(2017). VET Retention in Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. Good Practice Guide. National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) This good practice guide is based on the research project "Enhancing training advantage for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners" by John Guenther et al. on behalf of Ninti One Limited. The project examines five unique and successful vocational education and training (VET) programs in remote areas and identifies how retention and completion can be improved (to improve employability) and what other indicators of success (apart from completion) are important outcomes of training in remote communities. The project makes a vital contribution to furthering our understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences with VET in remote areas and explores the factors that boost engagement and retention in training and ensure that training meets the needs of these learners and their communities. This good practice guides synthesises the findings of the five case studies and looks at the factors that are important in enabling retention and ensuring good… [PDF]
(2016). The Impact of Disadvantage on VET Completion and Employment Gaps. Research Report. National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) Increasing educational attainment is generally tied to better employment outcomes. The vocational education and training (VET) sector is often used as an entry point into post-compulsory education for individuals who have experienced disadvantage in their lives. But does increasing participation in VET by disadvantaged individuals necessarily lead to the same benefits as experienced by their non-disadvantaged peers? Specifically, do disadvantaged learners have similar completion rates and employment outcomes as their non-disadvantaged peers? Using data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research's (NCVER's) National VET Provider Collection and the Student Outcomes Survey, the authors find both completion and employment gaps exist between different groups of disadvantaged learners and their non-disadvantaged peers, but that closing the completion gap will not necessarily result in the closing of the employment gap. The following appendices are included: (1) Additional… [PDF]
(2014). Qualities of a Good First Nation School. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, v6 n1 p39-42. In the continual reformation of the nature of schools, one central theme appears: the concept of a good school. A good school has a clear sense of purpose, dedicated staff, strong leadership, parental involvement, and continual improvement. To transform current educational pedagogy, one must take risks, read the literature, and seek the desire continually to improve. These qualities are desirable in every good school, but they are essential in a good First Nation school…. [PDF]
(2015). Evil, Agency, and Citizenship Education. McGill Journal of Education, v50 n1. We all have a sense of evil, but many of us do not ponder its nature or the ways in which our beliefs about evil shape what we teach and learn about the actions of citizens in historical or contemporary times. We argue that the word and concept of evil can be detrimental to the development of good citizens when it is used as a political and educational shibboleth to shut down critical thought about traumatic historical and contemporary events. Read through the work of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou, however, a pedagogical engagement with our understandings of evil offers an opportunity to learn from difficult events in a way that might inform contemporary action towards a less violent future…. [Direct]
(2015). Examining the Quality of Phonological Representations in Anindilyakwa Children in Australia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, v50 n6 p842-848 Nov-Dec. Background: In attempting to evaluate an intervention programme designed to improve English literacy outcomes in children in a remote indigenous community in Australia, the need for valid and culturally appropriate measures of the factors likely to impact on literacy development became apparent. One factor considered likely to be of importance was the precision of the children's phonological representations. Aims: To develop a measure of phonological representations that was culturally relevant for Anindilyakwa children and to evaluate its reliability and concurrent validity against English measures that are known to be predictive of literacy outcomes. Methods & Procedures: Starting from the Quality of Phonological Representations test (QPR), the authors developed an Anindilyakwa Quality of Phonological Representations test (AQPR) and examined its reliability and concurrent validity. Outcomes & Results: The AQPR was found to have acceptable reliability and to correlate… [Direct]
(2015). Exemplifying a Continuum of Collaborative Engagement: Raising Literacy Achievement of At-Risk Students in New Zealand. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, v20 n1-2 p29-41. This article reports different ways researchers work with stakeholders in national projects targeted at raising achievement of students. Specifically, New Zealand has a persistent high performance-low equity profile in international tests, with indigenous Maori students and immigrants from the Pacific Islands most at risk of underachievement and of leaving school without qualifications. Policy has aimed to address this issue largely through provision of high-quality professional development to enhance effectiveness of practice. The notion of a continuum of collaboration is proposed; examples are presented that are positioned at different points in terms of the ideal of coconstructed, evidence-based judgments and decisions. The examples represent models or ways of working and the analysis captures both the varied nature of the interface that researchers have with policy makers, ministry officials, deliverers of professional development, and schools, and the affordances and tensions… [Direct]
(2015). Moments of Becoming: Experiences of Embodied Connection to Place in Arts-Based Service Learning in Australia. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, v43 n2 p156-168. The experience of place in arts-based service learning (ABSL) is personal. It can be difficult to define and challenging to share and build upon. This paper, reporting from a national ABSL project involving three Australian universities, is concerned with experiences of place in forming professional teacher identity. Using a narrative methodology in presenting the stories of six people, pre-service teachers and Indigenous community members, the paper draws on a number of different theoretical frameworks to explore each participant's experience and its longer-term impact on their thinking. The participant stories revealed the value of spaces between art-making, teaching, and research. The learning experiences led pre-service teachers to reflect deeply in relation to self and to consider the impact of their experiences on both current and future professional interactions. As anticipated, participants found it difficult to communicate these elemental experiences in the written word. The… [Direct]
