Educational Encounters Research Articles

STEM learning ecologies: collaborative pedagogies for supporting transitions to school

ABSTRACT This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new learning, but also provide a context for a meaningful transition from kindergarten to the first year of school. A transition that went beyond familiarisation with the new school environment to creating reciprocal pedagogical collaborations. In their collective discussions the teachers indicated that they wanted to encourage children's agency. This provoked them to think creatively about their pedagogical designs. Being part of the project encouraged collaborative pedagogical conversations between all participants around children's voice and advocacy, the practices of noticing and generating questions as the basis of investigations and extending play-based inquiries from the kindergarten into the school context. This paper explores the ways in which these pedagogical encounters occurred. In the process, the teachers reflected on the shift from a traditional view of transition as being ‘school ready’ to one in which pedagogical conversations and documentation were elevated to focus on innovative designs for learning.

Cosmopolitical encounters in environmental education: Becoming-ecological in the intertidal zones of Bundjalung National Park

This paper develops a cosmopolitical approach to multi-species inquiry in environmental education and its associated research. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers’ concepts of “etho-ecology” and an “ecology of practices”, the paper explores ethical and political questions of what it means to think-with nonhuman animals as sentient creatures who participate (often unwillingly) in environmental science studies. The author argues that ecology as a scientific practice cannot be disentangled from a process of becoming-ecological in the field, including the affective concerns and ethico-esthetic values produced through encounters amongst people, nonhuman animals, technologies, and their associated milieus. This conceptual work is extended through etho-ecological accounts of a three-day field excursion with environmental science students and their lecturers in the intertidal zones of Bundjalung National Park in NSW, Australia.

Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change

The process of learning about climate change is not simply cognitive. It is also an emotional encounter that may have enduring effects. To date, little research has attended to the emotional significance of childhood learning experiences of climate change in adult lives and in social responses to climate change. We report a qualitative study exploring the variety, complexity, and the post-school significance of affective experiences of climate change schooling. We interviewed 21 young adults (18–24 years) in Tasmania, Australia, with diverse educational backgrounds and diverse levels of interest in and opinions about climate change. Applying an interpretivist framework, we analysed the tangled and interrelated emotions evident in participant reflections on educational encounters with climate change. Three overarching themes were identified: 'stripped of power', 'stranded by the generation gap' and 'daunted by the future'. In contrast to discourses of education as empowering, a majority of participants (n = 16) told of feeling disempowered by their educational encounters with climate change. They described being overwhelmed by an experience of limited agency and power. Participants also identified a generational gap that left them feeling abandoned by older adults, with associated feelings of anger and betrayal. Finally, affective experience of climate change schooling had ongoing significance for participants as they sought to make life choices in the shadow of a frightening future. These findings provide insight into the interaction of facts and feelings in public engagements with climate change. A lack of integration of cognitive and affective experience in climate change schooling may have lasting effects in adult attitudes and behaviours, and related social dynamics of distrust and division, related to this issue. In this study, young adult participants recounted childhood experiences of being powerless, betrayed and afraid in learning about climate change as significant formative encounters in their ongoing understanding of climate change.

Autobiographical Memory and Future Imaginings as a Resource for Pedagogical Understanding in Initial Teacher Education

The focus of this article is twofold: (a) It explores how autobiographical memory and future imaginings can be used as a resource for pedagogical understanding in Initial Teacher Education, and (b) The paper engages a methodological experiment where there is a layered reading of texts across time, 2008-2018.The paper presents, through a narrative analysis of autobiographical texts, the stories of two student teachers, Ciara and John (Text 1, 2008). These student teachers were in the early years of their undergraduate four-year programme in my university and I was their English Pedagogics lecturer. Later, I revisit these student teachers’ narratives and read them under new interpretative conditions based on their salient and punctum effects, significant and emotional effects, on me as a teacher educator (Text 2, 2018). Then, theorizing with relevant literature, I consider how to foster conditions and methodologies of growth as student teachers engage their autobiographical memories and imaginings. Ultimately, my findings underline that self-knowledge is central in the pedagogical encounter of self, other and subject matter (Latta & Buck, 2008) and that working with evocative, creative and emotionally attuned pedagogy can support this process of autobiographical / pedagogical understanding.

