CREd - Past Events
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- Addressing the Teacher Exodus
- Dawn Nolan and Julia Metcalfe
- On Sustainability Road
- Commercial ethnography
- Literacy and young peoples' lives
- Path modelling in survey research
- Margaret Byrne & Margaret Freund
- VET in SA
- Early interventions in schooling
- Higher Degree Research Supervision
- Redesigning Pedagogies in the North
- Literacy and young peoples' lives
- Commercial ethnography
CREd Seminar Series
Addressing the Teacher Exodus
Friday
November 6th
Presenters: Bruce Johnson, Rosie Le Cornu, Judy Peters and Anna Sullivan
Topic: Addressing the Teacher Exodus: Enhancing early career teacher resilience
and retention in changing times
In this presentation we will report the early findings of a longitudinal
study which aims to investigate how early career teachers negotiate and deal
with challenges to their personal and professional wellbeing during their first
years of teaching. The study is being undertaken (in conjunction with 8 industry
partners) with 60 early career teachers in metropolitan, rural and remote areas
in two Australian states: Western Australia and South Australia. The study
examines:
- How a ‘human resilience’ theoretical framework can be used to study the complex lives of early career teachers to identify the strategies and processes they use to meet the demands of their profession.
- The range of circumstances (influenced by socio-cultural and systemic school policies and practices, personal dispositions, and life events) that put early career teachers ‘at risk’ of leaving the profession.
- What and how personal and contextual factors and processes operate over time to reduce the impact of life stressors on early career teachers.
- What policy initiatives and school based strategies best promote early career teacher resilience.
Professor Bruce Johnson is a Professor of Education at the University of South Australia where he recently completed a four year term as Dean: Research Education. His research interests include human resilience, curriculum theory and development, school reform, and classroom management. He is a Key Researcher in the Hawke Research Institute with an active research program that includes international collaborations with colleagues in the UK.
Dr Anna Sullivan is currently an Adjunct Research Fellow with the School of Education at the University of South Australia. She has a strong commitment to education and a particular interest, background and experience in primary education. Anna has worked at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University. Her current research interests include early career teachers, teaching, classroom management and qualitative research.
Dr Rosie Le Cornu is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education working with undergraduate and graduate entry primary pre-service teachers in their professional experience placements. She is keen to see changes to the ‘professional experience curriculum’, based on the notions of reflection, collaboration and partnerships. and is Convener of the Professional Experience Research Group
Dr Judy Peters is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of South Australia, with particular foci on preservice teachers' work in schools, reflective practice, action research and teacher development. Other research interests include: leadership and conditions for educational change, learning cultures that support constructivist approaches to teaching and learning; and the characteristics of successful early career teachers.
Dawn Nolan and Julia Metcalfe
Friday October 30th
Dawn Nolan
Topic: Community learning at The Otherway Centre
The Centre for Research in Education Equity and Work (CREEW) aims for
social justice and equity through collaborative research. This research is
an inquiry into the experience and meanings of interactions that took place
at the Otherway Centre between Aboriginal Catholics and Afghani Muslim
refugees. They were welcomed at a time when many in Australian society
viewed them with suspicion and hostility.
The research is an interpretive inquiry which seeks to gather the stories,
thoughts and feelings of those involved in past and present events at the
Otherway. The methods used to collect data will comprise audio-recorded
in-depth interviews and observations made at the Otherway as the researcher
becomes a part of every day life there. A postcolonial framework explores
the philosophical, political, economic and sociological consequences of
colonialism and its structure of inequality.
There have been significant changes in the structure of the Otherway and its
functions which are currently being overseen by the Catholic Archbishop of
Adelaide. The planned relocation of the Otherway will restore the focus on
Aboriginal people and their needs. These changes in structure and focus
whilst disconcerting are not insurmountable obstacles to continuing and
completing the research.
Dawn Nolan is a Phd candidate at Mawson Lakes. Her pathway through
University has been in Aboriginal Studies first at Underdale and then the
Unaipon School. She never became a teacher but has long been interested in
the many facets of learning. She was a School Services Officer in a
kindergarten for 16 years. Currently a LAP volunteer for 20 years, and this
year took part in several mentoring programs at Mawson Lakes involving First
year education students and Year 10 high school students.
Julia Metcalfe
Topic: Evolution of holistic ideas of life, learning and
education
I welcome you to share in the process in which I find myself engaged
as an MEd research student.
This work has revealed itself as describing pivotal episodes in my life
that depict the changes in how I see the world and my place in it. I
picture an autobiographical introspective narrative made up of vignettes
or snapshots of my experiences of learning within the different stages
or ‘cultures of consciousness’ that I am inhabiting over the past fifty
years. These vignettes, arising through a contemplative life review
process, will self-select through their capacity to represent
transitions of an evolving consciousness. Theorists and writers will be
drawn upon that help create a rich description of the world-views
underpinning these cultures and assist in describing the impact of such
views on educational practice.
