Late Additions
Asynchronous Session
Featured Teacher Education Managers’ Responsiveness to Resilience and Wellbeing of Staff Working from Home during COVID-19 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christy Jean Kotze, Micheal M Van Wyk
The pandemic had increased anxiety and stress amongst teacher education managers and questioned whether they had the competencies to execute their operational responsibilities productively. The theories of resilience and transformational leadership underpin this study, which explore teacher education managers’ responsiveness to resilience and wellbeing of staff executing their operational practices in an open distance e-learning context. This qualitative approach used virtual video conferencing interviews with teacher education managers, explored how they mitigated their strategic and operational roles, and managerial functions to ensure wellbeing and organisational performance of staff working from home (WfH). Results revealed that distance managers showed positive experiences by using organisational strategies to mitigate challenges faced, to ensure wellness and performance of working from a distance. Further research needs to be undertaken to determine, through a mixed-method design, how resilient managers and staff WfH, which may yield different results.
‘Coming, Ready or Not: Teachers' Perceptions of School and Learning Readiness in Kindergarten Children View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patricia Carson
Teachers frequently use government mandated assessment tools and checklists to gauge children’s skills and abilities. These tools are designed by the dominant culture to reflect their values and priorities, which may, or may not, reflect or match the values, or learning styles of children in the classroom. With the goal of gathering information to answer the research question “How do kindergarten teachers’ perceive and understand the concept of learning readiness and school readiness,” this study focuses on exploring kindergarten teachers’ perceptions, assumptions and understanding of what, and how, learning readiness and school readiness presents in kindergarten children. To collect qualitative data this study was conducted within a social constructivist framework using an Interpretive Phenomenology Approach (IPA) to explore the lived experiences of kindergarten teachers, with regards to both learning and school readiness. Information will be collected in three phases. Phase one consists of a blend of qualitative and quantitative data collection. Phases two and three consist of two in depth interviews, which are to be treated as case studies. The researcher is keeping a reflective journal throughout the project to explore their own biases, preconceptions, and experiences of the phenomenon being studied. This paper reports on the progress of this research project to date, and what have been advantages and pitfalls in the study.
Approaches to Teaching and Learning Re-imagined: Bringing Concept-Based Understanding into Communication Skills View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sumit Mandhwani
The International Baccalaureate has foregrounded the Approaches to Learning (ATL) in instruction. It is a necessary component in lesson and unit planning. The Approaches include explicit focus on building students' skill sets which ultimately contribute to effective teaching and learning. Communication skills is central to the process- it takes the written, spoken and sometimes an emotional form as well. This skill will be in focus during this session. On the other hand, Concept Based Learning is central to the Programmes Standards and Practices 2020. It is essential for schools to demonstrate commitment to Concept Based Instruction in spirit and in action. This session thoroughly aligns to Dr. H. Lynn Erickson and Dr. Lois A. Lanning's work on Concept Based Curriculum and Instruction. Using that theoretical lens, the session brings Communication Skills into action in the classroom. The deep exploration of the skill from the concept based lens is critical to building a school culture and an effective learning environment. Therefore, using work on Concepts, the study re-imagines how Communication Skills can be planned for- vertically and horizontally.
Decolonisation of Digital Learning Spaces: Innovative and Appropriate Research Tools View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Traxler, Shri Footring, Marguerite Koole
In our current work, we have begun the creation of an international network of communities who are marginalised from the dominant their historical, economic, and sociopolitical institutions. These communities not only include Indigenous groups but also Deaf and Hard of Hearing, refugees, and those who might be suffering persecution in their own countries of origin. The long-term goal of the ‘Decolonisation of Digital Learning Spaces’ project is to empower communities in choosing, adopting, developing, and/or appropriating culturally appropriate and sustainable digital learning technologies. We must first know what questions to ask and how to ask. Our energies are focused on research methods. We are developing research tools and techniques and how to review, supplement and/or replace mainly white-Western European tools and techniques with ones hopefully more appropriate, efficient, and innovative approaches to better understand community needs and values. Selected methods must allow the researchers to step outside their own pre-conceived understandings to avoid dominating or imposing meaning upon the participants’ understandings. This paper describes the preliminary planning of the research project in creating an international network of community members, activists, and researchers, and in identifying and testing methods for eliciting needs, values, and ways of understanding the world. In this study, we describe 1) the goals and concerns that were the impetus for the project, 2) the nascent network, 3) potential knowledge elicitation methods, and 4) the repeated single-criterion card sort method as the first of several method that we are piloting.
Exentities: The Problematic Nature of Notions of Identity, Related to Young Children and Schools Serving Them View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Clydia Forehand
Research impacting this project was gathered in relationship to classroom observations conducted at the elementary school level. Students’ crafting and expressing various aspects of identity (personal, social, and cultural) focuses the research, as explored through teaching/learning music/other arts within a changing academic/social schooling culture. Particular focus is granted into how educating students in arts and artistry impacts identity understandings in schools. Studies into arts’ historical and social significance also contribute to the creation of this text. Particular consideration is given to various converging yet complex questions encircling how artistic understandings and endeavors may support identity and/or socialize individuals and groups. Multiple theories of personal/social identity and self-organizing principles are considered for their potential to demonstrate how individuals and groups have, at their core, concurrent needs for complexity and unity. Each of these also holds essential elements of what is meant by terms used to symbolize “identity” (whether individual, social, cultural), and various identifiers (race, gender, socio-economic levels, education, class, trauma/its absence, occupation, and other types of “status states”). The complexity of these multiple terms often confuses core understandings of what identity is and what it offers. This project intends to consider “identity” within a context of “organizing principles” for this reason. Found within the arts, these are also reflected in physics, cultural studies, and social structures, as well. A framework to further explore students' development, understanding, and expression of identities is proposed, including questions and themes for continued discussion.
