Catherine H. Arden

Learning and Teaching Styles

An ongoing challenge for instructional and syllabus designers and teachers and facilitators who seek to implement these curricula is finding and maintaining an appropriate balance between differing learning and teaching styles. Differences in cultural and language backgrounds, previous learning and teaching experiences, and the personal characteristics of learners and teachers create an extremely complex milieu at the intersection of learning and teaching in contemporary educational contexts. This chapter explores this issue through an analysis of three different data sets: the experiences of male Saudi nursing students at an Australian university; the role of children, parents and peers, and the natural environment as educators in an alternative school context; and the interaction between a teacher and student in an Australian senior secondary art classroom.

Community Learning Projects: Transforming Post-Compulsory Education Provision in Rural Communities

Abstract Rural communities such as Stanthorpe on Queensland’s Southern Downs, in Australia, are familiar with turbulent environmental, social, technological and economic change and the adversity that frequently accompanies such changes. The capacity of individuals and communities to bounce back from adversity is referred to as resilience. Participation in lifelong and life-wide learning is promoted as a strategy for rural community development, resilience and renewal. Stanthorpe, which declared itself as a ‘learning community’ in 2005, has been described as resilient, not only by the people who live there, but also by outsiders who view the community as a friendly, vibrant lifestyle choice. This paper reports a reflexive analysis of three learning community projects undertaken by a group of community leaders in partnership with their regional universities that used Participatory Action Research (PAR) and evaluation to draw on and mobilise ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ resources and expertise to promote purposive action to address their particular issues. Using processes of introspection and collaborative, critical reflection, the authors review each of these projects and propose these as a form of non-accredited post-compulsory education that succeeds in serving the lifelong learning aspirations of the community.

Professional Learning and Development

Professional learning and development hold potential for transformational growth and change for educators, and for enhancing their capacities to build the capabilities of learners. Realising this potential requires an appreciation of the philosophies, theories and practices surrounding professional learning and development and how these may progress a capacity-building agenda. This chapter examines selected conceptualisations of professional learning and development through an interrogation of the data from three research projects in diverse educational and learning contexts: classroom teachers and their work supporting student well-being; yoga teachers and teacher trainers; and circus families and teachers. As a result of the analysis of these data, we draw out the implications for professional learning and development practices that offer opportunities to build capacities.

Struggling for Purchase? What Shape Does a Vocational Education and Training Agenda Take Within a Contemporary University Education Faculty?

Abstract This paper focuses on the discourse among academics with a shared interest in the relationship between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education within the University of Southern Queensland’s Faculty of Education. The authors endeavour to make sense of how VET pedagogies and praxis are currently envisaged and enacted within the faculty, how they respond to present-day influences and developments in the VET sector and how they will in turn shape teaching, learning and research activity. In the paper, the authors put their personal and professional ideologies under the microscope in a dialectic that aims to inform the development of a shared set of meanings that will serve as a platform from which to move forward in their practice. This dialectic examines the nuances of practices from the perspectives of a reflective (Schön, 1983, 1987) and a reflexive (Usher, 1987) practitioner. Theoretical lenses drawn upon in this reflective and reflexive dialectic include critical theory (Habermas, 1972, 1973), criticality (Barnett, 1997) and the humanist tradition in education (Dewey, 1916, 1938). The results of this dialectic are then used to engage pedagogies that relate to further education and training (fet) within the faculty. To guide this situated engagement, several questions are asked. The conclusions drawn confirm that the convergence of these personal and professional ideologies is helpful in shaping the contributions of fet to the existing and emerging needs of the faculty’s lifelong learners.

Curriculum Leadership, Quality and Technology in a Suite of Australian Further Education and Training Teacher Education Programs: Making Meaning, Performing Practice and Constructing New Learning Futures

Abstract Constructing new learning futures is an ongoing challenge and opportunity for contemporary learners and educators alike. A crucial element of that construction is making meaning by and for all participants in the educational enterprise. Such meaning making depends in turn on the performance of practice – that is, on the regular, repeated enactment of situated learning and teaching in specific contexts and environments that turns abstract and hypothetical ideas about education into experienced and lived realities. This paper applies and demonstrates this argument in relation to a suite of further education and training (FET) teacher education programs at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Australia. The authors elaborate a set of evaluative questions for the leadership, quality and technology dimensions of the curriculum of those programs. On the basis of those questions, the authors generate a conceptual framework that they argue is productive in identifying the principles and strategies of making meaning and performing practice that are most likely to promote the construction of new and enabling learning futures.

Changes and Continuities

The multifaceted interplay between changes and continuities has a complex relationship with the opportunities for, and strategies of, capacity-building. This interplay is evident also in efforts to promote long-term and sustainable educational learning and development within and across specific educational sites. This chapter examines this interplay in the reported experiences of the individuals and groups participating in three selected research projects to portray what changes in their lives, what remains constant and continuous and how they use those changes and continuities to develop and refine contextually relevant capacities. This examination is used to distil wider implications for understanding the contemporary character of change and its significance for comprehending capacity-building and enhancing access to, and the outcomes of, educational learning and development.

Consciousness and Capacity-Building

This chapter explores the relationship between consciousness and capacity-building in current educational settings. In particular, it elaborates the distinctive associations between varying levels and states of consciousness on the one hand and the potential to enhance individual and group learning and teaching capabilities on the other. The authors argue that learners and educators are sometimes enabled to share their heightened understandings of themselves and their worlds with many others across multiple educational fields. This argument is illustrated by reference to specific manifestations of consciousness raising among Australian senior secondary art classrooms, Australian teachers promoting their students’ mental health and well-being, and yoga masters and practitioners. The chapter concludes by eliciting implications of this intimate connection between consciousness and capacity-building in contemporary educational contexts.

Diversity and Identity

The multiple theoretical understandings related to the concepts of diversity and identity provide useful frameworks for exploring capacity-building in a range of complex and, at times, highly contested contexts. This chapter explores how participants in a number of education research studies make sense of diversity and identity as they seek to build their own and others’ capacities in formal and informal educational contexts. It concludes by highlighting key theoretical connections among the concepts of diversity, identity and capacity-building. These are illustrated by reference to empirical studies of Saudi university students in Australia, a university education research team in Australia and yoga teacher trainers in Australia and the United States.

Forms of Capital and Currencies

The multiple forms of capital represent a powerful framework for understanding certain approaches to capacity-building. This chapter explores how particular groups of learners and educators exhibit specific forms of capital and how the participants in the associated research projects gain access to and mobilise those forms of capital to generate certain outcomes. This exploration is analysed from the broader perspective of which activities and outcomes hold currency in certain contexts and how that currency can be converted into other contexts. The chapter concludes by synthesising key implications for theorising the links among capital, currencies and capacity-building. These propositions are illustrated by reference to circus families in England, Australian teachers supporting student well-being and Australian parents’ perceptions of capital and their adaptations to systemic practices.

The Transformative Potential of Educational Learning and Development

The concluding chapter of this book challenges the reader to engage with the ‘hot topics’ and ‘wicked problems’ presented throughout the chapters on the topic of educational learning and development and the potential for capacity-building for both educators and learners. The new perspectives generated by interrogation of this topic enable the reader to move beyond the accepted conceptualisation of educational learning and development and encourage them to consider new ways of thinking about and engaging with this area. This engagement should allow practitioners, policy-makers and researchers working in the area of education to identify and make personal and professional connections which can potentially transform the area of educational learning and development.