Subject marginalisation is an ongoing concern across the primary education sector, particularly for the arts and humanities. This poses issues for pre-service teacher partnerships and for higher education institutions (HEIs) evaluating the role of subjects within their teacher training courses as they reform their curricula to prepare students to teach across diverse educational contexts. Through the interpretation of student voice, we disseminate a case study with primary initial teacher education (ITE) students that investigates learner perceptions of their training in under-represented foundation subjects. Emerging themes include tensions between university and school-based practices, and between curriculum models, together with the need to develop student adaptability and self-direction. The authors propose that if ITE students explore and take on the dispositions of changemakers, they will become equipped with the self-efficacy and adaptability needed to develop secure bases for teaching foundation subjects as they begin their careers.
This paper presents data from two international projects focused on the interaction between changemaking and digital making in university students. The data is drawn from the contributions of 63 university students located in the United States, Romania, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and England. Using a design thinking methodology and a thematic analysis of student responses, the aim was to understand how the creative use of immersive technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, might create an environment for changemaking practices in an international context. Findings suggest that students demonstrated not only enhanced digital skills and student engagement but increased cultural competence and global mindfulness. International digital collaboration can create conditions for students to develop changemaker attributes and identify as changemakers within the spheres of entrepreneurship and education, preparing them to be a force for change in the world.
The Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Developing Changemakers (DLAB) project uses immersive technologies in education to explore three challenges across three years: physical, personal and environmental. This paper focuses on the first of these, bringing together the themes of digital making and changemaking to cross physical boundaries by raising awareness about physical inactivity in 11 and 12 year old school pupils. Immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality enabled the development of empathy and intercultural understanding among participants, fostered an understanding of changemaking, and created environments for sharing prototype exergames. Research data is analysed to seek evidence of the development of changemaker attributes and impact within a sample group of 60 English school pupils.
This reflective article is based on the experiences of two years of teacher training students from the University of Northampton and the Pedagogical University of Weingarten. This article looks more closely at the benefits that international exchange experiences have afforded the trainee teachers involved and how challenges to the process have been addressed. This reflection reveals the value of international exchanges in challenging perceptions and assumptions and how the thinking of the trainee teachers changed following the exchange. This study employs a qualitative approach drawing upon the reflections and experiences of the participants through written and spoken data. The findings reveal trainee teachers developed skills specific to teaching and in particular teaching languages, and they also demonstrated an increased awareness of non teaching specific skills such as problem solving and intercultural sensitivity. The reflections offer insight into how trainee teachers, use, interpret and subsequently act upon the experiences offered in an international exchange.
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