Search

Background: This paper outlines the findings of a sociocultural study that examined how digital contexts shape historical thinking. It was assumed that the tools used to engage with historical information mediate thinking, and that when evaluating historical information online, participants would draw upon heuristics associated with Historical Thinking (Wineburg, 1991) and website evaluation. Method: The study involved qualitative interviews with historians and university students who evaluated three historical websites using a think-aloud protocol followed by semi-structured questioning. Findings: While sourcing, corroboration and contextualization remain the basis of disciplinary inquiry, the specific nature of each heuristic shifted when being used to evaluate online material, and a new category of intertextual 'hybrid' heuristics was formed as participants adapted general digital heuristics to evaluate historical information. Furthermore, these 'hybrid heuristics' had divergent effects on participants: for the students it appeared to inhibit critical historical thinking, whereas for the historians it formed the basis of their deep critical appraisal. Contribution: The findings have implications for research on historical thinking, history education and critical website evaluation.

Many recent technologies provide the ability to dynamically adjust the interface depending on the emerging cognitive and collaborative needs of the learning episode. This means that educators can adaptively re-design the learning environment during the lesson, rather than purely relying on preemptive learning design thinking. Based on a three-semester design-based research study this paper explores how adaptive learning design can be used to provide learning environments that enable more effective collaboration and representation of information. The analysis culminates in a framework for adaptive learning design of a web-conferencing environment that depends on the type of knowledge being represented and the nature of interaction anticipated. Heuristics for adaptive learning design in synchronous multimodal environments are presented, and the potential role of students as co-designers is also discussed.

This paper presents an heuristic that underpinned the development of a range of early years applications (apps) as part of the Early Learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Australia (ELSA) project (2016-19). The heuristic was developed to address a range of challenges that accompany the use of digital technologies in the year before formal schooling. These include the role of digital technologies in play-based learning environments, screen time and the importance of agency when young children are using digital technologies. In an increasingly digital world, the issue of screen time looms large as a particularly contested aspect of technology use by young children. The ELSA project responded to this challenge by developing a pedagogical framework that embedded digital technologies into context-rich, play-based STEM learning. The Experience, Represent, Apply (ERA) heuristic discussed in this paper is a component of the project's overall pedagogical framework and provides early years educators with the opportunity, and the know-how, to integrate digital technologies into STEM activities through intentional teaching and play-based engagement. It was evident from educator feedback at the four days of workshops we delivered, and in other comments throughout the year long trial, that the educators were able to embrace the cyclic nature of the ERA heuristic and ensure that the time spent on the tablet (Represent) was connected to contextualised learning opportunities (Experience and Apply). Importantly, the tablets provided affordances for the children to utilise User Generated Content (UGC) to support active engagement when using the tablets.

The notion of internationalization in higher education is understood as the recruitment of international students, marketing of academic programs and courses, and teaching English as a Second Language to student cohorts from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Various models of internationalization (Knight, 2004, 2006; Leask, 2009; Pimpa, 2009; Welikala, 2011) have been explored and promoted in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Often, as noted in the literature, these models emphasize the acculturation of international students into the host country culture rather than a respectful exchange of academic and cultural knowledge and ideas. The central thesis of this critical reflective discussion paper is that "glocalization" in higher education is an appropriate alternative to internationalization. Glocalization advocates a positive learning experience and encourages the enhancement of learners' "glocal" experience through a critical academic and cultural exchange of global and local socio-economic and political issues. Instructional strategies supporting glocalized learning curricula are recommended. The glocalization pedagogical framework for higher education, introduced in this paper, embraces the principles of social responsibility and justice with a firm commitment to sustainable futures for local and global societies.

