Chris Walsh
Victoria University, Arts / Education, Faculty Member
- Video Games, Literacy, Multiliteracies, Multimodality, Digital Literacy, E-learning, and 33 moreInternational Development, Teacher Research, Mobile Learning, Mobile Technology, Computer Games Technology, Computer Games Education, Adult Continuing and Professional Education, Continuing Professional Development, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Media Literacy, Creativity, Case Study Research, Systems Thinking, Digital Games, Adolescent Literacy, Media Literacy Education, Digital Literacies, Digital Media And New Literacies, Education, Teachers' professional development, Game studies, English As a Second Language (ESL), New Literacies, Digital Culture, Teacher Education, Digital Media, Digital Media & Learning, Game/Simulation use in education, Curriculum Design, Clinical Legal Education, New Media, and HIV/AIDSedit
- Chris is the Dean and Chief Academic Officer of Victoria University (VU) online. He has worked across diverse conte... moreChris is the Dean and Chief Academic Officer of Victoria University (VU) online.
He has worked across diverse contexts in Asia, North America, Europe, The Middle East and Australia to provide pre- and in-service teacher education, professional development and theorise new ways technology can assist educators in designing curriculum and pedagogy relevant to students’ and citizens’ lifeworlds.
Much of his academic and research leadership in developing contexts has centred on building institutional capacity—using information and communication technologies(ICTs)—for training and developing a high-quality teaching workforce in countries most hampered by the lack of qualified teachers (Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India). Within developed contexts, his work leverages the power of technology to assist pre-service teachers and practicing educators connect their teaching practices to students’ lifeworlds by drawing on their individual, family and community funds of knowledge (Australia, Austria, Greece, USA, and the UK).
This innovative body of work is evidenced by substantial external funding ($25 million). Chris also has a strong record of high quality publication outputs. To date he has published 1 edited book, 2 co-edited books, 5 co-edited textbooks, 27 refereed journal articles, 17 book chapters, 20 research reports and given 25 invited keynotes or presentations. He also currently edits Digital Culture & Education (DCE), a peer-reviewed and open-access international journal. Chris has previously worked at James Cook University, The Open University UK, Deakin University and Teachers College, Columbia University.edit
Many primary, secondary and tertiary educators need support to engage in inclusive pedagogical practices that challenge homophobia, transphobia and heteronormativity. We present a border-crossing pedagogy (BCP) designed to assist English... more
Many primary, secondary and tertiary educators need support to engage in inclusive pedagogical practices that challenge homophobia, transphobia and heteronormativity. We present a border-crossing pedagogy (BCP) designed to assist English language arts educators in translating knowledge into action to demolish deeply engrained anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex (LGBTIQ+) bigotry, discrimination and violence. This model is timely given the rise in anti-LGBTIQ+ bigotry as governments pass LGBT-inclusive hate crime laws, executive orders prohibiting LGBT discrimination and marriage equality. We illustrate how the BCP can be used to explore affordances and barriers located in the English curriculum, and beyond, to teach about diverse genders and sexualities, positively recognising and affirming LGBTIQ+ identities.
Australian universities have implemented outbound student mobility programs focused on the Asian region and hyped them as a 'powerful' educational strategy with the potential to positively transform students through opportunities to... more
Australian universities have implemented outbound student mobility programs focused on the Asian region and hyped them as a 'powerful' educational strategy with the potential to positively transform students through opportunities to acquire intercultural competence. It is assumed students' intercultural competence will give them 'the edge' they need to be successful when working with cultural others across diverse contexts. While outbound mobility programs can build students' intercultural competence, this does not happen just because they study abroad. This chapter presents a new border pedagogy based on the concept of hybridity that is being used to transform an Australian outbound mobility program. The new border pedagogy works by intentionally putting what is 'known' into crisis by constantly blurring and problematising boundaries, binaries and identities. Outbound mobility programs that leverage a new border pedagogy underpinned by hybridity can build students' intercultural competence by encouraging them to embrace potential miscommunication and intercultural conflict.
Research Interests: Globalization, Critical Pedagogy, Mindfulness, Hybridity, Post-Colonialism, and 12 morePedagogy, Border Crossing, Globalization And Higher Education, Third Space, Intercultural Competence, Student Mobility, Coloniality, Cultural Globalization, Mindfulness and well being, International student mobility, Mindfulness in Effective Teaching and Learning, and Intercultral Communication
Mobbing or bullying is a widely recognized problem in European schools, but it is most serious in Austria. We report on the game Stop The Mob!, which was designed during a teacher education course at the University of Vienna where... more
Mobbing or bullying is a widely recognized problem in European schools, but it is most serious in Austria. We report on the game Stop The Mob!, which was designed during a teacher education course at the University of Vienna where students were required to play serious games to experience how deep learning occurs with the goal of designing a serious game for the course's final assessment. The focus of this paper is twofold. First we describe the course 'Digital games, simulation and virtual worlds for teaching and learning'. Then we evaluate the design of Stop the Mob! and illustrate how it provides viable possibilities to situate learning, minimize cognitive load, engage the learner constructively and facilitate the learning task of preventing bullying when peda‐ gogically embedded into classroom practice. In conclusion, we argue that educa‐ tors can integrate the game into their pedagogical practice to fully actualize its potential to prevent bullying.
Research Interests: Teacher Education, Serious Games, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Cognitive Load Theory, and 13 moreICT in Education, Bullying, School Bullying, Digital Games, Videogames, Teacher professional development, Digital Technologies, Initial teacher education, Pre Service Teacher Education, ICTs profiency of teacher librarian in sustainable service delivery, System-Based Literary Practices: Digital Games research &Design, Digital Games and Education, and School Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents
“This publication fills the gap between traditional theory driven research and practical HIV prevention and care achieved by highly qualified and committed community-based and led implementers. During my masters studies in Public Health... more
“This publication fills the gap between traditional theory driven research and practical HIV prevention and care achieved by highly qualified and committed community-based and led implementers. During my masters studies in Public Health these articles, some previously published in Digital Culture & Education (DCE), proved to be an important supplement to the assigned course literature. This timely work provided my colleagues and me valuable insight and understanding into how ICTs are used across a wide variety of settings to reach key populations disproportionately at risk of HIV who not always covered in public health programs. I believe that anyone within the field of Public Health and HIV, regardless of whether they are a student, an academic, frontline health worker or working with community- based organisations, can benefit from the valuable experiences and inspiring programs and interventions the authors describe in this book.”
Tobias Herder, MPH - HIV Prevention Officer, Sweden
Tobias Herder, MPH - HIV Prevention Officer, Sweden
Research Interests: LGBT Issues (Education), HIV and AIDS education, HIV/AIDS, Gay And Lesbian Studies, LGBT Issues, and 19 morePublic Health Policy, Digital Culture, Public Health, HIV/AIDS policy, LGBT Health, LGBT Studies, Marginalized Populations, information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development, Digital Culture, education and youth, Public Health Policy, HIV/AIDS, Social Networks, Gay Men's Sexual and Mental Health, HIV/AIDS AND Risky behaviors, Msm, Hiv, Gay and Bisexual Men, ICTs for SMEs and NGOs, Most-At Risk Populations and HIV, LGBTQI Human Rights, HIV prevention programs among sex workers, Mobile and Internet Use on Marginalised Cultures; Relationship Between Caste, and men that have sex with men (MSM)
Online education often struggles to maintain a consistent, high quality academic experience. High attrition rates and low student satisfaction continue to challenge higher education providers. We present an innovative public-private... more
Online education often struggles to maintain a consistent, high quality academic experience. High attrition rates and low student satisfaction continue to challenge higher education providers. We present an innovative public-private partnership that delivers a resources-sufficient model of fully online postgraduate education with high levels of academic student support in an unbundled approach. The partnership overcomes the challenges that plague online education by leveraging learning analytics to provide highly responsive student support, 7 days a week and in the evenings. The success of this model is its ability to ameliorate problems inherent in online education. This includes the lack of ongoing staff training and support to successfully teach online, staff availability when students need support and insufficient staff-student ratios. As the sector moves towards a digitally integrated future, our model of online education illustrates how a public-private partnership can provide...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Students' engagements with, and exposure to, digital cultures and technologies have important implications for teaching and pedagogies. Questions arise in this constantly changing terrain, not just about content, but also what... more
Students' engagements with, and exposure to, digital cultures and technologies have important implications for teaching and pedagogies. Questions arise in this constantly changing terrain, not just about content, but also what tools—both digital and analogue—best support learning. This issue of Digital Culture & Education (DCE) brings together research that focuses on learners' and educators' encounters with, and use of, digital culture. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this issue steps beyond the pragmatic interests of ...
