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This chapter introduces this edited volume by articulating an agenda for apprehending scholars’ multiple and multifaceted precarious positions that constitute a springboard for the subsequent chapters’ assorted engagements with the proposition of researchers at risk. This agenda is framed in terms of a dual focus on presenting selected conceptualisations of researchers’ risks, and of synthesising particular strategies that researchers have demonstrated to be effective in engaging with those risks. These conceptualisations and strategies constitute in turn empirically grounded manifestations of the precarity, jeopardy and uncertainty that accompany certain aspects of contemporary researchers’ work. The chapter also outlines the clustering of the subsequent chapters into four parts, each directed at a different form of research risk: researchers’ identities; researchers’ professions; subject matter; and conflict-laden locations.

This chapter addresses the increasingly well-documented problem of teacher stress and attrition, focusing upon the need for critical conversations about this problem. Our response to this problem centres on online networks of teachers, which have the potential both to (a) counteract the stress experienced by pre-service and early career teachers and to (b) minimise the attrition of early career teachers. The case in favour of online learning networks of teachers focuses on three features of productive learning networks. The first is criticality, which includes critical thinking and combines it with communicative action as part of critical dialogue. Teachers in online learning networks engage in particular kinds of critical dialogue, and in doing so they display professional identities and exercise professional agency. One of the results of this critical dialogue is the development of shared understanding and a form of social cohesion, which manifest as the other two elements, communality and collegiality. Working in combination, these elements can drive innovative learning opportunities for neophyte teachers, while acknowledging the ongoing deprofessionalisation and politicisation of teachers’ work and identities that render a reimagined and reinvigorated criticality ever more timely and urgent.

This final chapter in the book affords the opportunity to review the preceding chapters against the backdrop of the book’s objectives and foci. This process is facilitated by the selection of three themes that emerged as running across those chapters: the importance of individualised learning, not only for the participating individuals but also for the holistic wellness of society as a whole; the continuing constraints of educational marginalisation and the deleterious effects that these constraints have on the education system itself; and the importance of the contexts of learning not being limited by formalised, tightly controlled philosophies of what it is to be an effective learner. These themes are then aligned with distilled responses to the book’s five organising questions.

Globally, there are multiple individuals and groups whose learning is enacted within the educational margins, and whose status is consequently that of educational fringe dwellers and sometimes border crossers. This status in turn positions them as exhibiting varied forms of otherness in relation to mainstream educational policy-making and provision, and generates both challenges and opportunities for their learning success.

This chapter draws on the first-named author’s doctoral research with a group of female undergraduate students at Dhofar University in Oman, a Muslim Sultanate in the Middle East. The data corpus included responses to a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews with the students, the first-named author’s critically framed observations of the context in her role as the students’ English language teacher and her analysis of the late Sultan’s royal decrees that framed and implemented Omani government policies. The second-named author contributed the chapter’s conceptual framework, which was centred on critical interculturality (Dervin, Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolkit. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Pivot/Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; Critical interculturality: Lectures and notes. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017) as a vehicle for generating new and potentially transformative approaches to researching within the educational margins. These approaches centre on ethical and rigorous contestations of cultural essentialism and hegemony, and on resisting strategies of exclusion and othering.

Practice, policy and management constitute complex and interdependent domains of theory and action in contemporary educational settings. This is certainly the case in schools, which are widely recognised as sites of ongoing change (Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011; Holmes, Clement, & Albright, 2013; Spiro & Crisfield, 2018), and as the intersection of competing priorities and pressures (Hardy, 2013; Petriwskyj, 2013; Pollock & Winton, 2012). Likewise, universities exhibit continuing change (Christensen, Gornitzka, & Ramirez, 2019; Goedegebuure & Schoen, 2014), and operate in environments of uncertainty (Gayle, Tewarie, & White, 2003).

The work of occupational Travellers requires them to cross geographical borders regularly, which in turn generates challenges and opportunities for educating their children. Similarly, education scholars researching with occupational Travellers cross axiological, epistemological and ontological borders in striving to research ethically and reciprocally with the research participants in spaces that mainstream cultures position as being on the margins of educational provision.

This chapter reports selected elements of a broader collaborative autoethnography and an exploratory case study involving a Doctor of Philosophy candidate and her three doctoral supervisors who, as participant–researchers, examined the commonalities and differences in the meanings that we assigned to the idea(l) of “supervision”. Guided by our defined boundaries for a collaborative autoethnographic case study, we examined our respective conceptions of supervision through phenomenographic means, utilising data from interviews conducted with each of the authors individually to explicate our varied understandings of supervision. The analysis elicited three distinct categories of description—doctoral supervision as a relational endeavour, as a pedagogical commitment, and as reciprocal growth—and an outcome space centred on the holistic development and self-actualisation of doctoral students and their supervisors alike.

