few moments of Physical Education, based on the practices of body awareness or alternatives; in our proposal, we pointed out another perspective to work with body awareness, bringing its elements to permeate and pass through the contents of Physical Education. At work we can see a suggestion for that these experiences are carried out by other Physical Education professionals, obviously adapting the activities according to age and educational level of students

Ampliação do ensino fundamental: compreendendo o fazer do professor

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)