Research Interests:
The growth in online professional development opportunities for teachers, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prompts us to question what the most effective practices of facilitating professional development online are and what design elements... more
The growth in online professional development opportunities for teachers, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prompts us to question what the most effective practices of facilitating professional development online are and what design elements of online professional development (OPD) programs improve teachers' content and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). These questions are critical to the successful design and delivery of OPD for teachers. To date, there is no systematic review that provides answers to these questions. Hence, this review presents a synthesis of 11 studies that systematically examine experimental and observational studies that tested or evaluated formal OPD programs for teachers. Eight studies were quantitative and three were mixed methods detailing evidence of teachers' OPD program effectiveness, including design elements , that lead to teachers' improved: content knowledge; PCK; beliefs about teaching; self-efficacy; and instructional practices. Design elements identified included a focus on learner supports, further acquisition or development of PCK, engagement, flexibility, individual difference in learners and learning styles, practical learning activities, reflection, relevance and application of knowledge and skills. The analysis uncovers a primary issue that few available publications of teachers' OPD are strong methodologically. This systematic review's findings report on design elements that lead to effective OPD learning experiences for teachers.
Research Interests:
This article interrogates how a particular conception of creativity: 'wise humanising creativity' (WHC) is manifest within a virtual learning environment (VLE) with children and young people. It reports on the outcomes of C 2 Learn, a... more
This article interrogates how a particular conception of creativity: 'wise humanising creativity' (WHC) is manifest within a virtual learning environment (VLE) with children and young people. It reports on the outcomes of C 2 Learn, a three-year European Commission funded project which introduced innovative digital gaming activities to foster co-creativity in the VLE between players. Theoretically the paper builds on previous work, which has conceptualised the potential for WHC within VLEs, as well as other educational contexts. Within C 2 Learn, arguments have been made for WHC as an antidote to overly-marketised, competitive notions of creativity, as well as for WHC supporting a view of childhood and youth as empowered—rather than 'at risk'—within digital environments. In particular, this paper focuses on outcomes of the project's final piloting in England, Greece and Austria across the primary and secondary age ranges. This research employed a bespoke co-creativity assessment methodology developed for the project. In order to document WHC, this methodology opted to evidence developments in lived experience via qualitative methods including teacher and student interviews, fieldnotes, video capture, observation and student self-assessment tools. The paper articulates how WHC manifests in C 2 Learn's unique VLE or C 2 Space, and its potential to develop more nuanced understandings of creativity across digital environments. It then goes on to consider WHC as a useful concept for changing how we create within VLEs, and the implications for educational futures debates and wider understanding of creativity in education as a less marketised and more ethically driven concept.
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Creativity, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Digital Games, and 8 moreImmersive Virtual Learning Environment, Virtual Learning Environments, Virtual Learning, Playful Learning, Children's Digital Games, Consciousness and Creativity, Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC), and C2Learn
tWise humanising creativity (WHC) is creativity guided by ethical action, meaning it is mindful of its consequences and is empowering, offering far greater shared hope for the future than the competitive mentality that pervades most... more
tWise humanising creativity (WHC) is creativity guided by ethical action, meaning it is mindful of its consequences and is empowering, offering far greater shared hope for the future than the competitive mentality that pervades most education systems. Understanding how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can foster WHC is becoming exceedingly important because it problematizes the marketisation of childhood and youth. It also offers new ways of considering educational futures including implications for the theoretical understanding of creativity within VLEs. We report on the theoretical development of the concept of WHC within C2Learn, a three-year project designing a digital gaming environment that provides children and young people with multiple opportunities to engage in co-creativity to foster their WHC. C2Learn is the first time WHC has actively been conceptualised in a digital context. We present our over-arching co-creativity conceptual framework which has been developed to frame the specific kind of co-creativity that is envisaged within C2Learn’s VLE.Drawing on that framework, we present a co-creativity assessment methodology specifically focused on evaluating the presence of WHC. We argue that leveraging WHC withinVLEs broadens perspectives on the purposes of education, as this ethically framed creativity foregrounds the role of values in generating fundamental small-scale creative change through ‘journeys of becoming’ that have the potential to generate ‘quiet revolutions’ or small cumulative, incremental changes over time which are meaningful to a particular community.
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Research Methods and Methodology, Assessment, Creativity, Research Methodology, and 12 moreHigher Education, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Digital Games, Virtual Worlds, Critical Thinking and Creativity, Virtual Learning Environments, Virtual Learning, Conceptions of Creativity, Children's Digital Games, Play and Creativity in the Curriculum, and Co-creativity
Reversing a global megatrend such as the climate emergency that is wreaking havoc on Earth's natural and human systems presents unprecedented educational challenges. Indeed, the planet's probable future, particularly for children and... more
Reversing a global megatrend such as the climate emergency that is wreaking havoc on Earth's natural and human systems presents unprecedented educational challenges. Indeed, the planet's probable future, particularly for children and young people, is looking increasingly dire. The Australian Curriculum: Technologies offers an unexpected timely response to the climate emergency through its overarching key idea, 'creating preferred futures'. In a preferable future, the kind for which we hope this Point and Counterpoint section will be a catalyst, educational institutions urgently introduce climate change education into the curriculum, and then invite students to engage in possibility thinking or curiosity-driven co-creative exploration to identify authentic problems related to the climate emergency that they want to address. Through possibility thinking, students can push back against the education currently on offer and learn to be anticipatory. With an anticipatory disposition, they can engage in strategic foresight to anticipate the digital literacies they will need not only to solve their climate emergency problems, but also to identify pathways and reward for a future of work that schools are not preparing them for in the present. Rather than waiting for the future to happen, students need viable opportunities to think about what their preferred future might look like, and how they can collaborate in a productive manner to co-create that future over the probable one. Such a stance requires students to take on an anticipatory disposition and articulate the digital literacies they will need in order to act with agency and conviction to be co-creative, co-imaginative and co-enterprising. We argue that a wise, humanising creativity (WHC) is central to children and young people engaging in collaborative thinking and ethical joint action to co-create their preferred futures.
Research Interests: Technology, Educational Technology, Climate Change, Creativity, Curriculum Design, and 15 moreDigital Literacy, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Critical Thinking and Creativity, Digital Literacies, STEM Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Climate Change Impacts, Curriculum, Information and Communication Technologies, Possibility Thinking, The Australian Curriculum, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC), and Climate emergency
As machines, clothing, buildings, even body parts become ‘smarter’, humans’ digital literacy practices need to be anticipatory to avoid disruption. Anticipatory digital literacy practices are pre-active. They help humans understand what... more
As machines, clothing, buildings, even body parts become ‘smarter’, humans’ digital literacy practices need to be anticipatory to avoid disruption. Anticipatory digital literacy practices are pre-active. They help humans understand what digital literacies practices they need to acquire and/or abandon to successfully adapt to new sociotechnical realities characterised by linear exponential technological change. In a probable future, some individuals and organisations will employ their anticipatory digital literacy practices to productively capitalise on technology innovations to maximise their business, economic impact and profits. But in a preferable future, all individuals have authentic opportunities to use anticipatory digital literacy practices at school to work successfully with others and artificial intelligence to address global challenges. Critical to addressing these global challenges is education’s ability to help individuals understand the ethical dimension of their anticipatory digital literacy practices so they not only use them pre-actively, but
with respect for others and the Earth. Equally paramount, is understanding that anticipatory digital literacies practices are not skills or competencies, rather they are cultural ways of doing things predicated on taking a pre-active stance to avoid disruption with different affinity groups.
with respect for others and the Earth. Equally paramount, is understanding that anticipatory digital literacies practices are not skills or competencies, rather they are cultural ways of doing things predicated on taking a pre-active stance to avoid disruption with different affinity groups.
