Keynote Speakers
Title
Making Change Happen - the reform of initial teacher education in Wales
Professor John Furlong
OBE, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Oxford, UK
Speaker Bio
John Furlong, OBE is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College. From 2003 – 2009 he was head of the Department of Education at Oxford having previously held posts at Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea and Cambridge Universities. A former President of the British Educational Research Association, he was elected as an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2004. His current research interests centre on both teacher education and educational research policy and the links between them. He has been author of a number of government reports on teacher education over recent years - Wales (2007), Brunei (2008), the Republic of Ireland (2013) Northern Ireland (2014) and Wales (2015). He is currently an adviser to the Welsh Government on Initial Teacher Education and Chair of the Teacher Education Accreditation Board for Wales. In 2013-14 he was Chair of the BERA-RSA Inquiry into Research and Teacher Education. He was a member of the 2008 and 2014 RAE/REF sub-panels in Education in the UK and Convenor of the Education Panel for the Hong Kong RAE 2014. In 2015, his book ‘Education – an anatomy of the discipline’ was awarded first prize by the British Society for Educational Studies, for the best educational research of the year; his most recent book (edited with Geoff Whitty) ‘Knowledge and the Study of Education – an international exploration’ was published by Symposium Books in June 2017. John Furlong was awarded the OBE for services to research in education and advice to government in 2017.
Abstract
In her recent book, Marilyn Cochran-Smith makes an impassioned plea for an end to the performativity-driven forms of external accountability in initial teacher education (ITE) that now dominate the USA, England and Australia. Instead she pleads for a ‘democratic accountability’ that would allow local institutions to develop their own more explicit focus on key issues such as social justice in ways that would help to make change happen. But what would this actually look like in practice? Wales, perhaps, provides a case study that may help us to respond to that question.
In the last two years, Wales has seized on the opportunities provided by wider educational reform to radically change its ITE provision. The aim has been to ensure that universities and local school systems collaborate in partnership to provide the best learning opportunities for student teachers so as to embed changed practice.
A new accreditation procedure has been established which, in contrast to other countries, begins with a ‘vision’ for student teacher learning, recognising that learning to teach involves students drawing on a range of different forms of professional knowledge.
The vision is itself is based on nearly 40 years of research, research that has focused on three fundamental questions about the process of learning to teach:1. What forms of professional knowledge can only be learned in school – the importance of ‘embodied’ knowledge;
2. What forms of professional knowledge is Higher Education best placed to contribute – research, theory, knowledge of practice elsewhere;
3. How do we design programmes that ensure that ITE is rigorously practical and intellectually challenging at the same time?
In order to achieve the new vision, teacher educators in universities and schools are now required to work together to develop a much stronger role for schools in the planning, management and delivery of ITE, with a much stronger role for research and scholarship amongst all ‘front line’ teacher educators in both schools and universities. Universities have also been required to devolve significant funds to schools.
But will the new model work? Will it increase the ability of new teachers not only to understand but to address issues such as inequality in practice? This paper outlines the changes for ITE in Wales, the research underlying them and considers their likely impact.
Title
Educating the Singular Teacher
Professor Anne Phelan
Professor and co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Teacher Education
The University of British Columbia, Canada
Speaker Bio
Anne Phelan is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, and co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Teacher Education, at the University of British Columbia. She is also Honorary Professor in the Department of Policy and Leadership at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on the intellectual and political freedom of K-12 teachers and on the creation of teacher education programs and policies that support that end. Her work has explored (a) the relationship between language, subjectivity, and practice; and (b) the dynamic of judgment and responsibility; and (c) the paradoxes of autonomy (creativity and resistance) and obligation in teacher education and in professional life. Her books (authored, co-authored and co-edited) include: Reconceptualizing Teacher Education: A Canadian Contribution to a Global Challenge (University of Ottawa Press, 2020), The Power of Negative Thinking: Teacher Education and the Political (Routledge, 2017), Curriculum Theorizing and Teacher Education: Complicating Conjunctions (Routledge, 2015), and Critical Readings in Teacher Education: Provoking Absences (Sense Publishers 2008).