Hubungan Guru dan Murid dalam Pendidikan Agama Islam Menurut Kajian Q.S. Al-Kahfi Ayat 65-70

The research is based on the writer's interest in knowing how exactly the relationship between a teacher and student in the Quran perspective. The author uses Q.S. Al-Kahf verses 65 to 70 as a material to explore and extract due to its excellent educational encounter value in it. This thesis aims to find; Teachers' rights and obligations, pupil’s rights and obligations, both characters and their relationship behavior in the verses of Moses and Khidir action as mentioned in verses 65-70. This research is based on library research (Library Research) with primary data sources contains books of classical commentary and contemporary interpretation, while secondary data consists of educational books that discuss teacher-student relationships. Furthermore collected data is analyzed by using tahlili commentary method. The author finds that: the teacher-student relationship in the verses is a relationship based on close friendship relations with maintained ethical values and mutual understanding. Similarly, students are expected to understand the rights of teachers and should uphold the rights of teachers. The relationship model is essential to be well implemented in today's education system. Given the decline of student's ethics and also the presence of teachers who are less aware of their responsibilities. It is clear it is time to apply the concept of teacher-student relationship as in al-kahf verses 65 to 70.

Between Culture and Curricula: Exploring Student and Faculty Experiences of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry

Undergraduate research and inquiry is a growing movement within the teaching and learning nexus, with many institutions developing their practices within this culture of education. This study aimed to identify the perceptions and experiences surrounding undergraduate research and inquiry among students and faculty at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; assess the extent of research and inquiry in the design of undergraduate courses; and explore the facilitators and obstacles educators encounter when attempting to implement this educational approach. Although differences exist in student and faculty definitions of undergraduate research and inquiry, we found two principal models that characterize its structure and delivery—the scaffold model and bookend model. A third, the abstract model, does not employ the practice of inquiry. Despite numerous benefits unique to undergraduate research and inquiry education identified by stakeholders, notable barriers (such as funding, faculty buy-in, limited student experience, and inherent competition) hinder its progress. Overall, we found a diversity of undergraduate research and inquiry practices across the university, operating within varying cultures and comfort levels, which suggests unequal access for student learners.

Examining the Self-Efficacy of Primary School Teachers and the Problems Encountered in Physical Education and Game Course

This study was conducted in order to determine the self-efficacy of primary school teachers and the problems that they encounter in physical education and game classes. The sample of study are consisted of 391 primary school teachers who were selected by stratified sampling method and working in Konya and Nigde provinces in the second semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. In research, 'Teacher self-efficacy belief scale' was used. In addition, teachers were asked open-ended questions about physical education and game lesson. According to the findings of the research, it was concluded that teachers are quite sufficient in the field. No difference was found between the self-efficacy scores by gender. Self-efficacy scores are significant in favor of those who do not need in-service training. Significant results were obtained in the sub-dimension of student participation in favor of teachers using physical activity card (PAC) in physical education and game lesson. This course which branch teacher should conduct were achieved meaningful findings in favor of the primary school teacher. The answers of teachers for open-ended questions were converted into frequency tables. According to the answers of the teachers, among the subjects that need in-service training; new teaching approaches, classroom management, special field courses and the use of technology in education have come to the fore. In physical education and game lessons, the movements of displacement, object control and balancing are acquisitions that teachers can do best. The course achievements that are forced in practice; are designing games, using various strategies and tactics, designing appropriate programs to improve physical fitness, preparing a nutrition program to protect health. When the problems encountered in physical education and game lessons are examined, they are generally collected under three headings. These are that the school-environment is caused by the teacher and the student.

What is Existential Educational Encounter?

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of the pedagogical concept of encounter by providing an overview of its use from the historical foundations of the concept in Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s (1903 to 1991) philosophy to contemporary phenomenological readings by Maxine Greene, Donald Vandenberg and Robyn Harrison. The outcome is a critical analysis and evaluation of the significance of the concept in educational contexts. The aims of the paper are as follows: a) to articulate the educational significance of the concept of encounter, and b) to clarify its relationship to the humanistic concept of formation (or unfolding; Bildung), in order to establish the tension between Bildung-theory and the existential theory of human formation. The paper claims that, for a more elaborated understanding of the human educative process, the tension between the processes of encounter and Bildung should be seen as the core tension behind the holistic view of becoming human. Also, c) for an analysis of the Anglo-American reception of the concept, a phenomenological view of the encounter as a transcendental aspect of a learning process will be made in order to gain a wider view of the concept.