Research Interests: Future Studies, Literacy, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, Critical Pedagogy, and 10 moreMedia Literacy, Digital Media And New Literacies, Futures Studies, Critical Media Literacy, Futures Studies and Foresight, Digital Technologies, Multiliteracies, Technological change, Critical Literacy, and Anticipatory Thinking
The Millennium Project, an international participatory think tank that uses futures research to systematically explore, create and test both possible and desirable futures in order to improve decisions in the present, presents... more
The Millennium Project, an international participatory think tank that uses futures research to systematically explore, create and test both possible and desirable futures in order to improve decisions in the present, presents unprecedented challenges for Australian education. Their publication, 2015-16 State of the Future, outlines 15 global challenges that represent an unparalleled invitation for educators to think creatively and imaginatively to design experiences whereby students successfully engage in 'border crossing' (Giroux, 1992). The act of border crossing provides unprecedented opportunities for children, young people and adults to develop intercultural competencies and skills that better enable them to live together mindfully. We present a new border pedagogy based on the concept of hybridity that works to build students' and citizens' intercultural competence by encouraging them to embrace potential miscommunication and intercultural conflict. By learning how to embracing hybridity, students can work productively to put what is known into crisis by constantly blurring and problematising boundaries, binaries and identities. Our new border pedagogy promotes living 'together-in-difference' (Ang, 2001) by encouraging students to critically interrogate issues of difference they face as they border cross. The border pedagogy for living together-indifference encourages students to embrace intercultural conflict and potential miscommunication because of the questions and wonderings it kindles and inspires. Importantly, it presents a pedagogy that assists educators in building on the educational goals of the Melbourne Declaration and engaging effectively with the Australian Curriculum's cross-curriculum priorities so students can prosper individually, collectively and communally in a globalised world.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Intercultural Communication, Globalization, Border Studies, Critical Pedagogy, and 11 moreCross-border cooperation, Intercultural Education, Pedagogy, Globalisation and Development, Border Crossing, Intercultural Education (Education), Critical Thinking and Creativity, Intercultural Competence, Social Pedagogy, Pedagogia, and Borders and Borderlands
Serious games are fun and powerful vehicles for learning, yet initial teacher education courses rarely require pre-service teachers to design serious games they can be used for future teaching and learning. Wanting to disrupt this... more
Serious games are fun and powerful vehicles for learning, yet initial teacher education courses rarely require pre-service teachers to design serious games they can be used for future teaching and learning. Wanting to disrupt this reality, we designed a course for pre-service teachers at the University of Vienna entitled ‘Digital games, simulation and virtual worlds for teaching and learning’. The course required students to first play serious games to experience how deep learning occurs through gameplay. Then they critically reviewed a number of serious games and critiqued them. They came to understand how serious games operationalise playful structures that allow gameplayers to think about their choices, take action and experience the impact of their actions. The final assessment required the pre-service teachers to draw on their gameplay experiences, critiques of serious games and collaboratively design a serious game they could playtest with diverse upper primary school students. We present four serious games designed by pre-service teachers that have successfully mapped educational outcomes into serious game mechanics. We argue that these pre-service teachers’ experience of designing and playtesting digital games not only helped them make their teaching relevant to students’ lifeworlds, but also helped them understand that pedagogy can be playful.
Research Interests:
Given the Digital Technologies rationale of the Australian Curriculum, it is critical that both teachers and students use design thinking to be creative and innovative producers of digital solutions and knowledge. Teachers and students... more
Given the Digital Technologies rationale of the Australian Curriculum, it is critical that both teachers and students use design thinking to be creative and innovative producers of digital solutions and knowledge. Teachers and students are increasingly being required to self-produce films and digital content across subject areas. Their productions are often used as a catalyst for discussion in the classroom or to illustrate mastery of curriculum content. Producing films and digital content that are engaging and also successfully conveying educational messages is challenging. Filmmakers engage audiences by using film techniques to activate different emotions. Producing learning content that is engaging and activates those emotions that support learning requires an understanding of the craft of the filmmaker and those academic emotions that learners experience when learning. We present an evaluation tool based on those emotions that learners experience when learning (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002) or those emotions different film techniques can provoke in viewers. The tool or Wheel of Academic Emotions (WAE) is useful for design thinking and for evaluating whether films and other digital productions activate the emotions known to support learning. We argue the WAE is timely because it provides teachers and students a useful tool to be creative and discerning decision-makers and to evaluate their digital content critically to ensure it communicates their ideas.
Research Interests:
The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has... more
The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has not been an extended study of English teachers incorporating computer games into their teaching and learning through action research projects. This paper outlines the structure and progress of a research project exploring the uses of computer games in English classrooms. We argue that much can be learned about the teaching of both print and digital literacies from examining computer games and young people’s engagement in online digital culture in the world beyond school.
Research Interests: Literacy, Game studies, New Media, Digital Literacy, Video Games and Learning, and 13 moreGame/Simulation use in education, English, New Literacies, Digital Media And New Literacies, Digital Games, Computer Games Education, Digital Literacies, Curriculum, English Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Computer Game, Game Studies, and Digital Media Learning
Although multiliteracies have been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This article examines multiliteracies as a crossdisciplinary curriculum... more
Although multiliteracies have been well theorised in recent years, few studies have
researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This
article examines multiliteracies as a crossdisciplinary curriculum practice, drawing
on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school. The data show possibilities for
students to engage in critique and to move toward designing multimodal texts. Using
Bourdieusian concepts of social capital and academic field, we explore the struggles
around learning to inhabit certain school discourses.
researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This
article examines multiliteracies as a crossdisciplinary curriculum practice, drawing
on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school. The data show possibilities for
students to engage in critique and to move toward designing multimodal texts. Using
Bourdieusian concepts of social capital and academic field, we explore the struggles
around learning to inhabit certain school discourses.
Research Interests:
Deliverable 5.4.1 is the first instalment of a document describing the outcomes of Co-creativity Evaluation Analysis of data and information gathered through the pilot activities (M21 cycle), following the methodology defined by T2.3. Led... more
Deliverable 5.4.1 is the first instalment of a document describing the outcomes of Co-creativity Evaluation Analysis of data and information gathered through the pilot activities
(M21 cycle), following the methodology defined by T2.3. Led by the UEDIN team, in close collaboration with OU, EA and BMUKK it sets out in detail the qualitative and quantitative analysis performed, according to the defined conceptual foundations and assessment methodology of the project (D2.3.1-2), leading to a synthesis of the pilot findings.
(M21 cycle), following the methodology defined by T2.3. Led by the UEDIN team, in close collaboration with OU, EA and BMUKK it sets out in detail the qualitative and quantitative analysis performed, according to the defined conceptual foundations and assessment methodology of the project (D2.3.1-2), leading to a synthesis of the pilot findings.
Research Interests:
In this document we report the activities of the first main pilot cycle, which was completed in July 2014, as foreseen by the C 2Learn User Evaluation Plan (deliverables D5.2.1 and D5.2.2). The main aim of this pilot cycle was to provide... more
In this document we report the activities of the first main pilot cycle, which was completed in July 2014, as foreseen by the C
2Learn User Evaluation Plan (deliverables D5.2.1 and D5.2.2). The main aim of this pilot cycle was to provide input to the processes of learning design and scenario development,
game design, as well as to the design of the co-creativity assessment methodology, and test the first available versions of the integrated C2 Learn technological solution. The present report on the pilot activities focuses more on the procedures and conditions of the pilot activities. The outcomes and user feedback informs all relevant processes and deliverables of the
project, and among them predominantly D5.4.1 ‘Co-creativity Evaluation Analysis’.
2Learn User Evaluation Plan (deliverables D5.2.1 and D5.2.2). The main aim of this pilot cycle was to provide input to the processes of learning design and scenario development,
game design, as well as to the design of the co-creativity assessment methodology, and test the first available versions of the integrated C2 Learn technological solution. The present report on the pilot activities focuses more on the procedures and conditions of the pilot activities. The outcomes and user feedback informs all relevant processes and deliverables of the
project, and among them predominantly D5.4.1 ‘Co-creativity Evaluation Analysis’.
Research Interests:
Information and communication technology (ICT) is transforming community-based and community-led HIV prevention and care services for gay men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people. This book celebrates and shares... more
Information and communication technology (ICT) is transforming
community-based and community-led HIV prevention and care services for gay men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people. This book celebrates and shares crucial work of frontline HIV workers, activists, researchers and educators whom are using innovative ICT.
community-based and community-led HIV prevention and care services for gay men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people. This book celebrates and shares crucial work of frontline HIV workers, activists, researchers and educators whom are using innovative ICT.
Research Interests: Digital Technology, Mobile Technology, HIV and AIDS education, HIV/AIDS, Public Health Policy, and 9 moreMLearning, Public Health, HIV/AIDS (International Studies), ICTs, Information and Communication Technologies, HIV and AIDS: prevention, care, ARV adherence, HIV and AIDS, Marginalised Groups, and Elearning
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English... more
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile-phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result, EIA is currently using a mobile-phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit — known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’ — to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of professional development for teachers at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and nearly 10 million students.
Research Interests:
While sustainable models of teacher professional development through information communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries like Bangladesh provide new opportunities for improving teaching and learning, they are largely... more
While sustainable models of teacher professional development through information communication technologies (ICT) in
developing countries like Bangladesh provide new opportunities for improving teaching and learning, they are largely unexplored. A variety of models of teacher professional development have been reported on in the research, but little attention has been paid to large-scale mobile e-Learning models that promote changes in communicative language teaching practices. This paper examines the ‘trainer in your pocket,’ an e-Learning component of English in Action (EIA), a project designed to contribute to the growth of Bangladesh by providing English language as a tool for better access to the world economy. The ‘trainer in your pocket’ works to build the capacity of teachers to achieve pedagogical change at the classroom level by providing them with strategies to teach English in more participatory and communicative ways on MP3 players and mobile phones. EIA’s ‘trainer in your pocket’ encourages continuous self and supported learning to help teachers rethink their pedagogical practices and simultaneously learn English. Teachers receive hundreds of audio resources for classroom use that provide students unprecedented opportunities to hear and experience high levels of spoken English directly related to Bangladesh’s national curriculum. The paper argues e-Learning can play a critical role in development projects alongside face-to-face and ICT-enhanced teacher professional development. Furthermore, it
provides a replicable framework or model for large-scale teacher professional development in emerging economies.
developing countries like Bangladesh provide new opportunities for improving teaching and learning, they are largely unexplored. A variety of models of teacher professional development have been reported on in the research, but little attention has been paid to large-scale mobile e-Learning models that promote changes in communicative language teaching practices. This paper examines the ‘trainer in your pocket,’ an e-Learning component of English in Action (EIA), a project designed to contribute to the growth of Bangladesh by providing English language as a tool for better access to the world economy. The ‘trainer in your pocket’ works to build the capacity of teachers to achieve pedagogical change at the classroom level by providing them with strategies to teach English in more participatory and communicative ways on MP3 players and mobile phones. EIA’s ‘trainer in your pocket’ encourages continuous self and supported learning to help teachers rethink their pedagogical practices and simultaneously learn English. Teachers receive hundreds of audio resources for classroom use that provide students unprecedented opportunities to hear and experience high levels of spoken English directly related to Bangladesh’s national curriculum. The paper argues e-Learning can play a critical role in development projects alongside face-to-face and ICT-enhanced teacher professional development. Furthermore, it
provides a replicable framework or model for large-scale teacher professional development in emerging economies.
