Joanne O'Mara

Literacy in the digital age: Learning from computer games

Abstract The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty‐first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has not been an extended study of English teachers incorporating computer games into their teaching and learning through action research projects. This paper outlines the structure and progress of a research project exploring the uses of computer games in English classrooms. We argue that much can be learned about the teaching of both print and digital literacies from examining computer games and young people’s engagement in online digital culture in the world beyond school.

Capturing the ephemeral : reflection-in-action as research

Abstract This paper considers two different methodological approaches to ‘capturing’ and analysing reflection-in-action in process drama teaching. Reflection-in-action, the ‘thinking on your feet’ that drama teachers constantly do, is ephemeral and difficult to record. In the first project discussed here, a teacher researcher study, examines the problem of representing the reflection-in-action, working around the central question of ‘How can I as a researcher describe and document my reflection-in-action when working as a teacher in process drama?’ The second project, an interview-based research project1, developed some of the findings of the first study through a series of interviews with drama practitioners. This paper considers these methodological approaches in terms of the possibilities they provide, the limitations for the study of reflection-in-action in process drama and some possible applications of the approaches investigated for future drama research.

Repositioning drama to centre stage: drama, English, text and literacy

Abstract A version of this article was first presented at the Drama Australia Conference, Fremantle, July 2002. It draws upon Freebody and Lukes four resources literacy framework, where they describe four kinds of literacy practices. It shows how this model is used within the literacy community and argues that this model is useful to describe the contribution that drama can make to literacy development. Freebody and Lukes model is used and promoted throughout Australia and the author argues that it is politically astute for drama teachers to reclaim and promote their links to the English/Literacy curriculum.

Process Drama and Digital Games as Text and Action in Virtual Worlds: Developing New Literacies in School

This article explores the intersections between drama and digital gaming and the educational possibilities for literacy of both. The article draws on a model for the educational uses of digital gaming and three case studies from the Australian Research Council funded three and a half year project, Literacy in the digital world of the twenty first century: Learning from computer games. This model theorises the scope of the possibilities for literacy outcomes from the usage of computer games. The article describes how the model works, and then applies the model to drama education, specifying some new ways of thinking about the literacy outcomes from drama education. Process drama is theorised as the creation of text-in-action.

Rethinking Difference in the iWorld: Possibilities, Challenges and ‘Unexpected Consequences’ of Digital Tools in Literacy Education

Within contemporary literacy classrooms, mobile touchscreen devices are occupying a more prominent place. For children who have disabilities or learning differences, such devices can offer increased participation and access and may also provide social capital to users. We share examples of how iPads and iPods were successfully used in classrooms by children who might be categorized as experiencing various challenges, as well as autobiographical examples we have experienced as parents of children with disabilities. Through these illustrations, we examine the possibilities of ‘new tools’ as well as challenges encountered in changing existing literacy practices.

Interrogating the promise of a whole school approach to intercultural education: an Australian Investigation

Intercultural education (ICE) is a priority for schools and schooling systems worldwide. While extensive policy and academic literature exists that describes how ICE should be done in schools, relatively little has been published about the pragmatics of implementing and enacting ICE, despite evidence that principals, teachers and schools feel ill equipped to teach and engage in ICE. This article investigates how schools implementing ICE are confronted with distinctive challenges. Engaging methodological tools of social constructivism (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005) and an analytical lens supported by social cultural theories of identity and representation (Hall, 1997; Gee, 2004), we argue that the everyday experiences and practices of teachers need be explored, but also interrogated and understood otherwise (Lather, 1991). We draw on qualitative data from a large-scale study conducted in schools in Victoria, Australia. We present three vignettes that elucidate how ICE was enacted at the principal, curriculum and teacher levels. Each vignette is based upon a key challenge confronted by schools and illustrates the processes different schools used to tackle these issues and to embed ICE into the daily schooling practice.

Supervisory scratchings: Critical autoethnography complicating “process” in doctoral supervision

ABSTRACT In this dialogic article of interwoven stories, we employ a critical autoethnographic approach to explore moments of our lives as we worked through the official “research plan” at the heart of the supervision timeline. Lucindas doctoral thesis in education, supervised by Jo, highlights the way curriculum emerges from the struggles of ideological becoming (Bakhtin, 1981) as she and a group of teachers develop curriculum and perform identity, both as co-researchers and as inescapably gendered subjects. Here, instead, we turn to how this might work in relation to the supervisory relationship, linking the personal and political to trouble the research plan developed in the first months of the PhD timeline. We write around a narrative from the original thesis, which troubled both of us, and rework our own stories of the supervised and the supervisor through the competing discourses of our work and lives.

The policy problem: the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and implications for access to education

Abstract This paper explores the changing terrain of disability support policy in Australia. Drawing on a critical disability framework of policy sociology, the paper considers the policy problem of access to education for people with disabilities under recent reform by means of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which commenced full roll-out across the country from July 2016. The paper reviews NDIS reports, legislation and associated literature to consider how eligibility to scheme participation and education services are shaped, and how education is positioned in the development and implementation of the NDIS. The analysis highlights tensions that exist for people with disabilities and their families who both access the scheme and who might draw on its provision to support their education, because of the way the policy is oriented towards pathological categorisation, standardised outcomes and service delineation rather than integrated support and informed involvement. The paper concludes by arguing that despite the policy priority across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries of increasing lifelong learning opportunities, fragmented NDIS policy in Australia prevents people with disabilities from achieving this ideal.