Leonie Rowan

Flexible learning in teacher education: myths, muddles and models

While there has been widespread take‐up of the concept ‘flexible learning’ within various educational environments—and equally frequent references to the flexible ‘natures’ of the computer and communication technologies that often underpin flexible learning initiatives—the relationship between technologies and flexibility is not a simple one. In this paper we examine some of the more persistent myths about technologies that are intertwined with discourses of flexibility. We highlight some of the more common ‘muddles’ that these myths can lead us in to and argue that the ‘mess’ that so often results from well‐intentioned moves to ‘be more flexible’ is largely a result of the ways that CCTs, or indeed any new educational technology or strategy, is theorized. Drawing on a recent study of online teaching and learning in higher education, we outline a new framework for examining these and related issues as they apply to teacher education.

Landscaping on Shifting Ground: Teacher Education in a Digitally Transforming World.

For almost three decades, the landscape of teacher education has been modestly shaped by the exploration of practices that made use of what were, at the time, current instances of computing and communication technologies (CCTs). More broadly and importantly however, the deployment of CCTs globally has, over the same time period (1980–2008), supported a reshaping of the planets social, economic and political circumstances in which all forms of education operate. Despite the enormity of these shifts the focus in teacher education has remained largely at site, reflecting a similar focus in schools. In fact, the patterns of adaption and response in teacher education to each new instance of high‐tech product are now quite predictable. Thus, while teacher educations engagement with CCTs can be mapped as a kind of minor landscaping, a process which attends more to appearance than substance, it is landscaping effectively premised upon a stable geography, one that resembles that of thirty years ago. This paper explores the changed and changing geography of a world heavily shaped by the ongoing deployment and use of more and more powerful CCTs. The analysis suggests that if we continue to attend only to landscaping, teacher education will be at risk of being terraformed.

What price success?: The impact of the quest for student satisfaction on university academics

Abstract Evidence of student satisfaction with a specific university study experience is often used to justify ongoing investment in the particular processes and pedagogies employed within that ‘successful’ scenario. This, of course, presupposes both the legitimacy of the particular mechanisms used to assess ‘satisfaction’ in the first place and the sustainability and desirability of the practices that appear to be positively correlated with these good results. Literature relating to the first of these issues – how to assess or measure ‘quality’ in university teaching – is vast and wide reaching and includes sustained efforts to identify ‘the’ essential characteristics of quality teaching in university contexts. Literature relating to the second issue – whether or not a particular ‘successful’ teaching experience is worth the price that has to be paid to achieve it – is less frequently explored. With a commitment to both the pursuit of quality university teaching and a concern for the physical and emotional well being of university staff, this paper draws upon the resources of post-structural feminism and explores two different sets of data related to university courses taught by one particular academic. The paper aims to identify what students clearly and consistently identified as the key features of a ‘satisfying’ teaching experience. From this basis, it explores reflections on these teaching experiences drawn from the academic’s personal journal. In juxtaposing these two sets of data, the paper identifies significant differences in the way the same ‘successful’ teaching outcome is experienced by the students and the academic and seeks to highlight the implications (for university staff) of an unproblematic acceptance of students’ criteria for measuring both teaching quality and student satisfaction.

Educated Hope, Modest Ambition and School-Based Equity Reforms: Possibilities and Perspectives for Change

Despite literally decades of equity based educational reform, patterns of educational success and failure remain remarkably unchanged. In recognition of the challenges associated with the pursuit of educational justice this chapter first explores different frameworks for approaching equity in education and then puts forward the ways in which contemporary work in this area can be usefully informed by the twin concepts of educated hope and modest ambition. A key aim is to demonstrate both the need for, and the possibility of, creating transformative educational environments into the future.

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.

Actor network theory and the study of online learning

This paper describes an approach to studying innovation and change that is taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies. Actor-network theory draws attention to the performative nature of the implementation of new technologies like quality systems and on1ine teaching. The theory posits that the world is not populated with entities that possess certain essences in and of themselves, but rather that the world is a texture of relations-a network which occasionally produces the effect of stabilised entities. We examine the consequences of producing durable forms of online teaching and quality assurance and argue that achieving durable performances requires a conformity to existing performances of a university thus reproducing current patterns of inequity.

Early career teachers' beliefs about their preparedness to teach: Implications for the professional development of teachers working with gifted and twice-exceptional students

Abstract Teachers have a major impact upon the educational achievements and psychological well-being of gifted students. Interestingly, however, relatively little is known about how well-prepared early career teachers believe themselves to be to take up this challenge. This makes the development of appropriately targeted and specifically focused professional learning opportunities challenging; responding to this significant gap in the literature—and its implications for the support of early career teachers—this article reports on results from a large-scale, mixed-methods Australian research project that investigated 971 newly graduated teachers’ beliefs about their preparedness to meet the needs of diverse students. Drawing upon this unique data-set, the paper identifies three key areas where beginning teachers felt less than prepared: teaching students with diverse abilities, supporting students with disability and communicating sensitively with parents. The paper then identifies implications of this research for the professional development of teachers.

Transformative approaches to new technologies and student diversity in futures-oriented classrooms

When we consider, first, school-based responses to the computer and communication technologies that underpin much social change, and, secondly, school-based responses to student diversity it becomes clear that schools have not yet been able to respond in any sustained or significant way to the most fundamental challenges posed by the external world within which they are located and which they ostensibly exist to support. In exploring this challenge, this chapter put forward the contested concept of future proofing and discusses to what extent, and in what ways, it is possible to future proof diverse children for unknown and unknowable futures.

Employment Pathways, Mobility and Retention of Graduate Teachers

The relationship between the quality of teacher education and the employability and retention of graduate teachers in schools has received increased attention from policymakers and researchers in the current context of educational reforms (Barber and Mourshed in Shaping the future: how good education systems can become great in the decade ahead. McKinsey and Company, Singapore, 2009; Bransford et al. in Preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do. Wiley, San Francisco, 2005; TEMAG in Action now: classroom ready teachers. Australian Government, Canberra, 2014).

Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education

The previous chapter outlined the complicated political context of contemporary teacher education. Sustained international scrutiny has seen many influential stakeholders (including Government ministers and accreditation bodies) voice concerns about the outcomes that can be linked to teacher education and, more specifically, the extent to which various teacher education programs produce ‘quality’ teachers who are, in turn, defined by their ability to impact positively upon student achievement.