Research Interests:
The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has... more
The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has not been an extended study of English teachers incorporating computer games into their teaching and learning through action research projects. This paper outlines the structure and progress of a research project exploring the uses of computer games in English classrooms. We argue that much can be learned about the teaching of both print and digital literacies from examining computer games and young people’s engagement in online digital culture in the world beyond school.
Research Interests:
Few spaces exist in schools that require students to research, play and design digital games. This paper presents two suburban case studies exploring the introduction of digital games into the English curriculum with students who... more
Few spaces exist in schools that require students to research, play and design digital games. This paper presents two suburban case studies exploring the
introduction of digital games into the English curriculum with students who traditionally struggle with literacy. The students’ research, gameplay and design of digital games enhanced literacy teaching and learning because the curriculum resonated more closely with their lifeworlds. The article moves the field of literacy
research forward by introducing the term systems-based literacy practices to describe youths’ new literacy practices emerging from their digital gameplay experiences. These practices reflect students’ proficiencies in programming as well as the technical, kinetic, social and linguistic knowledge necessary to play
and configure different digital games for maximum gaming pleasure. Digital games are a medium requiring students to interact with machines across various
platforms, to understand their interfaces and become familiar with differentvirtual worlds. The case studies illustrate how two teachers came to rethink digital games and students’ participation in digital game culture as valuable and integral meaning-making activities. The important findings concern the increased degree to which students engaged with the content of the English curriculum, the design of multimodal texts and their conscientious production of traditional school-based literacy practices still necessary for academic success. The paper argues students did this through transformed practice, where they transferred and re-created designs of meaning from, and across, one context to another drawing on their experiences as gamers and their systems-based literacy practices.
introduction of digital games into the English curriculum with students who traditionally struggle with literacy. The students’ research, gameplay and design of digital games enhanced literacy teaching and learning because the curriculum resonated more closely with their lifeworlds. The article moves the field of literacy
research forward by introducing the term systems-based literacy practices to describe youths’ new literacy practices emerging from their digital gameplay experiences. These practices reflect students’ proficiencies in programming as well as the technical, kinetic, social and linguistic knowledge necessary to play
and configure different digital games for maximum gaming pleasure. Digital games are a medium requiring students to interact with machines across various
platforms, to understand their interfaces and become familiar with differentvirtual worlds. The case studies illustrate how two teachers came to rethink digital games and students’ participation in digital game culture as valuable and integral meaning-making activities. The important findings concern the increased degree to which students engaged with the content of the English curriculum, the design of multimodal texts and their conscientious production of traditional school-based literacy practices still necessary for academic success. The paper argues students did this through transformed practice, where they transferred and re-created designs of meaning from, and across, one context to another drawing on their experiences as gamers and their systems-based literacy practices.
Research Interests:
Many school literacy practices ignore adolescents' new digitally mediated subjectivity as it has been shaped by the new media age. Youth possess often unappreciated repertories of practice which allow them to use their imagination and... more
Many school literacy practices ignore adolescents' new digitally mediated subjectivity as it has been shaped by the new media age. Youth possess often unappreciated repertories of practice which allow them to use their imagination and creativity to combine print, visual and digital modes in combinations that can be applied to new educational, civic, media and workplace contexts. This paper reports on research in two middle years c1assrooms in New York City's Chinatown, where students' design skills were recognised and validated when they v,'ere encouraged to critically re-represent curricular knowledge through multimodal design. The curriculum, rather than privileging print-only representations, recognised the linguistic, social, economic and cultural capital that different students brought to school. The findings suggest schools should harness youths' creativity - that often manifests itself through their capital resources - as they integrate and adapt to the new digital affordances acquired through their out-of-school literacy practices.
Research Interests:
Multiliteracies-related research is just emerging from the formal discourse of pedagogical theorising and how it may look in practice needs further exploration. This research, initiated under that warrant, presents practitioner research... more
Multiliteracies-related research is just emerging from the formal discourse of pedagogical theorising and how it may look in practice needs further exploration. This research, initiated under that warrant, presents practitioner research and the enactment of a multiliteracies curriculum with Year 8 students in New York City’s Chinatown. The study describes a collaborative digital literacies project with a local contemporary arts museum where students engaged in the multi-modal redesign of school texts. First, the article outlines a move of multiliteracies theory into
curriculum practice where students explored questions of Chinese-American and immigrant identities through a discourse analysis of history texts. Then, drawing on a digital gothic and hip-hop cartoon Web project, it outlines how students challenged ways their ethnic identities were positioned by drawing political satire cartoons about immigration to the United States. The project concluded with a virtual exhibition of students’ artwork where they inserted their cartoons within existing educational websites using HTML and Flash. It argues that the redesigned websites are a new set of multi-modal literacy practices that allow youth to disrupt racist and exclusionary discourses they encounter in school texts and their lived experiences.
curriculum practice where students explored questions of Chinese-American and immigrant identities through a discourse analysis of history texts. Then, drawing on a digital gothic and hip-hop cartoon Web project, it outlines how students challenged ways their ethnic identities were positioned by drawing political satire cartoons about immigration to the United States. The project concluded with a virtual exhibition of students’ artwork where they inserted their cartoons within existing educational websites using HTML and Flash. It argues that the redesigned websites are a new set of multi-modal literacy practices that allow youth to disrupt racist and exclusionary discourses they encounter in school texts and their lived experiences.
Research Interests: Literacy, Museum Studies, Creativity, Digital Literacy, Multicultural Education, and 10 moreFirst Language Acquisition, Disruptive Innovation, Writing systems, Emergent Literacy, Multiliteracies, Curriculum Design and Evaluation, Museum and School Collaborations, Critical Discourse Analyis, Analyzing Multimodal Texts, and Design and Assessment of Educational Material
"This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about... more
"This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games – can play in connecting pupils’ gaming literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school-based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately include digital games in their literacy instruction. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices,we present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy.We argue our heuristic can be used for effective teacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum. The heuristic traces gaming literacy across the quadrants of actions, designs, situations and systems to provide
teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games.We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out-of-school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum."
teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games.We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out-of-school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum."
Research Interests: Game studies, Education, Teacher Education, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, and 13 moreGame/Simulation use in education, Video Games, Digital Culture, Digital Media & Learning, New Literacies, Teacher Training, Digital Games, Teachers' professional development, Digital Literacies, Multimodal Literacy, Games, Paratexts, and Digital Media and Learning
Many schools in recent years have implemented curricular projects to ‘deal with’ homophobia and sexism as problems that affect adolescent students and make schools unsafe. The ways in which we, as teachers and researchers, confront such... more
Many schools in recent years have implemented curricular projects to ‘deal with’ homophobia and sexism as problems that affect adolescent students and make schools unsafe. The ways in which we, as teachers and researchers, confront such problems, however, depends upon how we view their power within schools. When viewed as discursive elements of a generally heteronormative school environment, gender and sexuality norms become more complicated and subtle, as they are a part of systems of language, actions, and expectations that can be difficult to problematize with students and teachers. Drawing on feminist post-structuralist theory related to normativity and discourse analysis, our research looks at two middle-school projects aimed at interrupting heteronormative thinking by including students in the process of analyzing and re-creating school discourse. In one project, a whole class looks at gender identity formation through analyzing collective memory works collaboratively with the teacher. In the second project, a smaller group of girls works to re-think ways that the science/math curriculum could be more responsive to girls, in the end also analyzing the work that comes out of the collaboration. Together, the projects raise important questions about the effectiveness of such curricular projects, the power of school language around ‘adolescence’, and the potential for addressing gender normativity on the level of discourse, especially in the face of such powerful ideas of gender/sexuality in the middle grades.