Sustainability Through Directed Change in the Visionary University: From Predicting to Producing the Future

The sustainability of a university can be questioned from the perspective of three functional goals, henceforth setting the analytical framework: (i) the development of suited knowledge (dynamic and evolving, mirroring the complexity of the socioeconomic environment, definitely internationalised and future-oriented), (ii) the development of students’ skills, as future workforce (valuing the knowledge) and (iii) the development of institutional capacities, in agile constructions (adequate to face the first two challenges). Such a vision of sustainability in higher education treats change as the very “fuel” of sustainability, not as a threat, an ordeal, or a risk factor; it also transfers the notion of “being sustainable” from an attribute of a state to that of a process; and at the same time, it is precisely a process that does not simply “happen”, but is purposefully driven by action, and it comprises a multi-level and polyvalent reality, where prognosis is to be accompanied by proactivity, forecast by foresight, and piecemeal approaches by systemic ones. This essay thoroughly contextualizes such a conceptualization of the sustainable university. It aims to identify some problems that higher education encounters in the managerial, teaching and research processes, that is in the creation and transfer of knowledge, within the current international institutional setup. It also seeks to explain how a culture of collaboration can be developed in such a way that good practices and knowledge are to be shared, obstacles are to be overcome, and efforts are to be capitalized upon in this context. It is essential to understand how teachers, students and graduates can all become prepared to muster and master such change, instead of being led by it or becoming its victims, governing both normalcy and disruptions. It also outlines a strategic understanding and a performance “kit” with innovative approaches, tools and other resources for universities aspiring to carry out plenary sustainability; thence, even if this logic might (not) have been tried out within present-day Romanian higher education, it should be part of its future tense

Thinking Dangerously: The Role of Higher Education in Authoritarian Times

The notion of a neutral, objective education is an oxymoron. Education and pedagogy do not exist outside of ideology, values and politics. Ethics, when it comes to education, demand an openness to the other, a willingnessto engage a “politics of possibility” through a continual critical engagement with texts, images, events and other registers of meaning as they are transformed into pedagogical practices both within and outside of the classroom. Education is never innocent: It is always implicated in relations of power and specific visions of the present and future. This suggests the need for educators to rethink the cultural and ideological baggage they bring to each educational encounter. It also highlights the necessity of making educators ethically and politically accountable for and self-reflective about the stories they produce, the claims they make upon public memory, and the images of the future they deem legitimate.

Evoking re-cognition through embodied enquiry: using drama-based methods to re-script storylines of gendered violence

In this paper I analyse the influence of drama-based learning activities in an education encounter exploring an instance of gendered violence. I use data stories to chart the multiple material, social, and historical influences that emanated within a role-played act of violence by a father upon his daughter following her transgression of the standards of pre-marital sexual purity held within a strongly religious community. I call upon Butler’s argument, that to understand an act of violence, one must engage with the conditions which permit the act, rather than just the act itself. I use the construct of the assemblage as offered by Deleuze and Guattari to trace the affective forces produced within the learning activities used to examine this enactment. I find that the drama-based activities were productive in opening conditions of possibility when they shifted the genre rules that had limited what it was permissible to feel, say and do as a recognisable masculine subject, and when they offered alternative modalities through which to articulate the multiplicity of possible desires, beliefs, fears and hopes at work within the Father-Daughter relationship.

Teaching as Creative Subversion: Education Encounter as an Antidote to Neoliberal Exploitation of the Educational Task

The author offers a critique of how contemporary educational practice is oriented toward production and considers its implications for themes associated with transactional analysis theory and practice. Writing from within the context of a neoliberal culture, he explores how education is subject to the principles of commodification, which contaminates how education might serve the interests of students and the intention of educators. Following from this discussion, he turns to the idea of encounter as an alternative for imagining the educational task and considers the implications for the role of the teacher and the experience of the student. A number of questions are raised for educational transactional analysts, trainers, and trainees to consider in relation to arrangements for training, accreditation, and examination within the transactional analysis community.

Development and Validation of a Novel Measure for the Direct Assessment of Empathy in Veterinary Students.

