Using appreciative inquiry to explore the professional practice of a lecturer in higher education: moving towards life-centric practice

This paper reports on a strategy for exploring the life-centric practice of a lecturer in Higher Education. The initiative for this inquiry arose out of the realisation that there did not appear to be positive, heart-lifting stories in a lecturer’s current teaching experiences. Using an appreciative eye and supported by a critical friend, life-giving experiences were ‘stalked’ from the past. The hope in this endeavour was to find greater meaning in the lecturer’s best professional practice. Using an Appreciative Inquiry approach, this endeavour rejuvenated the lecturer’s professional practice. As life-centric stories were recalled, provocative propositions were constructed that became the basis of a personalised action plan for future professional practice. This paper outlines the nature of the journey and the heartfelt discoveries

Sustainable Professional Practice

The project aims were to examine the ways in which the two distance learning social work programmes (The Open University (OU)and Charles Sturt University(CSU)) operate - looking at pedagogies and in particular how learning and teaching works in the practicum. Exchange visits were organised with Associate Professor Bowles spending 10 days at The Open University in June 2009, and Mick McCormick pending time at CSU in August/September 2009. Our aim was to investigate the different and similar ways in which we approached the teaching of practitioners in social work. We gained many benefits from our contacts and had opportunity to meet and work with social work academics and input to teaching and learning within respective academic institutions. Many of our findings are reflected in recently published work, or work in publication. Findings also have an ongoing impact on the production, delivery and review of our respective practice learning social work programmes

Taking a stance: resistance, faking and Muddling Through

This article focuses on project-based learning in media practice education, identifying three themes of interest. The first questions the recontextualisation of practice from the professional to a pedagogic environment. The second theme questions how much we know about what goes on inside a project and contrasts the ways in which students ‘do’ projects with the ways in which educators idealise project work as a mirror of professional practice. The final theme questions whether processes and procedures external to a project environment may result in a decoupling between professional practice and the everyday formulations of practice enacted by students. While educators may seek to encourage students to simultaneously adopt academic, professional and creative identities, as part of an active and purposeful approach to doing projects, this article questions whether tensions between these identities may actually encourage students to engage in decoupling behaviour. The article aims to encourage media practice educators to reflect on their own use of projects and question the ways in which the identities students claim as learners align with educator's beliefs and values