Research Interests:
Deliverable 2.3.2 is the final instalment of a document detailing the C2Learn Co-creativity Assessment Methodology, its rationale, method, tools and accompanying operationalisation. The assessment methodology will be utilised to test the... more
Deliverable 2.3.2 is the final instalment of a document detailing the C2Learn Co-creativity Assessment Methodology, its rationale, method, tools and accompanying operationalisation. The assessment methodology will be utilised to test the use of C2Learn’s computational tools, embedded within the pedagogical interventions and creative learning practices made available through the C2Space and its subcomponents or C2Experiences, in real-life educational settings. The core aim of C2Learn’s Co-creativity Assessment Methodology is to evaluate C2Learn’s impact on students’ (co-)creativity.
Research Interests:
Examples of mobile phones being used with teachers to provide continuing professional development (CPD) in emerging economies at scale are largely absent from the research literature. We outline English in Action’s (EIA) model for... more
Examples of mobile phones being used with teachers to provide continuing professional development (CPD) in emerging economies at scale are largely absent from the research literature. We outline English in Action’s (EIA) model for providing 80,000 teachers with CPD to improve their communicative language teaching in Bangladesh over nine years. EIA’s CPD program is delivered face to face and supported through open distance learning (ODL). This innovative model of teacher CPD is supported through peer learning and self-study using a variety of print, audio and video resources. Drawing on the success of EIA’s pilot studies, where internal and external evaluation reported significant improvement in teachers’ and students’ English-language competence after one year, the current phase is using low-cost mobile phones, or the ‘trainer in your
pocket’ to deliver CPD to 12,500 teachers through 2015. We believe EIA’s teacher CDP model is best suited to assist the project in achieving one of its primary goals: to increase the English-language proficiency of 12 million students, allowing them to access greater social and economic opportunities in the future. We argue EIA’s use of mobile phones for the provision of teacher CPD – at scale – is timely and replicable in both developed and developing contexts.
pocket’ to deliver CPD to 12,500 teachers through 2015. We believe EIA’s teacher CDP model is best suited to assist the project in achieving one of its primary goals: to increase the English-language proficiency of 12 million students, allowing them to access greater social and economic opportunities in the future. We argue EIA’s use of mobile phones for the provision of teacher CPD – at scale – is timely and replicable in both developed and developing contexts.
Research Interests: Teacher Education, E-learning, Mobile Learning, Continuing Professional Development, Mobile Technology, and 23 moreComputer-Mediated Communication, Networks, ICT4D, Liminality, MLearning, Teacher Training, Teachers' professional development, Bangladesh, Schools, Cpd, Knowledge Communities, Technology Enhanced Education, Developmental Work Research, Academic Staff Development, English In Action (EIA), School-based Professional Development (SBPD), Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Instructional Engineering, Innovation & Change Management, Open Distance Learning, Professional Graduate Attributes, Diffusing Innovations, and Curriculum Subject Change
Although multiliteracies have been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This article examines multiliteracies as a crossdisciplinary curriculum... more
Although multiliteracies have been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This article examines multiliteracies as a crossdisciplinary curriculum practice, drawing on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school. The data showpossibilities for students to engage in critique and to move toward designing multimodal texts. Using Bourdieusian concepts of social capital and academic field, we explore the struggles
around learning to inhabit certain school discourses.
around learning to inhabit certain school discourses.
Research Interests:
Our contention will be that love can exist in myriad forms, that it can be expressed in many ways, and that love, intimate relationships, and sexual pleasures are rights that one should have access to in life. Although sexual relations... more
Our contention will be that love can exist in myriad forms, that it can be expressed in many ways, and that love, intimate relationships, and sexual pleasures are rights that one should have access to in life. Although sexual relations and marriages are often viewed as economic, political, and social arrangements that reinforce systems of power and consolidate wealth, they are equally often imbued with spiritual values in which persons are united to one another through religious ceremonies. Around the world, connections of family and love create the support networks and social settings in which people's needs and desires are met. Focusing education on the importance of human relations and love, on the ability to interact with others in peace without the need for conquest or domination, may help create greater possibilities for all students, and open spaces for non-heterosexual love and sexuality to enter.
Research Interests:
Editorial
Thinking about the future trajectory of DCE, we are not only committed to remaining open access, but also equally committed to embracing an ethos of ‘slow citizenship’ over a trajectory of ‘fast citizenship’.
Thinking about the future trajectory of DCE, we are not only committed to remaining open access, but also equally committed to embracing an ethos of ‘slow citizenship’ over a trajectory of ‘fast citizenship’.
Research Interests:
In rethinking literacy education in light of unprecedented technological change, this paper reports on adolescent gamers and their accumulation of gaming capital. This is in opposition to more pervasive assumptions about gaming as... more
In rethinking literacy education in light of unprecedented technological change, this paper reports on adolescent gamers and their accumulation of gaming capital. This is in opposition to more pervasive assumptions about gaming as mindless entertainment, learning simulations, ideological tools and interactive mediums for the masses. We see the need to research the medium of games in their entirety, exploring their uniqueness as a medium—while at the same time—making connections to a wider media ecology (Fuller, 2005) that includes more than the games themselves. This media ecology of videogames is demonstrated in part by the ‘paratextual’ (Consalvo, 2007) industries that support game play, production and design. The ‘paratext’ is central to gaming capital in creating individual and group systems of distinction within gaming culture. Because we understand videogames as actions across social fields enacted through the actions of players or ‘operators’ on software, we also deem it necessary to understand both the operator and machines’ diegetic and non-diegetic actions (Galloway, 2006). This distinction allows us to think about games as more than texts, literacy practices and narratives, which highlights games’ significance in technoclture as systems (Salen, 2008), procedures (Bogost, 2007), algorithms (Galloway, 2006; Wark, 2007), configurations and code (Lessig, 1999; Manovich, 2001). In conclusion we provide a series of interview questions developed to uncover adolescents’ gaming capital. We also propose a heuristic to map a players’ total volume of gaming capital to better understand how gaming capital establishes trajectories of exchange between cultural and economic capitals and its implications for literacy education.
Research Interests:
In order to build upon, further and contest text-based paradigms of students’ video gameplay, this research utilises an ethnographic approach that presents a nuanced and multifarious framework. This study, part of a larger project1,... more
In order to build upon, further and contest text-based paradigms of students’ video gameplay, this research utilises an ethnographic approach that presents a nuanced and multifarious framework. This study, part of a larger project1, combines, and then draws upon both quantitative and qualitative methods; a large longitudinal survey sample, narrative analysis of popular games, interviews and participant observation over three years. In this article we suggest strategies for researching and teaching about these digital spaces through collaboration with high school teachers and cultural and educational institutions. This presents a play and player centred approach to researching gaming capital in educational contexts that posits researching video games be grounded in the practices of game players.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This report covers the baseline study conducted in three of the seven TESS-India states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. Data was collected from students, teachers and head teachers in schools (primary, upper primary and... more
This report covers the baseline study conducted in three of the seven TESS-India states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. Data was collected from students, teachers and head teachers in schools (primary, upper primary and secondary); and teacher trainees, teacher educators, and principals of DIETs between September-November, 2013. The survey tools consisted of questionnaires, classroom observation schedules and checklists; and the sample consisted of 23 DIET principals, 179 teacher educators, 984 teacher trainees from 24 DIETs (8 from each state); and 423 head teachers, 707 teachers, and 4117 students across 423 schools. The study was conducted in adherence to the research ethics of The Open University, UK.
Research Interests:
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English... more
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional
67,500 teachers and 10 million students.
67,500 teachers and 10 million students.
