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For Glenda Lord, Gaye Lovelock and Christine Elizabeth Danaherwhose unconditional love and supporthelped us survive the challenges of the doctoral design journeyFor there is no friend like a sisterIn calm or stormy weather;To cheer one on the tedious way,To fetch one if one goes astray,To lift one if one totters down,To strengthen whilst one stands.(Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market")RationaleResearch methods textbooks (see for example Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007; Johnson & Christensen, 2004; Opie, 2004; Somekh & Lewin, 2005; Wiersma & Jurs, 2004) generally highlight the need for educational research to be rigorous and systematic in character. These characteristics are clearly crucial on a number of levels, from 'being true' in representations of research participants to demonstrating the researcher's competence to offset recurring criticisms of educational research as fragmented, ideologically biased and/or having little or no effect on practice (Pring, 2004; see also Hammersley, 2002; Scott, 2000; Wellington, 2000).Despite these injunctions, the planning and conducting of educational research are neither automatic nor easy. On the contrary, every step in the process involves a complex and sometimes controversial set of decisions and requires the exercise of finely honed judgment about the design and shape of the project. Educational researchers draw on multiple sources of information and inspiration to frame and inform their negotiations around, past and through these potential shoals. The research process involves complex navigation of ethical, methodological and political stances to ensure legitimate, trustworthy and hopefully useful findings (see for example Bridges, 2003; Carmine, 1995; deMarrais & Lapan, 2004; Gold, 1999; Swann & Pratt, 2004; Tabachnick, 1998).This special theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning is entitled "Doctoral Designers: Challenges and Opportunities in Planning and Conducting Educational Research". It presents diverse engagements - by several intending, current and recently graduated doctoral candidates presently associated with the Faculty of Education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia - with the processes of planning and conducting educational research. What emerges is a rich array of methodological approaches to research which have been foregrounded as these particular doctoral designers have reflected on and interrogated the characteristics of doctoral research. Their considerations have focused on what was and what might have been, as well as what was not and will not be, included in their research. This decision-making about the intentions and impact of doctoral research offers valuable knowledge about the difficult and challenging task of 'designing' doctoral study.Despite the diversity of approaches, contexts and foci revealed in this theme issue, the papers have in common an engagement with one or more of the following organising questions:* Which issues are most important in making decisions about the planning and conduct of an educational research project?* Which factors help to facilitate and/or restrict an educational research project's legitimacy, trustworthiness and utility?* How can and should educational researchers negotiate with multiple and sometimes competing stakeholders and gatekeepers?* What are the particular challenges and opportunities of designing doctoral educational research?OverviewFive anonymously peer refereed articles have been selected for inclusion in this special theme issue. In the first article, Mark A. Tyler explores the phenomenography of his own experience as a doctoral candidate, examining the work and identity of Technical and Further Education teachers. In the process, he canvases a wide array of emotions and perceptions of both himself and the participants in his study. …

This paper deploys Denzin’s (1994) four 'Writing Issues' as an interrogative lens for evaluating the appropriateness and utility of the design of a recent doctoral study of the educational aspirations and opportunities of Australian mobile show people (Danaher, 2001a). The deployment of that lens highlights a number of dilemmas and tensions that the researcher encountered in writing about a community traditionally subject to exoticisation and marginalisation in ways that were as 'true' as possible to the participants and that also fulfilled the taken-for-granted assumptions about doctoral research. The paper presents the argument that Denzin's 'Writing Issues' constitute one among several potentially useful frameworks for reflecting on the planning and conduct of an educational research project, as well as for navigating the specific challenges and opportunities involved in designing doctoral educational research.

Situated ethics (Piper & Simons, 2005; Simons & Usher, 2000) provides a potentially powerful conceptual lens for reflecting on the research significance and researcher subjectivities entailed in contemporary educational research projects. This is the idea that research ethics is most appropriately understood and enacted in the specific contexts of such projects, rather than by reference to timeless and universal codes. This proposition is helpful in drawing attention to the crucial networks of aspirations and interests that bind and separate stakeholders in those projects. The authors illustrate this argument through a reflexive interrogation of their respective empirical doctoral studies (Danaher, 2003; Danaher, 2001). One study focused on multiple and conflicting constructions of wildlife preservation as a site of Japanese environmental politics and policy-making; the other examined educational provision for mobile show communities as a case of Australian Traveller Education. Both projects required the researchers to negotiate tentative and sometimes uneasy relations with research participants that veered between impartial and disinterested observers and partial and interested advocates. In engaging in those negotiations, the researchers enacted situated and provisional ethical positions derived from increasingly explicit assumptions about both the significance of their particular research and the importance of acknowledging their own subjectivities in making claims about that significance. Thus situated ethics is a vital element of evaluating the value as much as the values of conducting research with non-government organisations and on showgrounds.