(2015). Shared Understandings: Environmental Perspectives of Kenyan Community Members and Teachers. Environmental Education Research, v21 n7 p1079-1104. Environmental issues are a shared human concern as communities in all nations and geographic regions are grappling with environmental degradation. Despite this concern, there are multiple different viewpoints on the current state of environmental issues and how to understand these problems. Understanding how different communities conceive of the environment and sustainability is paramount in efforts to increase the frequency of environmentally conscious choices. If an awareness of others' perspectives of the environment is lacking, then the development of sustainable choices is placed at risk because of potentially competing views of what sustainability means in a particular context. As such, solutions to these environmental problems are frequently viewed as "wicked problems.'"This study investigates the shared and divergent environmental viewpoints of teachers and community members in Kenya. This study utilized photo-methodologies and qualitative in vivo analysis. The… [Direct]
(2015). Constructing the Rural in Education: The Case of "Outback Kids" in Australia. British Journal of Sociology of Education, v36 n4 p577-594. The majority of the still limited literature on education in non-metropolitan areas adopts an understanding of rurality as a fixed and known geographic entity. This paper departs from such a functionalist perspective to explore how rurality is constructed in a programme for at-risk teenagers in remote Australia. Drawing on a range of texts about the programme, including a documentary series entitled "Outback Kids," we examine how the rural space is imagined as simultaneously therapeutic and disciplining and therefore appropriate for troubled youth. Alongside this discussion we map the way in which other qualities and values associated with bifurcated definitions of the rural as a place of tradition and authenticity, and the urban as a place of disorder and pretence, are engaged in the texts to endorse the programme and its practices…. [Direct]
(2015). Min√°sbate Equivalents of Mathematical Concepts: Their Socio-Cultural Undertones. Online Submission, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences v2 n1 p37-43 Jan. This paper presents the collection and analysis of Min√°sbate equivalents of some concepts used in the study of arithmetic, counting, and geometry as provided by the elderly residents of the province of Masbate. The glossary of mathematical terms derived from interviews would serve as an authoritative reference for mother tongue teachers in the local primary schools. Some implications on the locality's historical and socio-cultural landscapes were deduced from the scrutiny of terminologies, such as the assimilation of foreign and neighbouring languages and the predominance of representational thinking among the natives…. [PDF]
(2015). Calculating for Probability: "He Koretake Te Rima" (Five Is Useless). Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) (38th, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, 2015). In Maori medium schools, research that investigates children's mathematical computation with number and connections they might make to mathematical ideas in other strands is limited. This paper seeks to share ideas elicited in a task-based observation and interview with one child about the number ideas she utilises to solve a problem requiring probabilistic thinking. The explanations provided by the child demonstrate how early number and spatial patterns can impact on computation, ease of determining possible outcomes and assigning a numerical probability measure to an event…. [PDF]
(2013). Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives in Education: Perceptions of Pre-Service Teachers. Canadian Journal of Education, v36 n2 p175-211. This study explored teacher candidates' perceptions of the potentialities and challenges associated with the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into mainstream education. Participants in this study were 2nd-year teacher candidates of a two-year teacher education programme who have completed a course on Aboriginal education. Using a qualitative approach, the principal investigator conducted interviews with teacher candidates in an effort to acquire data on pre-service teacher perceptions of and attitudes towards Aboriginal perspectives as a field of study and practice. This study found that while some participants reported a great deal of comfort in the study and delivery of Aboriginal perspectives in their respective school experiences, a significant number of participants reported apprehension. The findings of this study suggest that there are a number of variables that may lend to a positive experience for teacher candidates who are responsible for integrating Aboriginal… [PDF] [Direct]
(2013). A Haole in a Halau: Situating Identity, Practicing Learning. Educational Perspectives, v46 n1-2 p23-30. In this paper I look at a set of teaching techniques and practices that I experienced as a student of traditional hula over the past twenty years. I explain the practices of ho'ike (testing by showing what one knows), 'aiha'a (getting grounded), pa'a ka waha/ ho'olohe (hold the mouth/ listen), and learning without palapala (paper) as I have experienced them in halau hula (hula school). I discuss how these practices have challenged my assumptions about teaching and impacted my understanding of the learning process and my identity as a learner. I then isolate key values that I find interwoven throughout these practices, but which I find largely absent in our contemporary, Western educational institutions. I conclude with a discussion of what I call a pedagogy of respect. This concept, which I have drawn from my experience as a haumana hula (hula student), has helped me to clarify my identity both as an educator and a learner, and has increasingly informed my own teaching practice…. [PDF]
(2018). Decolonising Knowledge: Enacting the Civic Role of the University in a Community-Based Project. South African Journal of Education, v38 n4 Article 1662 Nov. The need to work in partnership with communities in a meaningful and impactful way has become a core part of university planning in many countries around the world. In the Global South, the potential for the Eurocentric knowledges and power structures to dominate such partnerships is pervasive. This article reports on findings of a participatory action research project conducted with community members in a socio-economically disadvantaged community in South Africa who had identified a need to improve school-community cooperation in educating local children. Analysis of our findings, framed against broader cultural and historical contexts, suggests that when the role of university-based 'experts' is one of facilitation rather than 'delivery,' then not only is participation more effective, but, also, the process and products of knowledge democratisation can be realised more effectively. We thus provide unique insight into the way relationships between the university and the community… [PDF]
(2016). The Crisis of Race in Higher Education: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue. Diversity in Higher Education. Volume 19. Diversity in Higher Education The compendium of writings in this edited volume sheds light on the event "Race & Ethnicity: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue" at Washington University in St. Louis and the work current students, faculty, and staff are doing to improve inclusivity on campus and in St. Louis. The book includes speeches, reflections, art, and photography aligned with the Day of Discovery and Dialogue in addition to original academic work on race in higher education, race in St. Louis, and race in the United States. Leading scholars and emerging voices feature in this volume, filling a void in the race and higher education literature since it will foreground a case study of a single university at the epicenter of a national racial crisis and how a university-wide event brought a campus together. This praxis focus may have far reaching impact in aiding other universities across the country in addressing racial tensions in their own communities…. [Direct]