Thank you to Jo Lang, Program Director for the B.Ed at Brunswick, for being this month’s respondee to the regular Q&A post.
What are your teaching/research interests?
My teaching and research interests complement each other and are in the areas of teaching and learning; teacher professional learning; ICT and learning and teaching; curriculum development; and education for sustainability.
Website/online resource you regard as indispensable?
When I’m stuck and want to know something quickly I use the web definition sites such as ‘the free dictionary’ and I don’t know what I would do without google and wikipedia. For deeper investigations I can’t go by the capacities of the search tools (eg ‘Search it’ tool at RMIT) within the library online catalogues where I can search for e-journals as well as the printed copies of texts etc. These tools make it so much easier to research! I don’t know how we could live without them!
A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.
Golly! This is a hard one because I’m influenced by so many; but let’s try to nominate a few. John Dewey is amazing. When I read his stuff I can’t believe that it was written about a hundred years ago. His ideas about putting learning and the learner in the centre of education and teaching are just as fresh (and sometimes as radical!) as when he first penned his ideas. I love his work on curriculum development: “The Child and the Curriculum” (1902). The more I learn about learning and teaching I recognise the important role of the ‘social’ in learning and the work by Lev Vygotsky got me started on thinking about social learning with his “Mind in Society” but there are many others that have since influenced my thinking including the seminal works associated with communities of practice such as Lave & Wenger and other related work for example Lea & Nicoll’s “Distributed learning: Social and cultural approaches to practice” (2002). Jerome Bruner’s work has been very important to me as it has connected with what I see as I work with learners across the formal (and informal) educational sectors: that learners need to have the opportunities to make meaning of their learning if they are to engage in deep learning. More particularly, in teacher education I connect with the work of people like Virginia Richardson, Fred Korthagen, Mary Beattie, Tom Russell, Deborah Britzman, Judyth Sachs, John Loughran, Bill Ayers, Parker Palmer, Miriam Ben-Peretz, Anne Freese, Lee Shulman – you get the general idea, there’s heaps! They either inspire you to continue with the challenging work of teaching or they help with alternative ways of thinking about teaching and learning or both. I like Donald Schon’s seminal work on professional learning because he was one of the first to articulate the differences in the knowledge of the professions that relies on tacit knowledge grown from experience, often difficult to develop and manage, and raised the significance of the ‘reflective practitioner’ in developing expert professionals. A couple of key influences in the areas of education for sustainability include Stephen Sterling’s “Sustainable Education: Re-visioning Learning and Change” (2001) because it was the first time that I read someone making the same connection as I had about a ‘gap’ in environmental and sustainability education: we needed to put learning in the middle of education for sustainability. I also like the work of Roger Hart’s “Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care” (1997) because it really gets you thinking about how to meaningfully construct a learning environment that is actively enabling for young learners rather than resorting to tokenism or indoctrination when it comes to sustainability issues that are often contested, sensitive and/ or challenging. I could go on and on…but I suppose I might stop here.
Where do you do most of your teaching preparation/research?
When the work needs to get done I can work almost anywhere. I know I did some of my PhD data analysis in the waiting room while getting my car serviced! But for real thinking time and creative preparation time I really like my custom built study at home where I have large windows facing my garden and I’m surrounded by my shelves of glorious books, computer, printer, files, readings etc. When I’m in ‘the zone’ it’s pretty hard to get my attention!
How do you find out about newly published research?
I’m afraid it’s much more adhoc than it should be. I should be more disciplined and set aside time each fortnight to browse the latest journals etc for relevant research and add the details into my EndNote. However, this doesn’t happen. I sometimes gleam relevant research from some email alerts from publishing houses; other times it’s through reviews from the professional associations I belong; yet other times it’s from colleagues and their recommendations; sometimes it’s from looking at the reference lists from the submitted assessment tasks of students in my classes; and of course when I’m researching an area I come across new work.
Are professional networks important to your research/teaching? How?
Absolutely! I’m a member of a variety of professional associations that include my discipline areas (eg environmental education/ sustainability) and teaching and teacher education across schools and university sectors. These are important to keep abreast of the issues that are emerging and a place for activism for positive change when needed.
Describe your personal library.
I LOVE my books and my library! Its shelves are crammed (or should that be overflowing?!) with wonderful books and you can follow my passions and career growth and development through the books on those shelves. It seems I never have enough books – and I’ve often got an order coming from amazon.com!
Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?
Both! Each has their place in the sun. It’s a case of matching purpose/need with the right type of tool/information.
Something you’d like your students to know and understand about the Library?
To grow and nurture a habit of professional reading and enjoy the beauty of this habit! To help students understand how the library is a critical key to open the rich and wonderful worlds of knowledge that can support their (deeper) learning.
Favourite journal?
Another hard question! I have a few teaching journal favourites that include, for example: Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Curriculum Perspectives, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Innovative Higher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education.
Something you’d like to change about the Library?
Goodness! Not sure about this one because all the remodelling has been fantastic. It’s just so great to see how the re-visioning of RMIT’s libraries are encouraging different ways of learning. Students are working and researching both individually and in small groups. Maybe a corner of ‘bean bags’ may provide another way to nurture the habit of reading for pleasure?
What are you reading right now?
I usually have a bundle of books by the bedside that I dip into and out of. At present I’ve gone back to some fiction as it’s Summer time. I’ve just finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel and now I’ve started on A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. And I’m continuing to read Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria. On the Teacher Education side of things I’m reading a couple of things: Our Underachieving Colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more (2006) by Derek Bok (published by Princeton University Press) and dipping into The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences (2006) edited by R. Keith Sawyer (published by Cambridge University Press).
