Translanguaging for bilingual educational theorising in higher degree researcher education : a case study of using Chinese funds of theorectical knowledge for research

This thesis reports on a preliminary investigation into the potentials of using Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge in educational research. The aim is to provide an approach to addressing, developing and maximising bilingual higher degree researchers’ (HDRs) theorising capabilities using translanguaging pedagogies. New forms of intellectual inequality and oppression have emerged with the internationalisation of doctoral education including academic dominance and dependency within the postcolonial world. This dependency is reflected in the academic dependence on Euro-American theories and in the use of the standardised academic English across the world. Further, beginning researchers, in particular HDRs, may have to learn and develop the capabilities for educational theorising to become good educational researchers. Nevertheless, teaching of educational theorising in HDR education seems to remain marginal compared to the emphases on theories. One of the results of the linguistic-theoretical dependency and theorising negligence is a lack of innovative educational researchers and research in non-Euro-American countries. Therefore, this PhD research project is conducted to probe into the possibilities of bilingual theorising in educational practices and research. The major research question to be answered is: How do bilingual Chinese HDRs perceive and use their Chinese-English bilingual and inter-cultural capabilities for theorising in educational research? This research question, complemented by five contributory questions, is contextualised within the broad social sciences and educational research literature in Chapter 2 from three dimensions, namely, the Euro-American theoretical dominance, the monolingual English tendency and the educational theorising process. Accordingly, a three dimensional theoretical framework is formulated and debated for the possibilities of Chinese educational theorising in in Chapter 3. First, advocates offering different perspectives on multi-linguistic-theoretical knowledge and intellectual equality provide premises for mitigating the oppressive Euro-American uniformisation. Then the debate over translanguaging pedagogy provides a focus for considering the linguistic-theoretical potentials of bilingual HDRs. Further, a pedagogical framework for bilingual HDR supervision is formulated with the capability approach and the implications from ignorant schoolmaster. To collect and analyse evidence, methodology and methods for the research are explained and justified in Chapter 4. With a flexible research design, evidence was collected from (1) individual interviews with fourteen bilingual Chinese HDRs and nine academics (two with non-Chinese background) from universities in Australia and China, and (2) thirteen pieces of published works authored or co-authored (as the first author) by bilingual Chinese researchers from the ResearchDirect Database through Western Sydney University online library. Premised on the analyses of evidence and guided by the sensitised theoretical framework, the findings in this research are presented and discussed in the evidentiary chapters from Chapter 5 to Chapter 9. In Chapter 5 dominance and uniformisation of Euro-American theories in educational research are debated based on reflections by the interviewees. Further, in Chapter 6 the concept “Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge” is debated and defined taking into consideration its complexity and controversy. Chapter 7 investigates the potentials of using translanguaging for educational practices and research. Chapter 8 focuses on the possibilities and scenarios for Chinese educational theorising using Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge and translanguaging. Chapter 9 explains an explorative conceptual-theoretical attempt of the researcher’s Chinese educational theorising by exploring the potentials of the jiāo/jiào xué xiāng zhǎng教学相长bilingual HDRs supervision pedagogy. In the concluding Chapter 10, the main findings and answers for the research questions are then presented. Together these findings point to a series of key concepts that might be useful for pursuing doctoral pedagogies that are more worldly in orientation than is currently the case. Bilingual educational theorising with a duì huà对话approach is argued to be able to provide an alternative path to interrupt the monolingual and hierarchical bilingual HDRs’ education and educational research. In summary, bilingual educational theorising emphasises the processes of asking questions and seeking for answers concerning educational policies, practices and/or research issues that are taken-for-granted. Through bilingual educational theorising, bilingual and HDRs researchers may make use of their knowledge of two or more languages to extend the potentials for theorising educational phenomena and problems

Problematised History Pedagogy as Narrative Research: Self-Fashioning, Dismantled Voices and Reimaginings in History Education