I trust my story (once completed) will inspire others to contemplate
their own lives, learning and evolving consciousness. Through this
experience each of us may envisage ways of being, learning and doing
that resonate more authentically with the world in which we then find
ourselves.
Julia Metcalfe
I consider myself a product of the 50s to 90s scientific-mental-rational
approach to schooling and higher education. Someone moderately
successful in negotiating a path for herself in a competitive
market-driven world. I have inhabited this world in schools,
post-secondary, and tertiary education for almost fifty years as a
student, teacher, and manager. I am an LLB, MEdAdmin, Grad Dip Systems
Analysis, BEd, DipT. Work has been a key motivator in my life. However
in recent years I have found escalating difficulties with convincing
myself of the continuing value of material success: be that positional,
monetary, or some other facet of ego-driven desire. I value learning and
am concerned about the capacity of our current education systems to
support the evolution of consciousness needed to heal ourselves, each
other, and the planet.
On Sustainability Road
Friday October 16th
Presenters: David Lloyd, Kathy Paige, Richard Smith and Sharon Zivkovic
Topic: On Sustainability Road with Nelson, Judy and Doris: Education for Sustainability Research
Richard Smith is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of
Education. In a distant past he has worked in curriculum courses in Science,
Maths and Social Education, in practicum courses and in Field Studies/Ecology
and Local and Global Studies in general studies. He presently teaches
occasionally in Local and Global Studies courses and convenes the School of
Education’s recently established Education Sustainability Committee. Richard
will consider briefly the nature of sustainability/ecologically sustainable
development (ESD) and Education for Sustainability (EfS), and provide examples
of recent EfS-related research and of avenues of investigation relevant to EDS
embracing sustainability.
David Lloyd is a Lecturer in the School of Education at UniSA with
interests in science and sustainability education and the educational
applications of futures studies and integral thinking. His research involves the
application of futures and integral thinking for teaching and learning. He has
published book chapters and journal articles in his research areas including
Contemporary qualitative research: Exemplars for science and mathematics
education; Studies in Science Education; International Journal of Environmental,
Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability; and The International Journal of
Learning. David will discuss: present movement in EDS towards an
instrument to assess how well our courses address EfS; priorities and directions
for EfS in Europe; reinvigoration of a general studies course in EfS for 2010
Kathy Paige is a Senior Lecturer in science and mathematics education at
the University of South Australia and is currently working in the 3-9 program.
The mathematics and science curriculum courses have a focus on integration with
a leaning towards educating towards ecological sustainability. Kathy’s current
research interests include primary science education, transdisciplinary
approaches to teacher education, citizen science and place–based education.
Kathy will discuss two interdisciplinary examples of how pre-service
teachers think and work scientifically and mathematically to reduce their
ecological footprint and one transdisciplinary example that connects pre-service
teachers to place.
Cathy Hammond is a Society and Environment Lecturer in the Primary/Middle
Program at Mawson Lakes. This multi-disciplinary course is taught from a global
education perspective and utilises a critical constructivist pedagogical
approach. Cathy is also completing a PhD in social sustainability and academic
work. This presentation will draw on Cathy's coursework with particular
reference to social action undertaken by students and will discuss findings from
her PhD research.
Commercial ethnography
Friday October 9th
Presenters: Sue Nichols and Sophie Rainbird
Topic:
Commercial ethnography: What are literacy researchers doing in the mall?
PowerPoint presentation
Commercial spaces such as shopping malls occupy a dimension of parents' lives as places in which they can visit and spend time with their small children and also source information and advice about how best to care for and educate them. In our international study of parents' networks of information about children's literacy and development, we regard commercial spaces as providing opportunities for families to access networks that produce and share information about children's learning. In this presentation we describe our practices as researchers in commercial spaces and address questions that have challenged us throughout this process: Is this educational research? Is this ethnography? How do we make sense of what we are seeing? The conceptual foundations of our methodology are explained with relation to ecological theory (McNaughton, 2001) and geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). We discuss what the analysis of semiotic materials and social practices in commercial spaces can tell us about diverse and dominant perspectives about parenting and early learning that circulate in particular geographic regions and globally.
Sue Nichols is an experienced educational researcher whose work
spans the early years, schooling and higher education. Her diverse portfolio of
research and publication covers the fields of literacy, pedagogy, learning
difficulties, parent involvement and teacher research and is informed by
theories of discourse, subjectivity, gender, and sociolinguistics. She has
written chapters in several internationally published books including Travel
Notes from the New Literacy Studies as well as articles for Journal of
Early Childhood Literacy, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Australian
Journal of Language and Literacy and Australian Journal of Learning
Disabilities. Her research in the field of parents and literacy broke new ground in its focus
on mothers’ and fathers’ negotiation of their literate labour and understandings
of their children’s literacy development. She is currently exploring the notion
of Parents' networks: the circulation of knowledge about children's literacy
learning on the ARC funded project with Helen Nixon and Jennifer Rowsell
(Rutgers University).
