Sue Monk

Differentiated learning: from policy to classroom

This paper explores the impact of a Teaching and Learning Audit of all government schools in Queensland, Australia. This audit has a concern with the extent to which schools ‘differentiate classroom learning’. We note that in England, since September 2012, one of the standards that teachers have been expected to demonstrate is an ability to ‘differentiate appropriately’, and thus the lessons of how this particular audit was implemented in Queensland have relevance outside of Australia. The paper draws on data collected from Red Point High School, one of the State’s 1257 schools and education centres audited in 2010. We suggest that this requirement to differentiate classroom learning was implemented without appropriate clarity or support, and that it increased teacher surveillance in this school. However, we also argue that some spaces were opened up by this audit, and its concern with differentiation, to articulate a social justice agenda within the school. We conclude that differentiation is a complex concept which is not easy to shift from a policy to a classroom context, and requires more careful explication at policy level and more support for teachers to enact.

Introducing a Learner Response System to Pre-Service Education Students: Increasing Student Engagement

Described in this study is a learner response system (clickers) used with first-year undergraduate students in a small group setting. The aim of the project was to address issues faced by us all as we seek to improve class participation, as well as engage students in lectures and tutorials throughout the course. Data collection for this case study incorporated diary entries by the lecturer and student responses to the use of clickers and reflects both the course coordinator’s journey through the process of introducing this new technology and changing students’ responses as they engage with this technology. The article reports on the positive results particularly in relation to increased potential for clickers to be used as a teaching and learning tool. The significance of this study, however, lies in the recognition that pedagogical approaches need to be taken into consideration when planning for effective use of clickers as a tool for engaging students.

Using Butler to understand the multiplicity and variability of policy reception

Understanding how teachers make sense of education policy is important. We argue that an exploration of teacher reactions to policy requires an engagement with theory focused on the formation of ‘the subject’ since this form of theorisation addresses the creation of a seemingly coherent identity and attitude while acknowledging variation across different places and people. In this paper, we propose the utility of Butlerian ideas because of the focus on subjectivity that her work entails and the account she gives for social norms regulating people’s actions and attitudes. We use Butler’s stance on how ‘cultural intelligibility’ is formed to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory ‘take up’ of curriculum policy by 10 teachers at a secondary school case study in Queensland, Australia. We use the phrase ‘policy reception’ to signify a particular theoretical line of thought we are forming with our application of Butlerian theory to the analysis of teacher attitudes toward curriculum policy, and to distinguish it from ‘policy interpretation’, ‘policy translation’ and ‘policy enactment’.

Early career academics learning the game in Whackademia

ABSTRACT The initial years as an early career academic (ECA) are challenging times as those new to the academy attempt to balance the three aspects of their role: teaching, research and service, while also coming to terms with both overt and hidden expectations. Formal mentoring arrangements for ECAs are threatened by competing demands on time. Additionally, they may not fully support the needs of ECAs as they can be more closely aligned to university needs than those of the ECA. The purpose of this paper is to open conversations about ECAs finding ways to develop agency. We use a reflective inquiry approach to identify and respond to the ideological and hegemonic influences on the experiences of ECAs. We also promote self-sustaining peer support and informal mentoring from more senior staff as complementary forms of professional learning.

Aligning pedagogy and technology: A case study using clickers in a first-year university education course

Abstract This paper presents the results of a case study which focuses on lecturers’ use of a learner response system (clickers) with students enrolled in a first-year university education course. Data is drawn from interviews and questionnaires with guest lecturers, including the course coordinator and an author of the paper, who is also the principal lecturer in the course. Within the body of research that links clicker use with positive student engagement, this paper focuses on the lecturers’ experiences in preparing for, and using clickers with their students. The study focused on the research question: How do pedagogical decisions affect the way clickers are used with students in an education course? Taking into account the locatedness of individual lecturers’ pedagogical frameworks, the results of this study indicate a connection between lecturers’ teaching pedagogies, the way these inform their interactions with students and also how they incorporate clickers in their teaching. This paper therefore argues that the objectives of using clickers need to be made explicit in pedagogical dialogues of teaching teams comprised of lecturers and guest lecturers, and clearly linked to the overall pedagogy informing course delivery.