Learner-centredness is a key element of the contemporary dominant discourse pertaining to pedagogies and learning. Yet enacting learner-centredness is far from easy in the increasingly massified higher education system. The authors contend that it is in the intersection between this philosophy and practice that meaning emerges and personal pedagogies can be researched. This paper deploys the authors’ experiences as higher educators covering a diversity of disciplines, encompassing pre-undergraduate, undergraduate and postgraduate domestic and international students and including face-to-face, distance and online delivery modes in two Australian universities. Learner-centredness is interrogated in relation to three key sites: • exploring transformative learning with previously educationally marginalised pre-undergraduate students in face-to-face and external modes • enhancing self-efficacy with face-to-face undergraduate teacher education students in relation to their mathematical competence • experiencing social presence with online postgraduate students learning about educational research methods and ethics. The paper reports examples from each site where learner-centredness is successfully engaged and hence where the meaning emerging in practice is fulfilling and productive. At the same time, interpersonal and structural factors sometimes obstruct the attainment of such positive outcomes. These findings have important implications for the authors’ ongoing research into their personal pedagogies as well as for policy and practice in contemporary higher education more broadly.

Constructing new learning futures is an ongoing challenge and opportunity for contemporary learners and educators alike. A crucial element of that construction is making meaning by and for all participants in the educational enterprise. Such meaning making depends in turn on the performance of practice – that is, on the regular, repeated enactment of situated learning and teaching in specific contexts and environments that turns abstract and hypothetical ideas about education into experienced and lived realities. This paper applies and demonstrates this argument in relation to a suite of further education and training (FET) teacher education programs at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Australia. The authors elaborate a set of evaluative questions for the leadership, quality and technology dimensions of the curriculum of those programs. On the basis of those questions, the authors generate a conceptual framework that they argue is productive in identifying the principles and strategies of making meaning and performing practice that are most likely to promote the construction of new and enabling learning futures.

RationaleThis issue publishes the initial set of refereed papers from the first wave proceedings of the 3rd international pedagogies and learning conference, held at the Springfield campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia on 27 and 28 September 2007. The first conference in the series (1 to 4 October 2003) explored the theme "New Meanings for a New Millennium", while the second conference (18 to 20 September 2005) engaged with the proposition of "Meanings under the Microscope". This third conference took up this focus and shifted attention to "meanings emerging in practice".The conference organisers, and the editors of these conference proceedings, consider this examination of the interface between the performance of practice and meaningmaking potentially highly significant for understanding and enhancing pedagogies and learning in their myriad contexts and manifestations. In particular, this interface can be seen as the site where 'macro' meets 'micro', where 'theory' encounters 'practice' and doubtless where other binaries are enacted and subverted. From this perspective, practice is posited as the place where educational ideas can be tried out, where new strategies can be implemented and evaluated and taken-for-granted assumptions can be questioned. The meanings that emerge in and through and from this practice can then feed into new and more sustainable and even transformative instantiations and institutions of such practice.35 papers were submitted for refereeing for the first wave proceedings, just over double the number submitted for the first wave of the previous conference. At the time of writing, a few papers are being finalised. Suffice to say that a rigorous process of anonymous peer review was applied to each paper, with approximately 25% of referees' reports recommending that the paper not be accepted for publication. The editors contend that this statistic is one useful indicator of the quality of the papers appearing in these proceedings, as well as a reflection of authors' and referees' commitment to enhancing the standard of scholarship in pedagogies and learning within an international arena. It is expected that the conference's second wave proceedings will be published in the first part of 2008.This issue of the journal also marks the first issue published under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (APACALL). One consequence of the introduction of the Australian Research Quality Framework - whose own quality and impact will hopefully be the subject of future examination - has been to render the position of journals such as this one at once more important and more precarious. The capacity building and empowerment that the editors wish as outcomes of the journal's operations must be juxtaposed with the largely hidden and unacknowledged work needed to make those operations possible, with resultant potential angst and stress. In that context, APACALL's invitation to the journal to make its home with such a hospitable and efficient organisation is both timely and welcome.Articles in Part 1Eight anonymously peer refereed articles have been selected for publication in this initial issue. They are clustered around three of several key themes identified by the conference organisers as applying multiple lenses to the crucial topic of pedagogies and learning being maximised through meanings emerging in practice.The first three articles take up, from different perspectives, the first theme, 'researching personal pedagogies'. The first article, by David Giles, deploys the rich concept of phenomenology to explore his experience and understanding of the teacher-student relationship within teacher education at the author's institution. The result is a lively mix of critical reflection and conceptually framed autobiography, evoking distinctive elements of practice that resonate beyond their institutional boundaries. …

