Literacy teachers as researchers: Developing small inclusive projects in your classroom

Literacy teachers have a big job. They are largely responsible for teaching reading and writing not to mention keeping up to date with contemporary literate practices such as those that are multimodal (Barton, 2019). Ultimately, literacy teachers are teachers of effective communication or how we make and create meaning (Barton and Lennon, 2020; Vasquez et al., 2019). Literacy teachers are also responsible for ensuring all students achieve positive learning outcomes, including personal growth (Luke, 2018). How then can teachers of literacy in their everyday busy lives best plan for and address diverse student needs? As teacher educators, we are responsible for teaching Master's level students in a course called Literacies Learning in Diverse Contexts. Student feedback about this course is always very positive and we believe this is because the learning is personal, reflective and relevant. Students are required to identify an issue they are interested in, related to literacy learning and diverse students. They develop a research question, research the topic and plan for implementation in schooling contexts. This short paper will outline the approaches we take in supporting our preservice teachers to become teachers as researchers

Using Arts-Based Methods and Reflection to Support Postgraduate International Students' Wellbeing and Employability through Challenging Times

International students face many challenges when studying and living outside their home countries. These challenges are magnified when unexpected events occur such as COVID-19. Due to border closures, travel restrictions, quarantining and even job losses international students have particularly faced hardship in the first six months of the 2020 academic year in Australia. This paper reports on an arts-based research study that aimed to support international students to reflect on their studies and personal working lives during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors implemented a reflective process involving mindfulness and body mapping to support international students in expressing their experiences and feelings during this time. Results show that the international students gained a deeper understanding of what they experienced personally and how these experiences were both different and similar to their peers. The process enabled students to acknowledge and accept challenges faced as well as provided a safe avenue to do so. They reported the powerful nature of the arts-based methods in helping them think positively about their studies and future working lives

Encountering Berlant part 1: Concepts otherwise

In Part 1 of ‘Encountering Berlant’, we encounter the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. In 1000-word contributions, geographers and others stay with what Berlant's thought offers contemporary human geography. They amplify an encounter with their work, demonstrating how a concept, idea, or style disrupts something, opens up a new possibility, or simply invites thinking otherwise. The encounters range across the incredible body of work Berlant left us with, from the ‘national sentimentality’ trilogy through to recent work on negativity. Varying in form and tone, the encounters exemplify and enact the inexhaustible plenitude of Berlant's thought: fantasy, the case, love, impasse, feel tanks, slow death, ellipses, gesture, attrition, intimate public, ambivalence, style. Part 2 of ‘Encountering Berlant’ focuses on Berlant's most influential concept: ‘cruel optimism’. Across these heterogeneous encounters, Berlant's enduring concern with the tensions and possibilities of relationality and how to enact better forms of common life shine through. These enduring concerns and Berlant's commitment to the incoherence and overdetermination of phenomena are summarised in the Introduction, which also explores how Berlant's work has been engaged with in geography. The result is a repository of what an encounter with Berlant's thought makes possible

Encountering Berlant part 1: Concepts otherwise

In Part 1 of ‘Encountering Berlant’, we encounter the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. In 1000-word contributions, geographers and others stay with what Berlant's thought offers contemporary human geography. They amplify an encounter with their work, demonstrating how a concept, idea, or style disrupts something, opens up a new possibility, or simply invites thinking otherwise. The encounters range across the incredible body of work Berlant left us with, from the ‘national sentimentality’ trilogy through to recent work on negativity. Varying in form and tone, the encounters exemplify and enact the inexhaustible plenitude of Berlant's thought: fantasy, the case, love, impasse, feel tanks, slow death, ellipses, gesture, attrition, intimate public, ambivalence, style. Part 2 of ‘Encountering Berlant’ focuses on Berlant's most influential concept: ‘cruel optimism’. Across these heterogeneous encounters, Berlant's enduring concern with the tensions and possibilities of relationality and how to enact better forms of common life shine through. These enduring concerns and Berlant's commitment to the incoherence and overdetermination of phenomena are summarised in the Introduction, which also explores how Berlant's work has been engaged with in geography. The result is a repository of what an encounter with Berlant's thought makes possible

The enactment of drama in the Arts F-10 curriculum: connections and controversies

This abstract is currently under embargo

Arts-based reflection for care of self and others in the academy: a collaged rhizomatic journey

It is important for academics to perform with a high degree of self-awareness to strive to achieve a state of balance between their work and personal lives (Rendón, 2009). Nevertheless, working in the academy can be both challenging and rewarding as change can occur daily (Englund, 2018). In this competitive and demanding culture, academics can be particularly vulnerable when subjected to critical feedback, scrutiny from many sources on their performance and pressure for greater accountability. In compounding factors such as a struggle to find ongoing employment, unsuccessful funding applications, rejection letters from journal articles, this can result in significant amounts of stress and uncertainty, regardless of where academics are in their career journeys (Berg, Huijbens & Larsen, 2016; Edwards & Askanasy, 2018). The stress and uncertainty can lead to a decrease in performance, and in some cases, reduced physical and emotional health and well-being (Poalses & Bezuidenhout, 2018). We acknowledge that not all experiences in the academy are negative and unpleasant. However, in this context, we seek to reflect on how we engaged creatively to support our health and well-being by using reflective practice. We understand that through collaboration, listening and understanding, we can share our lived experience and move closer towards a kinder academy. To achieve this, we drew on three arts-based practices: storying, poetry, and the making of a collaborative artwork called “otherness” to map our journey in academy. We argue that through collaborative reflective practice, we can enhance “mindfulness, contemplation and feelings of stability in work and personal lives” (Beer et al., 2015, p. 162)

Visual versus verbal contents at the title pages of czech weekly magazines

The thesis is concerned in the relationship between the words and images. It tries to describe a several relevant approaches of semiothics and it concerns in the basis princip of the method of history of art, iconography. Both of this methodolical approaches then tries to put together and it shows their cohesion and indiscerptibility through the new term of semiography. This methodological approach is apply on the five chosen title pages of major czech magazines. The teoretical results and evan the results of empirical analyses try to be use in the discursus of visual culture/ visual studies. The new scientific platform for understanding images as an integral part of our everyday lives