The scholarship attending doctoral study and supervision is growing rapidly, yet in many ways successful approaches to traversing the doctorate remain idiosyncratic, even mysterious. Accordingly, it is timely to situate the terrain occupied by that scholarship, and to identify the accompanying issues and proposed strategies for engaging with those issues. This situating and identification draw on literature about doctoral study and supervision distilled from the sometimes divergent perspectives of students, supervisors and administrators. The chapter also outlines the book’s structure and organising questions, and explains the techniques for maximising its rigour. From that perspective, traversing the doctorate emerges as a fundamentally worthwhile, yet complex and multifaceted, enterprise that warrants ongoing evaluation and continuing professionalisation.

This paper explores the possibility that virtual communities of teachers with large numbers of members (referred to as massive communities of teachers) can offer support to novice teachers by means of collaborative reflection. The paper examines and conceptualises some problems found in professional massive communities and proposes that massification can dilute what some authors have called social presence or engagement. It is argued that this dilution, among other problems, very much hinders collaborative reflection among members of the community. Collaborative reflection is argued to be a crucial part of the support that novice teachers need in their first years in the profession. Therefore, a challenge is envisioned for massive communities of teachers to avoid the dilution of social presence or engagement. The authors argue that this dilution can be overcome by the use of multiple layers within a platform, referred to as fractal design.

This handbook brings together contributors from the United States, Australasia and Europe who use theoretical insights and empirical data to examine current practices as well as possible future directions of postgraduate education. A full range of postgraduate study options are explored, including PhD and professional doctorates, masters awards, and taught coursework programs. The contributions of key stakeholders to the delivery of postgraduate education are addressed, including students, supervisors and university administrators. From this collection, university managers, higher education scholars, and anyone interested in establishing a centre for higher education are given comprehensive overviews of academic leadership, doctoral education, and supervisory relationships. Topics examined in detail in this collection are little discussed in the available literature, including supervisory relationships between colleagues, the emergence of the “second-career academic”, and academic blogging and social networking. The external pressures that universities around the world are experiencing, including neoliberalism, the massification of student numbers, disruptive innovations, and external quality benchmarking, are considered in terms of the ways that they are prompting change in how postgraduate study is administered and delivered. Many chapters contain specific recommendations to meet organisational and student needs, including for specific demographics such as international students or specific programs. The professional, employment, and information literacy needs of students and the professional development of supervisors and processes for examination are also considered.

Whilst educational managers and entrepreneurs are expanding online education opportunities, at least some academics are becoming less enthusiastic about the initiative. As a result, a complex and in many ways contested working environment for academics is emerging in tertiary institutions. Some academics are showing dissatisfaction with their workload. Scholars argue that academics’ job satisfaction is highly correlated with students’ learning outcomes. While economists advocate the expansion of online education in the context of rising costs of university education in economics literature, the psychological states of teaching academics are overlooked in economics literature. Attitudes to academic (over-)workload are a psychological issue in tertiary education, particularly in universities globally where online education has a strong presence. This paper deals with teachers’ attitude at an Australia university. This study explains the variations in academics’ attitudes to (over-)workload at an Australian university. For this study we have used primary data collected from a single Australian university - University of Southern Queensland (USQ) - during the period of February-March 2014. The total population size for this study is approximately 400 (four hundred), who are distributed across the then five faculties of the university. The data are collected online. In response to our online survey invitation, 83 (eighty-three) participating academics has taken part in the survey. We have used Likert-type data, where the scale of measurement is represented by ordinal numbers. Research methods used in this study are descriptive analysis of data and inferential statistics based on probit regression. The estimated coefficients of the regression analysis show that three variables are statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. These variables are: the use of the Internet per week, the native language (English) status and the academic qualification status. However, the estimates of the marginal effect show that because of a change of native English status from zero to one, an academic is 23 per cent more likely to be strongly agreed with the statement – online teaching increases academic workload. This implies that attitudes to academic (over-)workload vary among the academics. The policy implication is that education administrators will have to give attention to the working conditions of the academics in order to expand online education successfully.

Universities are fascinating places to work. A “provocative social cocktail” (Symes, 2004, p. 395) is one particularly apt description, although for some, the fascination could be ironically expressed as a reaction to the giddying changes and restructures and revisionings that define the contemporary university.