Sophie Rainbird is a research assistant working
on the ARC discovery project Parents' Networks: the circulation of knowledge
about children's literacy learning Sophie has a background in
anthropology and has conducted fieldwork in the UK and Australia. Her
research areas include refugee studies, organisational studies, educational
and welfare needs, and English as a second language. She is particularly
interested in issues surrounding narrative, race, ethnicity, whiteness, and
social justice. Sophie has worked with several NGO’s both in Australia and
in the UK providing consultancy, research, case work, and community
education.
Literacy and young peoples' lives
Friday October 2nd
Presenters: Annmarie Reid (UniSA) and Lyn Wilkinson (Flinders)
Topic: 'We talked to them about literacy...They talked to us about their lives'
In this presentation, we will tell the stories of three young men described as disengaged, struggling and ‘likely to leave school before completing their senior school certificate.’ For these three students, teachers’ work has made a difference. Through their stories, we will explore the challenges faced by secondary school teachers who seek to make the curriculum more permeable and illuminate some of the strategies used to ‘turn around’ the young men whose stories we share.
Annmarie Reid is a Research Assistant with the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures within CREd. She worked as a Teacher Librarian and taught English, History and Drama in a variety of secondary schools for twenty years, before her desire to work with beginning teachers led her to seek employment in the university sector. Annmarie has an MA in Information Studies and has taught post-graduate students at UniSA, as well as BEd students at Flinders University. Her research interests include literacy, middle schooling, oral history, life history writing, story-telling in organisations, beginning teachers and the impact of stress and illness on teachers’ work. Annmarie is currently the Research Assistant for the 2009 futureSACE School to Work Innovation Program: Literacy and Numeracy Project, a joint project between UniSA, Flinders University and the futureSACE Office.
Lyn Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer at Flinders University and has worked in the area of literacy for over thirty years, twenty of them at Flinders University. She is passionate about teaching and is privileged to be able to work with enthusiastic and energetic beginning teachers. Lyn enjoys working collaboratively and acknowledges the exciting opportunity she has had to work with staff from the University of South Australia on the futureSACE Projects. Lyn Wilkinson is currently joint Project Leader for the 2009 Literacy and Numeracy Project and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Flinders University.
Path modelling in survey research
Friday September 18th
Presenters: Greg Yates and Allen Campbell
Topic: A case study of path modelling in survey research: Predicting intentions to
teach within the country
In this seminar, the methodology of using Partial Least Squares as a
path modelling tool will be demonstrated in the context of survey research. One
specific application involves the analysis of preservice students’ desire to
teach in the country, which was found to be a function of personal
metrocentricity. The software demonstrated will be SmartPLS, which affords
analysis in terms of both mediated and moderated relationships, is
user-friendly, and readily available to staff and students at UniSA.
Greg Yates is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at UniSA with interests in the educational applications of social cognitive learning theories and is on the editorial board of the journal 'Educational Psychology'. His research involves the application of ICT for teaching and learning. He has published extensively in books such as Bridging the knowledge Divide: Educational technology for development, Innovations in E-learning, instruction, technology, assessment and engineering and Supporting learning flow through integrative technologies; and in journals such as Australian Educational Researcher, Educational Psychology and the Australasian Journal of Special Education.
Allen Campbell is an EdD candidate at UNISA and a teacher at Charles
Campbell Secondary School, situated in Paradise. He has served as a liaison
officer with DECS and the three South Australian universities in the training
and recruitment of teachers for country and rural positions.
Margaret Byrne and Margaret Freund
Friday September 11th
Margaret Byrne
Topic:
"But that’s no how ye make porridge!"
In Meaning and menace for educational researchers Noreen Garman (1996) reminds us
that moving away from the use of the ‘hard scientific’ tools of traditional
academic research is to risk mounting an expedition into soft and boggy terrain.
The growing interest in phenomenological methods such as heuristics is about as
dangerous as it can get in this matter possibly leading to muddle headed
thinking and the abyss of solipsism. This seminar explores ways the self and
story can be accepted as suitable research tools in investigating teaching and
learning with particular reference to topics such as care of the spirit in
palliative care.
Margaret Byrne is a lecturer in palliative care at Flinders University. She is also a current PhD candidate at UniSA researching teaching care of the spirit in palliative care.