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Creativity, Mobile Learning, Mobile Technology, TESOL, and 12 moreFutures Studies, Teachers' professional development, Mobile Phones, Bangladesh, Futures Studies and Foresight, EIA, CPD for teachers, Bangladesh ELT, English In Action (EIA), School-based Professional Development (SBPD), Open Distance Learning (ODL), and Trainer in Your Pocket
This Special Issue of Digital Culture & Education (DCE) provides innovative programmatic approaches to HIV prevention and care services for gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgender persons using information and... more
This Special Issue of Digital Culture & Education (DCE) provides innovative programmatic approaches to HIV prevention and care services for gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgender persons using information and communication technology (ICT) at a time when these same populations are experiencing an alarming upward trend of new HIV infections. During a successful participatory consultation in Washington D.C. in May 2013 hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and co-supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, and the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), representatives from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Australia and the United States shared innovative uses of communication technology across HIV research, programs, outreach, advocacy and public-private partnerships. Believing it crucial to share their innovations more widely—through open-access channels—led us to working in partnership with these frontline workers, activists, researchers and educators to further document and share their technological innovations in different global contexts. Importantly, we prioritised working with frontline workers and activists by providing cyclical and targeted writing mentoring to assist them in writing about their successful digital interventions. Disseminating this timely work through open-access channels, like Digital Culture & Education (DCE) means that researchers in less resourced institutions, practitioners and activists in the field and the general public can better understand how ICT, particularly mobile technologies, provides unprecedented opportunities to more effectively reach and engage gay men, other MSM and transgender populations across the HIV prevention, testing, treatment and care cascade.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Assessment, Creativity, Serious Games, Video Games, and 10 moreCreativity and Consciousness, Game Based Learning, Digital Games, Assessment Methodologies, Multimodal Analysis, Possibility Thinking, Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC), Creative Emotional Reasoning (CER), C2Learn, and Living Dialogic Space
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Mobile Learning, International Development, Mobile Technology, Blended And Mobile Learning, Professional Development, and 5 moreTeachers' professional development, Bangladesh, School-Based Professional Development as It Relates to Technology Integration in Schools, CPD for teachers, and School-based Professional Development (SBPD)
In addition to growing epidemics of HIV transgenders in Thailand, a low awareness of how to access justice increases their vulnerability to HIV infection. This paper presents a unique case study of how one community-based and led... more
In addition to growing epidemics of HIV transgenders in Thailand, a low awareness of how to access justice increases their vulnerability to HIV infection. This paper presents a unique case study of how one community-based and led organisations used social networking and instant messaging to address this problem among transgender community in Thailand. It describes and analyses how online peer-based health counseling integrated HIV education and prevention alongside access to justice through free university-based clinical legal education (CLE) works to empower transgenders. It argues that a community-based approach that integrates HIV prevention and education and access to justice within a wider sexual health programme, through digital technologies, is a sustainable approach for other populations disproportionately at risk of HIV. Furthermore digital media offer strategic opportunities to overcome on-going political violence alongside entrenched stigma and discrimination that disrupt denial of access to justice.
Research Interests: History, Social Change, Health Promotion, Social epidemiology, Participatory Research, and 53 moreTransgender Studies, Narrative, LGBT Issues (Education), Stigma, Sexuality, HIV/AIDS, Critical Psychology, Discourse, Collective Action, Politics, Social Justice, LGBT Issues, Youth Culture, Clinical Legal Education, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Qualitative Research, Social Exclusion, Public Health, Sexual Identity, Community Participation, Transgender Health, Digital Storytelling, Transgender, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth, ASEAN, Homosexuality, Harm Reduction, Institutional ethnography, Social Inequality, LGBTq Activisms, Malnutrition, Transsexuality and Transgender, Queer, Gay, HIV and AIDS: prevention, care, ARV adherence, Lesbian, Support Services, Script, Lgbtq, Bisexual, Street Life, LGBTQ Youth Homelessness, Power and Empowerment, Arts Informed Research, Clinical Legal Education (CLE), Health Systems Accessibility, Drugs and Addictions, HIV Care, Prevention and Treatment, HCV Care, Prevention and Treatment, Education and Development In Southeast Asia, Educational Reform In Thailand, Thai Political Economy, and Public Policy
The nursery rhyme, 'Sticks and bones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me' is widely recognisable. But is it true? I contend that it is not. As Toni Morrison reminds us, words hurt. Words mean something. Consider how you might... more
The nursery rhyme, 'Sticks and bones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me' is widely recognisable. But is it true? I contend that it is not. As Toni Morrison reminds us, words hurt. Words mean something. Consider how you might feel if you were called a liar when you told the truth. It does hurt to be called names. It hurts to be bullied and excluded because you have been labelled or set apart and called ugly, fat, stupid, lazy, old, homeless, illiterate, gay, disabled and so on. To be called names, or be labelled, is a form of 'othering' that is dis empowering and oppressive. To label another person adversely is careless and insensitive. Negative labels often stay with children and young people for the rest of their lives. Labelling often leads people into believing they are incapable and powerless. Conversely, labelling excuses - even encourages - some individuals to participate in destructive behaviour that upholds certain deficit, racist and homophobic views of the individual. Hurtful labels from
careless politicians, parents, relatives, practitioners or teachers are harmful to everyone, especially youth. Name calling and labelling others is a practice that must be rejected and redressed by practitioners working with children and young people. But it is so entrenched in the taken -for-granted and everyday practices of many powerful people, that a formidable strategy is needed to expose the violence
oppressive language represents and validates - with the aim of altering it.
careless politicians, parents, relatives, practitioners or teachers are harmful to everyone, especially youth. Name calling and labelling others is a practice that must be rejected and redressed by practitioners working with children and young people. But it is so entrenched in the taken -for-granted and everyday practices of many powerful people, that a formidable strategy is needed to expose the violence
oppressive language represents and validates - with the aim of altering it.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Queer Studies, Ethics, Feminist Theory, Marxism, and 20 moreDisability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, Critical Pedagogy, Feminist Philosophy, Sexuality, Social Justice, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Social and Political Philosophy, Solidarity Economy, Queer Theory, Queer Rights Movement, Disruptive Pedagogy, Counter-Storytelling, La Novela Negra, Crime/detective/mystery Narratives, Counter-Storytelling, Counternarratives, Theories of Socialism, Antiglobalization Social Movements, and Latin American feminisms
Research Interests: Mobile Learning, Sociolinguistics, International Development, Mobile Technology, TESOL, and 8 moreApplied Linguistics, Teachers' professional development, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English Language Teaching, Discourse Grammar, Communicative Competence, Second Language Acquisiton, School based assessment methods: Develop & implement, English in Action, and English As a Second Language (ESL)
This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about... more
This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games – can play in connecting pupils’ gaming literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school-based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately include digital games in their literacy instruction. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices,we present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy.We argue our heuristic can be used for effective teacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum. The heuristic traces gaming literacy across the quadrants of actions, designs, situations and systems to provide teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games.We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out-of-school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum.
Research Interests: Communication, Communication, Media Studies, Journalism, Journalism, and 16 moreDevelopment communication, Development communication, Computer Games Technology, Video Games, Media Education, Media Literacy, Media, Digital Games, Teachers' professional development, Multimodality, Computer Games Education, Media Research, Paratexts, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, and Alternate Media
The Millennium Project, an international participatory think tank that uses futures research to systematically explore, create and test both possible and desirable futures in order to improve decisions in the present, presents... more
The Millennium Project, an international participatory think tank that uses futures research to systematically explore, create and test both possible and desirable futures in order to improve decisions in the present, presents unprecedented challenges for Australian education. Their publication, 2015-16 State of the Future, outlines 15 global challenges that represent an unparalleled invitation for educators to think creatively and imaginatively to design experiences whereby students successfully engage in ‘border crossing’ (Giroux, 1992). The act of border crossing provides unprecedented opportunities for children, young people and adults to develop intercultural competencies and skills that better enable them to live together mindfully. We present a new border pedagogy based on the concept of hybridity that works to build students’ and citizens’ intercultural competence by encouraging them to embrace potential miscommunication and intercultural conflict. By learning how to embracing hybridity, students can work productively to put what is known into crisis by constantly blurring and problematising boundaries, binaries and identities. Our new border pedagogy promotes living ‘together-in-difference’ (Ang, 2001) by encouraging students to critically interrogate issues of difference they face as they border cross. The border pedagogy for living together-in-difference encourages students to embrace intercultural conflict and potential miscommunication because of the questions and wonderings it kindles and inspires. Importantly, it presents a pedagogy that assists educators in building on the educational goals of the Melbourne Declaration and engaging effectively with the Australian Curriculum’s cross-curriculum priorities so students can prosper individually, collectively and communally in a globalised world.
Research Interests:
This workshop aims to examine the literacy learning opportunities that present themselves when students interact with digital games. In this presentation, strategies for teaching about these digital spaces will be shared. These strategies... more
This workshop aims to examine the literacy learning opportunities that present themselves when students interact with digital games. In this presentation, strategies for teaching about these digital spaces will be shared. These strategies have come about through collaboration with high school teachers and cultural and educational institutions and extended periods observing students as they play and create digital games.
Research Interests:
This presentation interrogates how a particular conception of creativity: ‘wise humanising creativity’ (WHC) is manifest within a virtual learning environment (VLE) with children and young people. WHC is creativity guided by ethical... more
This presentation interrogates how a particular conception of creativity: ‘wise humanising creativity’ (WHC) is manifest within a virtual learning environment (VLE) with children and young people. WHC is creativity guided by ethical action, meaning it is mindful of its consequences and is empowering, offering far greater shared hope for the future than the competitive mentality that pervades most education systems. It reports on the outcomes of C2Learn, a three-year European Commission funded project, which introduced innovative digital gaming activities to foster co-creativity in the VLE between players and between players and machines. In particular this presentation focuses on the bespoke co-creativity assessment methodology developed for the project. In order to evidence WHC, this methodology opted to document developments in lived experience via qualitative methods including teacher and student interviews, fieldnotes, video capture, observation and student self-assessment tools. The presentation, drawing on data from England, Austria and Greece, articulates how WHC manifests in C2Learn’s unique VLE or C2Space, and its potential to develop more nuanced understandings of creativity across digital environments.
