Teaching in Focus
Not Turning Tragedy into Tourism: Service Learning in Developing Countries
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wendy G Turner
Developing countries are often noted for the tremendous needs of their inhabitants. Poverty, lack of resources and corruption are often acknowledged by the media, without giving attention to the strengths that these communities possess. Well-meaning persons and groups from wealthy nations may travel to those areas in order to help, but never recognize the tremendous gifts they receive from the residents of that country. The author takes graduate and undergraduate students annually for service-learning trips to Jamaica. She takes the approach that the students are learners and the people of Jamaica are their teachers. After fourteen years of building relationships with agencies and institutions on the island, the author has identified the essential components of successful service-learning activities abroad. She describes the necessary steps that faculty must take in order to ensure that they and their students are not exploiting the tragedies of others. She details how service-learning in developing countries can promote the values of social justice among privileged students.
Initial Teacher Education and Inclusive Education: What About Refugees?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robyn Cox
Initial teacher education in Australia has undergone a range of transitions in recent years most of which are connected to a move an Australian Curriculum and a national teaching competence framework. Each of these has made a huge impact on the core business of how education is done in Australia, and at times this has run into controversial spaces. External to these factors is the changing nature of the student population, which is usually captured under the heading of ‘Diversity’. This paper seeks to explore this broad heading of ‘Diversity’ in particularly the preparation of the pre-service teachers to respond to refugee groups who are new to Australia. This paper will investigate the impact of globalisation, in particular the social and psychological impact of migration experiences and the plight of refugees and cultural minorities along with the resulting tensions, barriers, and problems of integration during the settlement process. This exploration will be done using a case study approach documenting the development of a module for initial teacher education students by a cross-disciplinary team.
The Wins and the Pitfalls - Designing an Inclusive Learning Environment at a British University Law School: Can White Teaching Staff Really Create an Inclusive Syllabus?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachel Nir, Tina McKee
We are a Law School in a new university in the UK. Fifty percent of our undergraduates come from low socio-economic backgrounds and 48% come from minority ethnic backgrounds. Most lecturers within the School are white. UK law is based on Judeo-Christian origins and key statutes and cases have been determined by white jurists. How easy is it to make a learning environment more inclusive in this context? In 2016/17 we conducted a research project on why student attendance at our law classes was in decline. One of the key findings from the quantitative date was that our students from minority ethnic backgrounds attended more than their equivalent white counterparts but achieved less. The ethnicity attainment gap is well known in UK universities but our Law School data presented an unanticipated and unhappy picture. We adopted a two -pronged approach to begin tackling this. Firstly, we invited an external specialist to spend a day guiding the core first year staff on how to write an inclusive syllabus which would better reflect our student body. Secondly, we set up a student discussion group made up of our postgraduate interns who had just completed undergraduate law degrees and who reflected diverse ethnic backgrounds. We met throughout the academic year and took input and guidance from them as we began to try and adapt the learning environment. Our paper reports on our experiences of this two-pronged approach. How did teaching staff respond? What were the wins and what were the pitfalls?
Teacher Roles in Implementing Co-operative Strategies in a Multicultural Class with Roma Children
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pavlina Louizou, Christos Govaris, Stavroula Kaldi
This study focuses on teacher roles during the application of specific group cooperative strategies in a mixed ability class where students have different cultural backgrounds. The research is based on the principles of intercultural education and a theoretical framework of cooperative teaching and learning. Five (5) core co-operative teaching methods were implemented, covering both competitive and exclusively cooperative models of team behavior: (a) Teams-Games-Tournaments, (b) Complex Instruction, (c) Group Investigation, (d) Simulation and (e) Think-Pair-Share. It used a qualitative approach and a two-month action research project was applied in a multicultural 5th grade class of Volos, Greece, where both Roma and non-Roma students attended. The research tools for data collection were (a) the instructor researcher’s observation diary (fieldnotes) and (b) a team semi-structured interview with the students carried out by the instructor researcher. The results show that the instructor plays many different roles during the application of the aforementioned methods which have different impact on the students. In each of the five methods, a predominant role is highlighted. This role is determined by the number and qualitative assessment of specific reactions that the instructor displays while teaching. In each of the models the teacher role differed: motivator for Group Investigation and Simulation, wanderer for Complex Instruction and Think-Pair-Share and neutral presider for Teams-Games-Tournament. The results are discussed according to the structure of the five cooperative methods as well as the particular form of the class.
