1,720,994 research outputs found
Extending horizons: critical technological literacy for urban Aboriginal students
No full textThis literacy project was developed and
implemented to give students the
opportunity to learn critical
technological literacy skills and
become comfortable in a
university setting
Seeking continuity: Educational strategy in and for mobile ADF families
Get PDFThis report shares findings and insights from an interview study conducted in 2009, with 34 ADF families. These families were identified in the communities of primary schools in both state and Catholic systems with high ADF family enrolments in 3 towns across 2 states, with the assistance of the DCO and their embedded Defence School Transition Aides (DSTAs). In the interviews the parents were invited to describe their history of ADF relocations, and how they managed transitions for each member in terms of school choice, child care arrangements, spouse employment, and educational transitions. Parallel interviews were conducted with 12 teachers and 6 DSTAs across the identified schools to describe how schools cater for mobile ADF families flowing through their classes. Parents were invited to tell the story of their family’s sequence of moves and how each member made the transition, then reflect more generally on what advice they’d give other mobile families. Teachers were asked to describe how they respond to the mobile families in their school community, and to illustrate some of the issues and challenges from the institutional perspective. By offering perspectives from both parents and teachers, the report hopes to facilitate a dialogue between parties to address their common goal – promoting productive continuities in education for children in mobile families
Managing potentials: cultural differencing in a site of global/local education
No full textInternationalised online education offers a valuable window for research into the cultural processes of globalisation. This paper reports preliminary findings of a doctoral project about cultural difference in an online MBA unit with an internationalised student group. The case study was conducted as a critical ethnography (Carspecken 1996) adapted to virtual settings (Hine 2000). The study was also informed by a critical realist frame (Bhaskar 2002) which recognises the ontological level of potentials that can shape events, in addition to the empirical (that which is observable) and the actual (that which occurred). Cultural difference has typically been associated with negative potentials in pedagogical settings, in particular, the risks/problems of exclusion, disadvantage, and cultural offence. In emerging discourses of internationalisation, however, cultural difference is often constructed as potentially beneficial, enriching the mutual exchange of new insights. In this case study, the negative potential of intercultural offence and the positive potential of cultural difference as a vicarious asset for the curriculum were influential in shaping how the texts/interaction were designed and conducted. This paper will report in summary a variety of ways in which processes of cultural differencing realised both negative and positive potentials in the case study unit
Promising virtues in the virtual classroom : metaphors on trial
No full textThe utopian promise of the virtual classroom has been sustained by the metaphors ingrained in a persuasuve discourse shaping online learning. This discourse promotes an orthodoxy of a singular pedagogy married to technological affordances rather than to any instructional content, student body or pedagogical context. This study explores the limits of the now commonplace metaphors in this discourse: virtual 'commuinity, virtual 'classroom' and online 'discussion'. The rhetoric of utopian, imaginary visions of cyberspace's pedagogical possibilities is contrasted with empirical accounts of the vicissitudes of pedagogical itneraction in virtual environments, and with other theorizations of what constitutes 'community', 'classroom', and 'discussion'. The analysis explores how these concepts work as metaphors, and what such metaphors selectively choose not to represent. The analysis explores whether what is talked up in the enthusiastic discourse of online learning warrants the virtues of its metaphors, or is performing the work of simulation. The paper suggests that this discourse of a singular pedagogy unnecessarily limits the discursive resources available to teachers and cannot adequately reflect the potential diversity and relational properties of pedagogic relations in electronic environments
Understanding trouble in Paradise: intuitive natives and screaming aliens
No full textThis paper draws from an ethnographic study of an online MBA unit offered by an Australian university to an internationalised student group, and focuses on the eruption of interactive troubles around issues of technological functionality (as opposed to its malfunctioning). Drawing on Wertheim’s (1999) theorisation of cyberspace as a construction of utopian dreaming, Burbules and Callister’s (2000) distinction between designed space and populated place, and Green & Bigum’s (1993) description of aliens and natives in the classroom, particular incidents of trouble surrounding presumptive designs of functionality are analysed. The paper warns against the pedagogical ‘presumption of competence’ given its inevitable flipside of ‘critical illiteracy’, then argues for more research that goes looking for trouble and acknowledges the dystopian aspects of technophilic dreaming
