Dawn Garbett

Negotiating the university research culture: collaborative voices of new academics

This paper contributes to the wider discussion of the collaborative research process and the situation of new academics in the early stages of their research careers. It draws on our lived experience through several collaborative research projects and is descriptive and autobiographical in nature. As such, it provides an opportunity for our voices as female academics to be heard in a different way. We suggest that collaborative research can both enhance research skills and empower early career researchers (particularly female academics). Further, we reassert the importance of collaborative research at a time when higher education policy has tended to encourage individualism and competition between researchers. As a methodology to reflect purposefully on our lived experience as co‐researchers, we have used a qualitative design based on collaborative memory work. From the evidence presented in our stories, we have made some suggestions for developing successful collaborative research partnerships, both for individuals and institutions.

Developing Pedagogical Practices to Enhance Confidence and Competence in Science Teacher Education

The aim of this self-study research was to deepen my understanding of pedagogy for teacher education and the factors that enhanced and hindered my confidence and competence as a teacher educator. I recorded my impressions and descriptions of events, discussions, and interpretations as a result of studying my practice in an electronic journal. Student teachers’ responses to questionnaires, peer evaluation guidelines, and interviews provided alternative views about the efficacy of my pedagogy. Data collection and analysis was a hermeneutic and recursive process revealing emergent themes. One theme was that a focus on science content knowledge gave a false sense of confidence and overshadowed our ability to engage in meaningful conversations about learning to teach—a practice challenged through self-study research.

The Transformation from Expert Science Teacher to Science Teacher Educator

As an experienced science teacher, my transformation into a science teacher educator was hindered by the relative ease with which I could make learning about science engaging and fun for my student teachers. The science experiences I shared were rich and varied and the teaching uncomplicated. However, as many other teacher educators have realized, teaching about teaching is more complex than teaching a subject, such as science, itself. Science education is the vehicle through which I engage my students in learning about teaching. As this self-study illustrates, developing expertise in teacher education comes from understanding the complexities of teaching about teaching and in being able to articulate and demonstrate those complexities in meaningful ways.

Promotion by Teaching Distinction: Developing resilience and cache for a track less traveled

How does a teacher educator develop the resilience and cache necessary in a research-intensive culture to advance a career based on teaching? I consider this question by analyzing three successive applications for promotion and my responses to each. Previous self-study research gave me cache to position my teaching, research, and service in a way that could be recognized as worthy of promotion. I have examined the changing institutional culture objectively and capitalized on my assets, building my resilience to move past initial setbacks. I conclude by seeing my struggle as indicative of a broader collective struggle to value and acknowledge teaching as an academic practice (informing and informed by research) that is central to being an academic in a teacher education faculty.

Making Practice Visible: A collaborative self-study of tiered teaching in teacher education

In this article we document the impact of tiered teaching on making the complexity of pedagogy transparent when teaching science education to pre-service primary teachers. Teaching science methods classes together and researching our teaching has enabled us to reframe our assumptions and move beyond the simplistic and misleading idea that teacher education is the modeling of exemplary practice. This self-study has evolved over three years. We were faced with the tension between modeling exemplary practice to teach science education and science content and making our teacher education practices explicit to our students. Tiered teaching has allowed us to manage this tension. Four major themes emerged from this self-study: the cost of tiered teaching; the shift in priority to less science education and more teacher education; our own growth in expertise; and the transformation of our practice.

Preliminary findings: early childhood student teachers' perception of their confidence and competence

Abstract The purpose of this pilot study was to examine early childhood student teachers’ perceptions of their confidence and competence in the subject areas of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (NZCF). The preliminary findings are presented from an analysis of questionnaires, testing and focus group interviews. Study design and methods of collecting data are detailed. The students indicated their own perceptions of their confidence and competence in various subject areas and three influences bcame apparent from their responses. Teacher educators may find these preliminary results informative and instructive for the design of preservice early childhood education programmes.

