Contextualising learning through the participatory construction of an environmental education programme

Strengthening links between school and community is critical for improving people's participation in environmental issues. However, Mexican education programmes are generally unrelated to rural students' life experience and are planned without considering either teachers' or students' opinions. This article describes the participatory construction of a preparatory school environmental education (EE) programme in Ixtlan de Juarez, a Mexican indigenous community internationally recognised for sustainable forest management. The qualitative research methods used are based on the action research methodology. Results from interviews conducted with the preparatory school's headmaster, the coordinator, and nine teachers provided the needed documentation of the school site for contextualising learning activities. Feedback during focus groups with six students, three teachers, five local communal authorities, and two researchers highlighted that all participants perceived the need for creating an educational programme focused on local forest management. The contents and activities of the programme were designed by the focus group's participants. The programme has been continuously taught by teachers and forest workers since 2005 and was officially integrated with the preparatory school science curriculum in 2006. This participative educational experience has thus transformed the mandatory school curriculum in Ixtlan.

Judgement, reflexivitiy and interdisiciplinarity : reframing construction management education

A core skill of the construction management professional is decision making. Disciplinary content knowledge provides the basis for effective decision making, but is largely insufficient in contexts where projects demand a responsive and flexible approach to scenarios as they evolve and change. As Beckett and Hager suggest, ‘professional practice requires a much richer set of phenomena – a capacity to make judgements, sensitivity to intuition and an awareness of the purposes of the actions are all involved ‘(2002: 12). This paper begins by exploring judgement to develop a conceptual model for initiating and developing decision making skills for construction management professionals. The capacity to respond to change in a structured and self aware manner is examined through the concept of reflexivity, a concept borrowed from sociology. Reflexivity is an individual’s capacity to be aware, responsive and adaptability to constant changing and evolving environments. Coupled with this is the challenge for all built environment professionals in the need to integrate knowledge and processes from various specialist knowledge domains, particularly design domains. The conceptual model is then refined by synthesising concepts from interdisciplinary research.

The aim of this paper is to describe a framework to analyse and review current undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs offerings from Deakin University in the School of Architecture and Building. Following Boud and Falchikov (2007) this framework starts with practice, that is, the actual ‘doing’ of construction management as the basis for shaping curriculum development.

The social construction of leadership education

Most leadership theories assume that leadership is a quality of leaders (e.g., trait theory), or a response to environments (e.g., situational theory), or a combination of both (e.g., contingency theory). In all these approaches leadership is something knowable and definite. However, after years of research there is no agreed definition of what leadership is or any universal agreement about who might be regarded a leader. This paper outlines an alternative approach in which leadership is a contested construct and describes two engaging teaching techniques that align pedagogic approach with the underlying theory. In doing so this paper makes a case for the adoption of socially-constructed theories in leadership education

Dual sector education : Tafe and higher education collaborate in construction management

Curriculum collaboration between TAFE (vocational college) and universities in Australia has had a chequered history. Attempts to collaborate on curriculum development and delivery have mostly been at the margins of articulation and educational pathways. This study examines a pilot project in dual sector construction management education conducted at RMIT University over a two year period. The study demonstrates the challenges with mutual curriculum development between TAFE and higher education in Australia, and demonstrates the methods utilised to overcome these challenges. The results of the projects reveal that the benefits to students in hands-on experiences, theoretical knowledge gained and practical demonstrations were invaluable and worthy of ongoing research and development. The paper also raises critical questions about flexibility and mobility in educational institutions in Australia.

The best of both worlds – how vocational education can enhance university studies in construction management

Australian post-compulsory vocational or technical education and higher education (university) has traditionally been delivered separately. Attempts to collaborate on curriculum development and delivery have mostly been at the margins of articulation and educational pathways. This study examines a pilot project in construction management education conducted at RMIT University over a two-year period. The study demonstrates the challenges with mutual curriculum development between vocational and higher education in Australia and demonstrates the methods utilised to overcome these challenges. The results of the project reveal that the benefits to students in hands-on experiences, theoretical knowledge gained and practical demonstrations were invaluable and worthy of ongoing research and development. The article also raises critical questions about flexibility and mobility in educational institutions in Australia.