Margaret Freund
Topic: "This school is harder than any I have ever worked in": School Leadership,
Emotional Labour and Haecceity
This paper argues that within the current neo-liberal climate and discourses
of managerialism the nature of the work of school principals has been
transformed. The earlier position where policy was directed through often
very large bureaucracies has changed and the changes to school culture has
meant that positions have had to be renegotiated. The paper further argues
there is now a need for principals to demonstrate a stylisation of the
successful self, for they are now more than ever before, identified by the
public and parents as embodiments of school culture and success. Linked to
this is the further social dimension of emotional labour and Deleuze’s
notion of haecceity or ‘thisness’, beliefs about the particular nature of
this school, this community, these students, parents and teachers. Haecceity
is an assemblage in that the individual principal no longer remains separate
from objects of time and space, but enters into composition with them.
Rather than the skills of leadership or principalship being generic and
transferable from school to school, leadership is influenced by particular
social and economic situations that make each school unique.
The paper is reporting on research done as part of a Division Research
Grant.
Margaret Freund’s research interests focus around sociology and social philosophy and include the nature of teacher’s work, the creation of moral order, genealogies of teaching and the historical construction of teacher identity as feminized labour. Linked to this her other research interests include school leadership and the emotional labour of teaching and school ethnography. School choice, particularly the nature and choice of Catholic schools is a particular research interest. She is also involved in research in visual sociology and research into the visual. Influenced by post structuralism and the writings of Foucault she has published chapters and articles in the International Handbook of Teachers and Teaching, Educational Action Researcher and the International Journal of Early Years and Educational Philosophy and Theory.
VET in SA
Friday August 28th
Presenters: Steven Hodge, Roger Harris, Danny Slater & Kerrie Mackie-Smith
Topic: VET in SA –
issues, reforms, directions and developments
Stephen's PowerPoint presentation
Roger's PowerPoint presentation
Kerrie's PowerPoint presentation
Danny's PowerPoint presentation
Sorry audio file failed!
Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Australia is a dynamic and problematic area for policy, theory, practice and research. It may be argued that since it was first set on a reform path in the 1980s, VET in Australia has never attained a state of equilibrium and continues to face new demands and challenges. A panel of researchers and practitioners will address key aspects of contemporary VET, focusing on the South Australian context: Steven Hodge will provide a survey of recent history and current issues in VET. Roger Harris will discuss the relationship between research and VET policy and practice, and also examine the work of the South Australian Training and Skills Commission, an expert body charged with advising the State Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education on strategic directions in training for the state. Danny Slater will explore the impact of reform on TAFE in SA and contemporary challenges. Kerrie Mackey-Smith will reflect on the development of the VET in Schools agenda and provide an insight into the realities of implementing VET in South Australian schools.
Steven Hodge is a PhD candidate at UniSA where he is researching
transformative learning and competency-based training in the Australian
vocational education and training system.
Danny Slater, from TAFE SA Regional, works in leadership, organisational
renewal and career development across South Australia, NT and NSW. He and the
team can be best characterised as a fee-for-service (as contrasted with
state-subsidised) unit - a 'skunkworks', within the frame of a large
bureaucracy.
Roger Harris is Director of the Centre for Research in Education, Equity
and Work (CREEW) at UniSA. He has had extensive experience in VET teacher
education and VET research, with a focus on national training reform.
Kerrie Mackey-Smith is currently undertaking PhD research at UniSA -
exploring orality in the multimedia classroom - and is contracted as a
Vocational and Work Studies (SACE Board) moderator, and in an advisory role to
the SACE Board’s Subject Reference Group for the future Workplace Practices
subjects.
Early interventions in schooling
Friday August 14th
Presenters:
Trevor Gale, Sam Sellar, Deb Tranter, Rob Hattam
Topic: Research into early interventions in schooling aimed at increasing
students’ participation in higher education
Audio files and powerpoints from this seminar will be
available after the DEEWR report is released
This seminar reported on research into early interventions in schooling aimed at
increasing students’ participation in higher education after completing school.
‘Early’ in this case refers to the school years prior to Years 11 and 12. The
research was commissioned by the Department of Education, Employment and
Workplace Relations and conducted by researchers from the National Centre for
Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) and the School of Education. The
research involved a review of national and international literature, a review of
practices in Australian universities and some case studies of generative
examples identified by the review. The research was framed by Anderson’s
conception of the ‘four conditions [that] must be met for a student to enter
higher education: an adequate number of places must be available; the
institution must be accessible to the student, both geographically and
financially; the student must have the necessary scholastic attainment (or
academic achievement) to qualify for entry; and, the student must want to enter
[aspiration]’ (Anderson & Vervoorn 1983, p. 3). The seminar will
report on a summary of findings, a model for thinking about effective
interventions and some questions raised by the research.