Empathy is a requisite clinical skill for health professionals and empathy scores have been positively associated with professionalism, clinical competency, confidence, well-being, and emotional intelligence. In order to improve empathy in the veterinary field, it is critical to measure the construct of empathy accurately. Most research has relied on self-reporting measures to assess empathy, while some studies have recently implemented the use of simulated client encounters in veterinary education. Building on this research, the aim of the current study was to develop and validate a novel quantitative assessment tool-the Empathy Clinical Evaluation Exercise (ECEX)-designed to measure empathy based on directly observable behaviors, using simulated clients. To evaluate empathy, evaluators used the ECEX to assess the performance of student clinicians in a simulated client encounter, which contained a pre-determined number of opportunities designed to elicit empathic responses from student clinicians. Statistical analysis suggests the test has a high degree of inter-rater reliability. In addition, there was moderate correlation between average empathy scores using ECEX and previously validated measures of empathy, compassion satisfaction, and burnout. Using these methods, we found the majority of students we studied had increased empathy scores at the completion of their primary care rotations. These results provide preliminary support for the use of the ECEX as a direct and quantitative tool for the assessment of empathy. Health professionals could use this novel empathy assessment tool to teach students, evaluate teaching strategies, and improve communication competencies in a wide variety of clinical settings. Our broad aim was to examine the utility of a direct and quantitative assessment tool for measuring empathy-the ECEX-in order to answer the following questions: (1) Does the tool have good inter-rater reliability? (2) Does the tool correlate with previously validated empathy measures? and (3) Does the tool correlate with similar constructs of compassion fatigue and burnout? Our secondary aim was to evaluate the change in empathy scores over the course of a 4-month (16-week) primary care rotation (pre- to -post).

Valuable everyday encounters in early childhood education: narratives from professionals

ABSTRACTThis article presents professionals’ narratives about valuable encounters with young children in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The study aims to provide an in-depth perspective on how professionals talk about ethics in practice, and the values addressed in the narratives. Initially, professionals in Swedish ECE settings defined their understanding of a valuable encounter with a child and then used a digital app to self-register 10 such encounters during one day. After the self-registration, we interviewed the professionals and they told us about the encounters they had experienced. We identified three themes concerning who was the focus of the encounters: the professional, the child, or both reciprocally. By using a narrative approach and Nussbaum’s ethical theoretical perspective, we show how different rationales were interwoven in the stories and that situated emotions were enacted and reflected. Finally, we noticed that many valuable encounters took place in ‘in-between spaces’. They were not planned for or organised, but occurred spontaneously through professionals’ sensitive employment of an ethics in practice.

Staging Pedagogy in Trans Masculine Porn

AbstractThis article considers the ways in which pedagogy is formally represented in trans masculine porn, specifically in three films that stage scenes of learning: Linda/Les and Annie: A Female-to-Male Transsexual Love Story, Phineas Slipped, and Sex Education. Focusing on pedagogical scenes that dramatize failure, the article asks, Why, in trans porn, do we see extrageneric claims to educate? What kinds of pedagogical fantasies do trans porn, and porn-adjacent film, render about bodies and pleasures? The author offers a close reading of these films as rooted not in pornographic fantasy but in the fantasies of pedagogy. By directly incorporating pedagogy into the formal content of trans masculine porn films, these films distance themselves from the pedagogical functions of porn—porn as encounter, porn as learning about trans “difference”—and instead point to fantasies of efficacious pedagogy. The author suggests that these films do more than educate viewers on transgender; rather, they portray the pedagogical encounter itself as one way in which performers work through their own fantasies of successful pedagogy.

What participants learn, with, from and about each other during inter-professional education encounters: A qualitative analysis

BackgroundSafe healthcare requires teamwork and collaboration. To meet the needs of healthcare organizations and professionals, inter-professional education, is no longer an optional educational trend but rather a mandate of accrediting health education agencies. ObjectiveIn an effort to better understand the impact of inter- professional educational activities, this study sought to explore via qualitative methods what nursing and medical students learn with, from, and about one another during a week - long simulation-based inter-profession education course. DesignA convenience sample of post-course survey responses from students participating in a week-long, inter-professional, simulation-based patient safety course was used to longitudinally explore what participants learn with, from, and about each other. SettingsThe setting for this study was a research university located in the southeast United States. ParticipantsThe participants included a total of 272 second semester accelerated option Bachelor of Nursing students and 599 medical students entering the 3rd year of their program that participated in an annual patient safety course. The study analyzed responses of students to questions in a post-course survey regarding educational outcomes while learning with students from a different profession. ResultsIn the responses from 871 students collected over four years, the following key themes emerged. Students: 1) articulated learning the importance of contributions of other professions to the healthcare team, 2) expressed an appreciation for areas where their colleagues' training was superior to their own; and 3) identified deficiencies in their own knowledge and skill sets. ConclusionThe findings of this study provide a basis for developing more specific curricular content as part of inter-professional education endeavors to strengthen constructive views of healthcare professions, foster a more collaborative shared mental model, and to correct perceived misconceptions.