For Jim and Jonathan Simpson"We need...a way of knowing and educating in ways that heal rather than wound us and our world."(Palmer, 1983, p. 2)This special theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning is entitled "'Town and Gown' in the Bush: Contemporary Regional Universities and Transforming Communities" and provides a forum for multiple engagements with the relationships (or lack thereof) between contemporary regional universities and their communities, whether in Australia or in other countries.Many of the world's most prestigious universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg and Yale, are located in regional settings. Indeed in some cases, such as Utrecht, the regional town has developed around the university. Certainly, owing to the concentration of academics and students within a relatively underpopulated location, the atmosphere within a regional university town seems to be quite distinctive.Such an atmosphere has not always been mutually fruitful, and there is a long history of distrust between the university and the town of which it is ostensibly a part. In the case of Oxford, tensions between townspeople, who resented the university's growing arrogance and authority, and students boiled over on 10 February 1354, the Feast of Scholastica: "The countrymen advanced crying...'Smyt fast, give gude knocks'....Such Scholars as they found...they killed or maimed, or grievously wounded....Our mother the University of Oxon, which had but two days before many sons is now almost forsaken and left forlorn" (Anthony Wood, History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, 1674; cited in Drake, 1991, p. 3). The battle led to 62 students being killed and the rest being driven from the town.In the case of Australia, most of the longstanding traditional universities were constructed within metropolitan centres and capital cities. One exception is the University of New England in Armidale. Indeed, up until the 1980s, higher education institutions in most country areas were limited to Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and colleges of advanced education (CAEs). The reforms by John Dawkins, the then Federal Minister for Employment, Education and Training, to higher education in that decade saw these CAEs attain the status of universities, a change that enabled them to award postgraduate degrees and be recognised for research. Colloquially known as 'gumnut universities', these regional campuses have faced ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining students and academics, building a competitive research profile and finding a secure niche within the Australian higher education field on the one hand and within the often culturally diverse and geographically dispersed regional communities from which they draw their allegiance on the other.While several discourses can be discerned in these relationships, commentators on regional universities and communities commonly invoke at least two distinct narratives:* Regional universities, like their communities, are marginalised and under threat, and their best chance for survival lies in working together to create alternative opportunities and futures.* Regional universities, like their metropolitan counterparts, must increasingly adopt free market ideologies and practices whereby regional communities will be sidelined unless they can compete with national and international clients in accessing services from 'their' universities.In interrogating, contesting and reconstructing these discourses, the authors of the articles in this issue address three key questions currently confronting regional universities and their communities:* What are the identities and the missions of contemporary regional universities?* How are those identities and missions manifested in the universities' negotiated relationships with their communities, only some of which might also be regional?* What are the implications of those relationships for the likely future sustainability and survival of both regional universities and communities? …