The field of adult language, literacy and numeracy in Australia is a site of struggle as policy changes, new learner groups and new economic imperatives challenge teachers' expertise and beliefs about good teaching practice. This article examines the ways in which experienced adult language, literacy and numeracy teachers shape and reshape their practices within this tricky and treacherous terrain. Using Bourdieu's analytical tools of field and habitus as a theoretical framework, and Kumaravadivelu's notion of postmethod pedagogy as a lens for observation and interpretation, the paper analyses the ways in which four experienced teachers shape and reshape their classroom practice to create transformative learning for their learners. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper reports on qualitative research from an Australian, K-6, faith-based school about teachers' experience of a job-embedded professional learning initiative (the "Whole-School Benchmarking of Writing," WSBoW) that was designed to improve teachers' capacity to apply data-driven decision-making to achieve improvements in student learning. Teacher interviews provided the data about experiences and influences on teaching practice. The findings demonstrated that the professional learning initiative provided teachers with a supportive pedagogical tool for focusing their teaching practices on improving student learning. A research based evaluative framework was used as a heuristic to analyse the change initiative. This study used the framework and employed a social constructivist and sociocultural epistemology that recognised the importance of leadership and school context in the development of a culture focused on collaborative communities of practice and data-driven teacher decision-making. The study has significance for leaders, schools and systems that engage teachers in professional capacity building.

In this article I explore an often overlooked feature of everyday life that can serve as a powerful heuristic for students to engage history and geography critically: everyday place-names. Drawing on scholarship in critical toponymy, I explore how the city-text--the past as it is overlaid on top of the geography of the community through place-names--serves to commemorate particular histories that are often simultaneously exclusionary and taken-for-granted. Outlining three of the city-text's primary features--its unconventional narrative structure that emphasizes a worldview, its existence as a manifestation of state control over commemoration in the community, and its exclusive focus on heroism--I suggest that social studies classrooms be sites from which students critically engage the everyday city-texts of their own communities as a way of fostering critical thinking skills and commitments to historical and geographic critique.

This paper critically analyses the introduction of drug detection dogs as a tool for policing of illicit drugs in New South Wales, Australia. Using Kingdon's "multiple streams" heuristic as a lens for analysis, we identify how the issue of drugs policing became prominent on the policy agenda, and the conditions under which the alternative of drug detection dogs for illicit drugs policing came to be endorsed by decision makers. By applying Kingdon's heuristic, we also consider how this approach may be used to illuminate the limitations of the evidence-based policy paradigm in the context of policing policy.

WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) is an increasingly popular form of ecotourism in Australia. An ethnographic study of 10 young adult international tourists was conducted at five rural Victorian WWOOF sites. The objective was to examine the participants' nature experience. As part of the ethnographic study, this article selectively reports on the ecopedagogy at the WWOOF sites, focusing on the potential linking of spatio-sensory "doing" in the environment and conceptual "learning" about (including from, for, and with) the environment. The WWOOF environment is designed physically, materially, and naturally. These dimensions can be interpreted in overlapping spatial levels. Each spatial level partially correlates with the dominant bodily senses. By analysing the participants' reflexive accounts of their WWOOF nature experience, this article suggests that their spatio-sensory "doing" contributed to their environmental "learning", which is categorised into three heuristic types. These are called symbolic, transpositional, and transformative. This study empirically and conceptually adds to the literature on experiential environmental learning with a possible ecopedagogical model of incorporating spatialised bodily senses in curriculum design.

This article employs Rittel and Webber's "wicked" problem as a heuristic device for enhancing understanding about National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing in the Australian education context. Using a research project with seven independent schools in New South Wales, Australia, which analysed NAPLAN data from primary (elementary) students in years 3 and 5, this article highlights the "wicked" nature of the problem of NAPLAN testing, and standardised testing more generally. The research project, as a catalyst for the article, evidenced a set of difficulties, particularly for smaller primary schools, and highlighted the ways in which these schools experienced many of the challenges that the literature indicates are evident in the current regimes of standardised testing. The article focusses on problematising NAPLAN's use in Australia and uses the literature to critique its application. It then outlines Rittel and Webber's criteria that determine whether a problem might be "wicked" and applies this as a lens for considering NAPLAN testing. In problematising NAPLAN testing and applying wicked problem theory to the issue, this article asserts that many of the challenges can be managed and indeed may empower and liberate stakeholders.

