Even though classroom discussion is considered an essential element of citizenship education, research indicates that pre-vocational students have fewer opportunities to practice with these discussions than their pre-academic peers. To provide more insight into pre-vocational teaching strategies to facilitate citizenship-related classroom discussions that allow for variation in familiarity with discussion, we analyzed observations of plenary discussion moments during 26 lessons at three Dutch secondary schools. Classrooms less familiar with discussion seem to benefit from a focus on structural aspects of discussion and avoiding strict content regulation, whereas classrooms more familiar with discussion profit from reflection on both process and content.
Good practice contribution to the article "Leveraging Technology and the International Classroom for Cross-Cultural Learning" by Jane Edwards and Hanneke Teekens.
Many studies have suggested that personal practical knowledge is essential for professional development. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the importance of teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge of ‘language’ for student learning development. However, the need for teacher educators to first understand their own language-oriented development in content-based classroom interaction has not received as much emphasis. The current intervention study investigates how eleven experienced teacher educators understand their language-oriented development through the control of task difficulty, small-group instruction and directed response questioning. Data were examined by conducting content and constant comparison analyses. The results showed that the intervention affected the educators’ language-oriented development, which in turn affected their awareness and decisions made to improve their methods of initiation and response during classroom interaction. The results call for more concrete ways to expend teacher educators’ practical knowledge of language to further develop and enhance their language-oriented teaching performance in content-based classroom interaction.
The project Decolonising Education: from Teachers to Leading Learners (DETeLL) aims to develop a multi-site approach for interventions towards inclusion and decolonisation in order to change the hierarchical nature of higher education in the Netherlands. DETeLL identifies the model of the ‘traditional teacher’ as embodying the structural exclusions and discriminations built into the classroom and proposes the figure of a ‘Leading Learner’ as a first step towards a radical change in the educational system. In collaboration with the education departments in the Theatre and Dance Academy at ArtEZ, the post-doc will build up a research and teaching programme that engages with students and teachers in the faculty to create a prototype of an inclusive and diverse educational practice. RELEVANCE: Education should be the critical space in which changes occur in order to shape best possible futures. In DETeLL’s acceptation, decolonisation refers to a complete change in the way of thinking and behaving. It does not refer only to the urgency of dealing with historical colonial legacies embedded in society, but also to the subversion of the deeply oppressive colonial culture that (also unconsciously) regulates public and private living, whether this is related to gender, race, class or sexuality issues. RESULTS: 1) Create a theory and practice-based scientific base-line of decolonisation and art education; 2) Provide a definition of ‘Artist educator as Leading Learner’ following a practice- based methodology of intervention; 3) Design and Pilot a new teaching programme for theatre education at ArtEZ to be then upscaled to all educational departments in a follow-up project); 4) Produce a strong interdisciplinary and international output plan: 3 academic publications, 2 conferences, 4 expert group workshops. NETWORK: ArtEZ; University of Amsterdam (UvA); Ghent University; UCHRI; Hildesheim University; Cape Town University. The partners will serve as steering committee through planned expert group meetings.
