“Complete, relevant, fairly sophisticated response to task”. This is how the first descriptor in the 70s band of the International Foundation Programme (IFP) marking criteria reads. But what do these words – to which we could add “criticality”, “thorough” “in-depth” “systematic” analysis – mean to my students on the IFP? Although we’d discussed some of this language in class – sometimes using this visual of Bloom’s taxonomy – I wanted to provide my IFP students with a toolkit they could use to go about doing analysis. (more…)
Month: January 2023
Co-Creation of a Blog with CALD Pre-sessional Students
I joined CALD’s Research and Publications Project with the idea of co-creating a blog post with Pre-Sessional 10-week students for publication on the CALD blog. I was originally interested in “students as agentic actors rather than objects of research” (Charteris, 2020), so I hoped that meetings with the students would suggest the topic of the blog post and provide pedagogical insights to research further. This research idea evolved through a blog post I had co-authored with PS6 students in 2021, as well as in discussions with Kevin Haines around contextualising the idea broadly within Students as Partners research, among other critical perspectives. (more…)
A sociomaterial analysis of a learning space
by Kerry Boakes
A sociomaterial perspective views a ‘learning space’ as consisting of a range of actors that shape educational practices which are material and social. ‘Space’ is a social construction, according to French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1991); it is a product and a process defined by the power distribution of its social context. Therefore, rather than a static container to be filled, a ‘learning space’ can be considered a ‘sociomaterial’ process that exists through the interconnectivity of human and non-human actors. It allows us to see these different actors not in isolation but in the way they interact with one another. Digital platforms are often seen as tools that we utilise for a particular outcome, but learning space theorists claim that what is happening is more complex (Lamb et al. 2021). (more…)