One of the foundational subjects comprising most Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs is an introductory accounting course, in which students are exposed to the study of financial and management accounting at a basic level. For many students accounting is arguably the most feared subject in the MBA program. Although some students embrace the challenge and opportunity to develop an appreciation of accounting, the part it plays in organisations, and its role in management decision-making, for others the prospect of entering the world of accounting is one fraught with apprehension. Frequently described as "the language of business," for students with limited experience or prior instruction in accounting, engaging with this language is formidable, and the demystification of the accounting lexicon represents a major challenge to accounting educators. This paper advocates the use of analogies, metaphors, and similes in helping MBA students understand accounting principles and engage with the conceptual underpinnings of the discipline.

The case study discussed in this article examines how the community of inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010) was used to redesign the digital learning environment in the context of an Australian university. Some purposes were to replicate features of a traditional classroom and to support collaboration between professionals with different expertise. The discussion addresses three questions. Firstly, how useful was the CoI model in context and to what extent was the success (or failure) of the redevelopment attributable to the CoI? Secondly, what are the implications for current debates about the CoI model? Thirdly, what are the emergent issues and areas for future research? The paper concludes that the CoI model was useful as a communication and design heuristic rather than as a model that makes universal truth claims about the world.

Despite widespread recognition of the need to improve assessment in higher education, assessment tasks in individual courses are too often dominated by conventional methods. While changing assessment depends on many factors, improvements to assessment ultimately depend on the decisions and actions of individual educators. This paper considers research within the "heuristics and biases" tradition in the field of decision-making and judgement which has identified unconscious factors with the potential to limit capacity for such change. The paper focuses on issues that may compromise the process of improving assessment by supporting a reluctance to change existing tasks, by limiting the time allocated to develop alternative assessment tasks, by underestimating the degree of change needed or by an unwarranted overconfidence in assessment design decisions. The paper proposes countering these unconscious limitations to change by requiring justification for changing, or not changing, assessment tasks, and by informal and formal peer review of assessment task design. Finally, an agenda for research on heuristics and biases in assessment design is suggested in order to establish their presence and help counter their influence.

This article examines the web 2.0 blogging experiences of one 8-year-old travel blogger. The research question is centred on 'What does the interactive function of a web 2.0 blogging experience make available in terms of a child's pedagogic rights?' This instrumental case study is made up of 56 written and photographic travel blog posts covering some 11,411 words and 150 photos over 170 days, as well as the 187 replies from external blog participants. Background information about the child, his family and the context of the blogging project is provided via an informal interview with him and his mother. An analytical framework capable of rendering visible what the travel blog project made available in terms of the three pedagogic rights of individual enhancement, the right of social inclusion and the right to political participation is developed and activated. Two core findings emerge. First, in this blogging experience, the pedagogic rights of individual enhancement (80% of posts) and social inclusion (96% of posts) dominated the right to political participation (39% of posts). Second, despite claims that the interactive function of web 2.0 has the potential to boost individualism of meaning-making and action, in this case, the blogging experience did not always manifest itself to capitalise on the transformative potential of this experience for this young child travel blogger.

In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for "all hands on deck", what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt's terms, an "abyss of freedom" to act or a paralysing "abyss of nothingness"? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make judgements more akin to the latter and mount arguments to urge action. This paper joins their call and theorises ethical and demonstrably plausible resources as a potentially generative heuristic for political action by academics in the face of "dark times". I develop these resources by initially drawing on Arendt's ethical, but limited, action process. Then, through interpreting and expanding her unfinished theory of judging and echoing Karl Jaspers' concept The Encompassing, I propose the notion of an "encompassing ethic". This ethic, synthesised with Arendt's action process, ameliorates action's limitations and suggests the idea of "encompassing action". The paper concludes by bringing these conceptual resources to life through two inspiring historical examples of such action involving academics.

In this article we introduce a heuristic for orientating to the language content of the Australian Curriculum: English. Our pedagogical heuristic, called "Playing with Grammar", moves through three separate but interwoven stages: (i) an introduction to the learning experience, (ii) a focus on learning, and (iii) an application of new knowledge where students read and/or write with grammar in mind. We draw on aspects of Bernstein's sociological theories to consider the implications of keeping the content of the Language, Literature and Literacy strands together or apart. We also theorise different pedagogical approaches where teachers or learners control the sequence and pacing of content within the learning experience.

