Epistomologies
Experiential Learning Assessments: Extending Learning to Authentic Learning Spaces
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Desiree Scholtz
Vocational education is characterised by incorporating experiential learning as a compulsory component of curriculum. This allows for the alignment of theory and practice, as well as extending the learning space to an authentic work environment. One of the critical issues of a successful experiential learning experience is the assessment thereof. This paper reports on a review of experiential learning assessments in terms of their efficacy in meeting assessment criteria as required. Interviews with lecturers and a review of assessments of four management diploma programmes were subjected to content analysis using the exit level outcomes of the qualification for coding. The literature on workplace learning and crossing boundaries from the classroom to the world of work formed the backdrop for data analysis and discussion. The themes that emerged from this study revealed that experiential learning was viewed as a separate module, managed independently from the programme of study, and that assessments and work experiences differed depending on the placement opportunity. The import of this presentation resides in the need to evaluate current practices to ensure that experiential learning is an extension of the process of learning and should by no means be a disparate module for compliance purposes.
It’s Just Good Teaching!: Challenging the Hegemony of the Learning Outcomes Movement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session William Pelech
There is a movement sweeping across educational settings and social service programs alike. Although it manifests in a variety of names, it can more generically be described as the outcomes based movement. It is a movement that, when fully implemented in social work educational settings, requires that each instructor goosesteps backwards from learning outcomes to learning activities, ensuring that each component in a course is aligned in lockstep fashion. In social work, we are expected to critically reflect upon what we do and how our actions are congruent with our social work values. We are expected to question received truths. At the same time, as Stoller (2015) notes: Over the last 20 years, the use of definable and measurable learning outcomes has increasingly become a requirement for justifying curricular and pedagogical practices. To suggest the opposite…would be to appear on the wrong side of logic: as anti-transparency, anti-science and anti-growth. (p. 317) Implicit in the hegemony of the learning outcomes movement (LOM) is an underlying distrust of the ability of educators. There is an attempt to control through standardization, what is a complex, contextual, and creative educational project, producing a well-oiled and efficient educational machine. This presentation serves to disrupt the values neutral appearance of the LOM. We will compare and contrast the (LOM) with other curriculum approaches.
Dance and Art as Education : Aesthetic Experiencing, Aesthetic Literacy and Subjectivity in Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Paul Moerman
This paper makes a strong statement on arts as education. Ontological and epistemological questions are raised on how to describe and understand the nature and reciprocity of artistic activity such as dance in an educational setting. A theoretical framework is drafted, linking Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience to Biesta’s ideas of subjectivity as becoming and being in dialogue with the material and social world. Data from a field study with preservice teachers and a large number of observation data from lessons involving dance are analysed. The paper discusses aesthetic literacy, and places aesthetic experiencing at the core of relations shaped between teacher, learners, subject content and the surrounding world.
