Jon Austin

Constructivist pedagogy in conventional on- campus and distance learning practice: an exploratory investigation

Abstract This study attempts to identify characteristics of constructivism and their presence in face-to-face and open and distance learning (ODL) environments. In phase 1 of this study, a 6-week discussion through an electronic mailing list was carried out to explore the concept of constructivism, the process underlying constructivist learning and its facilitation. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and later analysed to ascertain the presence of constructivist principles in formal higher education instructional activities. The results of these studies were very similar and foregrounded the following seven components of constructivist teaching and learning: (1) arguments, discussions, debates, (2) conceptual conflicts and dilemmas, (3) sharing ideas with others, (4) materials and measures targeted toward solutions, (5) reflections and concept investigation, (6) meeting student needs, and (7) making meaning, real-life examples. Based on tutorials analysis (phase 1) and surveys (phase 2) in one university, the findings indicate that these components are not sufficiently present in any of the settings which were investigated, despite the positive intentions that instructional designers had in their planning phase.

Pedagogies of Self: Conscientising the Personal to the Social

Abstract This paper considers the catalytic potential for autoethnography, one of the “new ethnographies” (Goodall, 2000), to provoke emancipatory consciousness raising activity. Autoethnography opens possibilities for the development of a critical reflexivity wherein senses of Self and agency might come to be understood in terms of the social processes that mediate lived experience and the material realities of individuals. It is on this basis that autoethnography offers opportunity for the enactment of a genuinely critical pedagogy. By means of exploring the Self as a social construct, possibilities for exposing the mediating role that social structures play in the construction of identities become apparent and open to deep critique and change.

Writing race: making meaning of white racial identity in initial teacher education

Abstract Race has become one of the key defining features of contemporary society, and a considerable body of work has recently emerged in the area of white dominant racial identity and identification. This paper reports on images, experiences and understandings of white racial identity elicited from initial teacher education students by use of a process of critical autoethnographic interrogations of Self. Emphasis is placed upon the description and analysis of a particular form of critical self-reflection and (re)presentations of autoethnographically-derived understandings of racialised identities. These representations provide an insight into nascent processes of conscientisation engaged in by initial teacher education students. The paper explores possible implications for the development of racially aware teachers, and broader connections with transformative pedagogical practices. The data comprising the basis of this project were derived from a combination of learning conversations and narrative inquiry, both of which are discussed in this paper.

We know our place: Indigenous community research and the ever-evaporating critical qualitative research tradition

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use the experience of attempting to locate funding for three contiguous components of a research program to be undertaken in remote areas of Queensland to reflect upon the increasing challenges to critical qualitative research in the Australian context. Design/methodology/approach – This paper utilizes forms and formats of the composite narrator, narrative inquiry and autoethnographic techniques in putting their lived experience into the context of the neoliberalized university. Findings – As the research team developed and pursued a funding application through various university committees, the value of their work and the ways in which they were being increasingly marginalized qua researchers became starkly apparent to them. Originality/value – While Appadurai’s concern was to try to understand the inexplicable and seemingly inordinate fear of small numbers that, in contemporary times, causes large majority groups to launch horrendous campaigns of erasure against...

Australian citizenship in interesting times:curriculum, culture and immigrants as contested terrain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand, more deeply, what the field of citizenship education stands for, in both theory and practice, historically and currently, and especially, in relation to the new Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship. The authors have drawn on the backgrounds in social studies/social education, multicultural education, democracy education and Indigenous studies, in order to more deeply and profoundly understand “civics and citizenship education” and what it represents today in Australia. Design/methodology/approach – Methodologically, the authors see epistemological spaces as discursive productions from post-structural/post-modern and critical perspectives. These positions draw upon the notion of discourse as an absent power that can validate/legitimize vs negate/de-legitimize. The authors employ a meta-level analysis that historicizes the spaces made possible/impossible for those in deviant subject positions through a critique of the current literature juxtapos...

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students as Effective Numeracy Learners

I’m driving along the coastal edge of the Daintree Rainforest in far north Queensland in a four-wheel-drive vehicle (necessary for Western and convenient for indigenous travel in this part of the world). I’m on the road between Shipton’s Flat and Wujal Wujal, some 60 km to the south, talking with Errol and Peter about this most magnificent part of Queensland. In the front seat of the car is a university colleague, Ben.

Apology and Social Harmony

The delivery of formal apologies for harm done to generations of citizens by government policies and practices has provided a spectacular focus for processes of social healing and sustainability to potentially develop and take root. In the Australian context in particular, the notion of Apology has been at the forefront of federal government policies for the term of the current parliament. While the judiciousness, wording and delivery of such Apologies have been the subject of intense debate and disagreement, it would seem that there is a social catharsis benefit that flows from these types of public acts of contrition. The question that arises, however, is how to make such emotional attachment to social healing sustainable - how might the underlying motivational forces be sustained? One possible way is through formal educative means; that is, through the enfleshment of reconciliation plans with genuinely transformative educational work. This paper suggests a number of possible paths for a temporally-located event - an Apology - to become an on-going component of community renewal through schooling.