Trevor Gale is Professor of Education and the founding director of the National
Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education; an Australian Government funded
research centre hosted by the University of South Australia. He is founding
editor of Critical Studies in Education, on the editorial board of the
International Journal of Inclusive Education, and, from 2000 to 2006, was an
executive member of the Australian Association for Research in Education. As
President in 2005, he led the discipline’s early response when Australia's
Research Quality Framework was first mooted. Trevor is author and co-author of 3
books. Just Schooling (OUP 2000) and Engaging Teachers (OUP 2003; translated
into Spanish in 2007) are seminal texts in under and post graduate sociology of
education courses throughout Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Rough Justice
(Peter Lang 2005) is a narrative of youth homelessness and disadvantage in
Australia and is used extensively by juvenile justice workers in Victoria’s
Department of Human Services. Trevor is currently writing two further books:
Schooling in Disadvantaged Communities (Springer 2009, in press) with Carmen
Mills and Educational Research by Association (Sense 2009, in press), an edited
collection with Bob Lingard. He is author and co-author of over 100 book
chapters, journal articles, and conference papers.
Sam Sellar has recently been awarded his PhD for his thesis - Visceral
pedagogies and other ways of knowing: exploring ethical responsibility in
relationships at the periphery of institutional schooling - with outstanding
comments from examiners. Sam is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the National
Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. His research interests include
ethico-affective dimensions of pedagogy and social justice issues in schools and
higher education. He has recent publications in Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education and Pedagogy, Culture & Society, which
report on his doctoral research. Sam is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the
National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.
Deb Tranter is the Consultant: Student Equity at UniSA and provides an advisory
role to the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, the Learning and Teaching Unit and
the University community in general on student equity matters, advising on
policy and planning and providing a coordination role in relation to the
University's student equity strategy. She has an extensive background working in
student equity, at UniSA, including more than 10 years within the University’s
Corporate Planning services and more recently in her current role where she
works closely with the Northern Adelaide Secondary Principals’ Network on a
number of outreach and alternative entry programs She is also completing a PhD
investigating the influence of the secondary school environment on the higher
education aspirations of students from disadvantaged schools.
Robert Hattam is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, the Director of the Centre for Research in Education, and Associate Dean: Research and Consultancy. His research has focused on teachers’ work, critical and reconciliation pedagogies, refugees, and socially just school reform. He has published in a range of journals and has been involved in book projects with others that include Schooling for a Fair Go, Teachers' Work in a Globalising Economy, and Dropping Out, Drifting Off, Being Excluded: Becoming Somebody Without School.
Friday 7th August 2009
Higher Degree Research Supervision
Presentation 1 - Peter Willis
Existential pedagogy in post graduate educational research supervision:
invitations to a critical and practical learning of the heart
Powerpoint presentation
Peter began by briefly mapping the learning tasks embedded in the processes
of higher degree candidature in education particularly the clarification of the
kind of knowledge to be created. He then examined pedagogic elements of the
supervision exchange in educational research relevant to these learning task
from an existential perspective focusing on the experience of four learning
elements in the higher degree curriculum: immersion, imaginal narrative,
critical appraisal and reflective praxis.
Peter Willis has pursued research and supervision around forms of narrative
knowing and learning with a special interest in existential and phenomenological
inquiry. His most recent publication in this area is:
Presentation 2 - Marie Brennan
Pedagogies of supervision: Supervisor-candidate relations and their challenges
in the professional doctorate
Powerpoint presentation
Audio file
Marie used the framework of the EdD proposal as a means to explore the
supervisor-candidate relations and their challenges in professional doctorates.
If we see the 'proposal' as part of the curriculum of the doctorate, what is it
we think we are teaching, what is it we imagine ourselves to be doing? How do we
work with practitioners expert in their field but not usually expert in
university-sanctioned research? How does the pedagogy of the proposal provide
activities for the construction of practitioner-researcher identities?
Marie Brennan
has taught in, written on and researched the EdD and professional doctorates
in Australia since 1991. Her most recent publication on this topic is:
5th June 2009
Redesigning Pedagogies in the North: The vexed question of socially just pedagogy
Please note the papers from this seminar have not been put online as they will appear as articles in the September 2009 issue of Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education
Presentation 1
Towards pedagogical justice - (audio file)
Associate Professor Robert Hattam
Rob's presentation provided a short introduction to the Redesigning
Pedagogies in the North Project: an ARC Linkage project conducted in
collaboration between a UniSA research team, 10 northern Adelaide public
secondary schools, the Australian Education Union, and the Social Inclusion
Unit. RPiN effectively created, researched and supported a professional
learning community of teachers undertaking action-research projects. In
these projects, teachers collaborated with university researchers, and with
students, to design curriculum – including new forms of pedagogic practice –
that took up the RPiN ‘methodo-logic’ for making it more possible for young
people who typically disaffiliate from formal education to engage and
achieve through learning. A key strategy was ‘connecting lives to learning’
– that is, designing curriculum that makes strong connections to students’
lives beyond school. In this pursuit, what might have seemed a
‘straightforward’ curriculum initiative became persistently vexed – in
fertile ways – with questions of pedagogy.
