Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching [Editors introduction]

Doctrina perpetua—translated variously as “forever learning” (Cryle, 1992, p. 27), “lifelong learning” and “lifelong education”—is the Latin motto of Central Queensland University (CQU), an Australian regional university with campuses in Central Queensland and the metropolitan and provincial cities of Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney and with centres in China, Fiji, Hong Kong and Singapore. During its early development the institution was small and regional; in many ways it was an institution at the margins of higher education. For only a third of its 40-year life has it been recognised as a university. However, the vision of both its founders and its continuing staff has been that of an institution that actively brokers change, promotes innovation and seeks to transform marginalisation— for students, for its community and for itself. Its short life on the edge of the universe of higher education has promoted a culture of innovation and an acceptance that change is a necessary and positive aspect of life on the edge. Embracing change, CQU has become a complex institution, a notion well expressed in a speech in August 1999 by former Vice-Chancellor Lauchlan Chipman on Visioning Our Future: I have often remarked that I do not see CQU as “the last university of the old millennium” but rather as “the first university of the new millennium”. One of our greatest strengths in making the transition is our relative immaturity as a university. The more mature a university, especially if it is successful, the less agile it is when it comes to the need to change. So far as the future of universities and change is concerned, my position is unequivocally Heraclitean: change is the only thing that is permanent. Applying to itself the motto “doctrina perpetua” over its short life, the agile University has become a “complex and diverse organisation” (Danaher, Harreveld, Luck & Nouwens, 2004, p. 13). This overview of CQU seeks to provide readers with a short description of the current state of the institution and the story of its development to provide a context for understanding the chapters that follow, and to assist readers to reflect on how these developments at CQU relate to higher education generally, and to the universities with which they are more familiar

Doctrina perpetua: an initiative to enhance teaching and learning at Central Queensland University

• Proposal for an edited book about evidence and research - based teaching and learning at CQU, with implications for other universities in Australia and overseas. • Proposed publisher is Post Pressed (http://www.postpressed.com.au). • Hopefully to go to press in December 2005

Futuring sustainable Australian teacher education through recent doctoral dissertations: a thematic analysis of alternative scenarios

Envisioning and enacting teacher education for sustainable futures require simultaneous attention to multiple influences and imperatives. One among several possible approaches to this task is to draw on alternative scenarios as recommended by futures researchers, thereby suggesting several different possible visions of teacher education and considering their likely impact on current policy-making and practice. This paper deploys scenarios of potential higher education futures in the United Kingdom (Blass, Jasman, & Shelley, 2010, in press) as a framework for addressing this research question: Which challenges and opportunities might shape the sustainability of Australian teacher education? In particular, the framework is employed to examine six recent doctoral dissertations supervised by the authors and dealing explicitly or implicitly with teacher education research issues, ranging from visual literacy and visual signifiers to students with learning difficulties and teaching for social justice. A thematic analysis elicits several opportunities and challenges attending the sustainability options for Australian teacher education generated by Blass et al.’s (2010, in press) scenarios. The paper presents the thematic analysis findings by clustering the opportunities and challenges around three key elements of contemporary theorising of sustainability: contexts, connections and capabilities (Holland, 2008; Lanzi, 2007). These elements are posited as robust conceptual resources for highlighting and interrogating sustainability options across multiple domains of educational experience and activity. They are also proposed as vital ingredients in the ongoing re-evaluation of Australian teacher education designed to ensure its sustainable futures and to maximise its effectiveness and relevance

Transitions in senior phase learning [Editorial]

Throughout the world, practices and policies of technical training, career and vocational education are enacted in many and different types of senior secondary schooling environments. Within these differences, there are many similarities (European Commission, 2006). There is much to be learned through sharing the stories of senior phase education and training reform, the relationships among people involved, and the ways in which young people’s resilience may be fostered during the critical transition period from school-to-work and life in a civil society. Reform is occurring at system levels as well as in curriculum planning and pedagogical practices. Relationships among young people, their teachers, parents/guardians and employers are as important as they ever were. The resilience of students, school staff and systems to cope with ever changing challenges to education and training in a globalised knowledge economy is to be celebrated and cherished. This edition of VOCAL examines the issue of transitions in the senior phase of learning, from initial education to the world of work

(Inter)national bilingual networking: maximising the educational potential of the Australian NBN