Articles in Part 4This is the companion to the three-part inaugural theme issue that constituted Volume 1 of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. In combination, the numbers in that volume published the first wave of the refereed proceedings of the 2nd international pedagogies and learning conference, which was conducted at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia from 18 to 20 September 2005 with the theme "Meanings Under the Microscope". This special theme issue publishes the articles that make up the second wave of the conference's refereed proceedings - that is, those papers that were submitted after the conference for refereeing and possible publication. As with all refereed articles in the journal, these articles have undergone a rigorous, 'double blind' process of review by at least two anonymous referees.This section of this editorial introduction presents an overview of the papers making up the conference's second wave of refereed proceedings. As anticipated in the introduction to the previous issue, the next section is a selection of reflections on some of the broader implications raised by the articles in the journal's first four issues that constitute those proceedings.The first article, by Carol Butler-Made, Jeanne Allen and John Campbell from Central Queensland University in Australia, analyses the roles and experiences of teacher practitioners within the partnership arrangement in that institution's Bachelor of Learning Management degree. The authors cluster the results of a survey questionnaire with such practitioners around two themes distilling the perceived benefits and constraints of that agreement: professional growth and transition. In doing so, they reflect on a question that lies at the heart of all professional networks and partnerships: "What's in it for us?".In the second article, by Henk Huijser from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, the author interrogates assumptions underpinning the combined use of two contemporary concepts: the 'Net Generation'; and multiliteracies. Huijser argues for a shift from a teacher- to a learner-directed approach to enacting and engaging these concepts in order to maximise their potential benefits for learners. In doing so, he presents a number of possible strategies for that enactment and engagement.Tim Davis, Theda Thomas and Alanah Kazlauskas from the Australian Catholic University in Australia use the third article to present an account of a course about reasoning and critical thinking for information systems professionals in the Bachelor of Information Systems degree at their institution. The authors reflect on how the academic team developing the course used action research to inform their pedagogical practices, drawing on successive sets of survey questionnaire data to underpin their analysis. Davis, Thomas and Kazlauskas conclude by advocating the more comprehensive consideration and application of both critical thinking and action research in course development in contemporary universities.The fourth article, by Debra Manning from Monash University in Australia, explores the benefits of lecturers teaching in multicultural classrooms using a phenomenographic approach and metaphor analysis to enrich their pedagogy. The author applies cultural pedagogy as a conceptual lens for reflecting on the strategies that she developed to facilitate shared understanding between her Australian and international students. The article has a clear resonance with wider efforts to achieve the transformative potential of international education.Vicki Jones, Jun H. Jo and Jeonghye Han from Griffith University in Australia use the fifth article to ponder the possible pedagogical applications and implications of robotassisted learning. In particular, they argue that software robots can become effective tools in promoting e-learning if their design is based on constructivist learning principles. …

[Abstract]: Groups and organisations are not automatically sites of effective and transformative pedagogy and learning; such outcomes are most likely to occur when entities become communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). One conception of community focused explicitly on the facilitation of pedagogy and learning is cooperative community, centred on five principles (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). Another productive notion of community is as a symbolic construction, centred on members' shared consciousness and boundary maintenance (Cohen, 1985). One community that demonstrates the pedagogical and learning potential of cooperative and symbolic communities of practice is the Australian show people (Danaher, 1998, 2001). Following generations of educational marginalisation, this community participated in a specialised program within the Brisbane School of Distance Education between 1989 and 1999, and since 2000 its members have benefited from having their own Queensland School for Travelling Show Children, established under Education Queensland' auspices. This paper maps and portrays enactments of the cooperative and symbolic communities of practice in the school and on the show circuits. It identifies specific strategies that underpin the pedagogies and learning made possible in those communities of practice, and it considers possible implications of such pedagogies and learning for other educational contexts and groups.

For Wilson Marsden and Eileen Urith Marsden (nee Morton) and Maurice Danaher and Phyllida Nina Coombes (nee Radcliffe-Brown)-Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essential est invisible pour les yeux.....C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante....Les hommes ont oublie cette verite....Mais tu ne dois pas l'oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoise.Tu es responsable de ta rose...Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince, pp. 72-74Familiar acts are beautiful through love.Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound", IV, 403RationaleThis inaugural, three-part, special theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning publishes the refereed papers in the first wave proceedings of the 2nd international pedagogies and learning conference, conducted at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia from 18 to 20 September 2005. The conference theme was "Meanings Under the Microscope", connoting the multiple ways in which educators and learners make sense of, and derive purpose and authenticity from, the various acts and artifacts that constitute education.Of the 17 papers submitted for refereeing in the first wave of the conference, 15 were accepted for publication subject to revision and one of those was subsequently withdrawn from the conference. The second wave proceedings papers, due for submission after the conference, will be published subsequently.The International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning itself is a direct outcome of the 1st international pedagogies and learning conference, also conducted at the University of Southern Queensland from 1 to 4 October 2003, with the theme "New Meanings for a New Millennium". The conference organisers and participants decided that the journal constituted a fitting forum for the continuation of the lively and engaged discussions that the conference had facilitated.Linking both the first and the second themes, and clearly evident in the articles assembled in this inaugural issue of the journal, is a consistent concern that educational meanings, whether they are new, millennial and/or microscopic, must articulate with the ongoing mission of enhancing and enriching international pedagogies and learning. This mission is also common to both the journal's raison d'etre and the conference foci. This commonality is not accidental: it reflects a general recognition that at the beginning of the 21st century, despite the scientific and technological advances enjoyed by some individuals and nations, there are enormous disparities and inequities in access to different forms of capital and hence to the opportunity to undertake and benefit from formal education. Part of the responsibility of participants in the journal and the conferences is therefore to interrogate their own and others' philosophies, policies and practices for how they might be able to understand and hopefully to ameliorate those disparities and inequities.In the case of the 2nd conference, whose first wave proceedings papers are published in this and the next two issues of the journal, this responsibility has been facilitated by the posing of several questions for conference participants to frame their respective and shared reflections on the theme of "Meanings Under the Microscope":* What is my personal pedagogy?* How can I reflect on my practice?* Where does critical pedagogy fit in?* How can we use metaphor to enrich our making of pedagogical meaning?* In what ways can I enhance my pedagogy?* How can we develop a community of practice?These framing questions are deliberately inclusive and iterative; the assumption is that there are multiple meanings, metaphors, practices and communities associated with pedagogies and learning, and that placing these phenomena under the microscope is a necessary part of understanding and evaluating their intentions and impacts. …

