Tackling Xenophobia through Dialogue: A Freirean Approach

The deadly violence associated with xenophobia has become a concern in South Africa, a country with historically high levels of violence. This article explores the role that peace education can play in mitigating such conflict. Using Paulo Freire’s theorisation of dialogue in education, it discusses a peace education intervention that developed participatory workshops to foster dialogue between South Africans and their neighbours of foreign origin soon after the second wave of violence in South Africa in 2015. The article discusses the curriculum and pedagogical intent of the workshops through a theoretical framing of dialogue, how participants and facilitators responded to such plans and what learning and action were generated from these workshops. The experiences of participants and facilitators reveal a preliminary stage of deepening understandings in terms of reviewing rigid us/them dichotomies and identities, and reviewing stereotypical understandings of causes of conflict. The final section offers some critical reflections on the workshop design and the role of such interventions in relation to goals of broader social change. Some recommendations for future workshops in light of the need for psychosocial support generated by the workshop process are offered.

Applying a framework to document and analyze the learning design intent with learning analytics in an online course

“ETEC 565A: Understanding Learning Analytics” was a new course offered in a Master of Educational Technology programme in UBC in January 2019. In order to support students exploring learning analytics in a more relevant way to them, the final project allows students to choose their own learning analytics adventure. This presentation will be a showcase and a reflection of learning from our final (group) project. Our group wanted to focus on learning design and learning analytics. There has been a lot of interests in learning analytics in higher education, it has been appearing in the EDUCAUSE’s Horizon report for many years as a technology to adopt. We also know that learning technologies should support the educational goals. Therefore, it is important for us to understand, how would one combine learning design with learning analytics. Our instructor guided to Lockyer, Heathcote and Dawson (2013)’s work. Their article presented “learning design as a form of documentation of pedagogical intent that can provide the context for making sense of diverse sets of analytic data” (p.1439). Lockyer et al (2013) explored using the checkpoint and process analytics as broad categories of learning analytics and how through this documentation of pedagogical intent and the related learning analytics that can be collected, could support pedagogical actions. Our instructor has given us permission to use our course as an example to apply Lockyer et al (2013)’s framework and conduct our analysis on the course. Our group also had access to some learning analytics data ourselves, through the “Threadz” tool for analysing our discussion forum activities. For all other types of data that we did not have access to, we made comments on what the data could be used for, and if it would provide enough information to assess if the pedagogical intent was met. Comments were also made about potential data that could have been better for informing pedagogical actions but were either not possible to get or too difficult and unpractical. In the presentation, I will share some backgrounds for the Lockyer et al (2013)’s framework for aligning learning analytics with learning design, how one could use the framework to document their own course design and identify potential learning analytics data sources or the lack of. As the framework provides teachers and designers a tool to think, plan and reflect with. I will discuss some of our group’s findings and reflections from the analysis of our own online course. Then discuss about potentials of using such framework on a more traditional face-to-face course. As institutions and courses collect more data about their students, it is useful to have a framework to help teachers think about how they might use the learning analytics data to support their students through examining and documenting their pedagogical intents. It is also important to note what the existing data can and cannot do to support pedagogical goals.

Learning analytics performance improvement design (LAPID) in higher education: Framework and concerns

Learning Analytics Dashboards (LAD) promise to disrupt the Higher Education (HE) teaching practice. Current LAD research portrays a near future of e-teaching, empowered with the ability to predict dropouts, to validate timely pedagogical interventions and to close the instructional design loop. These dashboards utilize machine learning, big data technologies, sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, and interactive visualization techniques. However, alongside with the desired impact, research is raising significant ethical concerns, context-specific limitations and difficulties to design multipurpose solutions. We revisit the practice of managing by the numbers and the theoretical origins of dashboards within management as a call to reevaluate the “datafication” of learning environments. More specifically, we highlight potential risks of using predictive dashboards as black boxes to instrumentalize and reduce learning and teaching to what we call “teaching by the numbers”. Instead, we suggest guidelines for teachers’ LAD design, that support the visual description of actual learning, based on teachers’ prescriptive pedagogical intent. We conclude with a new user-driven framework for future LAD research that supports a Learning Analytics Performance Improvement Design (LAPID).

Culture and the Psychology Curriculum

The pedagogical intent of this chapter is to provide teachers of psychology with foundational material necessary for any part of the psychology curriculum featuring culture as an important factor in shaping human thought and behavior. The authors present overviews of basic concepts, historical considerations, and theoretical and contemporary research perspectives, as well as a discussion of psychological dimensions such as individualism–collectivism, tight versus loose cultures, personality traits, social axioms, and human universals. The authors give attention to the concepts of absolutism, relativism, and universalism, and briefly describe cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, indigenous/ethnic psychology, and multiculturalism. The issue of cultural coverage in introductory psychology texts is included, as is an appendix describing numerous official global associations and organizations that are important resources for the kind of information that teachers of culture and psychology will find valuable in the classroom.