Contemporary scholarship is replete with accounts and analyses of the challenges and complexities of current academic life. Much of this scholarship sounds alarm bells – even clarion calls – with regard to the sustainability and value of academics’ work. For example, Olson (2013) lamented that “Academe is often plagued by inexcusably rude and uncollegial behaviour” (p. 1) and that “This culture of incivility is becoming ubiquitous” (p. 1).

This paper situates the articles in this special theme issue of the International Journal of Educational Research within the broader global literature regarding the educational experiences and opportunities of mobile communities. The paper distils those articles’ contributions to extending current understandings about the specific itineraries of Indigenous pupils in northern Australia, the underlying issues of Indigeneity and school achievement, and the consequent implications for international and comparative educational research. In so doing, the paper links the particular analyses outlined in the articles and the associated sites of their research with wider debates in contemporary scholarship pertaining to education and mobilities,including the complexity and contentiousness of evidentiary data sets and of accompanying schooling policy and provision frameworks.

This article draws on an 18-year continuing empirical and qualitative study of the educational opportunities and experiences of Australian circus performers and show people to engage with broader questions about the intersection among rural mobilities, fixities and inequalities. In particular, the distinction between place as the source of the centre's power and space as the scene of operation of various tactics of resistance to that power is deployed to demonstrate that place and space are actually mobile concepts that highlight the relational and situated character of such supposedly fixed binaries as mobile and permanently resident on the one hand and rural and urban on the other. This conceptual fluidity and mobility are both useful and crucial in understanding the life-worlds of migratory workers such as circus performers and show people and more broadly in engaging with rural mobilities, fixities and inequalities, in Australia and elsewhere.

Discussions between new postgraduate students and potential supervisors prior to the formalisation of supervisor–student partnerships serve several useful purposes. One purpose is to explore the expectations that each partner has of the other and of themselves and the anticipated nature of the partnership. This article employs Freire’s perspective on dialogical pedagogy as a framework to identify and interrogate opportunities and challenges in postgraduate supervision. Theorising and clarifying the postgraduate supervisory process in these terms at the outset of candidature and at strategic points along the way can save time and effort that might otherwise be devoted to misunderstandings and less than optimum progress. It also has implications for lifelong education for both supervisors and students that can be realised beyond the period of candidature and the substantive and methodological gains normally associated with successful completion of a thesis.

This paper analyses data from two sources of stakeholder feedback – first year pre‐service teachers and supervising teachers/centre directors – about the issues involved in creating more collaborative approaches to the first year early childhood teacher education practicum at an Australian regional university. The collection of this feedback was part of a broader participatory action research project directed at maximising both the effectiveness of the pre‐service teachers' knowledge acquisition and meaning‐making and the sustainability of the partnership underpinning the practicum. The paper provides new insights into a hitherto under‐researched area, that of pre‐service early childhood teachers' professional learning experiences in child care contexts. It uses, as a basis, the work of Cardini. The main findings are that there are multiple viewpoints and competing interests, resulting in asymmetries, dissonance and the potential for conflict.

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.

This chapter examines the nature of teacher knowledge and its implications for the assistance required by PSTs and ECTs within virtual communities of teachers. The chapter characterises teacher knowledge by identifying two key types of knowing and their relation to teaching practice. From this characterisation, it is argued that novice teachers especially need opportunities for collaborative reflection with other teachers in order to construct, develop, and transform their teacher knowledge. Some conditions for this collaborative reflection—especially trust and collegial-like conversation—are then examined, and the authors contend that virtual communities need to promote high levels of engagement and social presence among the members of the community. The chapter concludes with five general implications for the design of virtual communities of teachers.

This chapter articulates three possible approaches to engaging with education research mazes: navigating (by heading towards, away from and/or around selected points of scholarly reference), negotiating (through interacting with research frameworks, technologies, participants, gatekeepers and other stakeholders), and nullifying (in the sense of understanding and where appropriate diminishing and/or enhancing what is puzzling or troubling about the research). The authors illustrate these three approaches to mobilising education research mazes with targeted accounts drawn from their respective research projects. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates theoretically framed and experientially grounded strategies for embracing the contextual, conceptual, methodological and transformational research challenges and opportunities presented in the subsequent chapters in the book. From this perspective, education research mazes emerge as integral components of the broader research enterprise.

Because activity in virtual communities is mediated by information and communications technologies (ICTs), it is important to understand how the operation of virtual communities, including communication, interaction, collaboration, and other social processes, differs from similar processes in non-mediated, face-to-face communities. This chapter examines the interplay among social presence, social identity, and online collaboration in order to analyse how collaborative reflection occurs in online communities. The first part of the chapter provides a background to understanding key social processes at work in online learning communities. The second part explores these social processes by examining a vignette that describes typical online community activity. The chapter concludes by drawing together current conceptions of technology-mediated social processes to identify implications for teachers’ learning in online communities.

