Love Me; Self Portrait 1-3; Self Portrait

These self-portraits explore the artist’s changing conception of self by presenting the self as a mutable entity without an essential core. The works also function as an index of the artist’s self-image, which spans a wide range of moods, emotions and dispositions. Love Me is characterized by bold, emotive phantasmagorias that explore the artist as a monstrous entity, a beast motivated by primal drives and appetites. Self Portrait 1-3 also induces a primordial resonance through its references to tribal art. These sculptures present the artist as an idol or effigy with mystical properties. This particular investigation into the artistic self references the inflated artistic ego, and role it plays in giving the artist special, almost shamanic, powers. Self-Portrait comprises of drawings manipulated to produce a video animation that tracks the artist’s perception of himself over a period of three years. This work reveals an ongoing interrogation of the relationship between self and artistic personae, which is evident in the animation that dramatizes the connections between the artist’s paintings and drawings

Pedagogical translanguaging as "troublesome knowledge" in teacher education

This paper reports on the shifts in understanding experienced by participants in a postgraduate initial teacher education course designed around pedagogical translanguaging as a core theoretical and pedagogical concept. Throughout the semester-long unit, teacher education students engaged with culturally and linguistically responsive teaching approaches by reflecting upon and shifting their understandings of how plurilingual students’ home languages can be celebrated and included in classroom teaching, even when English remains the medium of instruction. However, adopting pedagogical translanguaging as a concept and practice was not without its challenges, with both monolingual and plurilingual teacher education students having to confront and overcome deep-seated beliefs that “English-only is best”. Using a grounded approach to analyse teacher education students’ written reflections and transcripts from semi-structured interviews, our research found that learning about pedagogical translanguaging presented teacher education students with what Meyer and Land (2003) refer to as a threshold concept, which opened up new and previously inaccessible ways of thinking about linguistic diversity. Our teacher education students faced challenges in redefining their positions as they encountered counterintuitive beliefs about language and teaching, alongside the necessity to reevaluate their own language identities. Our analysis reveals that pedagogical translanguaging represents troublesome knowledge for these students, often leading them into an uncomfortable liminal space, with the practical application being the most troublesome hurdle

The role of Humanitarian Studies in education and research for sector transformation

The international humanitarian aid sector is struggling to meet the increasing demands driven by displacement, protracted emergencies, new conflicts, and the climate crisis. Recent funding cuts make it even harder to respond to those needs, sparking renewed calls for a system transformation. Accompanying the humanitarian sectors’ expansion, growing complexity and ongoing reform process, has been the recent emergence of Humanitarian Studies as an academic field of scholarship. This is reflected in the proliferation of humanitarian-titled and focused degree programs, journals, and research initiatives, particularly visible in the Global North. This paper explores what Humanitarian Studies contribute to humanitarian aid and the sector - including its ongoing reform. Recently published research findings show that Humanitarian Studies play a key role in providing humanitarian education and generating humanitarian research relevant to humanitarian policy and practice. However, Humanitarian Studies could be much more inclusive, critical and interdisciplinary. Access to Humanitarian Studies degree programs needs to be expanded, and Humanitarian Studies education needs to be much more contextualised. In addition, Humanitarian Studies research outputs need to be more accessible and practical for humanitarian work

Foreword : Future work and learning in a disrupted world: ‘The Best Chance for All’

This Special Issue, devoted to micro-credentials and qualifications for future work and learning in a disrupted world, is a welcome and critically timed contribution to educational theorising and practice internationally. COVID-19 has accelerated Industry 4.0’s pervasive labour market disruption. Digitisation’s efficiencies have been rapidly embraced and broadly up-scaled as a matter of necessity. Many industries and professions have fast tracked digitalisation to transform pre-pandemic business models for current and future sustainability. We have seen all education sectors – Kindergarten to Year 12 (K-12), vocational education and training/ further education (VET/FE) and higher education (HE) – digitise and digitalise to varying degrees in their rapid move to emergency remote teaching (Hodges et al., 2020). Robust evaluation will be needed to assess the efficacy of that pedagogical triaging – our well-intentioned ‘panic-gogy’ (Kamenetz, 2020) – to inform the quality and fitness-for-future-purpose of that online pivot. In the meantime, HE’s students and graduates emerge from 2020 wanting to support and apply their studies in a challenging job market that was already weakening pre-pandemic and has now worsened (for example in the Australian context, Social Research Centre, 2020), especially for young people. If that was not enough, significant and underlying issues of climate change, reconciliation with First Nations, demographic change and globalisation continue to have implications for equal and equitable participation in the full range of life opportunities, including in meaningful paid work. In brief, the context for this Special Issue is an international grand challenge writ very large

