The contribution of becoming reflective on the employability of teachers and social workers

Employability and reflective capacities are key outcomes of higher education. This inter-disciplinary project built upon earlier OLT projects and fellowships on reflection, employability and work integrated learning (WIL). The project aimed to: contribute towards rethinking reflective teaching/learning practices across all aspects of the pre- service social work and education curricula; integrate these with workplace-based needs for professional development; develop creative learning experiences and resources to enable pre-service teachers and social workers across five universities to develop reflective capacities that had been identified as essential by employers; and investigate how reflective capacities impacted graduates\u27 employability. The key stakeholders included: students in pre-service teacher education and social work programs; university staff engaged in teaching reflection and/or practice education; practice educators in schools and human service agencies; employers from schools and human service organisations who will benefit from employees with stronger reflection skills; and relevant professional associations and accrediting bodies. The project proceeded in three stages. Stage 1: an audit of reflective practice; Stage 2: a multi-site case study research focused on the phenomenon of reflective practice; and Stage 3 the development, refinement and implementation of a suite of online and multimedia resources made available on the website for the research project. The analysis of key documents revealed that, while critical reflection is a key criterion of the AASW Practice Standards, The Australian Employability and reflective capacities are key outcomes of higher education. This inter-disciplinary project built upon earlier OLT projects and fellowships on reflection, employability and work integrated learning (WIL). The project aimed to: contribute towards rethinking reflective teaching/learning practices across all aspects of the pre-service social work and education curricula; integrate these with workplace-based needs for professional development; develop creative learning experiences and resources to enable pre-service teachers and social workers across five universities to develop reflective capacities that had been identified as essential by employers; and investigate how reflective capacities impacted graduates’ employability. The key stakeholders included: students in pre-service teacher education and social work programs; university staff engaged in teaching reflection and/or practice education; practice educators in schools and human service agencies; employers from schools and human service organisations who will benefit from employees with stronger reflection skills; and relevant professional associations and accrediting bodies. The project proceeded in three stages. Stage 1: an audit of reflective practice; Stage 2: a multi site case study research focused on the phenomenon of reflective practice; and Stage 3 the development, refinement and implementation of a suite of online and multimedia resources made available on the website for the research project. The analysis of key documents revealed that, while critical reflection is a key criterion of the AASW Practice Standards, The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers include only one reference to reflection: the teaching standards, ‘provide a framework by which teachers can judge the success of their learning and assist self-reflection and self-assessment (p. 3); references to critical thinking were also considered relevant

A multiliteracies approach to online reading to learn: a case study

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of a multiliteracies approach to online inquiry reading. After presenting the key principles of this theory, I focus attention on an online platform acknowledged for its learning aims – TED-Ed – as an empirical basis for researching the practicability of such an approach. An original lesson available on the platform was studied, revealing that it only partially complies with the pedagogy in question. This analysis showed that while multimodal, hyperlinked and purposeful online reading was clearly taking place as a situated and transformative experience, there were, nevertheless, significant restrictions in the enactment of the theory, specifically, the partiality of the meaning-making paths designed to scaffold students’ learning, the absolute invisibility of semiotic resources used for making meaning and the adoption of an uncritical attitude toward meaning making. Finally, discussion is made of the most significant insights to be drawn from this analysis, concerning the potentials of such platforms for practice and research and the need for practitioners to develop their understanding of online reading to learn in order to fully enact the theory underpinning the multiliteracies approach.This work is funded by CIEd – Research Centre in Education, projects UID/CED/1661/2013 and UID/CED/1661/2016, Institute of Education, University of Minho, through national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT