School of Education

Teachers for the future: an unmet need

David Lynch et al. — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:16:53 PDT

In 2000 Central Queensland University conducted the first major review and redevelopment of its teacher education programs. Consequently the Bachelor of Learning Management (or BLM) came into being. A central premise of the BLM was the concept of graduate teachers having a ‘futures orientation’. In this article the results of a study into the perceptions of mentors and graduate teachers, with respect to a futures orientation, are reported.

Toward a model for early childhood environmental education: foregrounding, developing, and connecting knowledge through play-based learning

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie et al. — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:18:50 PDT

Environmental education represents a growing area of interest in early childhood education, especially since the inclusion of environmental principles and practices in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework. Traditionally, these two fields of education have been characterized by diverse pedagogical emphases. This article considers how teachers in particular see different types of pedagogical play, such as open-ended play, modeled play, and purposefully framed play as providing opportunities for young children and teachers to develop knowledge through experiences about environmental education in early childhood settings. As a result of findings based on our qualitative research study involving early childhood teachers and children, an emerging model for thinking about environmental education in early childhood is proposed as a way of integrating these pedagogical emphases traditionally associated with environmental and early childhood education. Avenues for future research associated with this model are also identified.

Resilience building using art therapy with adolescents in Australia

Joanne Kelly — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:35:35 PDT

Young children's play experiences in contemporary environments

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:41:33 PDT

This keynote presents arguments associated with young children's play experiences in contemporary environments. The notion of 'nature deficit disorder' and the changing role of nature in young children's lives is examined and problematized within an early childhood education context. The phenomenon of the ecological continuum is considered, alongside the perceived role of environmental education in the early years as a response to children's contemporary play experiences.

Food for thought: the hunger for satisfaction in a world of increasing choice

Robert J. Smith — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:15:56 PDT

Contemporary issues in Australian literacy teaching

Jenny L. Johnston — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:39:21 PDT

Looking for direction: climate change education: engaging, understanding and listening to children and young people

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie — Sun, 05 May 2013 21:57:31 PDT

Engaging young people in environment

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:51:23 PDT

Environmental education reforms in India: teacher educators’ experiences, issues, and the policy-practice gap

S Almeida et al. — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:51:19 PDT

Creating our next creative steps in research: getting published in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:51:15 PDT

This highly interactive workshop provides a unique opportunity for researchers (including early career researchers and research students) and aspiring writers to work with the Editor and Editorial Board members of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education in ‘getting published’. We will initially discuss the past, current and future directions of the Journal, followed by an interactive writing workshop. Participants are encouraged to bring their abstract, conference paper or other ideas to the workshop, along with ideas for furthering and advancing the Association’s journal.

Listening to children’s voices: teaching/learning environment through children’s literature

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie et al. — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:51:12 PDT

Cutter-Mackenzie et al* claim that children’s literature provides “some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children may have with ‘nature’” 253). They go on to say that children’s literature can: … afford openings for dialogue both with and against dominant cultural texts, images, narratives and figurations of eco-cultural relations, and may offer incompatible as well as compelling understandings of childhood, adulthood, place and nature. It may also encourage a ‘comparing and AAEE National Conference 2012, 30 September – 3 October, Melbourne Page 31 contrasting’ of these alongside questions of the ecologies and cultures depicted in children’s literature, including children’s and adults’ conceptions and constructions of environment that might be experienced with or through them, their senses of an eco-identity, -citizenship or -responsibility related to such places and nature, and the significance that immersive pedagogies might play in engaging these themes and their challenges (254). Their book contains the only dedicated research in environmental education that deals with how children experience environment through children’s literature. Through their own admission though they note that their work (to date) has not seriously considered children’s voices of/about/in environment. This trend can be seen in environmental education research more broadly where much of the work on children’s voices is over two decades old, not taking stock of the pace of today’s society and ever-changing environment. In this highly interactive workshop we will explore ways to understand and enable children’s environmental voices through the creation and sharing of child-framed children’s books. The session will feature examples from the Environmental Education program at Berwick Fields Primary School where students have begun to develop their own texts which express their experience of the environment. What do they produce and what does it tell us about the ways they see their future?

Generating new knowledge in early childhood education: aligning contemporary health, wellbeing and sustainability issues with research into children's play

Helen Skouteris et al. — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:51:07 PDT

The serious work of learning and sustainability in the early years

Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie et al. — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:06:34 PDT

What’s learning, what’s work and what’s play? Which category do children view environmental and sustainability activities as belonging to?

Even young children have definite views about what constitutes work, learning and play. We were interested to discover that young children were able to articulate concepts about waste minimisation, water quality and plant propagation and that children tended to classify activities around these concepts as real and valuable work. In a recent study of early years settings that investigated the connections between children’s acquisition of conceptual knowledge and different pedagogical approaches we gained insights into children’s perceptions and pedagogical approaches that successfully navigate a balance between the student/child-centred and teacher-directed, disconnect that are relevant to teachers at all levels.

Journeying together: understanding the process of teacher change and the impacts on student learning

Jake Madden et al. — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:34:43 PDT

Sustaining the future through virtual worlds

Sue Gregory et al. — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:06:55 PDT

Youth culture, physical education and the question of relevance: after 20 years, a reply to Tinning and Fitzclarence

Michael Gard et al. — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:59:22 PDT

This article is an attempt to think through the idea that physical education should draw from youth culture in order to be more ‘relevant’ to students. We begin by revisiting Tinning and Fitzclarence's 1992 article ‘Postmodern youth culture and the crisis in Australian secondary school physical education’ in which they essentially argued that young people were bored by physical education because it had failed to keep pace with the pleasures they derive from consumer culture. With this as a starting point, we try to both critique and extend Tinning and Fizclarence's ideas by drawing on two broad areas of scholarship; cultural studies of youth and participatory action research. Our purpose here is twofold. First, we want to help clarify what might be meant by the terms ‘youth culture’ and ‘relevance’. Flowing on from this, we suggest some directions for practice and research. These suggestions are not ‘solutions’ and we are at pains to argue that the ‘relevance problem’ may in fact be an unwitting shorthand for a range of related but distinct challenges. Because of this, as well as our own differing perspectives, we propose contradictory paths forward, including both more and less interest in student subjectivity and more and less allowance for student autonomy.

Disagreement, not misrecognition: a reply to Monaghan

Michael Gard — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:05:27 PDT

There are many ways to be an intellectual friend and ally. In this response to Lee Monaghan's article I argue that while groups of scholars and activists may share broad social and political commitments, this does not mean that they should never challenge each others points of view. Sometimes friendship is deepened by a robust interrogation of unexplored areas of difference. In this case, our shared domain is the critical scholarship of body weight. However, one theme in my recent work has explored the mosaic of different writers whom I call ‘obesity sceptics’ and the radically different ways they arrive at similar conclusions about the ‘obesity epidemic’. In this article I offer both context for this work and an account of my interest in the idea of intellectual consistency. In particular, although Monaghan accuses me of abandoning any interest in intellectual rigour, he fails to see that intellectual rigour is precisely what I am most interested in. Above all, my point is that political solidarity and intellectual consistency are rarely easy bedfellows and that emphasising one inevitably threatens the other. This does not mean that solidarity is impossible, but rather that part of the scholar's role is to notice lazy solidarity where it occurs so that politics and scholarship might enrich, rather than simply pander to, each other.

Teacher education in Australia : investigations into programming, practicum and partnership

David Lynch et al. — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:33:07 PDT

Examining the Bachelor of Education: mentor's perceptions of student/teacher performance

David Lynch et al. — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:33:04 PDT

Cognitive load: theory in search of a thought process

Tony Yeigh — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:33:00 PDT