Acknowledgement of Country

This includes the front cover of the special edition, Acknowledgement of Country, ACTA Statement, and TESOL in Context editorial team details for the current issue 2025 Volume 33 Number 02 Special Issue

Extending micro-credentials to micro-apprenticeships for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Enhancing vocational education and training in the post-pandemic’s ‘new normal’

As noted in the foreword of this Special Issue, COVID-19 has accelerated the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s or Industry 4.0’s disruption to the labour market (Sally, 2021). Beyond Industry 4.0 (I4.0), the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by enterprises, underscoring the need for workers to continuously upskill their digital competencies in order to remain relevant (Heinonen & Strandvik, 2021). Besides digitisation, organisations have had to innovate and adopt new business models to adapt to the ‘new normal’ of surviving and growing beyond the COVID-19 pandemic (Heinonen & Strandvik, 2021). In countries that largely relied on skilled migration as an important source of talent, the closure of international borders has restricted mobility of human capital resulting in insufficient skilled employees to meet the current and ever-increasing demand for skills (Guadagno, 2020)

Gaze 1; Gaze 2; Gaze 3

My three artworks Gaze 1, Gaze 2 and Gaze 3 depict the individual experience of looking but at the same time being aware of being looked at. This has been explored throughout art history – in particular through feminist critiques of art where the female muse in paintings was changed to a figure that confronted the viewer. Such renditions of the gaze tend to be expressed in art history as particular events as in the case of Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Conjurer. This painting depicts a group of individuals observing objects, whilst one individual in the background confronts the viewer. John Berger noted in Ways of Seeing how women in particular are aware of being looked at as they go about their day. In contrast to these event-focused, social and cultural explorations of the gaze in art history, Gaze 1, Gaze 2 and Gaze 3 portray how looking and being aware of being looked at, can occur for the individual in unison. I am interested in the psychological experience of the gaze – a form of paranoia perhaps - and how this constructs selves.&nbsp

User Personas and Social Media Profiles

In the world of User Experience Design, a persona isn't something that belongs to a person. Instead, personas are created by designers to act as "fictitious, specific and concrete representations of target users" (Pruitt & Adlin 2010, p. 5)

Using student conferences as a form of authentic assessment to develop and enhance transferable communication skills in quantitative and data-driven disciplines: Evidence from a postgraduate public health program

Globally, the volume and availability of data has grown exponentially over the last few decades. In turn, workforces are looking for graduates to be well versed in working effectively with data, with the skills needed to work both efficiently and creatively within data-driven environments. This has been reflected within the context of higher education through the increased demand for specialist training and development in quantitative and data-driven (QDD) disciplines – particularly within postgraduate study. Graduates are expected not only to possess technical skills, but also ‘softer skills’, including multifaceted communication skills to communicate complex concepts with non-expert audiences. This paper considers how the environment of a student conference might amplify the authenticity and meaningfulness of oral presentations as an assessment format, while helping QDD students to develop and enhance their transferable communication skills. Following the introduction of an additional assessment to a postgraduate public health program, surveys were carried out with staff (n=11) and students (n=31). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Results showed that the student conference environment assessment was meaningful for students and supported their communication skills development through the authentic delivery of oral presentations. The conference environment helped students build confidence, with 88% (n=22) finding it useful to practice presenting to peers, and 100% (n=26) feeling more confident about their work. This study, thus, illustrates a transferable and implementable approach for educators wishing to integrate a student conference assessment to develop students’ communication skills, particularly in QDD disciplines

Reflections on reflection: Supporting employability learning in the higher education context

Graduate employability remains a key talking point in higher education despite the contested nature of the construct and the myriad of factors that influence an individual’s capacity to gain employment. Universities are still positioned to produce graduates who can contribute to society and the economy through work. Students are similarly responsible for developing the knowledge and capabilities that will meet employer expectations and assure a successful career. This development process often involves students engaging in reflective practice. This paper reports on the efficacy of a structured, written reflective process implemented across an Australian research-intensive institution to support students to learn from experiences to develop their employability. Our study found value in the use of a formalised, stepwise approach to reflective thinking that helps students make and express meaning from learning opportunities. The findings suggest, however, that attempting to shoehorn the untidy business of reflective thinking into a standard linear approach does present some challenges. Despite these challenges, our examination of a sample of reflections using our process showed evidence of reflective thought. We found alignment with the experiential learning theories that framed the creation of our reflective process in the students’ expressions of their meaning-making endeavours. Our findings strengthen our advocacy of an anchor for reflective thought in a personally meaningful experience and the use of prompts around effect and action to guide students learning