This article has been anonymously peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, an international, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on issues and trends in pedagogies and learning in national and international contexts. © Copyright of articles is retained by authors. As this is an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. Abstract This paper focuses on the discourse among academics with a shared interest in the relationship between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education within the University of Southern Queensland's Faculty of Education. The authors endeavour to make sense of how VET pedagogies and praxis are currently envisaged and enacted within the faculty, how they respond to present-day influences and developments in the VET sector and how they will in turn shape teaching, learning and research activity. In the paper, the authors put their personal and professional ideologies under the microscope in a dialectic that aims to inform the development of a shared set of meanings that will serve as a platform from which to move forward in their practice. This dialectic examines the nuances of practices from the perspectives of a reflective (Schon, 1983, 1987) and a reflexive (Usher, 1987) practitioner. Theoretical lenses drawn upon in this reflective and reflexive dialectic include critical theory (Habermas, 1972, 1973), criticality (Barnett, 1997) and the humanist tradition in education (Dewey, 1916, 1938). The results of this dialectic are then used to engage pedagogies that relate to further education and training (fet) within the faculty. To guide this situated engagement, several questions are asked. The conclusions drawn confirm that the convergence of these personal and professional ideologies is helpful in shaping the contributions of fet to the existing and emerging needs of the faculty's lifelong learners.

Articles in Part 3This issue publishes the third and final set of refereed papers from the first wave proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Pedagogies and Learning, held at the Springfield Campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia on 27 and 28 September 2007. This third conference in the series focused on "meanings emerging in practice" as a lens for examining and evaluating multiple enactments of pedagogies and learning.10 anonymously peer refereed articles have been selected for publication in this third issue. Each article engages with a specific theme nominated by the conference organisers as a useful means of identifying whether and how pedagogies and learning can be maximised through meanings emerging in practice.The first article, by Patrick Alan Danaher, Geoff Danaher and Beverley Moriarty, contributes to the theme of researching personal pedagogies by interrogating the perhaps over-used term "learner-centredness" from the perspectives of their separate and shared interests in transformative learning, self-efficacy and social presence. Drawing on their lengthy experience across multiple disciplines, delivery modes and educational levels at two Australian universities, the authors present a mixed report card about the extent to which their colleagues and they have successfully implemented learner-centredness as a core principle of their learning and teaching. The authors conclude by eliciting three implications that illustrate as much about the prevailing climate of contemporary higher education as about the authors' specific aspirations and contexts and their personal pedagogies.In the second article, Bernadette Lynch and Shalene Werth engage with the theme of features of successful pedagogical practice by examining what can be done to maximize the learning outcomes of undergraduate students with low entry scores. Part of a team teaching a large first year management course, Lynch and Werth elaborate their design and application of two key strategies: scaffolding and academics as a supportive social presence regardless of delivery mode. The authors invite readers to identify attributes that rendered these strategies successful that might have broader applicability and relevance.The next three articles take up separate elements of the enduringly significant question of how to engage the student voice in practice. Michael Ryan uses the third articles to articulate the rationale for and implementation of incorporating the voices of former students into the current offering of a large first year undergraduate course. This articulation is accompanied by the results of a longitudinal design experiment exploring the pedagogical benefits of such involvement. The author is sufficiently encouraged by the positive outcomes of the experiment to recommend its wider adoption in other disciplines.The fourth article, by Anita Ryle and Kaye Cumming, makes an explicit link between engaging the student voice in practice and forms of engagement in online learning communities. Informed by a targeted literature review and empirical data from three postgraduate online courses, Ryle and Cumming elicit seven strategies that they contend are crucial to fostering effective online learning communities. In the process, the authors provide authentic and lively examples of what does and does not work in enacting those strategies.In the fifth article, A. S. C. Hooper explores engaging the student voice in practice in relation to the monitoring of and improvement to a post-experience information and communication technology masters management program. The article traces in considerable detail the principles and parameters informing the course design, and draws on focus group data to analyse the diverse expectations of the course and postgraduate education more generally held by participating students. One intriguing finding is the potential barrier to effective career development constituted by professional stereotypes. …

