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Keywords and Documents

Using Concept Maps Concept maps provide a graphic representation of organised knowledge domains and have been used widely in curriculum design and teaching

Deep and Surface Metaphors Metaphors arising out of blogging practice offer a much-needed alternative to the popular deep/surface “approaches to learning model”.

Constructionism – a reformulation of Piaget’s constructivism – developed by Papert and his colleagues at MIT’s Media Lab, highlights the personalised production of “knowledge artefacts” as well as the social nature of the learning process.

Research-led teaching in journalism education

Research-led teaching can be understood in a range of different ways. the Sydney University Research-Led Teaching Project website provides an extensive range of resources which help to explicate this idea.

In their analysis of the domains of research-led teaching they point to the consequences of the different underlying assumptions which might inform such project:.

External versus Internal views of research

So, for example, an academic who has a conception of research focused on the external environment (Brew 2001) may view research-led teaching as involving students in a range of social activities mirroring research conferences, journal publication, presenting posters, engaging in teamwork and networking. Someone who has a conception of research focused internally on the analysis of data to develop an understanding, may see research-led teaching more as a process of engaging students in courses on methodology, interpretation of data etc. (SU: Domains of research-led teaching)

Information processing versus conceptual change

Research-led teaching will be viewed differently where an academic has what Prosser and Trigwell (1999) call an ‘information transmission teacher focused’ approach to teaching and when they have a ‘conceptual change student focused’ approach. An information transmission approach may result in a view of research-led teaching as the process of telling students about the academic’s research, for example, in lectures, perhaps using anecdotes from laboratory experiences, while a conceptual change approach is more likely to lead to engaging students in research in some way. (SU: Domains of research-led teaching)

Objective knowledge versus negotiated knowledge

How the academic conceptualises knowledge is also likely to affect their understanding of research-led teaching. So for example, Gibbons et al’s (1994) conceptions of ‘Mode 1’ and ‘Mode 2’ knowledge production are likely to translate into different conceptions of research-led teaching; the former focused on courses as consisting of objective knowledge viewed as separate from knowers, i.e. an Enlightenment conception of knowledge which describes a pre-existent reality (Mourad 1997), the latter on communication and negotiation with knowledge viewed as created as much outside universities as within. The teaching which is likely to result from these different conceptions of knowledge is very different. (SU: Domains of research-led teaching)

I am currently involved in a collaborative research-led teaching project with Chris Nash and Theo van Leeuwen. It arose out of Chris Nash and my continuing attempts to improve Journalism Studies and Professional Practice and Culture. It began as a way of modeling approaches to research for students in Journalism Studies, who are expected to complete a major case study assignment which links theoretical material with empirical data.

We took a body of articles that had run in the Australian by Luke Slattery on educational reform, particularly controversy over "critical literacy" and postmodernism in educational curriculum. Nash, van Leeuwan and myself each adopted a different theoretical perspective for our analysis of these articles:

Chris Nash looked at source relations and used Bourdieu's field theory to look at the underlying relationships that had given birth to these stories.

Theo van Leeuwen dissected one piece using critical discourse analysis to show the linguistic structuring of the arguments.

Marcus O'Donnell looked at the stories as narratives which were given power by reference to powerful social myths such as the myth of the child.

This was received well as a demonstration project and students noted that it assisted them in coming to terms with the possibilities and practicalities of their research projects.

Nash, van Leeuwen and I are now further developing our presentations with a view to publication as individual articles and a joint article about what the different approaches say about methodological issues in journalism studies.

We will develop and repeat the project with a special emphasis on professional issues for the 2006 delivery of Professional Practice and Culture.

 

 

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