This article offers a methodological reflection on how "baby-cam" enhanced ethically reflective attitudes in a large-scale research project that set out to research with infants in Australian early childhood education and care settings. By juxtaposing digital images produced by two different digital-camera technologies and drawing on informal conversations with those who have viewed the images, it addresses the question: "What might we perceive or sense differently if we look at one filmed event through two different camera technologies, one of which is baby-cam?" It is proposed that baby-cam-generated digital images may provide participatory researchers with a useful heuristic device in that they can remind researchers of the limits of their own "gaze" and ways of knowing and theorising infants. When utilised in this way, baby-cam may assist infants to move further towards more fully claiming their "participant" stance within early childhood education and care participatory research.

This article presents a case study of four academic scientists. These academics teach in the first year of a Bachelor of Science degree at a large research-focused Australian university that has demanded and supported a greater focus on undergraduate learning. Taken as a whole, the accounts of science that the first-year academics in this case study gave, and which they are presenting to their students, challenge the images of science and scientists typically presented in school science curricula. Using Roberts' heuristic of Vision 1 and Vision 2 for the broad purposes of learning science, we consider various accounts given of science by these academic scientists and consider how science might appear to a student who takes all four of their subjects.

Social network perspectives acknowledge the influence of disciplinary cultures on academics' teaching beliefs and practices with implications for academic developers. The contribution of academic developers in 18 scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects situated in the sciences are explored by drawing on data from a two-year national project in Australia within a case study research design. The application of a social network lens illuminated the contribution of eight academic developers as weak ties who infused SoTL knowledge "within" teams. Two heuristic cases of academic developers who also linked "across" networks are presented. Implications of social network perspective are discussed.

The starting point for this article is the lack of a robust research base regarding details of what works and why for school leaders' professional development. The article extends work undertaken for a recent commissioned literature review of selected international reports on supporting school leaders' development strategies. The authors reveal that the leadership learning landscape seems to be one where system provision over-shadows individuals taking personal responsibility for their leadership learning. In an endeavour to create a balance between system and individual agendas, the authors have created an augmented version of a leadership learning heuristic tool originally developed by Clarke and Wildy. The tool is designed as a starting point only, intended to help leaders identify the state of their current knowledge about leadership as well as their future professional development needs using the tool's five focal points--pedagogy, people, place, system and self. An example of the tool completed by a practising principal is used to show his current leadership knowledge profile and the knowledge fields on which he will need to focus his learning in the future. The authors conclude with suggestions for further research on personal agency in school leadership learning.

The need for English and literacy curriculum to connect with young people's lifeworlds to build bridges and frames of reference that connect traditional English curriculum with digital texts and literacies, are increasing priorities in curriculum frameworks in Australia and elsewhere. This paper reports on a project in which the authors worked with teachers and students in five secondary schools to research the ways in which digital games might be incorporated into the English curriculum. Central to this endeavour was "turning around" to the affordances of digital games and their paratexts to understand how they can be understood as text and action. Drawing on classroom observations and literature in Games Studies and English curriculum we present a timely model and innovative heuristic that we argue facilitates teachers incorporating digital games into their English classrooms. We illustrate how each assists teachers in "turning around" to digital games to make their English classrooms more relevant to students' lifeworlds.

The ancient Greeks articulated three types of knowledge, "episteme," "techne" and "phronesis." Education has emphasised two of these--"pure" knowledge and technical skills--while neglecting the latter. Within early childhood a key aspect of "phronesis"--practical wisdom--is emotion work, and its impact on the well-being of educators. Taking a sociological approach to emotions within early childhood reveals how these are shaped by issues of gender, social class and other dimensions of inequality, rather than being universal. Drawing on interviews with childcare educators in Australian services, I analyse how emotion work practices become embodied over time, and the role that this emotional capital plays in moderating workforce issues such as burnout or low morale. Making the practical wisdom of early childhood educators a more conscious part of pre-service and in-service education challenges existing educational approaches, and enables a more critical, reflexive and resilient workforce.

