Julianne Lynch

‘Smart’ technologies in early years literacy education: A meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom:

With the revolution that has taken place in the functionality and uptake of portable networked ‘smart’ technologies, educators are looking to see what potential applications such technologies might have for school education. This article reports on a study on the use of portable personal computing devices in the early years of schooling. Specifically, it focuses on emerging patterns of use of Apple iPads in an Australian Preparatory (first year of compulsory schooling) classroom during the first year of implementation of these devices. We draw on student and teacher interviews and classroom observation data to provide a research meta-narrative of the intentions, practices and reflections of a ‘first year out’ teacher, and to discuss points of tension found in the contested space of early years literacy education, which are highlighted when potentially transformative technologies meet institutionalized literacy education practices. Our findings suggest that the broader policy and curriculum context of early years literacy education, and institutionalized practices found in this space, is potentially at odds with teacher-held intentions to transform learning through technology use, particularly with respect to tensions between print-based traditions and new digital literacies, and those between standards-based classroom curricula and more emancipatory agendas.

Assessing effects of technology usage on mathematics learning

Computer-based technologies are now commonplace in classrooms, and the integration of these media into the teaching and learning of mathematics is supported by government policy in most developed countries. However, many questions about the impact of computer-based technologies on classroom mathematics learning remain unanswered, and debates about when and how they ought to be used continue. An increasing number of studies seek to identify the effects of technology usage on classroom learning, and at a time when governments are calling for ‘evidence-based’ policy development, many studies applying quasi-scientific methodologies to this field of practice are emerging. By analysing a series of conceptual frameworks for assessing the use of computer-based technologies to support school learning, this article emphasises the value of research into the relationship between technical and conceptual aspects of technology use in mathematics education and beyond, and challenges the usefulness of large-scale, quasi-scientific studies that focus on educational inputs and outputs.

The continued underrepresentation of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses: a direct challenge to teacher education

The participation rates of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses of Australian universities and high schools have remained low (less than 30%), despite three decades of research and analysis. In seeking to better understand this phenomenon, this paper draws upon data collected during an Australian Research Council Linkage project to investigate first, the reasons that teachers and students in contemporary Australian high schools put forward to account for girls’ underrepresentation; second, the assumptions about gender that underpin these explanations; and third, the extent to which teachers appear able to respond to the full range of factors shaping girls’ decision making. The paper argues that attempts to improve girls’ participation rates might continue to falter unless teacher education programs explicitly prepare teachers to conceptualise educational reforms based on understandings of post-structural perspectives on gender; perspectives that challenge the more common explanations for girls’ behaviour associated with both essentialist and socialisation mindsets.

Moving beyond a ‘bums-on-seats’ analysis of progress towards widening participation: reflections on the context, design and evaluation of an Australian government-funded mentoring programme

In 2010, the Australian government established the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Programme – a funding agenda to promote programmes that respond to the under-representation in higher education of people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Many government-funded programmes and projects have since emerged that respond to the problem of low SES under-representation, based on partnerships between higher education providers and other organisations. The arguments made in this paper draw on one such project: a mentoring programme implemented from 2011 to 2013 that targeted the aspirations of Year 9 regional secondary students. We discuss data and documentation that provide insights into the conception and design of the mentoring programme, and the strategies used to evaluate it, in order to discuss how funding and policy contexts influence the possible solutions that might be implemented in response to the under-representation in higher education of people from low SES backgrounds.

Community-based environmental monitoring goes to school: translations, detours and escapes

Abstract Community-school partnerships are an established practice within environmental science education, where a focus on how local phenomena articulate with broader environmental issues and concerns brings potential benefits for schools, community organisations and local communities. This paper contributes to our understanding of such educational practices by tracing the diverse socio-material flows that constitute a community environmental monitoring project, where Australian school students became investigators of and advocates for particular sites in their neighbourhood. The theoretical resources of actor-network theory are drawn upon to describe how the project – as conceptualised by its initiators – was enacted as both human and non-human actors sought to progress their own agendas thus translating the concept-project into multiple project realities. We conclude by identifying implications for sustaining educational innovations of this kind.

Theorising Teacher Practice with Technology: Implications for Teacher Education Research

‘New technology’ is not new. Over the last six or more decades (arguably since the establishment of formal schooling much earlier than that), wave after wave of ‘new technology’ have emerged: television, video cassettes, microcomputers, laptops, the internet and, most recently, portable, mobile (and even wearable) devices. In this chapter, I provide a critique of dominant views of teachers’ technology work with reference to the assumptions underpinning much policy on and research into educational technology. First, I characterise approaches to understanding teachers’ technology practices found in public policy and mainstream educational technology research. I then argue that sociomaterial understandings of practice offer alternative conceptual tools that are more likely to support and promote teacher innovation with technology. To do this, I draw upon a selection of concepts and analyses that have influenced my practice as a teacher educator and educational technology researcher and which inform a discussion of the practice of teacher education and implications for teacher education research.