Pathways to formally assessed work placement : employers' perspectives on collaborative education in the Australian construction industry

The QS and construction industry is uniquely impacted by project-based work environments. This creates special challenges for collaborative, work-integrated education of pre-professional students. This research is based on investigating the attitudes of employer’s towards the use of formally assessed internships. The study comprised two stages- firstly a series of pilot interviews were undertaken with employers to test a number known issues and secondly, the results from the interviews were used to refine a set of questions that were put to a large focus group of employers who were invited from across the property and construction sector in Australia. The results showed that many employer organisations expressed considerable goodwill towards collaborative education with universities. However, the challenges caused by project-based work environments restrict employers' ability to provide comprehensive learning opportunities. This research discusses some of the distinctive issues associated with work-integrated learning in the construction industry and proposes some potential opportunities for overcoming these restrictions.

Developing online construction technology resources in tectonic design education

We outline issues of importance in relation to tectonic design within the architectural profession and the relationship to architectural education in Australia. Twelve years of research and curriculum development at Deakin University is discussed, involving the creation of online resources and case studies, digitally-integrated projects relating to building construction and design studio education. The ethos behind the Construction Primer of engaging students as ‘amateur researchers’ in a way that ensures ‘that student research work is worth more than course assessment’ forms the pedagogical foundation of much of this work. A model of Socially Networked Construction Technology education has been developed that integrates social networks and the Internet to engage students in tectonic design within and outside the classroom through authentic curricula. Through the use of Virtual Galleries, Blogs, YouTube and social networks, a culture of peer learning and sharing has been developed. Through shared knowledge facilitated through social networks, great potential lies for expanding the synergies between higher order learning and online resource development for design decision support.

Hurdling the barriers : enabling student pathways from VET to higher education in building and construction management

Building effective pathways for students to transfer from and between education sectors and qualifications has been the subject of extensive research, policy development and practice over the last 20 years, both in Australia and internationally. Different researchers and policy-makers have examined this topic from various angles, but all from the perspective that improved pathways constitute an essential feature in a more flexible and integrated tertiary education system.

Interdisciplinary project applied to engineering education: construction of a miniature ceramic industry

The greatest challenge of undergraduate engineering courses is to encourage creativity, cooperation with other students, teamwork, and motivation in the first years of their courses. While students have little or no contact with advanced disciplines, it is very difficult to attract their interests and encourage them to develop the skills in their undergraduate courses. This work aims to achieve these objectives through a mini-factory project involving the construction of a production line of ceramic tiles on a laboratory scale, from the ceramic processing using raw materials to the shipping of the final product. Having been given an established monthly demand for ceramic tiles, the students determined the construction requirements of the mini-factory, as they have created the layout, including the processing equipment, the dimensioning of equipment, and its operational structure. This article intends to describe the successful creation of the ceramic tile mini-factory, including the objectives, benefits, and inherent difficulties of the process and the receptivity of the exercise by the students involved.

Controversy between curriculum design and curriculum development of online "highly specialized" education in the field of construction

Nowadays, on a global level, the Higher Education System has a complex and broad horizon of curricular tools to use in the teaching and learning process. In addition to these new educational instruments, full of possibilities, we face specific socio-economic conditions that affect in a significantly way the Curriculum Development in certain knowledge areas (areas traditionally built on a methodology based on a physical presence of students in the classroom). Some areas such as Restoration, Rehabilitation or Construction Pathologies, and the construction sector in general, require very defined and particular knowledge that only a small number of experts claim as specialized training. All these aspects condition the teaching methodology performed in a physical classroom at a university campus (the only option used until recent years) and made us consider the integration of online teaching in these areas too. The present work shows the teaching methodology used for the development of two online courses, where we offer distance learning for "highly specialized" formation in the Edification area (an area where traditionally there was only classroom training). At the beginning, both courses were designed by classroom training, but got a really small number of applications due to the specialized topic proposed. Later, we proposed a "Curriculum Redesign" of the contents, offering an online modality, which implied a significant demand both within and outside the university area. A notable feature of this educational experience is the great spectrum opened for attendees of both courses in the online version. This situation improved significantly the "Curriculum Development" for the student and implied an interesting new proposal on the offered contents and materials (what would have been really difficult to get in a face to face classroom). In conclusion, the absence of certain types of specialized contents in the academic university curricula makes essential to raise new methodologies to save the gap in this area through additional training courses as those analyzed in this paper. Thus, our experience opens a debate on the appropriateness of implementing online training in relation to the face to face training in constructive content subjects and, especially, presents a new scheme, not without controversy, for the curriculum design.