Reimagining community engagement in a JK–12 International Baccalaureate school: Transforming praxis through compassionate dialogic processes

The International Baccalaureate (IB) mandates community engagement (CE; otherwise known as service learning) throughout its continuum; however, there is confusion around epistemological approaches, strategies, and methodologies. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) aims to support educators in developing a praxis-based CE program at an independent IB school in Western Canada. It is inspired by a problem of practice that exists at Hope Mountain School (HMS), where there is currently no coherent framework to guide CE development through ethical and sustainable approaches. Critical/post-critical theoretical approaches ground the OIP’s inquiry process supported by sociotransformative constructivist and ecocentric worldviews. Systemic tensions between HMS, IB programs, and the provincial curriculum are discussed, and HMS’s culture and vision are analyzed in relation to CE epistemology as focused through dialogic change processes. A tripartite model of ensemble, compassionate systems, and reflexive leadership supports systems change, and cycles of community-based participatory action research promote reflexive praxis and contextual intelligence. The change model positions research, purpose, intentionality, critical thinking, and participatory conversations as necessary for change implementation, and this model is deepened through an exploration of collaborative strategies for community wellbeing. Solutions are measured against the concepts of compassionate collaboration, leadership capacity, and deeper learning, with the chosen solution focusing on a continuum-wide approach to change. Equitable and decolonizing approaches to knowledge mobilization and evaluation are presented with the aim to increase inclusion, leadership capacity, and agency

Teaching Women's Studies: Exploring Student Engagement in Technology-Rich Classroom Learning Communities

Although university students are key participants in knowledge-making processes, their insights about learning are sparsely documented, and too rarely considered in contemporary conversations in higher education. In centering the insights and experiences of students enrolled in two women's studies courses at the University of Maryland, this dissertation produces a substantive intervention that both democratizes and disrupts existing academic discourse. The research utilizes empirical data collected from students enrolled in three sections of Women's Studies 250: Women, Art and Culture, and from students enrolled in an online course, Women's Health and Well-Being, Transnational Perspectives, which was taught cross-institutionally at four universities in Africa, Israel and the United States. Qualitative analysis of empirical data facilitated the description of processes by which women's studies students were engaged in classroom knowledge-making. Student texts, interpretively stitched together within a crystallized presentation format, produce a poly-vocal narrative illuminating the robustly material and multi-sensory nature of processes in, through, and by which participants transacted their learning. Collectively, their shared stories affirm the value of a technology-rich classroom praxis, one that facilitated dialogic and peer-centered learning processes, to students' active and productive engagement in collaborative knowledge-making endeavors. Research findings also illuminate how such a praxis, scaffolded on dialogic engagement, and on the deployment of socio-constructivist pedagogies in a technology-rich learning environment, deepened participants' collaborations with one another as equally knowledgeable peers across difference, which simultaneously and materially facilitated their capabilities to critically and reflexively engage relevant knowledge frameworks. The strength of these findings attest to the benefits of focusing qualitative research on the nature of the transactional processes by and through which students are engaged in classroom learning. In explicitly asserting the value to learners of these material processes above others in facilitating collaborative knowledge-making transactions, this dissertation documents shared ownership in processes of classroom knowledge-making as an enabling factor in participants' abilities to capitalize on vital resources of peer diversity that, when mobilized, have the capacity to support potentially trangressive and tangibly transformative social justice outcomes for individuals and for the classroom learning community as a whole

Leading Transformative Change Collectively

This book directly helps decision-makers and change agents in companies, NGOs, and government bodies become more proficient in transformative, collaborative change in realizing the SDGs. This practitioner’s handbook translates a systemic – and enlivening – approach to collaboration into day-to-day work and management. It connects the emerging practice of multi-stakeholder collaboration to easily understandable models, tools, and cases. Numerous, concrete cases not only bring this methodology to life, but also help identify the challenges and avoid common mistakes. The book can be used as a guide to apply a breakthrough approach for navigating the complexity of stakeholder systems, designing results-oriented process architectures, ensuring the success of cross-sector change initiatives, and enlivening collaboration ecosystems for SDG implementation. It is designed to enhance high quality stakeholder engagement, dialogue, and collaboration. A must-read, the book sets a new standard for the collaborative implementation of Agenda 2030 and is a foundational guide for leading sustainability transformations collectively to achieve climate change mitigation, social integration, equitable value chains, and broad sustainability challenges

