Elaine Khoo

Accountability through access, authenticity and advocacy when researching with young children

ABSTRACT Research with children involving their use of digital and mobile technologies either as a methodological tool or in relation to their learning foregrounds emerging ethical issues and practices. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical challenges we faced in studies involving the recruitment of young children as research participants, and where the integrity of these research collaborations was critical. We propose an ethical framework to foreground these challenges that is shaped by a view of children as social actors and experts on their own lives, information and communication technologies as ubiquitous in children’s lives, and ethics as a situated and multifaceted responsibility. This framework has three aspects: access, authenticity and advocacy. We draw on examples from different research projects and use ethically important moments to illustrate how notions of access, authenticity and advocacy can foreground the ethical challenges in teaching–learning research contexts to better consider and offer children greater agency in research collaborations.

The Implementation of e-Networks to Support Inquiry Learning in Science

The successful implementation of an e-networked and information and communication technology (ICT)-supported science inquiry learning approach in secondary classrooms is dependent on a range of factors within the milieu of teacher, school and students. The teacher must have a clear understanding of the goals of the activity, the school leadership must provide effective technological infrastructure and sympathetic curriculum parameters, and the students need to be carefully scaffolded to the point of engaging with the inquiry process.

Trial-and-Error, Googling and Talk: Engineering Students Taking Initiative Out of Class

This chapter reports on the strategies that first year engineering students used to supplement and extend their laboratory and lecture learning about a 3-dimensional computer-aided design (3D CAD) software, SolidWorks. A capacity for self-initiated and self-directed learning as part of developing lifelong learning capabilities is widely recognized as a critical outcome for today’s engineering graduates (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2009; National Academy of Engineering, 2004). This capacity naturally spans both formal and informal settings. We illustrate what this might look like drawing on two projects. One investigated the role ICTs/e-learning can play in tertiary teaching and learning (Johnson, Cowie, & Khoo, 2011) and the other investigated the nature, development and implications of software literacy (Khoo, Hight, Torrens, & Cowie, 2016). Engineering students in these studies reported a diverse array of self-initiated and self-directed informal learning actions including daily conversations with peers, out-of-class conversations with lecturers, trial and error in their own time, work through course materials, and use of YouTube videos and dedicated online professional discussion forums. Different students expressed a preference for different combinations of these approaches. Student informal learning therefore covered a patchwork of learning processes and outcomes within their formal learning programmes. Students asserted informal learning activities were essential to enrich and complement formal learning occasions if they were to develop adequate/sufficient understanding of and competency in the use of software to solve engineering design problems.

Comparing the Cases: What Do They Tell Us About Software Literacy?

This chapter reports the comparative analysis of the two case studies on media studies software (see Chap. 3) and engineering software (see Chap. 4). Common themes emerged across the cases such as students’ tendency to draw from informal learning strategies to supplement formal learning approaches, the diversity of student background and software abilities, and students’ general assumption that a tier 2 software proficiency level (see Chap. 1) would be adequate entry into a professional pathway. However, the cases differed in terms of the nature of the nuanced learning goals and aspirations of each discipline which impacted on the way course curricular, teaching, learning and assessment strategies were structured. These findings have implications for teaching and learning where software plays a central role in understanding and accomplishing disciplinary ideas and practices in tertiary and workplace contexts.

Research as a Catalyst for Crossdisciplinary Partnerships Amongst University Lecturers

This chapter presents a reflective discussion of ideas related to ‘partnership’ at the tertiary level. We examine the nature and enactment of successful crossdisciplinary partnerships in two Ministry of Education funded research projects involving university-based education researchers and lecturer-practitioners from a number of other disciplines. Ideas about the structure, issues and rewards of research partnerships will be explored.

Introduction: Software and Other Literacies

This chapter outlines the role and significance of software in contemporary society. Drawing from the new field of Software Studies, it sets outs key concepts relevant to the study of software, including affordances, agency, human-machine assemblages, and performance to explain the ways users co-create with software. It proposes the notion of software literacy as a framework to help readers unpack the ways the affordances of software can (re)shape the ways we think and act. These ideas are then grounded in an examination of an educational research project into the ways in which students become more literate about the nature and implications of software which they encounter as part of their tertiary studies.

A Genealogy of Software Applications

This chapter outlines a broad genealogy of two areas within software culture: Digital Non-Linear Editing (DNLE) and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software. Emerging from distinct institutional environments, their respective historical developments and the implications these have generated within their professional domains provide a broader context for the software at the centre of this educational research project (see Chaps. 3 and 4). Each of these histories demonstrate how decisive the institutional and industrial contexts of their creation were in inscribing the affordances, interfaces and conceptual frameworks coded into these software.

The Learning, Use and Critical Understanding of Software in Media Studies

This chapter (as with the next, Chap. 4) reports on the findings from a two-year funded empirical study (2013–2014) exploring how tertiary students in media studies and engineering develop the understandings and skills needed to use software as forms of software literacy. Two case studies were developed. The case studied experiences of media studies students’ software literacy development is the focus of this chapter. Two cohorts of media studies undergraduate students were tracked, at different stages of study and using mixed methods, in their learning of discipline-specific software, Final Cut Pro, and the Adobe Creative Suite. The findings illustrate the ways student software literacy develop in a specific tertiary context. The findings will be revisited in Chap. 5 and discussed to include implications for the wider field of software teaching and learning.

The Learning, Use and Critical Understanding of Software in Engineering

This chapter (as with Chap. 3) details the findings from a two-year funded empirical study aimed at understanding tertiary students’ development of the understandings and skills needed to use software as forms of software literacy. Two case studies were developed. A case study of engineering students’ software literacy development is the focus of this chapter. Two cohorts of students were tracked using mixed methods to explore their learning and understanding of discipline-specific software (here the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software SolidWorks). An additional group of advanced final year CAD students were also interviewed to ascertain if there were particular nuances in their software learning experience. The findings of this case study provide insight into engineering students’ software literacy development in a specific tertiary context. A discussion of the findings including implications for what the findings might mean in relation to the wider field of software teaching and learning is addressed in Chap. 5.

Software Literacy: Education and Beyond

Software literacy is an essential part of learning and living in the 21st century; something which, we argue, transcends the use of any particular tool and any particular educational, social and cultural context. Software literacy is an increasingly central part of the palette of understandings and skills that comprise the broadening umbrella of digital literacy. It is therefore essential that citizens have a critical understanding of software to make more informed choices about their use, can transfer this critical understanding to software they have yet to encounter, and understand that all software has nuanced affordances and limitations. In tertiary settings this is needed to ensure equitable and critical learning with and through software. This chapter summarises our key insights from our own research into these issues and offers recommendations for future research in the field.