Should Wellness Be a Core Competency for Physicians?

There has been a recent rise in calls for action around wellness and physician health. In medical education, wellness has been proposed as a physician competency. In this article, the authors review the history of the "wellness as a competency" concept within U.S. and Canadian residency programs and medical schools. Drawing from literature on the discourses of wellness and competence in medical education, they argue that operationalizing wellness as a physician competency holds profound implications for curricula, admissions, evaluation, and licensure. While many definitions of "wellness" and "competency" are used within medical training environments, the authors argue that the definitions institutions ultimately use will have significant impacts for trainees who are considered "unwell." In particular, medical learners with disabilities-including those with mental health, chronic health, learning, sensory, and mobility disabilities-may not conform to dominant conceptions of "wellness," and there is a risk they will become further stigmatized or even be considered unsuitable to practice in the profession. The authors conclude that framing wellness as a competency has the potential to legitimize support-seeking and prioritize physician health, yet it may also have the potential unintended effect of excluding certain learners from the profession. They propose a universal design approach to understand wellness at a systems level and to remove barriers to wellness for all medical learners.

A queer youth’s challenges to normativities of time, space, and queerness: pedagogical encounters in a small town Christian youth group

ABSTRACT Previous scholarship on queer youth in small town and rural educational contexts has primarily documented educators’ perspectives and experiences of youth victimization. Drawing from a broader, interview-based teacher inquiry project, I extend this research by considering a queer youth’s voice and agency. Using queer theorizations of time and space, I examine the telling case of Sylvia, a queer young woman in a semi-rural, small Midwestern US town. Through her participation in the educational context of an interdenominational Christian youth group, she experienced pedagogical encounters that helped her challenge and reconfigure normative constructions of time, space, and queerness, which facilitated movement toward greater healthiness and happiness, even as she reproduced racial and class normativities through a politics of respectability. Sylvia’s experiences suggest the need to attend to heterogeneity and agency in working with queer rural youth and the importance of considering constructions of time, space, and queerness in queer-inclusive curricular texts.

From London to Grenada and Back Again: Youth Exchange Geographies and the Grenadian Revolution, 1979‐1983

AbstractThrough a case study of three educational youth exchanges from London to the Caribbean island of Grenada in the early 1980s, this paper situates decolonisation as a site for youthful agency. Assessing official and ephemeral exchange material held in archives in London and the Caribbean alongside original oral history interviews with key actors, the paper argues that an analysis of youth exchanges as informal education spaces helps bring into focus young people’s agency in decolonisation both as a historical process and conceptual undoing. While the paper asserts that exchanging produced transformative moments of becoming in which young people’s global educational encounters transcended local perceptions of race, it also reveals youth exchanging to a revolutionary nation was no holiday, and that “youth exchange geographies” were governed, predetermined and impeded by the organisational labour of youth workers, fundraising initiatives, and unfolding international politics.

Intercultural Understanding in the Australian Curriculum

Intercultural Understanding and Personal and Social Capability are two General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum. However, the level of engagement anticipated by students in addressing these general capabilities across the learning continua provided in the curriculum differs significantly both in terms of the cognitive level expected of this engagement (as measured by Bloom’s Taxonomy), and of the level of interaction expected between students in meeting the capabilities’ learning objectives. Using the work of Bernstein and Fairclough, this paper argues that the Intercultural Understanding general capability requires less intellectual and inter-social engagement than the Personal and Social capability due to underlying assumptions that operate so as to distance the cultural Other, placing them on the periphery of Australian society, despite cultural diversity being, in fact, the lived experience of virtually all Australians. The learning continua, once scrutinised through a linguistic analysis and the lens of Bernstein, point to the absences of deep engagement in Intercultural Understanding capability, particularly when compared with that expected for the Personal and Social capability and begs the question of how Intercultural Understanding can become imagined, sustained or respectful within pedagogical encounters across the Australian Curriculum.