Developing identity and agency as an early career academic: lessons from Alice

Abstract This paper draws on Lewis Carroll’s character of Alice as a metaphor for interrogating identity construction and agency amongst early career academics, a process which can seem like Alice’s pursuit of the White Rabbit in a strange land. Keeping in mind the effects of neoliberalism on the tertiary sector, we recognise the centrality of personal lives in decision-making about academic careers and the shaping of professional identities. We also foreground how communities of practice not only build agency amongst ECAs but can also be supported by academic developers.

Lessons from Alison: a narrative study of differentiation in classroom teaching

Abstract Teaching is challenging in part because, although school structures are to some extent modelled on industrial approaches in which the ‘raw materials’ are assumed to be very similar, human beings are endlessly diverse. Understanding the many differences amongst students, and treating these differences as teaching resources rather than deficits, is a powerful approach. This paper draws on teacher interviews and classroom observations collected during a two-year study of two regional Queensland schools to explore issues of ‘recognition’, ‘distribution’ and social justice. It uses narrative vignettes from a single classroom to provide an occasion for reflection on the part of the reader on how schooling can better meet the needs of students, and outlines six pedagogical practices for effective classroom teaching.

The uncomfortable teacher-student encounter and what comes to matter

ABSTRACT This article offers insights around how a posthumanist framing might allow us to know our teaching practices, performances and identities otherwise. Influenced by Baradian philosophy and the work of Sara Ahmed, it uses an ethico-onto-epistemology to conduct a diffractive rendering of the affective experiences of three female teaching academics (the authors) as they encounter uncomfortable teacherly moments in the course of their daily work. By repositioning emotions as both material objects and powerful (re)constitutive forces, they are placed at the very centre of teaching practices, performances, identities and teacher-student relationships. From here they function to redistribute agency through such things as words, past experiences, shared histories and bodily responses. This approach extends scholarly research in Higher Education settings beyond conventional humanist ontologies to examine the ways that power shapes the very surface of bodies as well as worlds.

This is the sound of one voice: singing to see beyond boundaries in a university community choir

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore their experiences as singers in a community choir called Arrkula (a Yanyuwa word meaning “one voice”) based in the School of Education at the University of Queensland as performance of song, self, social justice and seeing beyond boundaries. Performing at “gigs” inside and outside the university, Arrkula has been singing together since 2011, and despite an environment replete with neo-liberal ideals of individualism, competitiveness and capitalist driven research agendas, at the centre of their song remains a yearning for social connection, equality and renewed consciousness. Design/methodology/approach – The authors take an autoethnographic creative approach and bring performance of song together with their stories and interviews with choir members to link the “secret space” of the rehearsal with the “public space” of staged performances. Findings – The authors’ aim is to think and perform the potential the voice and voices of Arrkula hold in terms of hei...

Investigating ‘moments’ for student agency through a differentiated music curriculum

Abstract Research provides compelling evidence linking music-making to academic achievement and increased wellbeing for disengaged students. However, in the Australian context, education policy has narrowed its focus to literacy and numeracy, with an associated ‘accountability’ framework of mandated assessment and reporting practices. Within this context teachers are being asked to demonstrate how, through their pedagogical practices, they meet the needs of all their students. As a result of this, differentiation has become the lens through which student learning and engagement are being monitored. Drawing on data from a large state secondary school, this paper examines how a differentiated music curriculum is being implemented to support student agency. We demonstrate that, through a range of formal and informal music programs, agency is enhanced through the development of self-reflexive and self-referential learning practices. However, we suggest that differentiation, alone, does not unmask the reasons behind students’ different learning experiences nor does it necessarily redress entrenched educational inequalities. We also suggest that the ‘moments’ for student agency, created by these music programs, may have as much to do with the ‘fragile’ position of music within the broader school curriculum where the spotlight of high-stakes testing is directed elsewhere.