Research Interests: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Theoretical Frameworks/Methodologies, and 7 moreDigital Games, Artifical Intelligence, Virtual Learning Environments, Educational Assessment and Teaching Methodology, Computational Tools, Consciousness and Creativity, and Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC)
Instead of asking students to take out their books and notebooks, we could ask them to unpack their virtual schoolbags with the goal of learning what digital literacy practices remain hidden inside. To do this, teachers need to actively... more
Instead of asking students to take out their books and notebooks, we could ask them to unpack their virtual schoolbags with the goal of learning what digital literacy practices remain hidden inside. To do this, teachers need to actively ‘stand back’ and allow students to ‘step forward’. By standing back, teachers can engage in possibility thinking through multiple ways of generating the question ‘what if?’ What if I make digital games central to my English curriculum? or What if I used iPads to teach reading? In this way, teachers draw on students’ funds of knowledge and out-of-school digital literacy practices to translate “what is this?” to “what can I do with this to connect students to literacy?” Knowing and growing our learners so we learn together, is about fostering our students’ resilience and confidence and reinforcing their capabilities as confident designers and meaning-makers. Given the radical changes and degrees of uncertainty in the 21st century, growing our learners is also about fostering their possibility thinking so we can work together to build viable and sustainable futures for all of our learners.
Research Interests: Creativity, Serious Games, ICT in Education, Early Childhood Literacy, Digital Games, and 8 moreMedia Literacy Education, Digital Literacies, ICT in Teachers Education, Videogame and Virtual World Technologies, Serious Games, applications in Education and Training, English language teaching, Possibility Thinking, Literacy Teaching In Early Childhood, and Literacy Education Secondary Schools
Digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is generally thought. This is because of digital games’ paratexts or the numerous print and multimodal texts about digital games that circulate in gaming... more
Digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is generally thought. This is because of digital games’ paratexts or the numerous print and multimodal texts about digital games that circulate in gaming culture. Drawing on action research projects with two Victoria teachers, I describe the role digital games can play to better connect students with literacy. I illustrate how these two teachers turned around to acknowledge the affordances of digital games by tapping into students’ gaming literacy and the diversity of multimodal literacy practices that remained invisible and packed away in their virtual schoolbags. By including the research, reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts and digital games in the literacy classroom, teachers can actively turn around histories of student literacy failure and disengagement. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy in relation to other forms of literacy practices, I present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy. I illustrate how the heuristic can be used to assist literacy teachers in identifying and talking about the elements of digital games that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum.
Research Interests:
Warwick Hadfield presents the third annual Deakin University It's not my fault forum recorded earlier this week in Melbourne. Popular children's writer Andy Griffiths talks about what turns children on to reading and how he's trying to... more
Warwick Hadfield presents the third annual Deakin University It's not my fault forum recorded earlier this week in Melbourne.
Popular children's writer Andy Griffiths talks about what turns children on to reading and how he's trying to 'leave bums behind.'
Catherine Beavis says Australian children still perform well in international rankings although we have moved down the scale a few notches. She wants conventional ideas about literacy broadened to include digital literacy.
Christopher Walsh talks about his experience as a middle school teacher in the Chinatown area of New York, where his students used their impressive digital skills to create an award-winning website about migration.
Popular children's writer Andy Griffiths talks about what turns children on to reading and how he's trying to 'leave bums behind.'
Catherine Beavis says Australian children still perform well in international rankings although we have moved down the scale a few notches. She wants conventional ideas about literacy broadened to include digital literacy.
Christopher Walsh talks about his experience as a middle school teacher in the Chinatown area of New York, where his students used their impressive digital skills to create an award-winning website about migration.
Research Interests:
The effective design process of gameful systems remains a challenge for academic researchers and industry professionals tasked with collaborating to create a ‘playful’ learning system for both formal and informal educational settings.... more
The effective design process of gameful systems remains a challenge for academic researchers and industry professionals tasked with collaborating to create a ‘playful’ learning system for both formal and informal educational settings. This paper reports on a gameful learning design that encourages students and teachers to be immersed in and engage ‘playfully’ with co-creative, non-linear activities triggered through embedded challenges, quest and dilemmas within a digital gaming and social networking environment. We introduce C2Learn and the project’s conceptual co-creativity framework that aims to foster co-creativity through Creative Emotional Reasoning (CER) to generate gameplayers’ Wise, Humanising Creativity (WHC). We present the goals of our gameful learning design to provide greater pedagogical insight into what types of activities and game play need to occur to help deepen children and young people’s relationships with real-life contexts through action and play. Then we present what our gameful learning design looks like in practice, utilising the affordances of currently available examples of the project’s game prototypes and digital tools. We argue a gameful learning design is needed first, rather than adding a ‘game layer’ to a system if the goal is to design a digitised learning system where users freely explore ideas, concepts and shared knowledge and engage in creative problem-finding and problem-solving—individually, collaboratively and communally—assisted by the system’s artificial intelligence (AI). Furthermore, this exemplifies how game affordances including feedback, agency, emotion, relevant challenges and user-centricity, over gamified elements such as points, levels, and rewards or badges drawn upon in a non-game framework, are better suited to motivate children and young people and increase their intrinsic motivation and capacity for active learning.
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Creativity, Game Design, Video Game Design, Gameplay (Video Game Design), and 12 moreCreativity and Consciousness, Digital Games, Gamification, Gamification in Education, Possibility Thinking, Digital Games and Education, Gameful Design, Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC), Creative Emotional Reasoning (CER), C2Learn, Creativity and Games, and Creative Emotional Reasoning
This presentation argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have more in common than is reported in the research literature. Drawing on action research projects completed with two Victoria teachers, I describe the role... more
This presentation argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have more in common than is reported in the research literature. Drawing on action research projects completed with two Victoria teachers, I describe the role digital game paratexts—ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games—can play in turning-around to students to connect their system-based literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school-based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts and digital games in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately turn around histories of student failure and disengagement. By turning around to acknowledge students’ gaming literacy and system-based literacy practices, or their proficiencies in programming as well as the technical, kinetic, social and linguistic knowledge necessary to play and configure different digital games for maximum gaming pleasure, teachers are able to start their literacy instruction from where students are at. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices, I present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy. I argue the heuristic can be used for effectiveteacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum.
Research Interests:
This workshop explores why the rhetoric of interest in learning analytics is not bringing about the anticipated changes one would expect from an evidence base of data in Universities. The reasons for this are many and complex. Firstly... more
This workshop explores why the rhetoric of interest in learning analytics is not bringing about the anticipated changes one would expect from an evidence base of data in Universities. The reasons for this are many and complex. Firstly there is the standard resistance to change that learning analytics as a driver of change faces. Second is the challenge of the data and the accuracy of the data. Third is the use of, distribution of, and use of analytics data, and where the data is owned. Finally is the challenge of knowing what to do with the data, which presumes an understanding of teaching and learning. The workshop explores some ways forward to help institutions embed analytics in their processes by developing clear lines of action and responsibility, and the use of analytics in a comparative manner. Part of the workshop will run as a ‘collaboratory’ to help participants understand the deeper reasons why they are not getting the adoption of change stemming from analytics that they wish. This will probably highlight some of the deeper systemic failures within the University governance and management structures that currently exist.
Research Interests:
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English... more
Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional
67,500 teachers and 10 million students.
67,500 teachers and 10 million students.
Research Interests: Creativity studies, Creativity, Mobile Technology, TESOL, Futures Studies, and 9 moreBangladesh, Futures Studies and Foresight, CPD for teachers, Key words: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Bangladesh ELT, TPD, English In Action (EIA), English As a Second Language (ESL), and Open Distance Learning (ODL)
The creativity & games in education summer school in Crete from June 30 to July 5, 2013
Research Interests:
Invited presentation at the 3rd Annual Asia Pro Bono Conference 2014 The Conference aims to: Demonstrate the importance of pro bono initiatives to achieve greater access to justice for poor, marginalised and disadvantaged communities in... more
Invited presentation at the 3rd Annual Asia Pro Bono Conference 2014
The Conference aims to:
Demonstrate the importance of pro bono initiatives to achieve greater access to justice for poor, marginalised and disadvantaged communities in Southeast Asia and internationally;
To provide opportunities for lawyers and law firms to network with potential pro bono partners and develop initiatives to meet unmet legal need in the region;
Educate university academics, law students, lawyers, judiciary, pro bono professionals, policy makers, civil society and non-profit representatives about the meaning and concept of pro bono initiatives;
Foster collaborative ties between conference participants to conceptualise, design, create and strengthen pro bono initiatives locally, regionally and internationally; and
Showcase the successful establishment of pro bono initiatives and programmes.
