Henk Huijser

The power of problem-based learning in developing critical thinking skills: preparing students for tomorrow's digital futures in today's classrooms

This article describes problem‐based learning as a powerful pedagogical approach and an aligned teaching and learning system to explicitly and directly teach critical thinking skills in a broad range of disciplines. Problem‐based learning is argued to be a powerful pedagogical approach as it explicitly and actively engages students in a learning and teaching system, characterised by reiterative and reflective cycles of learning domain‐specific knowledge and doing the thinking themselves. At the same time, students are guided and coached by the problem‐based learning teacher, who models critical thinking skills in the acquisition of the domain‐specific knowledge. This article will explore what critical thinking actually means. What are critical thinking skills? How best to teach such skills? What is the potential role of problem‐based learning in teaching critical thinking skills? Finally, the article reflects on how critical thinking can be developed through problem‐based learning as a pedagogical approach in an aligned learning and teaching context.

Gendered barriers to educational opportunities: resettlement of Sudanese refugees in Australia

This paper argues that whilst equitable educational pathways are integrated into educational policy discourses in Australia, there are significant gendered barriers to educational participation among members of the Sudanese refugee groups. The specific conditions of forced migration reinforce disadvantage and further limit opportunities. Cultural factors play a key role in this, as the data from this study demonstrate. Participants in this study are Sudanese refugees who arrived in Australia as part of the humanitarian programme. The paper draws upon interviews and focus group data that were collected for a larger study on the broader issue of resettlement of Sudanese refugees in Australia. This paper argues that women from refugee backgrounds are particularly at risk and face cultural and linguistic barriers in accessing educational opportunities.

Exploring the combined relationships of student and teacher factors on learning approaches and self‐directed learning readiness at a Malaysian university

This article presents the findings of a study of the interrelationships between students’ individual characteristics, self‐efficacy beliefs, parental involvement, university and classroom learning environments; teachers’ individual characteristics, teaching efficacies, university and classroom learning environments, teacher outcomes and approaches to teaching; and approaches to learning (deep and surface learning) and self‐directed learning readiness. The study was guided by a two‐level integrated theoretical framework, designed to examine ‘student and teacher ecological systems’ and their influences on student learning and outcomes. Data was drawn from 392 students and 32 teachers situated in 44 problem‐based learning classrooms from three study levels at a Malaysian private medical university. The analyses, through hierarchical linear modelling, revealed what and how personal, family, learning environment and teacher factors directly influenced approaches to learning and self‐directed learning readiness. Implications for teaching in higher education are discussed.

A call for new approaches to identities in a crisis world

This is a review article of two recent books: Creative explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences, by David Gauntlett; and Culture-on-demand: Communication in a crisis world, by James Lull.

Exploring nursing educators' use of theory and methods in search for evidence based credibility in nursing education

OBJECTIVES In this paper, a review of nursing education literature is employed to ascertain the extent to which nursing educators apply theory to their research, as well as the types of theory they employ. In addition, the use of research methodologies in the nursing education literature is explored. DESIGN An integrative review. METHODS A systematic search was conducted for English-language, peer reviewed publications of any research design via Academic Search Complete, Science Direct, CINAHL, and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition databases from 2001 to 2016, of which 140 were reviewed. FINDINGS The findings suggest that within current nursing education literature the scholarship of discovery, and the exploration of epistemologies other than nursing, in particular as they relate to teaching and learning, shows significant potential for expansion and diversification. CONCLUSIONS The analysis highlights opportunities for nursing educators to incorporate broader theoretical, pedagogical, methodological and philosophical perspectives within teaching and the scholarship of teaching.

The Establishment of Bahrain Polytechnic: Assumptions Questioned, Myths Exposed and Challenges Faced

To enhance productivity and promote competitiveness in an increasingly globalized economy, Bahrain is striving to ‘build solid and sustainable social, economic and technological bases appropriate to modern times and conditions’ (Oukil, 2012, p. 8). Faced with depleting oil resources and an increasingly competitive trading environment, Bahrain’s national strategy, Economic Vision 2030 (Bahrain Economic Development Board [BEDB], 2014) has suggested means to achieve sustainability through growth and diversification of the economy. An analysis by the Bahrain Economic Development Board ‘highlighted “gaps” both in the provision of education and in the skills required by employers’ (Soman, 2008, para.18). The mismatch between the job market and graduate capability led to high youth unemployment, with one in eight Bahrainis out of work, at a time when two out of every three new jobs were going to expatriates bought in to fill the skill shortages (Polytechnics International New Zealand [PINZ], 2007, Section 3, p.13).

Enhancing Inquiry-Based Learning Environments with the Power of Problem-Based Learning to Teach 21st Century Learning and Skills

This chapter provides an outline of how the essential elements of problem-based learning (PBL) can be adapted to enhance inquiry-based learning environments and in the process teach 21st century skills. It uses a case study of a first-year nursing course at a regional Australian university to show how essential PBL elements can be adapted in an ‘ePBL’ context, following five ePBL steps. Overall, it is argued that a carefully mapped outset of learning outcomes and PBL problems designed as inquiry-based activities provide a ‘liquid learning’ environment that will ultimately prepare confident graduates who will be able to take full advantage of the 21st century learning and professional contexts in which they find themselves.

Demythologizing Teaching and Learning in Education: Towards a Research Agenda

Myths occupy an enduringly powerful position in teaching and learning objectives, in activities and in outcomes in contemporary education. Myths also generate a range of responses from education researchers: some researchers seek to challenge and transform persistent myths associated with disempowering stereotypes; some focus on interrogating myths understood as popular mis/conceptions about teaching and learning; and some researchers conceptualize teaching and learning as sets of powerful narratives and stories that evoke timely or timeless messages about current educational practice that need to be comprehended. Finally, myths can be productive learning tools in themselves, as they create (and sometimes recreate) narratives that are neatly wrapped around culturally based messages and ‘truths’. The following chapters interrogate assumptions upon which teaching in a variety of contexts is based, drawing together a rich array of perspectives and methodologies. Some chapters are based on scrupulous empirical research and others on the critically alert interpretation of theory. The chapters take up the idea of a ‘myth’ in different ways. Of course in any rationalist sense, anything ‘mythical’ is ‘untrue’, but arguably something mythic also crosses into areas of faith and belief. In some chapters, the authors argue that there is critical scrutiny of faith which is sometimes misplaced, in aspects of practice and scholarship and also in technology.

“You Can Lead the Horse to Water, but … ”: Aligning Learning and Teaching in a Web 2.0 Context and Beyond

Collectively, Web 2.0 technologies constitute a major conceptual shift in the way the Web is used. Two central concepts within this shift are collective intelligence and user participation, as these have seriously blurred the boundaries between knowledge management and dissemination. From a learning and teaching perspective, Web 2.0 technologies offer a variety of opportunities in terms of what such technologies could be used for, and in many cases already are, by a new generation of students entering universities. The challenge from a higher education perspective is to align what students are already doing with technologies with how they are being taught, without blurring the boundaries between “private” and ABSTRACT

Anticapitalism and culture: Radical theory and popular politics

Book review of: Anticapitalism and culture: radical theory and popular politics, by Jeremy Gilbert, Oxford and New York, Berg, 261 pp., ISBN 978-1-84520-230-9.