After the education disciplines:Teaching theory on-line (original) (raw)

Redefining and interrogating pedagogical practices

2021-2022 Contextualising Horizon Report, 2022

Lockdowns and the rapid pivot to remote teaching disrupted much of Australasian higher education and has given us impetus to rethink educational design and practice. Overnight, some educators found themselves thrown into remote teaching, while for others, their courses were already designed with blended and online learning in mind. Universities with large face-to-face cohorts have tended to rely upon traditional teaching and assessment modes, with some variation across faculties and departments. Long before the pandemic, learners had been choosing flexible, online teaching and learning modes with dedicated online providers with programmes purposefully designed to leverage online technologies over the traditional on-campus experiences. Many across the higher education sector have recognised this as an opportune time to reflect on just how far education has shifted from a teacher-centred to a learner-centred approach, and how technology may enable or hinder that process.

"From Existentialism to Virtuality," M. Boler (2013) Leaders in Philosophy of Education

Leaders in Philosophy of Education, 2014

This autobiographical essay outlines the interdisciplinary paths and divergent educational choices that converged in the creative and intellectual work and career of Megan Boler, a leading thinker in contemporary philosophy of education. Leaders in Philosophy of Education, ed. L Waks (2014) (Volume 3 in Book Series, Leaders in Educational Theory) In the late 1950s plans were initiated to bring a higher level of professionalism to the training of educational professionals. New projects included introducing contemporary scholarship from the humanities and social sciences into colleges of education to revitalize the education knowledge base. In North America and the United Kingdom, analytical philosophers were recruited to inaugurate a ‘new philosophy of education.’ Analytical philosophy of education soon spread throughout the English speaking world. By the 1980s this analytical impulse had largely subsided. Philosophers trained in analytical philosophy and their students turned to more ambitious normative pursuits related to problems of social justice and democracy. Meanwhile, feminist philosophers opened up new issues regarding the education of women and the nature of teaching and knowing, and a new wave of pragmatist philosophers turned to issues of educational policy. By the 1990s Anglo-American philosophers of education welcomed a dialogue with counterparts in Western Europe, and the field responded to established trends in European philosophy ranging from critical theory and phenomenology to post-structuralism. New leaders emerged in philosophy of education representing all of these various strands. This volume documents the emergence of contemporary philosophy of education as seen by those spearheading these trends.

S(t)imulating learning: pedagogy, subjectivity and teacher education in online environments

London Review of Education, 2010

Australian higher education increasingly relies on flexible modes of delivery as a means of attracting and retaining students in a highly competitive global education market. While education is among those disciplines that have been most actively involved in the shift from face-to-face to online learning and teaching, the transition for many teacher educators is fraught with tensions and contradictions. For some, teaching online is seen as primarily a cost-cutting exercise on the part of universities, and has little to do with improving the quality of student learning. For others, the online environment offers multiple pedagogic possibilities that have yet to be fully explored. Yet others consider online environments as problematic, posing challenges to pedagogic and peer relationships that are generally seen as integral to 'good' teaching. This paper draws on an empirical study of teacher education faculties in five Australian universities, and analyses excerpts from interv...

Countering a ‘Back-to-Basics’ Approach to Teacher Education: Multiliteracies and On-Line Discussions in a Community of Practice

Language and Literacy, 2015

Aiming to extend sociocultural theory about literacy education in teacher programs, this article reports on results from a qualitative study conducted in a Western Australian university. The project tracked a group of initial teacher and graduate education students collaborating in on-line discussion embedded in a literacy course. The article focuses on how one pre-service teacher constructed situated identities and understandings about literacy as she interacted on-line with peers and the course instructor in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Suggestions are provided for designing on-line CoPs that consider power and an expanded definition of literacies.

A Bridge Too Far? Reflections on Theory in Educational Practice

“Symposia Melitensia”, vol. 16, pp. 71-86., 2020

Praxis is a notion underlying several educational theories and it has led to the development of different models of teacher education. Locally, this has also been one of the concepts discussed during the 'masterisation' of the teaching profession, by virtue of which pedagogical content knowledge builds on prior-achieved content knowledge. As teacher education in Malta was reformed, a number of unprecedented socioeconomic developments created a scenario which, at policy-making level, brought about further educational reforms. These include an outcomes-based model for learning and assessment and a drive towards vocational education. In this presentation, I refer to data regarding teacher-student ratios, as one aspect of the contextualization of education locally, and I proceed to reflect upon two educational documents, using Critical Discourse Analysis. I argue that the cyclical nature of praxis, which requires reflection and action, is somewhat side-lined within the current educational context, possibly because immediate instrumental gains are being prioritized.

Nomadic Epistemologies and Performative Pedagogies in Online Education

Educational Theory, 2002

In this essay 1 explore culturally responsive epistemologies and pedagogies in online education that integrate difference (based on gender, race, geography, ethnicity, class, sexuality, size, affiliation, and physical ability, for example), open-endedness, and conductive reasoning through practices of collage, appropriation, and fragmentation.' This approach offers a theoretical framework for online educators to produce curricula and pedagogies that are more supportive of making sense of the multiple subjectivities and complex discourses that lifelong learners confront in a postmodern, postcolonial, and media-dense era marked by increasing social and cultural hybridity.2 "Cultural hybridity" will be used to describe these anti-essentialist approaches to social and cultural difference in relation to online education learners, in contrast with the predominant constructions of online learners as static unified subjects and the traditional models of instructional design that dominate online education curricula and pedagogies? I suggest approaches to online learning that create liminal spaces (epistemologies and pedagogies that exist with/through/between dominant and nondominant discourses) for the negotiation of knowledge and identity.