Abstract
Much research attests to the destructive inclinations imminent in educational institutions ordered by accumulation, productivity and competition. Harnessed to such ends, the teacher is indistinguishable from the existing socio-political order (i.e. teaching standards; evidence-based or ‘best’ practice) and its desired results (i.e. human capital, represented by the student achievement test scores, extracted in the interests of global capitalism). As such, educational policy relies on and operates through a politics of teacher identity that defines teachers exclusively in terms of effects. In this presentation I argue that the current politics of teacher identity has rendered the language of ‘profession’ and ‘professional education’ meaningless for teachers. Inspired by Max Weber’s (1919) lectures on vocations as ‘august noble endeavours’ and Wendy Brown’s (2017) more recent writing on ‘the vocation of the public university,’ I examine the implications of the revitalization of teaching as a vocation for teacher education. As an ethico-political response to the normative order, the idea of vocation provokes and sustains the teacher’s own singularity (irreplaceablity) as an ethical-political subject; it acknowledges the precarious possibilities of composing and recomposing a (teaching) self in the company of others; and it returns teachers to the importance of their assessment of what matters on the basis of an always inaccessible ‘good.’ I ask whether the language of vocation is enough to rescue teachers and teaching from the toxic forces of our times.
Title
Transgressing boundaries: Developing attitudes and actions for sustainable development
Dr. Gillian Kidman
Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia
Speaker Bio
Dr Gillian Kidman is an A/Professor of Science Education at Monash University, with a particular interest in inquiry-based processes, and the potential inquiry has for the integration of science with other disciplines for solving real world problems. She is currently working on the transdisciplinary nature of STEM inquiry. Gillian’s research, teaching and curriculum design is award winning at both the State and National levels, she is a Co-Editor for the journal International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, and she was a Writer and Senior Advisor of the Australian Curriculum: Science, and Australian Curriculum: Biology. Her specific contributions were in the Science Inquiry Skills strand of the curriculum.
Abstract
As the world faces potentially catastrophic environmental and health issues, we hear calls for Sustainability: the ability to maintain healthy environmental, social and economic systems in balance, indefinitely, on a global and local scale. To meet these calls, we need improved ways to integrate knowledge from all perspectives, and use it for a better world. We need collaboration between university, government and industry domains. Importantly, we also need improved educational practices to ensure we have informed citizens and a next generation of researchers with the ability to think and work in transdisciplinary teams. In this presentation, we will explore the nature of this improved Education for Sustainable Development. Consideration needs to be given to how we educate so that disciplinary boundaries are transgressed; so that we build on our existing knowledge, seek out new knowledge and skills, make connections between our prior knowledge and the challenges we encounter, and to learn from our experiences. Thus we need a transdisciplinary approach to education for sustainable development that is both an attitude and a form of action.
Title
The Theories and Practices for the 21C skills as the STEM/STEAM Models for the Japanese Contexts - Comparing to NGSS of the US contexts with the Evidences of Shizuoka STEM Academy
Prof. Kumano Yoshisuke
Professor of Science Education, Graduate School of Science & Technology (Ph.D. Program), Informatics Section and Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, Japan
Speaker Bio
Kumano Yoshisuke is the Professor of Science Education, Graduate School of Science & Technology (Ph.D. Program), Informatics Section, and Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, Japan. He got grants two times from Fulbright Programs as the Visiting Scholar, the University of Iowa in 2012 and, his Ph.D. Program in Science Education, the University of Iowa in 1989-1993. His Mentor was Prof. Robert E. Yager. Now, his major interests are on STEM Education Innovation in terms of researches and practices. He is conducting “Shizuoka STEM Academy” in the informal setting for about 50 students by the governmental grants (2019-2021). Now he is the President of East-Asian Association of Science Education and the Director for Japan Society for STEM Education.
Abstract
Almost all western countries including Asian countries has been interested in the next frameworks so-called, 21st century skills or competencies towards Society 5.0 (MEXT). It is so difficult to find those skills or competencies for the near future simply because we do not know what kinds of innovations in science & technologies are coming. However, we can develop skills or competencies which can elaborate an innovation in science & engineering. Implementation from my researches will go to the needs of Global collaborative researches on 21st century skills in STEM/STEAM education. We do not know what kinds of STEM literacy needed 50 years later, however, we can challenge to develop educational system and innovative STEM learning that can support new coming Society 5.0. Problem Based Learning or Project Based Learning will be the lessons model and group or individual inquiries or practices will be identified as the central learning at the informal and formal setting.
