Josephine Ryan

Pedagogy in the Multimodal Classroom: An Analysis of the Challenges and Opportunities for Teachers.

Contemporary commentary notes that students are frequently ahead of their teachers in their ability to manipulate and be creative with the internet, digital programs, and mobile technology. In this context it is important to ask, ‘What knowledge do teachers need to teach in the contemporary context where texts are elaborately multimodal, constructed not just of print but of image, sound, and movement?’ This paper proposes some signposts to assist teachers with navigating in this environment. Using teachers’ and researchers’ reflections on practices in a diverse range of settings, both primary and secondary, the analysis explicates the challenges that teachers face in this multimodal context and elucidates some ways they can effectively operate within it. In particular, it argues that it is teachers’ expertise as analysts and critics of texts that needs to guide their planning and teaching in this ‘new’ text world.

Learning in the practicum: engaging pre-service teachers in reflective practice in the online space

It is argued that online discussion is a useful tool for creating opportunities for learning in teacher education. In a project designed to improve the practicum in rural areas, researchers placed pre-service teachers (PSTs) in two different moderated online discussion forums: an unstructured personal blog space and a structured threaded discussion forum where discussion topics guided them to reflect on their practicum experiences in relation to theoretical components of their studies. Findings indicated a marked difference in the contributions made to each form of online discussion with significantly greater participation in the unstructured blog format. Using Kreber and Cranton’s hierarchy of reflection, analyses of both forums found that PSTs rarely engaged in high-level reflection. Examination of lecturer involvement in the forums suggests that their contributions did not sufficiently encourage PSTs towards optimum critical reflection. These results leave the researchers considering ways in which the practicum experience can better promote reflective practice in this crucial, component of teacher education.

Reflective Practice in Teacher Professional Standards: Reflection as Mandatory Practice

This chapter analyses the contemporary phenomenon of the inclusion of reflective practice in the national professional standards for teachers in a range of countries. Through exploring the teacher standards of Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore and the United States of America (USA), the chapter documents the various ways in which reflective practice is characterised by policymakers, showing the theoretical and everyday elements evident in these constructions of reflective practice. It argues that there is a tension in mandatory standards documents between the expectation that teachers are to be encouraged to be critically aware of teaching practices and the standards’ purposes as documents of regulation. That is, while the standards promote critical reflection, they rarely suggest that teachers be reflective about the larger sociopolitical aspects of schooling and education systems.

Another Country: Non-Aboriginal Tertiary Students' Perceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Even though Aboriginal people are from Australia it does not mean they speak the English language (non-Aboriginal tertiary student). Jo Lamperts (1996) research discussed in her article Indigenous Australian perspectives in teaching at the University of Queensland speaks volumes about the challenges of attempting to make university curricula inclusive of Indigenous Australian perspectives. She documents the often ambivalent attitudes of academics towards opening up the curriculum to Indigenous Australians. The research discussed here seeks to add to our understanding of this process, focussing this time on the response of students to the introduction of Australian Indigenous perspectives into a single unit within a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching program. The impetus to reflect on the process came with the shock of reading student papers, written at the end of the unit, and finding that effective communication about the educational needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples did not seem to have taken place, making a closer analysis of the teaching/learning process imperative. This investigation will address questions abouthowuniversities can communicate effectively about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Communication in the Practicum

In the contemporary teacher education world many commentators see close relationships between schools and universities as critical to quality teacher education (House of Representatives, 2007; Parliament of Victoria, 2005; Zeichner, 2010). Schools and universities must work together, it is argued, because they must support the crucial site of professional learning, the practicum. The practicum, known by a range of other terms including professional experience, field experience, teaching placement, teaching round and internship, is the period of time that teacher education students, or pre-service teachers, develop their planning and teaching capabilities within the school context.

The Online Space: Developing Strong Pedagogy for Online Reflective Practice

This chapter will investigate the complexities of designing an optimum online learning environment in which pre-service teachers can reflect on their practicum teaching experiences and come to critical understandings about their practice. It charts the pedagogical journey of two teacher educators engaged in a series of teaching initiatives implemented with a view to fostering critical reflective practice in pre-service teachers during the potentially isolating practicum component of their course. To counter this isolation, online forums were established to promote critical reflection among pre-service teachers, and lecturers monitored the impact of the pedagogical choices. Findings point to the need for teacher educators engaged in promoting online discussion with pre-service teachers during practicum to maintain a delicate balance between addressing pre-service teachers’ social and cognitive needs.

Advancing Partnership Research: A Spatial Analysis of a Jointly-Planned Teacher Education Partnership

This chapter addresses the critical and often divisive international issue of how to create high quality teacher education. It does this through an investigation of a teacher education partnership designed to meet the goals of the university and school partners as well as sector leadership. Basing its analysis on a view of teacher education as taking place in the boundary zone where teacher educators, teachers and pre-service teachers (PSTs) can jointly construct professional knowledge, the study explores the partnership in terms of its vision (conceived space), its particular program and approach (perceived space) and the experience of participants (lived space). Using a case study methodology to explore a partnership that aimed to develop teachers well-qualified to work in a particular context, the study finds that the creation of successful teacher education partnerships is a process in which participants must demonstrate an ability to respond to others, their needs, standpoints and understandings in order to develop PST capacity.

Linking Rural and Regional Communities into Teacher Education

Internationally, and in Australia, preparation to teach in rural areas has been one widely recognised weakness of contemporary teacher education (Altbach, Reisberg & Rumbley, 2009; Kline, White & Locke, 2013; Lyons, Choi & McPhan, 2009). The term rural, often broadly used to denote a range of areas away from cities, is defined in Australian government statistics in terms of distance to be travelled to urban services (Baxter & Gray, 2011).

Teacher Education at Trinity University Meets the STEPS Interpretive Framework

This chapter investigates the principles and practices which have guided the highly regarded Professional Development School (PDS) partnerships at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA, and analyzes them in relation to the STEPS Interpretive Framework. The analysis is undertaken as a dialogue between an insider from Trinity University seeking to articulate the significant features of their partnerships and an outsider teacher educator making connections to the STEPS Interpretive Framework. Trinity partnerships have emphasized principles, including education as “transformation,” the centrality of “relationships,” and strong university leadership. Analysis of Trinity approaches in terms of the STEPS Framework suggests that faithfulness to overriding partnership principles has promoted strength and resilience in its partnerships with schools, indicating that the framework is justified in proposing principles and practices which can guide successful partnership development no matter where it takes place.

The Case of the Catholic Teacher Education Consortium: Using the STEPS Framework to Analyse a School–University Partnership

The following case study investigates the STEPS Interpretive Framework for its value in illuminating a long-standing and evolving university–school partnership, the Catholic Teacher Education Consortium (CTEC). The presentation of a model of key features for “successful” teacher education partnerships, as proposed in the STEPS Interpretive Framework (Jones et al. in Teaching and Teacher Education 60:108–120, 2016, p. 109), challenges us as participants in a partnership to reflect on what has been achieved, to consider what we have not accomplished and to plan future action based on these insights.