The Conference aims to:
Demonstrate the importance of pro bono initiatives to achieve greater access to justice for poor, marginalised and disadvantaged communities in Southeast Asia and internationally;
To provide opportunities for lawyers and law firms to network with potential pro bono partners and develop initiatives to meet unmet legal need in the region;
Educate university academics, law students, lawyers, judiciary, pro bono professionals, policy makers, civil society and non-profit representatives about the meaning and concept of pro bono initiatives;
Foster collaborative ties between conference participants to conceptualise, design, create and strengthen pro bono initiatives locally, regionally and internationally; and
Showcase the successful establishment of pro bono initiatives and programmes.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Teacher Education, Mobile Learning, Critical Pedagogy, TESOL, Bilingual Education, and 13 moreTeachers' professional development, Teacher Development, CLIL, Reflective Teaching, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), EIA, Professional development of ESL/EFL teachers, Management in Education, Continuous professional development, English in Action, Plurilingual Education, English As a Second Language (ESL), and Pedagogy and Learning
Research Interests:
Using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for HIV prevention and education among gay, other MSM and transgender communities in today’s Web 2.0 world can improve access to services and resources regardless of location. This... more
Using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for HIV prevention and education among gay, other MSM and transgender communities in today’s Web 2.0 world can improve access to services and resources regardless of location. This session critically explores why existing public health approaches to mobilizing communities for HIV prevention may be ineffective in achieving improved health and human rights. Drawing on community-based examples, panelists will share innovative developments using ICTs that have greater potential to improve impact on HIV prevention, health and human rights outcomes. All participants will be encouraged to reflect on their experiences of providing or receiving HIV prevention in gay, other MSM and transgender communities, as well as their experiences with ICTs in today’s Web 2.0 world. Practical recommendations will be suggested to inform future HIV prevention and community mobilization policy and practice.
Research Interests:
The identification of AIDS in the 1980s evoked a vigorous cultural response from gay men and their allies in the U.S. and elsewhere that involved innovative forms of cultural activism, community mobilisation, and education. By the late... more
The identification of AIDS in the 1980s evoked a vigorous cultural response from gay men and their allies in the U.S. and elsewhere that involved innovative forms of cultural activism, community mobilisation, and education. By the late 1990s a loss of momentum occurred linked to community burnout, normalization of the public health response, reframing of HIV as a chronic manageable illness, and changing practices of sociality. As a result, pressing questions have emerged around how to constitute affective communities of HIV prevention in the context of generational change, with many younger gay men knowing little about events in their recent history as well as deepening divisions across serostatus, which could undermine collective responsiveness. Rising infections, including within racialised subgroups as well as nascent gay communities in non-western contexts, have lend urgency to these questions of education and cultural engagement. In this session, a panel of esteemed cultural scholars, sociologists, and community activists will address these issues and explore strategies and ways forward.
TLBz Sexpert! illustrates how TG community-based and led organisations can use low-cost social networking strategically to implement 'safe' online spaces, build trust with TG groups, deliver counselling services that focus on the social,... more
TLBz Sexpert! illustrates how TG community-based and led organisations can use low-cost social networking strategically to implement 'safe' online spaces, build trust with TG groups, deliver counselling services that focus on the social, behavioural, legal and human rights factors influencing TGs' HIV risk, and overcome widespread social marginalization directed at TGs.
Cultivating digital and online platforms and communities to sustain grassroots participation, equity, social justice and democracy remains a significant obstacle, while issues of citizenship, access and inclusion, are even more difficult... more
Cultivating digital and online platforms and communities to sustain grassroots participation, equity, social justice
and democracy remains a significant obstacle, while issues of citizenship, access and inclusion, are even more difficult
to adequately address with, and through technologies. While a variety of models and interventions have been proposed
and implemented, more attention needs to focus on aligning the micro-macro nexus of research and practice, to leverage technologies to disrupt existing exclusionary structures, practices and discourses, and to impact policy change. This paper presents three unique case studies that document the ways information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be leveraged to impact on participation, equity, social justice, and democracy. The first highlights a practitioner research study in New York City’s Chinatown where immigrant students used ICTs to creatively redesign school history textbooks and disrupt racist and exclusionary discourses they encountered in school texts and their lived experience. A second case study showcases the innovative ways a small community-based organisation in Thailand collaborated with local and international partners to design a peer-based online HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention programme, In conclusion I present the ways English in Action (EIA), a large-scale project (£50 million over 9 years) is working to improve the English proficiency of 25 million people in Bangladesh through school-based professional development approaches, mobile technologies (The Open University) and the mass media (The BBC World Trust). This paper argues that technology alone is inconsequential in realising equity and social justice. Rather building trust, forging strategic partnerships, and co-designing dynamic participatory mechanisms to continuously rework and rethink access to knowledge for ‘ordinary’ citizens is needed in addressing today’s social and economic challenges. Individuals, organizations and governments must be prepared to adapt their use of technologies to contexts and circumstances—in ways that genuinely take into account—its ongoing impact on those being invited or expected to participate. Otherwise technologies on their own will do little to disrupt existing hegemonic structures that work to maintain the status quo and undermine social justice and democracy.
and democracy remains a significant obstacle, while issues of citizenship, access and inclusion, are even more difficult
to adequately address with, and through technologies. While a variety of models and interventions have been proposed
and implemented, more attention needs to focus on aligning the micro-macro nexus of research and practice, to leverage technologies to disrupt existing exclusionary structures, practices and discourses, and to impact policy change. This paper presents three unique case studies that document the ways information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be leveraged to impact on participation, equity, social justice, and democracy. The first highlights a practitioner research study in New York City’s Chinatown where immigrant students used ICTs to creatively redesign school history textbooks and disrupt racist and exclusionary discourses they encountered in school texts and their lived experience. A second case study showcases the innovative ways a small community-based organisation in Thailand collaborated with local and international partners to design a peer-based online HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention programme, In conclusion I present the ways English in Action (EIA), a large-scale project (£50 million over 9 years) is working to improve the English proficiency of 25 million people in Bangladesh through school-based professional development approaches, mobile technologies (The Open University) and the mass media (The BBC World Trust). This paper argues that technology alone is inconsequential in realising equity and social justice. Rather building trust, forging strategic partnerships, and co-designing dynamic participatory mechanisms to continuously rework and rethink access to knowledge for ‘ordinary’ citizens is needed in addressing today’s social and economic challenges. Individuals, organizations and governments must be prepared to adapt their use of technologies to contexts and circumstances—in ways that genuinely take into account—its ongoing impact on those being invited or expected to participate. Otherwise technologies on their own will do little to disrupt existing hegemonic structures that work to maintain the status quo and undermine social justice and democracy.
Using audio files on mobile phones, in a work-based programme of teacher professional development in Bangladesh, provides students and teachers—having little prior exposure to spoken English—a near native example of spoken English to... more
Using audio files on mobile phones, in a work-based programme of teacher professional development in Bangladesh, provides students and teachers—having little prior exposure
to spoken English—a near native example of spoken English to enhance teaching and learning. External evaluation demonstrates this approach to TEFL is both cost-efficient and successful at helping students acquire higher levels of English language proficiency.
to spoken English—a near native example of spoken English to enhance teaching and learning. External evaluation demonstrates this approach to TEFL is both cost-efficient and successful at helping students acquire higher levels of English language proficiency.
Although multiliteracieshave been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This presentation offers an alternative way of looking at the failureand... more
Although multiliteracieshave been well theorised in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies. This presentation offers an alternative way of looking at the failureand dismissal of interdisciplinary curricula in schools and proposes a shift to transdisciplinarity; a model based on alternative ideas of disciplinary knowledge, subject area literacies, and student subjectivities. This presentation examines multiliteraciesas a transdisciplinarycurriculum practice, drawing on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school with first and second generation Chinese immigrants. The data show possibilities for students to engage in critique and to move toward designing multimodal texts. Using Bourdieusianconcepts of social capital and academic field, struggles aroundlearning to inhabit certain school discourses are explored.
Research Interests:
New and proposed anti-LGBT legislation challenges global educators to provide an education free from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status. Many primary and secondary educators need support to... more
New and proposed anti-LGBT legislation challenges global educators to provide an education free from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status. Many primary and secondary educators need support to authentically engage in inclusive pedagogical practices that challenge homophobia, transphobia and heteronormativity. We present a border crossing pedagogy (BCP) that assists educators in translating knowledge into action to demolish deeply engrained anti-LGBT bigotry, discrimination, harassment and violence. The BCP encourages educators to be courageous by embracing conflict and miscommunication with the goal of dismantling heterosocial norms that contribute to inequality and violence. We argue this pedagogical model is timely given the sharp rise in anti-LGBT bigotry as select governments pass LGBT-inclusive hate crime laws, executive orders prohibiting LGBT discrimination and marriage equality. We illustrate how the BCP can be used successfully with the ‘collaboratory’, a simple-to-use process methodology that focuses on co-creative solutions driven by challenges, not theory. We argue that by using the BCP within a collaboratory, educators can create spaces to safely border cross, with the goal of disrupting the anti-LGBT continuum of violence that LGBT students, their families and allies face due to the rise of state sanctioned anti-LGBT legislation.