Public deliberation as a teaching andragogy: Implications for adult student learning from a doctoral higher education policy course

Public deliberation provides an inclusive and robust mechanism for making shared decisions in community and political settings; however, its application to teaching and learning remains underutilized (McMillan & Harriger, 2007). This manuscript reports on a case study of the use of public deliberation as a teaching andragogy in a graduate level course in higher education policy, which showed that public deliberation creates greater ownership of the course, fosters critical thinking and student agency, and implicates taking action

Developing culturally competent teachers: An international student teaching field experience

This study offers a theoretical construct for better understanding how experiential learning enables student teachers to acquire social and cultural variation skills, develop cultural empathy in the K-12 classroom, and the transference of these skills to new educational situations. An Australian and United States research team used a phenomenological approach to explore the connections between the skills student teachers acquire and the application of these newly developed skills to professional practices. Participants were a group of United States pre-teachers who enrolled in a 5 week teaching experience in Australia. Findings show that participation in cultural based events is part of a complex decision making process. The variety of cultures that now exist in schools requires new teachers to obtain and apply a skillset that promotes manoeuvrability through, and an understanding of the many definitions of culture. A better understanding of this process may strengthen curricula and improvements in teacher education program delivery and further enhance higher education study-abroad international partnerships