Robert Hattam is Associate Dean of Research and Consultancy and an Associate Professor in the School of Education. His research has focused on teachers’ work, critical and reconciliation pedagogies, refugees, and socially just school reform. He has published in a range of journals and has been involved in book projects with others that include Schooling for a Fair Go; Teachers' Work in a Globalising Economy; and Dropping Out, Drifting Off Being Excluded; Becoming Somebody Without School. Recently he published a book entitled Awakening-Struggle: Towards a Buddhist Critical Theory.
Presentation 2
The elusive search for funds of pedagogy to build
socially just schooling -
(audio file)
Dr Lew Zipin
Powerpoint presentation
RPiN sought to develop curriculum that could engage middle-years students
whose cultural lifeworlds do not carry the ‘cultural capital’ that
mainstream curriculum privileges. Consequently, RPiN took a funds of
knowledge approach: to build intellectually challenging curriculum from
knowledge assets in students’ lives beyond school. In conjunction, the UniSA
research team asked RPiN teachers to evaluate their pedagogical approaches
and consider how they might change them to support a funds-of-knowledge
approach. The Uni researchers then found it concerning when teachers – other
than emphasising that pedagogy is most importantly about ‘caring
relationships’ – did not readily articulate their pedagogical approaches.
And yet, the Uni researchers tended to treat pedagogy merely as a classroom
matter: that is, they took ‘funds of knowledge’ primarily to mean knowledge
contents, and not also pedagogical processes of transacting knowledge in
students’ lives, which could be used to build stronger schooling engagement.
Indeed, prominent ‘funds of knowledge’ literature (Moll, Gonzalez and
colleagues) shows this same gap in attention to funds of pedagogy in
students’ lifeworlds. This presentation considered how life-based funds of
pedagogy might offer significant possibilities for interrupting school
reproduction of status quo power; and, consequently, how school use of funds
of pedagogy ran up against formidable institutional barriers – in which
students, teachers and university researchers unwittingly become
complicits.
Lew Zipin lectures in sociology and policy of education at the University of South Australia, where he co-coordinates the Doctor of Education program. His research interests include critical theories of power in education; issues of policy, governance, work and ethics in schools and higher education; and education for social justice. He is currently co-editing a book collection, Re-positioning University Governance and Academic Work, to be published by Sense Publishers. He is co-editor, with Robert Hattam, of a symposium on the Redesigning Pedagogies in the North project, to be published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.
Presentation 3
Exploring the ethico-affective experience of
pedagogical relationships - (audio file)
Sam Sellar
In our current moment there is a resurgence of interest in pedagogy as an
object of research and policy across Australian universities and education
systems. In this context, the RPiN project employed participatory research
methodologies in an attempt to explore teachers’ work and collaboratively to
build theory about pedagogy. However, difficulties were encountered during
this process. Teachers struggled to provide detailed accounts of their
practice beyond repeated suggestions that pedagogy is ‘all about
relationships’. In this presentation Sam explored the notion of pedagogy as
relationship, and the possibility that the emphasis teachers placed on this
notion signals their strong intuitive sense of relational dynamics that are
inherently elusive. He developed his argument through analysis of data generated
in reference group sessions with teachers, conducted as part of his doctoral
research within the RPiN project, and by engaging with theoretical resources
that draw attention to the affective and ethical qualities of relationships
with others. Sam suggested that the condition for pedagogy becoming an ethical
experience inheres in a dimension of the teacher-learner relationship that
cannot be translated into a stable object of knowledge. It resides at the
level of teachers ‘gut-feelings’, or their visceral sensation of teaching
and learning events. While elusive, such gut-feelings’ are substantive
aspects of pedagogy that warrant further consideration in research and
theory.
Sam Sellar is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. His research interests include ethico-affective dimensions of pedagogy; negotiating epistemological difference in pedagogical relationships; and the pursuit of socially just education. He has forthcoming publications in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education and Pedagogy; Culture & Society, which report on his doctoral research within the RPiN project.
Research Forum
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RESEARCH FORUM
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Thursday October 15th The Forum will be repeated on: Friday October 23rd |
The Centre for Research in Education (CREd) invites you to a Forum to
showcase the research conducted within the School of Education at the University
of South Australia. Come and meet our researchers, see displays by our Research
Groups and hear about our current projects.
Each Research Group within
CREd together with the
National
Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education will have an area where past
and present research is displayed. Researchers will be on hand to answer questions
and present details of current projects in ten minute presentations at the
adjacent lecture theatre.
The event is aimed at potential Honours students and those wishing to undertake postgraduate research degrees. Industry partners, such as DECS, will also be invited.
The first Forum will be held at Magill campus on October 15th and then repeated at the Mawson Lakes campus on October 23rd.
