Recently, the National Academy of Education released a report, edited by Lee, White and Dong, entitled Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse. Naturally, it falls within my areas of interest, although the phrasing of civic reasoning and discourse, as opposed to something like active citizenship education, is a term that I don’t personally use, for…
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Face to face again
So I recently attended the launch of a part of UTS’s RESHUB program, which is all about encouraging research excellence and providing support. It was a great event – the focus of this particular one was all about creativity and how that might find expression in research – and there was a focus on art…
Civic and Media Literacy
I recently came across this article by Gianfranco Polizzi and Marina Cino Pagliarello which beings by describing the current state of media literacy and citizenship education in the United Kingdom, before calling for the inclusion of more media literacy content and material within the compulsory citizenship syllabus. It’s a good article, and, while the UK…
Review of the Australian Curriculum
So, the next version of the Australian Curriculum is currently out for public review. I will be contributing to a variety of submissions in a number of guises, but I also wanted to document my thoughts here, specifically as they related to Civics and Citizenship. I’ll start by beating my usual drum about the place…
Trains, (no) planes & automobiles
I was recently invited by the Teacher Learning Network to give a presentation as part of their professional development program. They are based in Melbourne, so the plan was for me to do it via Zoom. No problem. I feel like I live half my life on Zoom at the moment. Michael, the director there,…
Educ8 and Clubhouse
Recently, I had the chance to take part in the Educ8 conference, which was a 24 hour (or longer!) event across multiple time zones, hosted entirely on Clubhouse, the new audio only social media app. I was invited by Mark Parry, a fellow Learning Designer, to work with him to contribute to a session all…
Is Citizenship the wrong term?
Careful readers of educational policy, and especially those with an interest in Civics and Citizenship Education will have noted that the recent version of the Australian Goals for Schooling – the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration – has a number of significant changes from its predecessor, the Melbourne Declaration. One of the most overlooked, as far…
Feedback and Feedforward
Learning Design: Feedback and Feedforward I’ve been teaching a class about Assessment and Evaluation as part of the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design at the moment. It’s the first time I’ve taught the subject since I designed it, and 4 weeks in, I’m reasonably pleased with how it’s going. We recently did a session all…
Citizenship and Power
I was recently asked to provide some feedback about a program that had been developed to encourage active citizenship amongst young people in one of Australia’s state. It was an interesting experience, and afforded me the chance to reflect just how far I have come as an expert – and an opinionated one, too –…
Supervising HDR Students
This year I’ve been supervising a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) student for the first time. This feels a bit strange, considering that I’m only a few years out of completing my own PhD, but I imagine that’s common for students. And, of course, at least I have the benefit of drawing on my own…