Cultivating Creative Approaches to Learning

Negotiation Journal, 2002

In 2015 I was awarded a Doctorate on the practice and teaching of screenwriting. During the course of the research I became increasingly concerned that despite the fact that this was a practice based research PhD. the creative practice of screenwriting would become dominated by the privileging of theory. Would the knowledge that arose out of this research stem from my practice and creative process or would it reside primarily in my engagement with academic theory? Would I be drawn away from meaningful practice in order to fulfil the demands of 'privileged' theory? Research based upon creative writing has often been identified as essentially another form of literary or cultural studies and as a consequence is supervised and examined by academics with literature or cultural studies backgrounds, as was the case with my PhD. How, then, did the academy -both in general in terms of the accepted approach towards practice based research, and in particular in terms of the specific academy within which my research was being conductedengage with the development of my practice? And how did that engagement impact upon both my practice and my research? In this paper I intend to explore these issues.

The Qualitative Report

Research methods courses can provide essential opportunities for graduate students to develop themselves as researchers. This article offers insights into the application of creative pedagogy and praxis for a graduate-level qualitative research methods class. Students learned and applied the innovative research method—gender audit as process and method—to understand the gendered nature of University social media accounts. Applying principles of collaborative learning and hands-on practice, students gained confidence in themselves as researchers while examining a contemporary issue affecting higher education institutions.

2014

2011

Recent discussions of teaching research methods have focused on understand- ing the relationship between methods courses and the broader discipline, including the need to integrate qualitative methods and other approaches beyond the traditional statis- tical approaches still common in the majority of undergraduate research methods courses. This article contributes to this conversation by arguing that the basic elements of research design and qualitative techniques should be integrated into substantive (or “non-methods”) courses across the discipline. To accomplish this aim, I offer a brief outline of methodolog- ical benchmark skills—drawn from the pool of skills necessary for a successful thesis—that can be taught in various courses across the discipline through a traditional assignment: the semester research paper.

Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

This paper critiques the journey of pedagogical change over three mobile learning (mlearning) project iterations (2009 to 2011) within the context of a Bachelor of Architecture degree. The three projects were supported by an intentional community of practice model involving a partnership of an educational researcher/technologist, course lecturers, and course students. The pedagogical changes achieved over three years of sustained collaborative participatory action research illustrate the potential for using a community of practice model for supporting pedagogical transformation in broader educational contexts. The Architecture case study thus serves as an example of the ethical, sustained, and collaborative educational technology research called for by and reiterated by others. We use the concept of the pedagogy-andragogy-heutagogy continuum as a measure of the pedagogical change achieved by the integration of mobile social media within the Architecture curriculum. From our experiences of utilizing mobile social media to support a pedagogical change towards heutagogy we develop a framework for scaffolding a move along the PAH continuum and explore the application of this framework to the establishment of a wider global community of practice (icollab11).

Practice Methodologies in Education Research

This chapter introduces the notion of activist practice methodologies, illuminated through a focus on education research that is informed by practice theory and framed by an explicitly normative regard for education. It identifies and responds to some of the topographies of expansive practice theories; some of the onto-epistemological challenges these topographies create for researchers; and the relationship between methodologies and axiology, especially within education research where social justice values collide spectacularly with policy discourses around competition, the market and particular framings of evidence. Thus established, the chapter outlines key features of research that deploy theories of practice in pursuit of normative ends, developed in conversation with other chapters in this collection. We theorise that within education research, methodologies informed by expansive practice theories are derived from research axiologies that are activist in intent and that they respond to the ontoepistemological challenges of those same theories. In our account, activist practice methodologies are invested with normative ideals, specifically to advance social justice-in this case, in and through education. This work often involves novel arrangements of theory, new approaches to data, and experimental approaches to research writing. Amid the ontoepistemological angst thrown up by expansive practice theories, activist practice methodologies do not give up on method but persist in developing new ways to apprehend and engage practice. Five interrelated aspects of activist practice methodologies are discussed: activist axiologies; reconstituting the ethical subject in research practice; theory as method; more-than-representational data; and restive accounts of research.

2014

This paper examines technology-enhanced learning at work in the context of the integrative pedagogy model. The basic idea behind this model is to create learning environments whereby the four basic elements of professional expertise (ie, theoretical, practical, self-regulative and sociocultural knowledge) can be integrated. The paper illustrates two basic ways of applying the model in technology-enhanced learning at work. First, examples of how to make use of existing technologies, especially social media, to empower learning at work is presented, and second, an instance of the way the model is used in the design of specific technologies for enhancing collaborative learning in the work context is described. The paper concludes that the integrative pedagogy model has the potential to serve both as a principle for designing technologies and for applying existing technologies for workplace learning. Introduction Twenty-first century work contexts face rapid and constant change with exp...

Seminar presentations, by academics on how they have used educational technology, form a visible part of many university staff development programmes. The presenters, even in these brief public events, act as itinerant practice leaders. While being accepted leaders in their own fields these presenters are occasional contributors to developing other communities of academics using educational technology. We draw on rhetorical analysis to highlight the epideictic or ceremonial form of these presentations which we see as exemplary of such events. We argue that this epideictic form is an essential component in emerging communities of practice and communicates the value of working collaboratively. In the analysis of the question and answer conversations we look at how participants are translating the reified descriptions into their own experiences. These presentations tend to be quite distinct from how research or policy might be disseminated. The structure of the analysis follows a hermeneutical framework allowing us to view the stylistic choices of the presenters and to see the functioning of the emerging learning communities.

Journal of Management Studies, 2002

In this paper we argue that the learning of safety in a constellation of communities of practice is mediated by comparison among the perspectives of the world embraced by the co-participants in the production of this practice. Our discussion is based on two empirical research projects in which we investigated the accounts of the causes of accidents provided by the members of three different communities of practice (engineers, site foremen and main contractors), in a medium sized building firm. In the paper we suggest that comparison among perspectives is made possible by a discursive practice targeted on the alignment of elements both mental and material, within mutually accountable discursive positions. These alignments are provisional and unstable, they produce tensions, discontinuities and incoherence (cacophony) just as much as they produce order and negotiated meanings (consonance).  Practice is where nature and society and the space between them are continually made, un-made, and remade. (Pickering, 1992, p. 21) Learning in a community of practice is described in the literature as a process of progressive 'engagement' in the practices of that community. Yet there are practices that traverse the boundaries of several communities and which-as in stellar formations-create a network of relations within a constellation of communities of practices tied together by interconnected practices. How do people learn to cope with the knowledge embedded in their community, and the knowing nested in a constellation of practices? A construction site will provide the setting for an answer to the question. A 'site' is the concrete aggregation of whatever abstract systems have been imposed upon it. And planners or users of a site become involved in a multiplicity of systems, at once designed and unpredictable (Turner and Pidgeon, 1997,