Professional capital of educators across the varying school quintile categorisaton.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.This study examines the acquisition and deployment of professional capital of educators across the varying school quintile categorization. One of the attributes of providing quality education is a strong emphasis on teacher professional development but within the context of South Africa teacher professional development initiatives packaged into workshops, which have minimal monitoring and evaluation, does not necessarily translate into educators learning new knowledge that leads to their practice being changed for quality teaching for quality learner outcomes (Bertram, 2011; Whitworth & Chiu, 2015). Engagement with the literature in the area of professional development has alluded to the phenomenon of Professional Capital advanced by Hargreaves & Fullan (2012), opening a new gaze into professional development and it is in this gaze that I locate my study. Professional Capital, which is made up of three interrelated components (human, social and decisional capital) that underscores excellence and educators realising their fullest capacity in teaching, provides the theoretical lens of the paper. This study employed a qualitative, case study methodology using an interpretive approach with a view to understanding the discourse of teacher professional development through the lens of Professional Capital within the context of the varying quintile rankings of schools. Using multiple case studies, a sample of four educators from the Ilembe District, KwaZulu-Natal (two from quintile 3 - non-fee paying schools; one each from quintile 4 and 5 – fee-paying schools), were observed and interviewed. The findings of the study point to differences in the professional capacity and conditions of work as well as variations in the professional capital acquired and deployed by educators in fee-paying and non-fee paying schools. While the social capital of educators in non-fee paying schools are acquired and deployed in their schools as part of their “survival” humanistic aspects of schooling dealing with the socio-economic challenges of the school (crime, teenage pregnancy etc.), educators from fee-paying schools acquire and deploy their social capital that to a large extent fulfils the neoliberal agenda of performativity, competition and career mobility. This thesis contributes to an understanding of the varying dimensions of professional development as explored through a framework of professional capital. This study is also significant for educators in recognizing their potential to make appropriate decisions that inform their practices based on how they view their human, social and decisional capital informing their work as educators

EELC9 Conference Programme

This file contains the EELC9 conference programme and book of abstracts

Merging MOOC and mLearning for Increased Learner Interaction

In this paper, the authors suggest the merger of the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) format and mobile learning (mLearning) based on mutual affordances of both contemporary learning/teaching formats to investigate learner interactions and dialogues in an open online course. The paper presents a case study of how MobiMOOC, a course created using the MOOC format, demonstrates the synergistic characteristics between the MOOC format and mLearning, making a combination of both fields ideal for contemporary, digital, collaborative learning, and knowledge construction based on learner interactions and dialogue. MobiMOOC was a six-week online course focusing on mLearning that ran in April and May 2011. An endof-course survey providesinsight thatsupportsthe synergies between MOOCs and mLearning: collaboration, informal and lifelong learning, and dialogue.Fil: De Waard, Inge. Athabasca University; BélgicaFil: Koutropoulos, Apostolos. University of Massachusetts; Estados UnidosFil: Hogue, Rebecca J.. University of Ottawa; CanadáFil: Abajian, Sean C.. California State University Northridge (calif. State Univ. Northridge);Fil: Keskin, Nilgün Özdamar. Anadolu University; TurquíaFil: Rodriguez, Carlos Osvaldo. Universidad del Cema. Departamento de Ingeniería Informatica; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gallagher, Michael Sean. University of Edinburgh; Reino Unid