Articles in Part 2This issue publishes the second set of refereed papers from the first wave proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Pedagogies and Learning, held at the Springfield Campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia on 27 and 28 September 2007. This third conference in the series focused on "meanings emerging in practice" as a lens for examining and evaluating multiple enactments of pedagogies and learning.Seven anonymously peer refereed articles have been selected for publication in this second issue. Each article engages with a different theme nominated by the conference organisers as a useful means of identifying whether and how pedagogies and learning can be maximised through meanings emerging in practice.The first article, by Bernadette Lynch, contributes to the theme of researching personal pedagogies by exploring her role in teaching in-text referencing to undergraduate Faculty of Business students at the University of Southern Queensland. Drawing on concepts synthesised from personal pedagogy, reflective practice and cognitive theory, Lynch advocates the careful and systematic use of humour as an antidote to cognitive depletion and as a way of both facilitating effective reflection and (re)kindling irreverence and joy in academics' work. The article provides a fresh perspective on the hardy perennials of student plagiarism and academic integrity.In the second article, Cassandra Star and Jacquelin McDonald engage with the theme of features of successful pedagogical practice by arguing that the transition to first year in a diverse, multi-campus, multimodal university provides significant difficulty and disorientation for school leavers, mature age and international students. The authors report on a case study from a first year Faculty of Business core course at the University of Southern Queensland to outline a successful pedagogy for supporting students through this transition. Key elements of this pedagogy include constructive alignment, formative and developmental assessment, proactive and extensive scaffolding for student learning and a central role for an active online community.Ting Wang and Leah Moore use the third article to consider how exploring the learning style preferences of Chinese postgraduate students in Australian transnational programs offered by the University of Canberra can be considered one manifestation of the theme of developing the globalised learning environment. Reporting an empirical study of pre- and post-questionnaire responses by two groups of students from different parts of China in two Australian offshore Masters programs, the authors highlight considerable diversity in those responses, contesting the assumption that Chinese learners are homogeneous, passive and teacher-dependent. Wang and Moore argue that these results should contribute to helping Australian academics working in transnational programs to understand their students' learning preferences and thereby to maximise their educational outcomes.The fourth article, by Susan Bolt, takes up the theme of meeting the pedagogical challenges in new contexts by investigating problems and possibilities in integrating research, action and learning in the workplace in order to generate productive organisational change. The questionnaire and interview data presented in the article were collected from staff members of a state branch in Western Australia of a large Australian charitable organisation. While the organisation had made significant strides in adapting to changing circumstances and new ideas about work and identity, the data indicated that many workers were not learning optimally and reflected the complexities confronting organisations seeking to promote such optimal learning. …