Visualizing constructive alignment in the process of course design

Course design in higher education is often approached in a very linear and text-based manner. The paper presents a visual tool in the form of a canvas aimed at accompanying teachers in the design of courses. The canvas can be used in an individual or co-teaching setting. It can be applied either during the conception phase of a new course or to revisit and reflect an existing course.The visual dimension departs from the usual text-based format and ambitions to offer a practical and intuitive approach. It aims at engaging teachers to adopt a prototyping approach in the design of courses. It builds on the various visual modeling tools offered in the fields of business and strategy.The proposed canvas is part of a broader project accompanying higher education teachers in the clarification of their pedagogical intent, in ensuring constructive alignment and in the adoption of a reflexive posture on their teaching experiences.

Roots/Routes of American Identity

Bicentennial events in Los Angeles spoke to black mayor Tom Bradley’s plan for shaping the city into a business-friendly, multicultural metropolis—a plan that would reach fruition in the next decade. This chapter looks at Wolper Productions’s principal role as architect of a patriotic culture of national commemoration. Without a cinematic record of early American history, the studio turned to “docudrama” as the solution to a narrative problem of documentary historiography. Combining the form and style of period fiction with the truth-telling charge of documentary, docudramas such as Sandburg’s Lincoln (1974) and I Will Fight No More Forever (1975) were a novel kind of prestige programming. Docudrama could command high ratings and claim the pedagogical intent of educating viewers. Wolper Productions made network series and specials on American Indians, African Americans, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political leaders, which culminated with the studio’s twelve-part miniseries Roots (1977).

An Instructor Learning Analytics Implementation Model

With the widespread use of learning analytics tools, there is a need to explore how these technologies can be used to enhance teaching and learning. Little research has been conducted on what human processes are necessary to facilitate meaningful adoption of learning analytics. The research problem is that there is a lack of evidence-based guidance on how instructors can effectively implement learning analytics to support students with the purpose of improving learning outcomes. The goal was to develop and validate a model to guide instructors in the implementation of learning analytics tools. Using design and development research methods, an implementation model was constructed and validated internally. Themes emerged falling into the categories of adoption and caution with six themes falling under adoption including: LA as evidence, reaching out, frequency, early identification/intervention, self-reflection, and align LA with pedagogical intent and three themes falling under the category of caution including: skepticism, fear of overdependence, and question of usefulness. The model should enhance instructors’ use of learning analytics by enabling them to better take advantage of available technologies to support teaching and learning in online and blended learning environments. Researchers can further validate the model by studying its usability (i.e., usefulness, effectiveness, efficiency, and learnability), as well as, how instructors’ use of this model to implement learning analytics in their courses affects retention, persistence, and performance.

Choral Repertoire as Pedagogy

The study includes 1) a discussion of historical choral repertoire that was conceived with a main or substantial pedagogical intent and 2) a discussion of repertoire and programming that can be of beneficial value to choruses. The first part of the study represents and explores choral genres such as Gregorian chant, the Lutheran chorale, and the Baroque oratorio (both sacred and secular). It then moves on to modern-era compositions with didactic purposes, including works to promote nationalism but also an antiwar message. The second part of the study addresses choral programming for a) choral development that relies on transfer of learning, b) recruitment and retention of singers and audiences, c) environmental customs and expectations, d) psychological management of time in regards to ontology and flow, and e) performance practices. In summary, repertoire that serves a pedagogical purpose has the opportunity to elevate the aesthetic value of the choral experience.

O currículo e o trabalho por meio de projetos: construindo alternativas pela prática investigativa - Curriculum and work in projects media: building alternatives for practice investigative

Neste artigo tem-se como objetivo apontar alternativas de reconstrução do currículo escolar por meio do trabalho com projetos. Vale salientar que o currículo se refere à organização do conhecimento escolar, sendo uma construção social do conhecimento, real, significativa, com intencionalidade político-pedagógica, aberto o suficiente para ser percebido como um processo, no qual as questões oriundas da relação ensino e aprendizagem possam dar-lhe um caráter dinâmico e transformador. Um instrumento relevante para reconstrução curricular são os denominados projetos de trabalhos, pois o ponto de partida do processo de construção do conhecimento é a prática social concreta e a realidade em que acontece.Palavras-chave: currículo, projetos de trabalho, conhecimento. CURRICULUM AND WORK IN PROJECTS MEDIA: BUILDING ALTERNATIVES FOR PRACTICE INVESTIGATIVEAbstractThis article same has the objective of pointing reconstruction alternatives of the school curriculum by working through projects. It is worth noting that the curriculum refers to the school knowledge organization, being a social construction of knowledge, real, significant, with political-pedagogical intent, open enough to be perceived as a process in which issues arising in the teaching / learning can give you a dynamic and transforming character. A relevant tool for curricular reconstruction is the so-called work projects, because the starting point of the knowledge construction process is the concrete social practice and reality where it happens.Key-words: curriculum, work projects, knowledge.