Discovering the Parameters of Sound Creation: Physics Informed String Pedagogy

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

A Way of Doing Things: Exploring and Applying the Alexander Technique for Choral Conductors

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

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.

Productive leaders and productive leadership: Schools as learning organisations

This paper draws on a three-year study of 24 schools involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers and principals. Through an examination of three cases, sets of leadership practices that focus on the learning of both students and teachers are described. This set of practices is called productive leadership and how these practices are dispersed among productive leaders in three schools is described. This form of leadership supports the achievement of both academic and social outcomes through a focus on pedagogy, a culture of care and related organizational processes. The concepts of learning organisations and teacher professional learning communities as ways of framing relationships in schools, in which ongoing teacher learning is complementary to student learning, are espoused.

Moving and dancing towards decolonisation in education: An example from an Indigenous Australian performance classroom

This paper explores the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. The author examines what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and teacher, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Major issues and solutions to applied climate education in Australia

In the past decade, Australian agriculture has evolved considerably. During this period, climate variability has been of considerable concern, compounded recently by the threat of climate change. Applied climate education has attempted to keep up-to-date with these developments. Understanding the issues and solutions to applied climate education is a challenge confronting agriculture in Australia. This paper reports on the major issues and solutions to applied climate education in Australia as identified in the literature.

Imagining an interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy

There has been a great deal of discussion about the need for interdisciplinary, applied research to service the needs of the knowledge economy and to solve the broader complex theoretical problems of the twenty-first century. This is known as 'Mode 2' knowledge production. Yet, university research higher degree programs continue to be largely disciplinary-based. While there has been a rise in the number of research students working on industry-related, applied projects, very few research students gain exposure to interdisciplinary research processes. This paper explores several examples of interdisciplinary doctoral programs based in North America and Australia and seeks to draw upon examples of undergraduate interdisciplinary learning and epistemology. In reviewing this theoretical work and a number of strategies implemented at an Australian university, the paper begins to imagine an interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy.

Predestination and freedom in Milton's 'Paradise lost'

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) offers a highly creative seventeenth-century reconstruction of the doctrine of predestination, a reconstruction which both anticipates modern theological developments and sheds important light on the history of predestinarian thought. Moving beyond the framework of post-Reformation controversies, the poem emphasises both the freedom and the universality of electing grace, and the eternally decisive role of human freedom in salvation. The poem erases the distinction between an eternal election of some human beings and an eternal rejection of others, portraying reprobation instead as the temporal self-condemnation of those who wilfully reject their own election and so exclude themselves from salvation. While election is grounded in the gracious will of God, reprobation is thus grounded in the fluid sphere of human decision. Highlighting this sphere of human decision, the poem depicts the freedom of human beings to actualise the future as itself the object of divine predestination. While presenting its own unique vision of predestination, Paradise Lost thus moves towards the influential and distinctively modern formulations of later thinkers like Schleiermacher and Barth.