Growing recognition of the complexity of children's lives has led to strong advocacy in education research literature for greater collaboration between researchers from different paradigms to address the "wicked" problems that face contemporary children and families. There is little literature, however, exploring how collaboration works in practice. This paper, drawing on researcher reflective narrative, and using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a heuristic framework, describes and critiques the formative stages of an educational research collaborative group of five early and one mid-career early childhood education researchers (the authors), from two universities, and with quite different epistemological and ontological understandings. It outlines, from an insider perspective, some of the outcomes, challenges and tensions associated with participating in the research group, and concludes by providing some implications for policy and considerations for those contemplating forming a collaborative group.

The importance of mathematical visual images is indicated by the introductory paragraph in the Statistics and Probability content strand of the Australian Curriculum, which draws attention to the importance of learners developing skills to analyse and draw inferences from data and "represent, summarise and interpret data and undertake purposeful investigations involving the collection and interpretation of data" (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2011, para. 6). It also indicates the importance of learners developing abilities to critically analyse statistical information. Teachers cannot assume student knowledge of the different semiotics systems in the subject. In order to enhance learning and to cater for needs of diverse student groups, it is the responsibility of mathematics teachers to focus some teaching on this area of mathematics. This should be seen as part of the teaching of mathematics, not an extra that will take time away from the day to day teaching of the subject. In this paper, literacy pedagogies to scaffold the teaching and learning of mathematical visual images are considered. Further pedagogies to aid the establishment of links between different representations are described. The pedagogies are based upon their previous use in literacy and/or mathematics classrooms.

In 1986 (first published 1983) Clark's triangle of coordination compared national higher education systems according to the dimensions of state authority, market and academic oligarchy. The picture was of a particular time, one in which those three factors could be ably used to illustrate major differences in how coordination took place. Subsequent sweeping changes in higher education coordination have led to the alteration of the triangle's features and assumptions as it has been adapted over time. This article argues that the vertices of any such triangle must themselves be alterable in order to indicate changes in the constitution of salient forces that have been observed, and can be expected. A new, less time-bound heuristic -- "microcosmographia" -- facilitates such comparisons, with a recast, unified triangle as its kernel. (Contains 8 figures.)

Whilst care imperatives have arisen across the breadth of Western societies, within the education sector they appear both prolific and urgent. This paper explores the deployment of care discourses within education generally and draws upon the case of Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) more specifically, to undertake a Foucauldian interrogation of care. In so doing I demonstrate the usefulness of Foucault's pastoral power lens and its capacity to provide insight into the moral and ethical work conducted by caring teachers on behalf of the state (Acker, 1995). Following a brief overview of the advocacy, challenges and debates surrounding the issue of caring teaching within education, I draw on the work of Hunter (1994) and three case studies from a genealogical interrogation of HPE that employed Foucualt's ethical fourfold as a heuristic device to reveal the ethical practices and objectives of the good HPE teacher. Drawing on this genealogical work, I argue that HPE teachers and their colleagues have been purposefully incited to constitute themselves as agents of pastoral power. From this Foucauldian perspective, I conclude with an exploration of the unintended and possibly "dangerous" practices of caring teaching that may emerge within the complex and messy nexus of contemporary self-constitution.

Dissemination of learning and teaching innovation in higher education requires approaches to change that are socially contextualised, dynamic and self-reflexive. This article, therefore, presents a methodology for dissemination employing an embedding heuristic and engaging in participatory action research. The embedding approach emphasises three organisational domains of action: first, the capacity of communities of practice and distributed leaders to generate organisational commitment and seed activities; second, formal and informal organisational policies and procedures that provide reciprocal processes for initiating and systematically sustaining curricular change; and, third, accessible resources, tools and databases that support implementation of innovation. The methodology is applicable for disseminating innovations beyond disciplinary silos across faculties, and more widely, potentially across universities and other institutions. Academic leaders, academic developers and others charged with facilitating pedagogical change may find this dissemination methodology applicable to embedding innovation in a range of domains, and as a useful heuristic for planning, diagnosis or evaluation. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.)