A growing disturbance with history’s identity in the New Zealand schooling curriculum disrupted my educational socialisation (curriculum, professional, academic) and inheritance of educational policy decisions. In turn, this disturbance shaped a critical stance in my research and practitioner work. Accordingly, problematised history pedagogy [PHP] emerged as the phenomenon and method of my doctoral study and was activated as a counterpoint to my experiences of normalised discourses of history curriculum and pedagogy. The PHP as narrative research was situated in my history curriculum programme in a postgraduate year of secondary teacher education. The research aimed to engage my history class (research participants as preservice teachers) in pedagogy that involved critique of and reflection on the things we do as history teachers in the secondary curriculum. The PHP was nested within my historicising and theorising of educational experience. Conceptualised as a reciprocal research process, the PHP involved the participants and me in theorising pedagogies, fashioning pedagogic identities, and engaging critically with curriculum conceptions of history. The PHP sought to reimagine history curriculum and pedagogy and identify pedagogic spaces of possibility. The narrative research was layered as a bricolage of storying that reflected the interdisciplinary nature of my educational socialisation. Experiences as a teacher educator, curriculum and assessment developer and researcher, meant many voices, discourses, and theories were woven into the narrative. This complex conceptual work focused on understandings of narrative; policy, curriculum and pedagogy; critical pedagogy; history; history education, and notions of space. The narrative research was constructed in three parts. Firstly, my narrative selves and shifts to a critical pedagogy stance were historicised and theorised through an autobiographical approach. An original dimension of this storying has been the use of vignettes that illuminate the convergence of educational experience, theorising, and reimaginings as an aesthetic and critical narrative device. The second part of the research narrative arrives at the point of praxis whereby experience and theory came together to activate the PHP. The PHP was placed in the context of the national history curriculum, a review of history education literature, and situated in my teacher education work. The PHP has been represented as a system of meaning through its distinctive research processes of phenomenological inquiry, genealogical disclosure, and discursive self-fashioning. An original form of analysis was conceptualised to deconstruct the participants’ history thinking and their experiences of the cultural politics of the history curriculum. This was conceptualised as a dismantling analysis [DA]. The third part of the narrative recounts the history class’s year of reflexive engagement with PHP. Participants’ pedagogic identities, historical thinking and critique of history curriculum and pedagogy as PHP ‘cases’ in secondary classrooms were dismantled and discussed. Emergent PHP findings of the participants’ thinking as beginning history teachers include such features as: discourses of embodiment (fears, failure and fraud) prior to practicum; uncertainties about historical knowledge that includes doubt and discomfort about dealing with ‘difficult’ knowledge; disillusionment with familiar historical narratives; scant exposure to Aotearoa New Zealand histories and limited engagement with historical research methods in school and university study; observations of uncritical teacher modelling of history pedagogy; questioning of a strong masculine focus in historical contexts and a recurrent theme of history as violent; history practicum experienced through the dominant orientation of history as inquiry. These findings illustrate the public, accountable and discursive production of the national history curriculum. Reimagined history curricula are glimpsed in the participants’ seeking of counter-orientations of history’s purpose and desired history pedagogy as inclusive and democratic, as social reconstruction, and as an evolving critical project. A reflective critique of the narrative research brings the writing to a close

Processes of Pakeha change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi

The sense of crisis that marks our times may be seen as a crisis for dominant groups whose once-secure hegemony is being challenged by marginalised others. It is in theorising the reply from the dominant group to the voices of the oppressed that existing Western conceptions of social change fall silent. The dominant Pakeha group in Aotearoa New Zealand has used discourses of benign colonisation and harmonious race relations to resist 165 years of communication from indigenous Māori about their oppression and a dishonoured treaty for settlement. My research documents the appearance of the Treaty of Waitangi into the Pakeha consciousness, and the now 30 year-long response by a Pakeha antiracism movement to educate their own cultural group about its agreements. Targeting government, community and social services organisations, activist educators used Freire's (1975) approach of conscientising dialogue to present a more critical view of colonisation, and to encourage participants to consider the complicity of their organisations in ongoing structural and cultural racism. Based on my membership of local and national networks of activist educators, I was able to organise and facilitate data gathering from three sources to investigate processes of Pakeha change in: (i) unpublished material describing the antiracism and Treaty movement's historical theorising and strategies over 30 years, (ii) a country-wide process of co-theorising among contemporary Treaty educator groups about their work and perceived influence, and (iii) a collection of organisational accounts of Treaty-focused change. The collected records confirmed that a coherent anti-colonial discourse, which I have termed 'Pakeha honouring the Treaty', was in use to construct institutional and constitutional changes in non-government organisations. My interpretation of key elements in a local theory of transforming action included emotional responses to counter-cultural information, collective work for cultural and institutional change and practising a mutually agreed relationship with Māori. I concluded that these emotional, collective and relationship processes in dominant group change were crucial in helping to construct the new conceptual resources of 'affirming Māori authority' and 'striving towards a right relationship with Māori'. These counter-colonial constructions allowed Pakeha a non-resistant and facilitative response to Māori challenge, and enabled a dialogue with Māori about decolonisation. By examining in one research programme the genealogy and interdependencies of a new discourse, my research contributes to theorising about the production of new, counter-hegemonic discourses, and confirms the crucial part played by social movements in developing new, liberatory constructions of the social order. My research calls for further theory-building on (i) emotional and spiritual aspects of transformational learning, (ii) processes involved in consciously-undertaken cultural change by dominant/coloniser groups, and (iii) practising of mutually agreed relationships with indigenous peoples by dominant/coloniser groups. My research has implications for theorising how coloniser and dominant groups generally may participate in liberatory social change and decolonisation work, and the part played by the Western states in the global struggles by indigenous people for recognition of their world-views and aspirations. It remains to be seen whether counter-colonial discourses and organisational changes aimed at 'honouring the Treaty' with indigenous peoples will be sufficiently widely adopted to help transform Western dominating cultures and colonial projects. In the meantime, acknowledging and documenting these counter-colonial discourses and their constructions opens up increasing possibilities for constructing, from a history of colonisation, a different future

