Margaret Baguley

Learning and Teaching Styles

An ongoing challenge for instructional and syllabus designers and teachers and facilitators who seek to implement these curricula is finding and maintaining an appropriate balance between differing learning and teaching styles. Differences in cultural and language backgrounds, previous learning and teaching experiences, and the personal characteristics of learners and teachers create an extremely complex milieu at the intersection of learning and teaching in contemporary educational contexts. This chapter explores this issue through an analysis of three different data sets: the experiences of male Saudi nursing students at an Australian university; the role of children, parents and peers, and the natural environment as educators in an alternative school context; and the interaction between a teacher and student in an Australian senior secondary art classroom.

Technoliteracy, Discourse and Social Practice: Frameworks and Applications in the Digital Age

Design and technology education Hybrid identity design online ICT in language learning Lack of technology integration Literacy of gaming Literate practices Multiliteracies and games Technoliteracy in practice Technology in society Vodcasting

Critical friends: an investigation of shared narrative practice between education and nursing graduates

This article reports the findings of a pilot research project that investigated the perceived educational value of sharing narrative practice amongst graduate students from the School of Education and the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Tasmania. During a semester the graduate students reflected upon and wrote about a ‘critical incident’ which had occurred during their recent practical experience. These narratives were exchanged with the graduate students in the other discipline in order for the lecturers to examine the perceived educational value of sharing narrative practice. Analyses of written responses and questionnaire results were framed within a social constructivist perspective and drew on notions of peer feedback, critical reflection and the value of shared stories. The findings revealed that the graduate students appeared to revert to discipline-specific behaviours within this cross-disciplinary context.

Professional Learning and Development

Professional learning and development hold potential for transformational growth and change for educators, and for enhancing their capacities to build the capabilities of learners. Realising this potential requires an appreciation of the philosophies, theories and practices surrounding professional learning and development and how these may progress a capacity-building agenda. This chapter examines selected conceptualisations of professional learning and development through an interrogation of the data from three research projects in diverse educational and learning contexts: classroom teachers and their work supporting student well-being; yoga teachers and teacher trainers; and circus families and teachers. As a result of the analysis of these data, we draw out the implications for professional learning and development practices that offer opportunities to build capacities.

The education of artistic vision: A collaboration between the community and the academy

Abstract This paper investigates an established collaborative working relationship between two people working in the arts discipline area. One works in a voluntary arts organisation providing professional development for teachers, whilst the other is an arts academic preparing pre-service teachers for a primary teaching career. Both participants bring a range of skills, expertise and experience to their working collaborative relationship resulting in opportunities to engage the school, university and wider community in the arts. Narrative inquiry methodology has been utilised in order to provide rich insights into the elements which have contributed to the ongoing success of the collaborative relationship. The paper also explores the current context facing universities the challenges encountered by the collaborators in a climate of increasing performativity and accountability. The findings of this paper may assist those seeking to pursue university–community collaborations and provide insights into the characteristics of the collaborative process.

Teachers' Curriculum Stories: Perceptions and Preparedness to Enact Change.

Abstract Within the specific context of The Australian Curriculum: The Arts, this paper explores how teachers of the Arts and teacher educators encounter and enact curriculum change. Adopting Ewing’s notion that curriculum is a complex web of varying stories and storylines that are impacted on by teachers’ underlying philosophy, we suggest that Arts teachers embrace the intent behind The Australian Curriculum: The Arts. This paper unearths and explores insights gleaned from teachers looking inward and reflecting on their own personal curriculum journeys. The learning dimensions of conceptualising, experimenting and developing, reflecting, resolving and communicating are applied to investigate the implementation of the new curriculum. This article shares data from a number of Arts teachers’ interviews with the authors in relation to their thoughts on the implementation of the new curriculum. Two key themes emerged from these interviews, these being navigating challenges and the implications of personal attributes in encountering and enacting change. Interestingly, a number of qualities associated with Arts practitioners such as creative and lateral thinking, resilience and flexibility emerge as significant contributing factors in regard to how teachers encounter, enact and become curriculum change.

The Palgrave handbook of global arts education

This extensive handbook addresses a range of contemporary issues related to arts education across the world. It is divided into six sections; Contextualising Arts Education, Globally and Locally; Arts Education, Curriculum, Policy and Schooling; Arts Education Across the Life Span; Arts Education for Social Justice: Indigenous and Community Practice; Health, Wellbeing and Arts Education and Arts-Based and Research-Informed Arts Education. The Handbook explores global debates within education in the areas of dance, drama, music, media and visual arts. Presenting wide-ranging research from pedagogies of adaptation developed in Uganda to ethnomusicology in Malaysia and community participatory arts to wellbeing in Canada the Handbook highlights the universal need for arts education and in particular the importance of indigenous (including both traditional and contemporary practice) arts education. With contributions from internationally renowned scholars and practitioners and building on the World Alliance for Arts Education Global Summit in 2014, the Handbook creates an essential resource for arts education practices in and out of school alongside institutional, traditional and contemporary contexts. Students, teachers and practitioners across the arts disciplines will find the text invaluable for developing further opportunities to promote and study arts education.

The Influence of Professional Identity on Teaching Practice: Experiences of Four Music Educators:

This study explores the influence of professional identity on the teaching practice of four school music educators, two from Spain and two from Australia. Narrative inquiry methodology was utilized in order to investigate the full spectrum of their musical experiences, ranging from their earliest childhood memories to their current positions in the education sector. In the course of the co-construction of the narratives, two recurrent themes emerged: strategies to improve practice and teaching approaches. Despite the obvious cultural and institutional differences, there was a marked correlation of these themes in terms of their contribution to the formation of each of the participants’ professional identities. Although these findings are derived from a small number of participants they may provide insights for specialist music educators, teacher educators programs, and for those considering a career in music education.

Changes and Continuities

The multifaceted interplay between changes and continuities has a complex relationship with the opportunities for, and strategies of, capacity-building. This interplay is evident also in efforts to promote long-term and sustainable educational learning and development within and across specific educational sites. This chapter examines this interplay in the reported experiences of the individuals and groups participating in three selected research projects to portray what changes in their lives, what remains constant and continuous and how they use those changes and continuities to develop and refine contextually relevant capacities. This examination is used to distil wider implications for understanding the contemporary character of change and its significance for comprehending capacity-building and enhancing access to, and the outcomes of, educational learning and development.

Work in progress — Assessment of how engaging in teaching may enhance the learning journey of engineering and education students

This paper will examine the initial stages of a research project which seeks to evaluate the teaching potential of engineering and education students in the higher education setting. This analysis was conducted independently by three academics from engineering and education based on an initial neophyte teaching performance of an engineering student. The academics utilized both discipline-specific and pedagogical expertise in order to compare and contrast their findings and in the process were able to identify areas in which the student demonstrated lack of knowledge and/or skills during their teaching episode. The results of this pilot study provides important information in relation to enhancing the tertiary experience of students studying engineering, in areas such as including teaching and presentation skills which are increasingly becoming necessary for engineers; determining how to implement a range of these type of performance skills in a crowded engineering curriculum and devising ways to integrate pedagogical skills within authentic assessment tasks, such as through peer review of engineering students by pre-service education students which provides mutual benefits to both cohorts.