The New Social Studies movement was an effort by social scientists to reform US social studies/history curriculum at all levels during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the end, more than 50 different projects attempting to revitalise social studies were developed. Many of the projects focused on inquiry-based teaching practices and curriculum. Considered to be the most controversial of the projects developed was Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) which sought to restructure social studies instruction by emphasising social science empiricism. The purpose of this historical analysis was to explore the curricular, ideological and financial obstacles that contributed to the eventual demise of the MACOS project. The author proposes that federally funded MACOS challenged the "history-as-national-progress" paradigm of the early to mid-twentieth century. This precipitated an ideological "conflict" that called into question the nature and purpose of social studies education. The study of MACOS's demise provides an insightful lesson on how the reception of curriculum innovation is subject to changing sociopolitical ideologies and the practicalities of instructional implementation. (Contains 83 footnotes.)

A curriculum is a knowledge structure outlining what is to be learned in what order. The Australian curriculum for English emphasises creation of a "coherent" and "cumulative" "body of knowledge about how the English language works", with learning that is "portable and applicable to new settings across the school years and beyond" (National Curriculum Board, 2009, p. 9, emphasis added). But what happens when those charged with implementing curriculum cannot agree on "what counts"? This article reflects on key differences between stakeholders about disciplinarity in English, drawing on sociological categories of Bernstein and Maton. The fourth challenge facing implementation is "face validity". The creation of a viable knowledge structure for English makes it crucial that teachers and professional bodies find it acceptable. The article concludes with a heuristic figure for representing key parameters of knowledge structure in English and a proposal for interrelating these so as to optimize implementation of the curriculum in Australian classrooms. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study aims to add to the growing research related to the implementation of non-traditional writing tasks in classrooms to encourage science literacy. A secondary reanalysis methodology was employed to review student interviews collected as a part of several individual studies during a ten year research program. This method established an interpretive framework different than the particular frameworks guiding the individual studies. In doing so, a greater ability to generalize findings was sought. Main assertions emerging from the student responses analyzed include recognition of benefits of non-traditional writing, recognition of the need for particular task characteristics to encourage these benefits, and recognition of greater cognitive activity than is present in typical science classroom writing. (Contains 6 tables.)

This article discusses a study of three Australian middle-years teachers who deployed Learning by Design principles and practice to support multiliteracies learning through students' production of digital/multimodal texts. The aim of the research was to develop an understanding of how three teachers embraced new e-learning pedagogical designs for teaching and learning about multiliteracies, and to what extent Learning by Design facilitated both the teachers' and students' learning. This qualitative research involved the collection and analysis of the three teachers' curriculum-planning artefacts before and after professional development on Learning by Design, interviews, audio and video recordings, classroom observations and student digital/multimodal products. This article examines Learning by Design as an e-learning pedagogical framework and the dimensions of professional practice that contribute to quality student production of digital/multimedia texts. The study demonstrates the existence of five conditions that are necessary for the Learning by Design pedagogical framework to be effective as a heuristic to enhance digital/multimodal literacy outcomes. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Three experiments are reported that investigate the extent to which an authority figure influences the level of persuasion undergraduate students and research-active mathematicians invest in mathematical arguments. We demonstrate that, in some situations, both students and researchers rate arguments as being more persuasive when they are associated with an expert mathematician than when the author is anonymous. We develop a model that accounts for these data by suggesting that, for both students and researchers, an authority figure only plays a role when there is already some uncertainty about the argument's mathematical status. Implications for pedagogy, and for future research, are discussed. (Contains 4 tables, 4 figures and 9 footnotes.)

The term "innovation" is associated mainly with change in practice using educational technology. This paper explores the question of why innovations in online teaching and learning in higher education break down or deliver less than they promise: why they are so resource intensive, so prone to breakdown, and why they often fail to live up to their promises? Two cases of innovation were selected from a broad doctoral research project across three Australian universities, involving 24 interviewees. One case was a bottom up, wiki based learning space inspired by a constructivist commitment, the other a top down response to organisational change in a degree program. Despite literature on case studies which offer useful, evidence based approaches and models for online pedagogy, there is a lack of analytical perspectives with which to engage with breakdowns and "thwarted innovation" in online learning. The focus in this paper is "online teaching", and breakdowns are scoped beyond the technologies involved and encompass social, material and discursive entities. An actor network perspective (Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Law 2000) is used to explore the relationality between social and technological entities, and the "sociotechnical assemblage" which constitutes online teaching. It argues that (i) crucial factors are hidden by the normative perspective inherent in the implementation of technology systems, and (ii) recognising the connections between the social, material and discursive entities in online learning offers a strong analytic basis for innovative teaching and learning practice. (Contains 4 tables.)