Program of events
- Still to be finalised -
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Thursday October 15th 3.30 3.45 3.55 4.05 4.15 4.25 4.35 4.55 5.05 5.15 5.25 5.35 |
12.00 12.15 12.25 12.35 12.45 12.55 1.05 1.15 1.25 1.35 1.45 1.55 |
Jerri Willett Seminar
Mutual Learning through a university/school partnership: Synergistic and sustainable model
Audio file of Jerri's talk |
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July 8th 2009
Over the last decade, teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers in the U.S. have been the target of harsh criticism by conservative reformers, who, in the name of greater accountability and higher achievement in schools, marginalized educators and educational researchers. These attacks and subsequent mandated reforms, such as scripted curriculum materials, devastated the morale of educators. Seeking to reclaim their voices, a group of school and university educators formed the ACCELA Alliance, a University-Schools Professional Development Partnership between Springfield, a low-performing, high poverty school district, and the Language, Literacy and Culture Concentration at the University of Massachusetts. In this partnership, teachers and faculty with the assistance of doctoral students worked together to document teaching and learning across the year with both mandated curriculum scripts and teacher-developed curriculum units. This presentation will describe the synergistic model of mutual learning that emerged, how it transformed relationships and identities among its members, and how their efforts improved learning and teaching. But it was the documentation of the children’s learning that enabled these educators to reclaim their voices in the conversations about educational reform. Drawing on the ACCELA model, the School of Education and the Springfield School District are currently expanding the partnership to incorporate additional programs and faculty from the School of Education and teachers and administrators from the Springfield School District. The goals of this expanded partnership will be to 1) recruiting, supporting and retaining teachers in high need subject areas, 2) provide seamless and articulated professional development across all stages of teacher development (pre-service, residency, induction and leadership), and 3) building coherence through negotiated core commitments and strategies.
Professor Jerri Willett has earned an international reputation for her groundbreaking work in the fields of language and literacy. For more than two decades, she has been a compelling advocate for the professional development of teachers of second language learners. Jerri spends countless hours in the schools, working with teachers in Holyoke and Springfield and mentoring students in the doctoral concentration. Her consistent presence in the lives of these public school teachers along with her dedication to improving the education of second language learners have been instrumental to the ACCELA Alliance's success. Professor Willet and her colleagues in the language and literacy concentration at UMass Amherst are currently working to expand the ACCELA program across the Commonwealth.
2009 CREEW Seminars
Friday 26th June 2009
Becoming Critical of the Technologising of the Word
Kerrie Mackey-Smith
This presentation presents a ‘slice’ of a single-school ethnographic study, which explores aspects of talk as central to the ‘accumulated’ modalities of literacy (Green, Lankshear & Snyder 2000) - the oral, the written and the digital information technologies. Central to this study is a concern for the invisibility of talk as interrelated to students’ abilities and propensities for articulating their concerns and understandings as a social action, whether written or spoken. The presentation takes up the problem of the absence of oracy, particularly for classroom practice and policy on literacy.
Kerrie Mackey-Smith is currently undertaking PhD research at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include: the oral cultures of learning spaces, modalities of sense making and the social implications of these. Kerrie tutors in the university and works in an advisory role to the SACE Board in the area of Work and Vocational Studies. Prior to working in education, Kerrie worked in the media and communications industry sector.
'Writing teaching' for the wider community—A TESOL perspectiveJill Burton
A new version of a common saying might be “Those that can, teach; those that can’t, write about it.” Why is it that most teachers don’t write about teaching in ways that are publicly recognised; whereas educators outside the conventional classroom do? I believe that, apart from the immediate, obvious response, “Classroom teachers don’t have time”, there are other more subtle factors involved.
In this session, I hope to open a conversation, first, on why teachers avoid writing and publishing on teaching practice and, second, on how more of us might write more openly about our work in ways that please us and also the wider community. This is not a short conversation. But I hope it is one that many of us could enjoy continuing as the new nodes and centre get underway. My input to the conversation will be explaining why I chose to research and write reflectively as a teacher and started to develop a writing strategy that complements reflective teaching.
Jill Burton joined UniSA when it began in 1991, having been a TAFE
educator in adult migrant education for many years. She now works with
postgraduate students in TESOL in the School of Education at Magill. In
2006, she completed editing a 21-volume series of case studies on TESOL
practice for the international professional organisation, TESOL Inc., in the
U.S. This, and other experiences, led to her research interest in who writes
and publishes on teaching, and how.
Friday 12th June 2009
A creative synthesis of Third Age rural women
Glenna Lear
A creative synthesis is the final stage of the heuristic process and is
achieved through the researcher’s tacit knowledge, intuition, and
self-searching after developing a comprehensive understanding of the
totality of the experience of Third Age rural women. It expresses the
essences and life experiences of 7 women co-researchers who regard midlife,
their Third Age as an opportunity for realising their dreams and achieving
personal fulfillment. This creative synthesis is a descriptive or
metaphorical narrative, which uses my personal insight and imagination as a
Third Age rural woman living in the same community.
Glenna is currently writing up her PhD thesis, There’s got to be more!