Problem Statement: The Australian National Broadband Network is being developed nationally, but debate continues about its likely take-­‐up. Its potential impact must be maximised, including the enhancement of bi-­ and multi-­lingualism. Research Questions: How can the NBN promote (inter)national bilingual networking and how can that networking enhance second language teaching and learning in Australia? Purpose of Study: The study seeks to develop a conceptual, policy and practice-­based framework for using the NBN to expand (inter)national bilingual networking programs in three areas of Australia. The framework is derived from the authors' research projects and scholarly literature related to bi- and multi-­lingualism and national policy about broadband provision. Research Methods: The paper presents a comparative, exploratory case study, with the three sites of NBN take-­up as contextualised cases. The study integrates multiple forms of data gathering, including policy and documentary interpretation, conceptual analysis, and empirical evidence from the authors' promotion of multi-­cultural and multi-­lingual networking among their doctoral students within and across their respective universities. Findings: The framework distilled from the case study presented here presents an evidence-­based and theoretically informed platform for the development of dynamic and sustainable bilingual networks with national and international dimensions. The authors acknowledge several potential challenges to the application of the framework that encapsulate broader economic, political, socio-­cultural and technical elements of the Australian educational landscape. Conclusions: The framework arising from the study is useful in articulating a scenario for future Australian schooling, teacher education and community networks related to bi-­ and multi-­lingualism. This is significant for Australia's social cohesion and for valuing diverse cultural expressions and experiences. It is also a timely identification of the capabilities needed to harness and sustain widely dispersed broadband technology

Navigating through distance teacher education: taking comparative bearings in Australia and China

This paper compares the approaches to course design and implementation for distance education students in two faculties of teacher education: one in an Australian regional university, the other in a Chinese metropolitan university. The comparison is predicated on the need for navigational tools to be deployed by staff members in both faculties to steer through the ‘sea’ of distance teacher education. The paper elaborates three fundamental influences on how those tools are selected and implemented: globalisation, de-differentiation and marketisation. The authors argue that international comparisons and research collaborations of this kind can facilitate effective navigation that promotes both student and staff satisfaction with distance teacher education. This is crucial if the professional and collegial agency of individuals and groups involved at all levels of distance teacher education is to receive the appropriate analytical recognition and political validation necessary for productive and mutually beneficial relationships between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ in this dynamic and sometimes turbulent ‘sea’

Curriculum connections: lessons from post-compulsory vocational education and training

Curriculum, as one of the three educational message systems (with pedagogy and assessment), can be understood as potentially complicit with disconnections and missed opportunities for creating connections in teaching and learning. This is particularly the case if the curriculum is removed from the lived experiences and situated aspirations of groups of learners. At the same time, curriculum can function as the vehicle for creating and sustaining meaningful connections in teaching and learning if it engages respectfully with those experiences and helps to fulfill those aspirations. This chapter explores curriculum’s capacity to create educational connections by interrogating a previously marginalized field of educational provision and research: post-compulsory vocational education and training, incorporating senior secondary schooling, Technical and Further Education Colleges and their non-Australian equivalents, and private providers. Framed by selected concepts from contemporary curriculum theorizing, the chapter draws on evidence presented in recent issues of VOCAL: The Australian Journal of Vocational Education and Training in Schools. Specifically, the authors argue that post-compulsory vocational education and training provide several examples of curriculum creating powerful connections for young adult learners that must be understood against the backdrop of broader socioeconomic trends enacted locally, nationally, and globally. More broadly, this field makes a distinctive and important contribution to wider research endeavours related to teaching and learning. Separately, curriculum and post-compulsory vocational education and training are both contested and politicized fields of scholarship, policy, and practice. This chapter examines these two fields in combination, in order to identify the opportunities for creating productive and sustainable connections in teaching and learning that they exhibit, as well as some of the obstacles to such a creation. In doing so, we also consider what those opportunities and obstacles might prognosticate for enabling and empowering curriculum connections more widely

Mapping and interrogating assessment practices

This is a report of a project to map current assessment practices and tasks in CQU’s undergraduate distance and online courses (Phase One); - to conduct a theoretically informed interrogation of those assessment practices and tasks, framed by CQU’s strategic documents and contemporary ‘best practice’ in the assessment of adult learning (Phase Two); - to provide participating academics with a practical and research-informed framework for their subsequent action in evaluating and refining their assessment practices and tasks (Phase Three); - to present a set of recommendations for linking those assessment practices and tasks to ACODE’s national benchmarking project of Australian universities’ distance and electronic learning programs (Phase Four)

Engaging pedagogies and facilitating pedagogues: communities of practice among novice online tutors and secondary vocational teachers at the forefront of systemic tensions and change

[Abstract]: Much contemporary teachers' work is located at the interface of complex systems of policy and provision. That interface is increasingly the site of broader discursive tensions as change is enacted, with profound implications for individual classes and courses. If pedagogies are to be engaging in such a context, teachers need to be simultaneously facilitators and facilitated. Yet often those teachers are at both the forefront and the frontline of educational change, without sufficient ammunition in their armoury as they battle to enhance students' learning outcomes and find meaning in their work. The paper illustrates this argument by reference to two cases of engaging pedagogies and facilitating pedagogues: graduate research students working as novice online tutors in a Masters management program; and experienced secondary teachers implementing new vocational education subjects for senior secondary students in schools in a Queensland regional community. Deploying the concept of communities of practice (Wenger, 2000; Yamagata-Lynch, 2000), the paper traces some of the professional and personal challenges experienced by both groups of educators, as well as their respective strategies for making the pedagogies engaging for their students. They gain from these communities the support that is often absent from the systems that employ them