Culturally-Responsive Canadian Postsecondary Performance Measurement

Student success has multiple meanings; however, the postpositivist bias prevalent in Canadian postsecondary education restricts how student success is defined and measured. When we standardize measures of student success we assume that the student experience is homogeneous and risk implementing policies and programs based on insufficient information. Unless new evaluation approaches are adopted, it is unlikely postsecondary institutions will generate the knowledge and wisdom needed to serve their regional, national, and international learners and communities. Postsecondary education leaders must be cognizant of the legacy of colonialism and consider cultural congruency between performance measurement systems and local context. This organizational improvement plan proposes a theory of action model for culturally-responsive postsecondary performance measurement that leverages shared governance through participatory, emergent, and appreciative processes and qualitative evaluation methodologies. Perception and socially constructed norms play a pivotal role in addressing the postsecondary education sector’s quantitative bias; therefore, an interpretivist lens is used to critically examine the cultural appropriateness of quality assurance and measurement processes at a Canadian university. Culturally-responsive performance measurement requires consideration of diverse worldviews and methodologies. Qualitative evaluation can amplify the lived experiences of students and inform complex policy issues through examination of phenomena and local variability. The next generation of quality assurance requires inclusive decision-making structures to generate collective wisdom and cultivate an ethic of community by engaging community members, faculty, staff, and students as change agents

An inquiry into the nature of effective dialogue and discourse and peacebuilding through leadership

The research study and findings presented in this work underscore the necessity to design and develop effective strategies for inter-paradigm dialogue and discourse for peacebuilding. The study argues that adoption and application of appropriate dialogue strategies impact and engender the nurturing and emergence of a culture of leadership that can foster sustainable peace. Dialogue and discourse processes are considered as being intricately connected to processes of conflict transformation and resolution, and linkages of dialogue, peacebuilding and leadership are mirrored in macro- and micro- spaces of engagement, namely, much contested cultural, political and economic spaces in which myriad and diverse perspectives reside. The potential for peace, it is argued, substantially lies in the formulation and design of contextually-relevant frameworks for equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, and macro-micro intersections play themselves out in the dialogue field within which societies and individuals can seek and strive to anticipate, accommodate, attain and enact their life wisdoms into peaceful systems of co-existence. This view also speaks to the issue of how consensual and sustainable global and regional collaborative enterprise requires the parallel accompaniment of well-configured partnerships in support of cultural responsiveness and social cohesion. Through discussion of appropriate methodologies of dialogue and discourse, the identification and statement of objectives for this study, as well as the design, elaboration and configuration of its research framework, aimed to contribute towards furthering debate surrounding the integration of prevailing theoretical approaches, in order to gain a better understanding of the linkages and dynamics between peacebuilding initiatives, conflict resolution processes, and effective and sustainable leadership. Dialogue is adopted as the key component in the design of an effective model and architecture for peace building. The enquiry underscores emerging gaps that require addressing, and which may then highlight zones of ambiguity, or dialectics between action and practice, and between researcher and practitioner

New opportunities for languages learning through twenty-first-century knowledge-building communitiestwenty-first-century knowledge-building communities

This chapter explores how language learning pedagogies are changing as a result of new technologies and opportunities for international collaboration, and glocal community engagement in the facilitation of purposeful conversations that respond to mutual needs. It explores various initiatives that have emerged as a result of creating connections to fulfil the need for more authentic languages learning spaces (O’Neill 2015; Yardley 2008). These initiatives show how practices have responded to opportunities afforded by digital communication technologies and social networking, providing for both international language-exchange and more localised community involvement in using English, as well as facilitating students’ use of their home languages and cultures. The way such approaches are able to build participants’ capacity, encourage authentic and deeper languages learning (Tochon 2014), add value to educational experiences—as well as sustain student engagement—is described and discussed. The potential of these approaches is further explored through the lens of knowledge-building communities (Bindé 2005) and the importance of student voice and agency, and intercultural literacy for the reshaping of languages policy, curriculum and practice. A model of operation is advanced and explored in terms of language learning being at the forefront of a modern responsive and innovative education system that acknowledges our globalised world and diverse multilingual contexts (Spring 2015)