Naming the Trouble with Default Settings
No full textThe 21st century is marked by accelerating global flows more so than mere ripples in regard to the exchange of cultural resources across geo-political boundaries. However, a spot of trouble in these flows can produce disruptive ripples. This paper examines textual data generated in the contact zone of teacher-student interactions within an online MBA unit, offered by an Australian university to an international student group. Over the life of the unit, it became evident that names were doing a lot of identity and pedagogical work in these interactions and considerable interactive trouble arose over the social practices surrounding names. In particular the default field settings in the online courseware did not suit the tripartite Chinese names and their associated conventions, though these scripts were also being eroded. The analysis will use SFL concepts to interrogate selected slices of the online texts and participants' interview accounts to demonstrate how naming practices were instrumental in building the tenor sought in competing models of teacher/student relationships, and how ethnocentric default settings in the electronic mode served to heighten and exacerbate cultural differences. These events are related to the larger problematic of theorising the context of culture in times of globalisation
Agentive motility meets structural viscosity: Australian families relocating in educational markets
No full textThis paper will develop and illustrate a concept of institutional viscosity to balance the more agentive concept of motility with a theoretical account of structural conditions. The argument articulates with two bodies of work: broad social theory of reflexivity as negotiating agency and social structures; and sociology of mobility and mobility systems . It then illustrates the concept of viscosity as a variable (low to high viscosity) through two empirical studies conducted in the sociology of education that help demonstrate how degrees of viscosity interact with degrees of motility, and how this interaction can impact on motility over time. The first study explored how Australian Defence Force families cope with their children’s disrupted education given frequent forced relocations. The other study explored how middle class professionals relate to career and educational opportunities in rural and remote Queensland. These two life conditions have produced very different institutional practices to make relocations thinkable and doable, by variously constraining or enabling mobility. In turn, the degrees of viscosity mobile individuals meet with over time can erode or elevate their motility
Naming trouble in online internationalized education
No full textThis paper offers an analysis of cultural politics that emerged around naming practices in an ethnographic study of the interactions within an online MBA unit, offered by an Australian university to both “local” Australian students and international students enrolled through a Malaysian partner institution. It became evident that names were doing important identity, textual and pedagogical work in these interactions and considerable interactive trouble arose over the social practices surrounding names. The analysis uses sociolinguistic concepts to analyse selected slices of the online texts and participants' interview accounts. The analysis shows how ethnocentric default settings in the courseware served to heighten and exacerbate cultural difference as a pedagogical problem. These events are related to the larger problematic of theorizing the context of culture in times of globalization and increasingly entangled educational routes, with implications for the enterprise of online internationalized education
Optimising meritocratic advantage with the International Baccalaureate Diploma in Australian schools
No full textThis paper explores two of the tensions Tarc identifies in the history of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma: firstly, between its design for meritocratic competition and its internationalist vision and, secondly, between the IB as a global commodity and its localised interpretations. Using data from three case studies of Australian schools offering both the IB Diploma and the local government curriculum, and student responses to an online survey across 26 such schools, the analysis shows how choices behind the IB's growing popularity foreground strategies for optimising meritocratic competition. Framed through Bourdieu's concepts of field and ‘rules of the game’, the analysis shows how students act on their own comparative analyses of each curriculum to optimise their chances to access desirable university pathways within the local rules of the game for university placement. Schools are shown to offer the IB Diploma to recruit and retain academically ambitious students by pooling their relative advantage in different local ecologies. Students are shown to carefully evaluate the benefits and costs of the IB choice. The conclusion reflects on how the choice of the IB Diploma for meritocratic advantage by some might change conditions for others not choosing it
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