Review of Chris Tyler (ed.), Traveller Education: Accounts of Good Practice, Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent, UK and Sterling, USA, 2005, ISBN 1 85856 308 9According to Chris Tyler, editor of Traveller Education: Accounts of Good Practice, the book is underpinned by two key concepts. "The first is a recognition of the need to examine and make concrete the pedagogy of Traveller Education...[as a] strand of educational theory and practice in its own right....[The second is] a recognition of the collegiate nature of Traveller Education" (p. viii)."Traveller Education" in the context of the book refers to educational provision for two principal categories of learners: those whose families' occupations require them to be mobile; and those whose cultural backgrounds are associated with Gypsy Travellers. In the United Kingdom (specifically England), where the book is set, the main groups within and across these categories are English Gypsies, Irish/Scottish/Welsh Travellers, fairground and show people, circus people, Romany Gypsy refugees and asylum seekers, New Travellers, bargee and water craft Travellers and migratory seasonal workers (pp. x-xi).The proposition that these various groups of learners need and receive a specialised form of pedagogy known as "Traveller Education" is promoted throughout the book's 14 chapters, of which we have space to refer to only a few. The opening chapter, by Arthur Ivatts, who had national responsibility for Traveller education as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, explores the conflict between inclusive schools and an exclusionary society, thereby highlighting traditional and contemporary prejudice towards "Gypsies" and mobile communities. In Chapter Two, Brian Foster and Hilary Horton draw on achievement data across seven London Local Education Authorities to interrogate the National Primary Strategies developed to strengthen the teaching of basic skills, and conclude that "...there is always a danger that Travellers, for reasons beyond their control, will miss out on or benefit less from initiatives designed to meet their needs" (p. 21). Chris Tyler's own chapter elaborates a number of key principles that need to underpin effective Traveller education practice, including "The school as inclusive mirror", "Travellers will travel", "Achieving inclusivity", "Whole school planning" and "What happens if they go?".Other chapters deal respectively with early childhood, primary and secondary education for Traveller learners. Ken Marks's chapter explores the provision of distance education "learning packs" and the possibilities afforded by information and communication technologies, such as wireless laptop computers and datacards, to link mobile technologies with a mobile lifestyle. The final chapter, by Jim Donovan, focuses on "housed Travellers" in the London borough of Camden, and underscores the complexities of identity formation among Irish Travellers and East European Roma who are living in individual houses yet are determined "to maintain their way of life and principles" (p. 145). The book concludes with three appendices: an example of a whole school planning document; a "Literacy for All" list of strategies for teachers; and a school self-evaluation pro forma for the effectiveness of provision for "Gypsy and Traveller pupils".The editor and authors are all experienced Traveller educators in one way or another. Chris Tyler (who along with Lucy Beckett and Margaret Wood, two of the authors, was interviewed by the second-named reviewer during study leave in 1999) worked previously as a travelling teacher to a circus and is currently Head of the Hertfordshire Traveller Education Project. The authors represent services in Basildon, Buckinghamshire, Cambridge, Durham, Essex, Hertford, Leeds, London, Norfolk and Oxford.The book is intentionally positioned as "a handbook for all schools that have Traveller pupils" (back cover), and it fulfils its promise admirably of "outlin[ing] good practice, based on proven success in schools" (back cover). …

Review of Susan Ellsmore, Carry On, Teachers! Representations of the Teaching Profession in Screen Culture, Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent, UK and Sterling, USA, 2005, ISBN 1 85856 359 3There is a strong and continuing tradition of cinematic representations of the work of educators, some of it memorable and inspiring. The most recent of these viewed by the reviewers was Julie Walters' superlative performance in the television film Ahead of the Class (ITV, 2005). Walters portrayed Dame Marie Stubbs, who came out of retirement to lead St George's Roman Catholic Secondary School in London, at whose gates a previous headteacher had been murdered and which was threatened with closure by the English Office for Standards in Education. Partly by dint of her powerful personality and partly through the enforcement of what some might see as traditional behaviour such as courtesy and punctuality, she succeeded in taking the school from having been threatened with closure to being lauded as a national example of good pedagogical practice.In Carry On, Teachers! Representations of the Teaching Profession in Screen Culture, Susan Ellsmore, a sixth form teacher and university lecturer from Bournemouth in the United Kingdom, explores in considerable depth the character and significance of cinematic performances such as Julie Walters'. Her analysis is based on 16 films and three television series, which were viewed by and discussed with two groups of volunteer teachers, with 17 teachers in one group watching six films and 13 teachers in the other group watching episodes from the Channel 4 series Teachers. Ellsmore combines interpretation of the participants' responses to the selected cinematic texts with her own emotional and intellectual engagement with those texts, from which she elaborates what she terms "a four-fold typology of the charismatic teacher film" (p. xv).Chapter One of the book provides an historical overview of changes to the British teaching profession between the mid 1940s and the mid 1990s, encapsulated in what Ellsmore considers the two most significant Education Acts in Britain in the 20th century: those implemented by Rab Butler in 1944 and by Kenneth Baker in 1988. The chapter also identifies the first of the four types elaborated by the author - "[e]ccentric charismatic teachers" (p. 19) - as portrayed in films like Carry On Teacher (1959) and Clockwise (1986).In Chapter Two, Ellsmore traces changes to the British teaching profession under the New Labour government of Tony Blair, juxtaposed with commentary on three television drama series of that period: Hearts and Minds, Hope and Glory and Teachers. Chapter Three outlines the second type identified by Ellsmore - "the enduring charismatic teacher film" (p. 39) - as demonstrated by Mr Chipping in Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939) and Mr Holland in Mr Holland's Opus (1995).Chapter Four discusses 10 films about charismatic teachers from the second half of the 20th century, beginning with Blackboard Jungle (1955) and finishing with Mona Lisa Smile (2003). …