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the literature on beginning the principalship by identifying and illustrating key challenges that novice principals encounter in their first year for which they would benefit from improved preparation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a synthesis of a decade of research focusing on the principal with the general aim of analysing ways in which principals can work more effectively within the realities of schools as highly complex organizations. Throughout this work, the narrative account has been used as the main approach for depicting principals understandings of the contexts in which they find themselves and their interpretations of the experiences that confront them in their roles. Findings: A range of findings generated from the research as a whole has been refined into the conceptualisation of four distinct but interrelated challenges facing novice principals in exercising their roles. Originality/value: The paper proposes a conceptual framework that can be used as a heuristic tool for informing the preparation of principals, especially in the Australian context.

In his book entitled "Teaching Defiance: Stories and strategies for activist educators," this author asserted that, although his book was not a discussion of the Iraq war, it was concerned with the way the war has been "waged" in the countries of the three invaders: the USA, the UK and Australia. For him, the fact that each government disregarded the will of so many of its citizens marked a significant change. When governments disregard the protests of the people who elected them, adult educators--like all concerned people--have a duty to promote public dialogue between citizens and their leaders. The author believes that adult educators should make use of whatever skills they have to help re-establish a democracy constructed on open, frank and continuing public dialogue between the citizens and their elected leaders. This article discusses the skills that are needed to engage in dialogue with the leaders: (1) making appraisals; (2) thinking clearly; (3) thinking inventively; (4) taking action; and (5) acting wisely.

This study examined the relative benefit of three interventions (i.e. physiological, behavioural, and pragmatic) designed to facilitate speech recognition software use. Participants were 15 adults with dysarthria associated with a variety of aetiological conditions, including cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, and motor neuron disease. Results suggested no clear dysarthric profile that would preclude at least some degree of speech recognition system use. Participants demonstrated systematic improvement in their dictation rates regardless of treatment order. The physiological treatment produced significantly higher dictation rates overall than the behavioural--but not the pragmatic--treatment. This finding suggests that improvement was not simply a function of software training, at least for the physiological treatment. This conclusion also was supported by changes in the participants' speech production during a post-treatment assessment. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 1 note.)

It is generally accepted that to live and work in the remote regions of Australia requires specific skills and expertise to accommodate the shifting demands of outback life. For professionals assigned to such areas by employing bodies, this is particularly the case, and teachers are no exception. In addition to such personal attributes, professionals such as teachers must maintain currency in their professional practice both to serve their students appropriately and to ensure that they become eligible for future promotions and transfers possibilities. This study investigated whether teachers in rural and remote regions are disadvantaged in ways that could potentially affect their teaching careers in negative ways, in particular in terms of professional development and career advancement opportunities. Such opportunities are crucial if teachers are to provide an education of high relevance to rural and remote children who are already considered to be significantly disadvantaged in terms of educational provision. The data are presented in the form of a single teacher narrative, a composite tale aimed at telling the story of rural and remote teachers, professional development provision and career advancement opportunities. It was apparent that teachers in these contexts face serious challenges in terms of their professional and career development.

Provides an introduction and an overview of Michel Foucault's archaeology and genealogy as eligible and appropriate art educational research methods. Briefly reviews Foucault's work on subjectivity and governmentality and provides relevant samples. Discusses similar postmodernist theorists and includes a 62-item bibliography. (MJP)

Recommends using a number of qualitative research techniques, specifically for research regarding art education teaching techniques and teachers. Argues that the process of teaching and the subject of art are so subjective that researchers should embrace unabashedly qualitative approaches to research. Briefly describes these approaches. (MJP)