This paper argues that when young children are given an opportunity for their voice to be heard, they are competent communicators and social agents who can co-create cultural practices as theory makers. The paper draws on video recorded data from a small study that focussed on how young children (3-5 years) participated in an end-of-year cultural…

In an environment that encourages co-construction and participatory practices, and especially in an educational environment saturated with media and images in which children are considered to be valid and competent contributors to knowledge construction, children's visual literacy becomes increasingly important to the development of educational…

It is widely recognised that academic freedom is currently under threat. But there is also considerable dispute about the meaning of the term. In this paper I examine two recent and important accounts of the nature of academic freedom that seek to distinguish it clearly from free speech. Such a distinction is, in my view, essential. The aim of the…

My starting point for this paper is a problem in critical thinking pedagogy--the difficult of bringing students to a point where they are able, and motivated, critically to evaluate their own deeply held beliefs. I first interrogate the very idea of a deeply held belief, drawing upon Wittgenstein's idea of a framework belief--a belief that forms…

This paper explores the potential for using dream material and social dreaming in action research. Access to emotional dimensions of experience is increasingly recognised as an issue for action researchers, raising questions about how to enable such inquiry and how material from the imaginative sphere may be brought into socially constituted…

Contemporary educational theorists focus on the significance of Dewey's conception of experience, learning-by-doing and collateral learning. In this essay, I reexamine the chapters of Dewey's "Democracy and Education," that pertain to thinking and highlight their relationship to Dewey's "How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation…

The disciplines of counselling and psychotherapy have generated a range of innovative qualitative research methods. There is the potential for further developments, particularly in relation to methods that reveal how the researcher is implicated in the research. Practitioner-researchers could help to identify potential new methods through a…

As the field of leadership education continues to prioritize learning in leadership, it is important to ask the question: What do we know about the learning process itself? Conceptual change, a learning framework used in educational psychology, can help to explain learning in leadership. Research on conceptual change in the social sciences is…

In design studio, sketching or visual thinking is part of processes that assist students to achieve final design solutions. At Queensland University of Technology's (QUT's) First and Third Year industrial design studio classes we engage in a variety of teaching pedagogies from which we identify "Concept Bombs" as instrumental in the…

Learning is a continuous process, and through the process of learning, people acquire or construct new knowledge; this knowledge is evaluated implicitly or explicitly (Hofer, 2000). Research on beliefs about knowledge has become an important field of inquiry in educational research (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). This field of research has emerged…

The trustworthiness of a qualitative study can be increased by maintaining high credibility and objectivity. Of utmost importance to these factors is the reflexivity of the researcher. Standard journaling techniques are frequently used to maintain an audit trail and document tentative interpretations of a study. One of the major limitations to…

Undergraduate students are expected to find, evaluate, and use peer-reviewed or scholarly literature, but they rarely learn about the process of creating new knowledge or the roles the literature plays in the work of scholars. A desired outcome of undergraduate education is the understanding that knowledge is created, evolving, and contextual…

The scale and reach of the recent global financial has created a fresh wave of interest in exploring more sustainable forms of management. A central thrust behind this trend in the practice of management development and education has been the accentuation of reflexivity. There are many variations in how reflexivity is understood, and this article…

This paper describes research on the use of journals in a general education chemistry course for elementary education majors. In the journals, students describe their understanding of a topic, the development of that understanding, and how the topic connects to their lives. In the process, they are able to engage in reflection about several…

US administrators must meet the demands of accountability while maintaining a balance and the joy of learning in their schools. Accountability comes with the US laws No Child Left Behind (2002) and Title II Reauthorization (2002). Increased accountability has had a major impact in several other countries as well. This paper is largely conceptual…