Articles in Part 3This is the third and hence the final of the three-part inaugural theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, which has published the first wave of the refereed proceedings of the 2nd international pedagogies and learning conference, held at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia between 18 and 20 September 2005. The conference theme was "Meanings Under the Microscope"; the refereed theme articles in this issue contribute to a diverse and comprehensive account of the constructions of meanings in multiple educational contexts and of the effects and impact of those constructions. The remainder of this editorial introduction outlines the articles appearing in this issue; the introduction to the next issue will include selected reflections on the 18 theme articles constituting the conference's first and second wave refereed proceedings.In the first article, Allan Leslie White of the University of Western Sydney in Australia is concerned with the character of the relationship between graphics calculators and pedagogical change in secondary mathematics classrooms. The article develops a matrix of pedagogical approaches derived from the research literature and designed to maximise the effective use of graphics calculators to promote such change. At the same time, the author acknowledges both the limitations of using graphics calculators and the pedagogical implications arising from those limitations.The second article, by Robyn Torok from Education Queensland in Australia, focuses on the association between propositional and practical knowledge reflected in the metaphors and images articulated by pre-service teachers during their fieldwork experiences. The study explored three pre-service teachers' explications of the supposed theory-practice divide in relation to behaviour management and pedagogy. The author's major finding is that it was less this divide than the supervising teachers' teacher-centred pedagogy that prevented the pre-service teachers from developing their practical knowledge as comprehensively as they might have wished.Poh Gek (Julie) Lim, an experienced teacher in Singapore and a postgraduate student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, uses the third article to identify effective pedagogical and learning strategies that promote Internet information literacy among secondary school students in Singapore. …

Articles in Part 2This is the second of the three-part inaugural theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, which publishes the first wave of the refereed proceedings of the 2nd international pedagogies and learning conference. The conference, which was held at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia between 18 and 20 September 2005, had the theme "Meanings Under the Microscope"; the refereed theme articles in this issue contribute to a widely ranging and thorough engagement with how meanings in teaching and learning are constructed and with what effects. The remainder of this editorial introduction outlines the articles appearing in this issue.The first article, by Farrah Fayyaz, M. Ashraf Iqbal and Yasser Hashmi from the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences and the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, is part of a broader project to which articles in Parts 1 and 3 contribute also and is concerned with barriers restricting Pakistani engineering students' understandings of the complex concepts associated with semiconductor electronics. The authors draw on concept maps developed by students and structured interviews with students and instructors to elicit these barriers and identify the learning bottlenecks that they represent. On the basis of these data, and calling on relevant learning theory constructs, the authors advocate selected teaching methodologies to enhance students' learning of this intricate topic.In the second article, by Ting Wang and Shujie Zhang from the University of Canberra in Australia, the authors turn their attention to the strategies needed to enhance the effectiveness of the in-service training of Chinese police officers working in Beijing and studying part of their program in Australia. Data gathering and analysis focus on a qualitative study of semi-structured interviews with five officers. The study highlights crucial differences between individual and organisational learning needs, between Chinese and western approaches to andragogy and between the contexts of training in Australia and working in China.Ian Eddington, from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, uses the third article to pose important questions about the connections among the soul, the mind and contemporary science education. The article deploys writings by Plato, Berkeley and other authorities to posit different aspects of the soul in premodern, modern and postmodern times, which are then linked with the pedagogical issues of teaching methods and concept changes. The author argues that science and science education should continue to use common sense appeals to experience as the warrants for their claims about knowledge construction.In the fourth article, by Beverley Moriarty, Patrick Alan Danaher and Geoff Danaher from Central Queensland University and the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, attention is given to the mobile communities of the Australian show people as cooperative and symbolic communities of practice. …