It ain't just what you do and the way that you do it: why discourse matters in higher education communities of practice

A number of Australian universities have established and sponsored interdisciplinary communities of practice (CoPs) to develop teaching and learning. CoPs are popularly defined as groups of people who share a passion for something and, together, learn how to do it better. Without further specification, this definition is of limited use in understanding intentionally established CoPs in higher education settings. The term CoP is used and applied in a range of ways in higher education and has been accompanied by some scholarly debate about the meaning and relevance of CoPs to academe. The prevalent response to such debate has been to propose typologies. While typology can be useful, epistemology and discourse are also significant in understanding and developing higher education CoPs. In this paper I focus on discourse surrounding CoPs as a conceptual and developmental factor which has been insufficiently considered in the literature on higher education CoPs. I draw on findings from interviews with 33 CoP members and facilitators in three Australian universities. My findings indicate that discourse surrounding CoPs is significant in shaping notions of participatory value. Connecting with the literature, my findings also reveal a ‘big D’ Discourse of collegiality whereby CoPs offer social support and knowledge sharing to build capacity, as well as spaces in which a collegial academic identity can thrive. This coincides in complex and unpredictable ways with a Discourse of managerialism. I conclude that discourse should supplement typology and epistemology in adaptively shaping understandings of contemporary higher education CoPs and their future development.

Collaborative reflective experience and practice in education explored through self-study and arts-based research

Eight teacher educators used self-study methodology to engage in reflective practice to overcome their isolation as individual teachers and researchers, and to facilitate professional development. Their research question asked: How can we continue to develop our teaching practice to ensure we are high quality, contemporary teacher educators? They contributed collaboratively in one overarching research project as well as through several focussed projects that explored issues in their individual teaching practices including: sustainability, creativity, curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and the learning experiences for students. This paper explores the outcomes from collaborative inquiry that five of the eight educator/researchers engaged in during a research-writing retreat. It documents their experience using arts-based strategies in which drawings were created about their experiences of engaging in a collaborative project and smaller focussed self-study projects. Analysis involved inquiring into each other’s drawings through recorded conversation. The metaphoric representations found through analysing the drawings provided insight into participants’ teaching practices and identities as teacher educators. Six months later when the participants had developed their projects further and used other artsbased methods to understand these experiences, they reflected on the key issues for their teaching practices that had arisen from undertaking this Collaborative Reflective Experience and Practice in Education research. Arts-based inquiries and reflective analysis over six months, constitute this paper. The experiences and analyses are shared to show how creating and sharing metaphoric meaning of visual representations is useful in self-study research to drill down into the real issues. Importantly, this in-depth sharing provides authentic interdisciplinary links when individual educators share their own approaches to teaching in their disciplined area. Findings suggest that gaining new insights into each other’s discipline-based approaches to teacher education through these methods, revealed different responses to pedagogical challenges and allowed for new possibilities for understanding the landscape of teacher education.

Interdisciplinary mathematics education: a state of the art

This book provides an essential introduction to the state-of the-art in interdisciplinary Mathematics Education. First, it begins with an outline of the field’s relevant historical, conceptual and theoretical backgrounds, what “discipline” means and how inter-, trans-, and meta-disciplinary activities can be understood. Relevant theoretical perspectives from Marx, Foucault and Vygotsky are explained, along with key ideas in theory, e.g. boundaries, discourses, identity, and the division of labour in practice. Second, the book reviews research findings of mainly empirical studies on interdisciplinary work involving mathematics in education, in all stages of education that have become disciplined. For example, it reports that a common theme in studies in middle and high schools is assessing the motivational benefits for the learner of subsuming disciplinary motives and even practices to extra-academic problem-solving activities; this is counter-balanced by the effort needed to overcome the disciplinary boundaries in academic institutions, and in professional identities. These disciplinary boundaries are less obviously limitations in middle and primary schools, and in some vocational courses. Third and finally, it explores selected case studies that illustrate these concepts and findings, both in terms of the motivational benefits for learners and the institutional and other boundaries involved.