Considering Teaching Excellence in Higher Education: 2007-2013: A Literature Review Since the CHERI Report 2007

No abstract available

Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions

This is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from an additional literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers

Valid knowledge: The economy and the academy

The future of Western universities as public institutions is the subject of extensive continuing debate, underpinned by the issue of what constitutes valid knowledge. Where in the past only prepositional knowledge codified by academics was considered valid, in the new economy enabled by information and communications technology, the procedural knowledge of expertise has become a key commodity, and the acquisition of this expertise is increasingly seen as a priority by intending university students. Universities have traditionally proved adaptable to changing circumstances, but there is little evidence to date of their success in accommodating to the scale and unprecedented pace of change of the Knowledge Economy or to the new vocationally-oriented demands of their course clients. And in addition to these external factors, internal ones are now at work. Recent developments in eLearning have enabled the infiltration of commercial providers who are cherry-picking the most lucrative subject areas. The prospect is of a fracturing higher education system, with the less adaptable universities consigned to a shrinking public-funded sector supporting less vocationally saleable courses, and the more enterprising universities developing commercial partnerships in eLearning and knowledge transfer. This paper analyses pressures upon universities, their attempts to adapt to changing circumstances, and the institutional transformations which may result. It is concluded that a diversity of partnerships will emerge for the capture and transfer of knowledge, combining expertise from the economy with the conceptual frameworks of the academy

Supervision in the contact zone revisited : critical reflections on supervisory practices through the lenses of time, place, and knowledge

This article contributes to the discussion on intercultural doctoral supervision through a reflexive analysis of one supervisor’s practices during a joint Laotian/Swedish capacity-building project in 2005–2011. My practices were guided by postcolonial/feminist aspirations to shift power relations and to disrupt knowledge-production practices to allow what Singh (2011, p. 358) calls “pedagogies of intellectual equality”. These ideals, however, were challenged by the formal structure of the PhD programme and my socialisation into a Swedish/Western rationality about what a ‘good’ doctorate is. Using the concepts of time, place, and knowledge (Manathunga, 2014), I reflect here upon my own practices and actions during supervision of four doctoral students from Lao People’s Democratic Republic. This supervision took place in what Pratt (2017/1990) calls the ‘contact zone’, the space where intercultural meetings take place. Manathunga (2014) argues that time, place, and knowledge are crucial to understanding intercultural supervision. I analyse the opportunities and challenges I met as a supervisor, and critically reflect upon how postcolonial theory and concepts of time, place, and knowledge can contribute to discussion on disrupting hegemonic patterns of knowledge production in doctoral training. The analysis shows how supervision in the contact zone may support assimilation at the expense of transculturation, the blending of knowledge from different contexts to create new knowledge (Manathunga, 2014, p. 4). The analysis also points to a third path, accommodation, towards the needs and strategies of doctoral students and supervisors affecting and changing training in unexpected ways.peer-reviewe

Continuing Education of English Teachers: Teachers’ Translation of New Knowledge into the Classroom

This qualitative study seeks to gain deeper insight into how primary school teachers translate new knowledge about language learning into the classroom and how they experience development in their teaching practice through their continuing education course in English. The theoretical framework is rooted in Ertsås and Irgens´ theory on teachers’ learning and professional development (2012). To avoid a dichotomous assumption of theory and practice, Ertsås and Irgens redefine theory as a process, theorising, where teachers gradually take increasingly stronger theory into use in order to reflect on, analyse and reason about their teaching practice. The data were collected from three equivalent English courses in the autumn semesters of 2015, 2016 and 2017. The participants wrote a reflection text towards the end of their first semester in which they reflected on noticeable development in their own teaching practice. This textual documentary material was analysed primarily from an inductive perspective, then coded and categorised.publishedVersio