Becoming Teacher: Exploring the Transition from Student to Teacher

The focus of this chapter is the transition from student of teaching to teacher of students. This transition is perhaps the most ubiquitous journey that teachers undertake, and yet, when we delve betwixt and between the positions of student and teacher, schooling and education, teaching and learning, we uncover far more complexity in the concept of learning to be a teacher than might currently be considered. In this chapter we deliberately attempt to reframe the journey of becoming a teacher from a conception that the process is a linear, progressive movement from novice to expert teacher to a journey that explores untold variations in pathways; recognises multiple starting points; and contemplates ultimately what might be possible for any person intent on learning teaching. We draw insights from complexivist philosophy and poststructural social theory to problematise the teacher-subject and consider the process of becoming a teacher in a more distributed, relational way. The intent is to generate ways of thinking beyond the conventional novice to expert explanations of becoming a teacher and explore instead the ‘ongoingness’ of developing a new professional self that is already implicated in the dynamic and evolving contexts of contemporary schooling.

Examining a Student-Generated Question Activity Using Random Topic Assignment

Students and instructors expend significant effort, respectively, preparing to be examined and preparing students for exams. This paper investigates question authoring, where students create practice questions as a preparation activity prior to an exam, in an introductory programming context. The key contribution of this study as compared to previous work is an improvement to the design of the experiment. Students were randomly assigned the topics that their questions should target, removing a selection bias that has been a limitation of earlier work. We conduct a large-scale between-subjects experiment (n = 700) and find that students exhibit superior performance on exam questions that relate to the topics they were assigned when compared to those students preparing questions on other assigned topics.

Using Assessment to Enhance Twenty-First Century Learning

Assessment has traditionally been seen as a way of finding out what students have learned. There has been a relatively recent shift to embedding assessment as an integral aspect of the learning culture of Net Generation learners. In such a shift, pedagogical encounters are characterised by learners engaging with and connecting to other key agentive elements in ways that combine to create a personalised learning network that extends outwards from each student. In this chapter, we focus on four case studies that enhance learning by viewing assessment as part of the ongoing activity emerging from such pedagogical encounters. Each case study acknowledges that an essential part of working with the Net Generation of learners is having a greater sensitivity to how they make sense of learning activities and enacting forms of assessment that are more student centred, reflective and proactive in enabling students to self-manage their learning activity. This has required numerous changes in our roles as teachers, changes in the role of students, changes in the nature of student–teacher interaction and changes in the relationship between the teacher, the student and the course content. One important insight is that if teachers are to be leading learning in their classrooms, it behoves them to become Net Generation learners themselves. We conclude by suggesting that assessment must be deeply embedded as a part of student learning culture and be evoked in ways that work for the Net Generation of learners.

Lessons on the Hoof: Learning About Teacher Education Through Horse-Riding

Experienced teachers and teacher educators often find it difficult to change their practice without some significant and meaningful experience to provide a new perspective. In this chapter I reflect on the impact that learning to ride a horse meant for my practice as a teacher educator. By choosing something that was so unfamiliar to me, the process was ‘a visceral rather than an intellectual route into critical reflection’ (Brookfield SD, Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, p 50, 1995). I signed up for weekly riding lessons with experienced instructors and regularly recorded my reflections, thoughts, and feelings about learning to ride in a professional journal. I shared my journey as a neophyte with my student teachers and critical friends. Their comments, insights, and responses added considerably to my examination of teacher education practices. I used the generative potential of my horse riding experiences to reflect as an embodied learner on the commonplace, subtle, and lived experience of being a learner. As an experienced teacher I found that I had forgotten the angst, self-doubt, bravado, satisfaction, thrill, and despair that can accompany learning. Horse riding brought forth such feelings regularly. Comparing my horse riding skills with an expert’s was a less threatening route to authentic discussions about the skilful, complex nature of teaching which experienced teachers are wont to make look effortless. Other themes that emerged were the importance of learners’ perspectives in the teaching-learning process and the importance of feedback to improve our practice. Learning to ride a horse and using this as a basis of a self-study taught me a great deal more than I originally signed up for.