The Third Age Life of Rural Women of Action, which is a heuristic and
autobiographical inquiry into the experiences and learning of a small group
of rural women who have successfully developed more individual identities in
midlife. They wanted to make a difference and some have won state and
national awards for their community leadership and as change agents.
Current research projects
Tom Stehlik
Reporting on current research projects in CREEW arising out of scoping
projects: A discussion of the approach we have developed to contract
research using an initial 'scoping process' to identify and develop larger
research proposals, with reference to two recent case study projects:
2. Leadership and management capability development in the rail industry (CRC for Rail Innovation).
Friday 29th May 2009
The Impact of Individual Characteristics on Training Evaluation Levels in
the Iran Gas Company
Foroogh Bakhtiari
Recently, researchers and authors have distinguished between the two
constructs of training evaluation and training effectiveness. Training
evaluation is the measurement of a training program’s success or failure,
while training effectiveness is the study of factors that influence the
training process. This seminar discusses the impact of individual
characteristics such as personality traits, motivation and experience on
training evaluation levels such as reaction to training, cognitive learning
and training performance. It also explores the relationships among these
training evaluation levels.
Foroogh Bakhtiari is doing her PhD in Organizational Psychology at the
University of Isfahan, Iran. She is interested in training, and while in
Adelaide, hopes to collect data on training evaluation at Origin Energy.
Graham McDonagh
Historical overview of the collision repair industry in Australia and the
effects of rationalization
This seminar offers an overview of the smash repair industry in Australia by
examining the historical evidence of rationalization and conflict, and how
that can be applied to the satisfaction of the major stakeholders, the smash
repairers, the insurance companies and the clients, the vehicle owners.
Graham is working on a PhD in CREEW.
With some forty years of experience within the collision repair industry he
brings to the table an understanding of structures and trends as well as
contested issues within the complex world of smash repairs and insurance
claims methodology.
top^
Friday 15th May 2009
Susan Bardy
The day my Father died in 1948: Meta-autoethnographic analysis of a personal
grief experience
This presentation follows my progress in my autoethnographic PhD study of
vocational transformation in Palliative Care Nursing. I question why nurses
would opt for a career in caring for dying people. I am in the process of
analysing collected data of not only my metamorphic experiences but also
those of sixteen nurses I interviewed. I had written narratives of most
transcripts when I discovered meta-autoethnography as an analytical tool.
These narratives gave me deeper insight into experience of my father’s death
from cancer in a post WW2 refugee camp and contributed to my research.
Susan is a PhD candidate at the writing up stage of her thesis. Her research addresses palliative care nurses in particular a vocational
transformation in their professional role. She looks back on 20 years of active
clinical nursing in hospice, having experienced her own personal transformation
many years ago.
Lisa Davies
The value of qualitative research methods to unravel managers’ attitudes
towards work-based learning about depression
This presentation details how qualitative, interpretive research methods
gave clear insights into manager’s beliefs about and attitudes towards the
adoption of Government recommendations about work-based mental health
education. The research was centred in eight in eight Information and
Communications Technology organisations in South Australia. Depression is
the lens through which the study is focused.
Prior to joining the UniSA, lisa was engaged in education for over 10 years
teaching vocational education and management training programs. She was the
Human Resources Manager in a software development organisation in South
Australia for 8 years. Her current teaching is focussed on adult learning,
organisational learning and learning theory. Lisa's research interests
include investigating the nexus between behaviourist, cognitive and
social/situated learning theories and their relevance to workplace learning.
Friday 13th March 2009
Chong Zhou
Hard times and learning: The Challenges of Cross-cultural Adjustment for
Chinese high school students boarding with Australian families in South
Australia
This seminar explores the learning challenges faced by Chinese high school
students attending high school in Australia and boarding with Australian
families. Besides the academic challenge of the various topics at the high
school and the constant need to learn English, Chinese students experience
serious learning challenges to do with more general cross cultural
adjustment.
Chong Zhou is doing his PhD in the School of Education.
Sharon Zivkovic
Early developments in exploring the influence of a community leadership
program
This seminar highlights early developments in a case study research project
to investigate what influence a community leadership program has on the
community leadership practice of program participants and on the practices
of the organisations and communities that program participants interact
with. Recent data collection by the researcher has highlighted that participants
experience issues related to ‘power’ as they attempt to put the skills and
knowledge they gained during the leadership program into practice.
Given this finding, the researcher is exploring political theory to try to
explain these early findings.
Sharon Zivkovic has held economic and community development positions on urban regeneration projects, has been employed as the Finance Manager of an Australian manufacturing company, facilitated workshops in small business management for the University of South Australia and case managed job seekers in the employment services industry.
Since 2005 Sharon has been operating her own business that has developed and
delivers an adult education program that focuses on building community
capacity and combines citizenship education, leadership development and
education for sustainable development principles. Sharon lectures in Social
Entrepreneurship at the University of Adelaide.