Relational Responsive Pedagogy, Teachers and Māori students Listening and Learning from each other

This thesis examines the culturally responsive and relational pedagogical practices of a group of teachers in one Phase four Te Kotahitanga school. It then considers the influences of these pedagogies on four Māori students. The thesis begins by seeking to understand the two different worldviews in Aotearoa/New Zealand (a Western worldview and a Māori worldview) and some of the discourses that have emerged in the shared Māori and colonial history of this country. It examines kaupapa Māori as both a movement of resistance to the dominant Western worldview that came with colonisation; and a movement of revitalisation to Māori ways of knowing and understanding the world that began to be lost at the same time. It focuses on Te Kotahitanga as a kaupapa Māori response in secondary schools. The collaborative storying of teachers and Māori students in a Te Kotahitanga school alongside their data of practice and achievement are discussed and examined. Shifts across three levels of the school are identified and understood alongside the Te Kotahitanga professional development cycle. These understandings are discussed in relation to Māori metaphors. The overall implications of Māori metaphors in relation to the research questions are then considered. This thesis concludes with considerations and implications for others in addressing the on-going educational disparities of Māori students in mainstream educational settings in New Zealand

Whakarongo mai!: Transformative teaching to support Māori identity and success in a mainstream school

This thesis topic emerged following a year’s teaching experience in a mainstream classroom during 2009. My cultural assumptions of being a Māori teacher in a mainstream class were challenged predominantly by a group of Māori students in the classroom. The level of despondency I felt as a result of disruptive student behaviours forced me to reassess my own socio-cultural constructs which had influenced the formation of my identity as Māori and as a mainstream teacher. The purpose of this study was to understand and explore a transformational behavioural shift which occurred within a group of Māori students during 2009 and the level of support they felt they received as Māori within a mainstream classroom context. National and international literature demonstrates that transformative praxis is both reflective and active. Successful inclusive teaching requires a personal and professional commitment to firstly understand individual cultural constructs to then better understand how learners are perceived and positioned. Culturally responsive pedagogy ensures that all students’ cultural practices and values are acknowledged and included into classroom teaching and learning programmes. In a New Zealand mainstream context, the Treaty of Waitangi principles of ‘partnership’, ‘participation’ and ‘protection’ serve as a bi-cultural ‘power-sharing’ metaphor from which all mainstream teachers of Māori students can successfully encourage student voice and foster reciprocal teaching and learning relationships. My use of qualitative research methods and kaupapa Māori principles to guide the research process ensured that Māori cultural protocols and practices were honoured. My role as a Māori insider researcher meant that my relationship with the participants was already established. Our reflections as Māori students and a Māori teacher in a mainstream classroom context were based from shared teaching and learning experiences during 2009. Researcher reflexivity has ensured that the research integrity, validity and reliability have remained high. The research findings present the reflections of both the participants and researcher as Māori students and as a Māori teacher during 2009. Participants believed that teaching and learning programmes which incorporated te reo Māori served to honour their identity as Māori. However, their awareness of participating with tikanga Māori principles of whānaungatanga (relationships), manaakitanga (caring), ako (reciprocity) and aroha (respect) embedded within classroom activities that were exclusively in English, were not identified as being relevant to them as Māori. Similarly, the Treaty of Waitangi principles lacked transparency within my teaching pedagogy. Two key implications for teaching and learning in mainstream schools and classrooms were identified. Firstly, there is an urgency for mainstream school managers, leaders and teachers to develop an understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi and its significance for the 21st Century mainstream teacher and learner. A bi-cultural understanding of ourselves as treaty partners support Māori cultural values and practices within increasingly diverse mainstream school and classroom contexts. Māori students‟ success becomes the responsibility of all mainstream managers, leaders and teachers as treaty partners. Secondly, inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogy demonstrates that Māori and non-Māori mainstream teachers are capable of effectively engaging Māori students with learning while acknowledging and reaffirming their cultural identity and language as tangata whenua. Overall, my commitment for Māori students to be supported as Māori within mainstream school and classroom context has been enriched and strengthened as a result of this research study. The cultural and professional tensions I have experienced in mainstream contexts have challenged the socio-cultural constructs that I had accepted as being my cultural ‘norm.