Having “room to manoeuvre” is crucial if qualitative education and social researchers are to design and conduct studies effectively, efficiently and ethically. These rooms for manoeuvres also build creatively on the shifting boundaries of contemporary methodologies as well as on the evolving experiences of the researchers deploying such methodologies. This chapter outlines a rationale for reimagining rooms for methodological manoeuvres. This rationale arises from a distillation of the decision-making dilemmas presented in the preceding chapters, and also from an articulation of the proposed principles and the synthesised strategies contained in those chapters. In combination, these dilemmas, principles and strategies constitute an authentic, practical and useful encapsulation of broader implications and issues attending contemporary qualitative education and social research.

This chapter is focused on understanding the particular needs of supporting PSTs and ECTs as a contemporary wicked problem, which helps to suggest new insights into the design, implementation, and analysis of communities to provide such support. The chapter touches on a number of key issues in teacher education research, including high attrition rates, the need for well-prepared teachers in diverse geographical settings, and frequent and insecure employment contracts for many beginning teachers.

This chapter considers some of the different types of PST and ECT communities currently existing in both physical and virtual spaces. The chapter identifies the divergent features of these communities and analyses members’ and other stakeholders’ claims about these communities’ relevance, sustainability, utility, and transformative capacity. From this analysis the authors synthesise defining and contextually specific characteristics that underpin effective communities of teachers regardless of national and regional locations and irrespective of physical and virtual spaces. This synthesis is useful for helping to frame the discussion in subsequent chapters of particular online networks for teachers.

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.

While diversity and commonality are not necessarily contradictory aspirations in relation to contemporary teaching in higher education, they exist potentially in a state of dynamic tension, fostered by market-based and government-induced policies that strive to have the largest and widest possible client- or customer-base, while reducing costs by standardising delivery and assessment. This paper explores this dynamic tension between diversity and commonality through three empirical cases of different types of students at Central Queensland University in Australia: Indigenous, pre-undergraduate and international students. The paper presents an analytical synthesis of the particular teaching strategies developed by academic staff working with students in each case: experiential learning, transformative learning and culturally-situated pedagogy. The authors argue that these strategies constitute a potentially effective means of helping to resolve the dynamic tension between, and of unravelling the Gordian kn...

Background Australian show people traverse extensive coastal and inland circuits in eastern and northern Australia, bringing the delights of ‘sideshow alley’ to annual agricultural shows. The show people's mobility for most of the school year makes it difficult for their school-age children to attend ‘regular’ schools predicated on assumptions of fixed residence. This situation requires innovative approaches to educational provision if show children are not to be rendered vulnerable and at educational risk. Purpose The research reported here investigated whether and how the establishment in 2000 of a specialized institution, the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children, was meeting the specialized educational and sociocultural contexts and needs of the show children three years after establishment. Sample Participants in the study included the children, their parents and school and district educational personnel. Design and methods The research employed a qualitative design, highlighting naturalisti...

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. …

The article on which this paper reflects presented elements of a research project investigating learning interactions in online courses at two Australian universities. This paper revisits that earlier account of researching “classrooms without walls” by distilling and updating the authors’ propositions and by examining these propositions’ potential wider applicability. The twin foci of this examination relate to effective online learning designs and innovative cross-institutional research collaborations.

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.

[Abstract]: Questions concerning the education of mobile groups help to highlight the lived experiences of people otherwise rendered invisible by policy actors. This includes the diverse communities of occupational Travellers – those people who regularly move in order to earn their livelihood. While the category ‘occupational Travellers’ encompasses groups as varied as defence force personnel, specialist teachers and seasonal fruit pickers, the focus here is on the people who travel the agricultural show circuits of Australia to provide the entertainment of ‘sideshow alley’. Drawing on qualitative research with the Australian show people since 1992, this paper deploys the concept of ‘sedentarism’ to highlight the ambivalently valorised lived experiences and educational opportunities of the show people. In particular, the paper explores the pedagogical and policy implications of efforts to disrupt and transform the marginalising impact of sedentarism, which constructs mobility as the other in relation to fixed residence. Specifically, it is argued that anti-sedentarism makes possible the identification and interrogation of three distinct pedagogies of mobility pertaining to the show people, revealing differing stances on intersections of mobility and education. The first is teaching about anti-sedentarism, which involves demonstrating the value of the informal learning that takes place on the show circuits so that the show people’s mobility does not throw a negative light on their learning on the run. The second is teaching through anti-sedentarism, which centres on informing non-show people about the lives of show people and their contributions to cultural, economic and social life in Australia. The third is teaching towards anti-sedentarism, entailing the mapping and valuing of multiple forms of mobility. The paper considers implications for policy actions of these three pedagogies of mobility about and for the Australian show people. These implications are identified through the lens of assumptions underpinning the current Commonwealth Government policy statement on student mobility. The argument is that the evidence from the show people’s experiences suggests that pedagogies of mobility represent one among several possible ways forward in pursuing anti-sedentarism and in imagining anew traditional education for contemporary mobile learners.

The proposition of “culture as an excuse” is assuming greater prevalence in contemporary cultural and political discourses. On the one hand, this proposition has been heavily criticised as a disguise and a pretext for infringing the inalienable human rights of particular groups, including women (Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012; Holtmaat & Naber, 2011; Voestermans & Verheggen, 2013; see also Hallevy in this volume), deaf people (O’Rourke, Glickman, & Austen, 2013), ethnic minorities (see Lim in this volume), and foreigners in certain countries (see Rivers in this volume). It has also been posited as helping to perpetuate unhelpful cultural stereotypes, such as those pertaining to so-called Confucian cultures (Huang, 2009; Li, 2013) and as sanctioning lower expectations by teachers of children who belong to specific communities (Brown & Kraehe, 2010), as well as constituting an alibi for repressive actions by authoritarian governments (Eko, 2010) and for deeper power imbalances and structurally embedded inequities. On the other hand, some commentators recognise “culture as an excuse” as a bulwark against the forces of cultural homogenisation and globalisation and as a valuing of some of the specificities of cultural diversity (Zwart, 2012; see also Cuadrado-Fernandez in this volume).

[Abstract]: This paper focuses on the travelling show people whose itineraries take them to every Australian State, including two circuits through Queensland. Show people evoke ambivalence in most permanent residents. Their itinerancy makes them different: they are considered exotic and even glamorous, yet they are also objects of suspicion, appearing to have no economic or emotional investment in the towns through which they travel. They are at once ‘larger than life’ and ‘not like us’. For the show people’s part, they are proud of their distinctive lifestyle and heritage, yet they also emphasise the points of similarity between themselves and other Australians. The paper uses the author’s interviews with, and representative publications by and about, show people to analyse the nexus between relations between ‘showies’ and ‘locals’ and the ongoing construction of national identities and difference. The show people’s depiction of themselves is a strong contribution to the diversity of national identities, and their emphasis on their distinctiveness points to one possible way of celebrating difference within the framework of those identities. At the same time, the show people’s tactic of emphasising their similarities with other Australians highlights how easily difference of identities can lead to marginalisation and discrimination.

A Foucauldian perspective reveals how “knowledge” can be complicit with “power” in privileging some individuals and groups while marginalizing others. This crucial point should alert educational researchers to the ethical and political implications of recording itinerant people's reflections on their educational experiences and their expectations of alternative forms of schooling. Thus, the Australian show people's general dissatisfaction with the learning opportunities available in the past has fuelled their determined lobbying for a separate school for show children; here the demand for a specific form of knowledge provision articulates with the show people's engagement with state and institutional power. The chapter illustrates this argument by drawing on the senior author's semi-structured interviews with show children, parents, home tutors, and teachers in five sites between 1992 and 1996.

This chapter examines the “field” of international Traveller and nomadic education research and argues for the need to extend significantly the boundaries of that “field.” A chief characteristic of Traveller and nomadic education research is its mobility; it shifts and flows as it engages with broader developments in educational provision and research. The approach adopted in this special issue — the mapping and celebration of international diversity — is needed if contemporary understandings of the multiple experiences of itinerancy, especially as they relate to education, are to be expanded.

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. …

This article considers the pedagogical benefits of a state-of-the-art language laboratory for learning Japanese. The article argues that, although many believe the language laboratory is anachronistic, it deserves its rightful place as one of the ‘new’ technologies which can enhance foreign language learning. The benefits, however, are subject to the teacher's ability to encourage within students feelings of confidence and control about using this technology.

In this article Patrick Danaher, Doug Wyer and Leo Bartlett of Central Queensland University, Australia, apply a range of social theoretical perspectives in the open learning field, with particular reference to the remote primary classroom and the itinerant primary classroom. By examining the situation of rural learners and peripatetic learners on the Queensland circuits of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia, the authors are able to probe notions of centre/periphery and mobility/immobility in radical and innovative ways.