Currently completing a Diploma of Teaching ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) through the Autism Teaching Institute. I post my teaching videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDeO4H9GI-YWCrE12SkqgcA and my some of my teaching content here: http://www.slideshare.net/skolber
It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Aust... more It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Australia as ‘in crisis’. The consequences of pandemic policy have provided opportunities for groups to exploit the cascading crises facing teachers. We argue the online political ecosystem recognises teachers as a trope useful for retaining or gaining power. Astroturfing is the process by which political actors seek to present policy platforms emerging in an organic way from ‘the people’. We detail how teachers were targeted as political leverage, within political frames that centred vaccinated teachers. We examine theTeachers’ Professional Association of Australia (TPAA), an example of an astroturfed member group. Using a qualitative approach to digital sociology we analysed the strategies used by the TPAA to manufacture a crisis associated with teacher vaccinations and answer this research question: in what ways was digital astroturfing present in the TPAA campaign against mandatory vaccinations? We find sufficient evidence to indicate that astroturfing did occur, and was employed by the TPAA in an effort to weaken traditional union movements in Australia producing a form of union uberfication. Such a development poses an existential risk to existing teacher associations and trade unions and more broadly to the health of democracies.
The Australian Curriculum, and therefore the Australian education system, continues to be a site ... more The Australian Curriculum, and therefore the Australian education system, continues to be a site of contestation and review. The Australian Curriculum has become dominated by third parties playing knowledge games with the document to win elections. This paper draws on ongoing research into political knowledge games in educational policy making in the ongoing debates about History and Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) in the Australian Curriculum. The actions are undertaken by various politicians via an analysis of social media activity. The findings indicate that the development of curriculum, which is something that should be undertaken via a democratic process that privileges community engagement and majority influence, is at risk of being subverted by these actors through ideology-borrowing, laundering and acquisition. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what teachers and traditional advocacy groups should be concerned with in an age where curriculum is determined by social media.
This study sought to examine the relationships between school facilities, school resources and te... more This study sought to examine the relationships between school facilities, school resources and teacher career intentions. The hypothesis of this study is that teachers are affected by their teaching context, as manifested through the facilities and resources that they have available to them. It is hypothesised that this effect of the teaching context impacts upon teachers’ enjoyment, motivation, and satisfaction, of and for teaching. Further, it is predicted that this impact upon enjoyment, motivation and satisfaction will ultimately impact upon teachers’ career intentions, and likelihood of remaining at their current school, and more widely, within the teaching profession. The key research question the study addressed was: ‘What is the relationship between teacher career intentions and teaching resources and facilities?’ In addition, a series of sub-questions were imbedded in the research. The first sub-question was ‘What facilities do teachers most value in respect to their ability to teach effectively?’ The second was ‘What resources do teachers most value to allow them to teach effectively?’ The third was ‘What is the connection between teaching experience and self-reported likelihood of teacher movement?’ This study found that teachers’ intentions were affected by their resources and facilities, with resources being more impactful than facilities. It also suggest that teachers have different perceptions of the resources and facilities at their school, depending upon their intentions to move schools or leave the profession.
PurposeThis paper explores the features of pracademic practice within online spaces where pracade... more PurposeThis paper explores the features of pracademic practice within online spaces where pracademics, academics and teachers interact.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses autoethnographic case studies to showcase the boundary-spanning thinking of two pracademics, one a practicing teacher, the other an early career researcher, to provide an overview of how pracademics are engaging with research and the profession online in Australia, in 2021.FindingsThe paper describes five key features that are central to the development of pracademic practice. They are rigour and depth, discussion beyond immediate cultural context, accessibility, knowledge creation and collaboration.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is focused on the teacher and early career researcher perspectives on pracademia, due to the extant literature focusing on the well-established academic perspective primarily. It focuses on fora within the Twitter social media platform and the #edureading group specific...
Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but n... more Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but now I am a teacher. Thinking about it, it is hard not to see this fact as a massive downer. As a university student I was the strange person you rarely see, walking quickly with my head down reading a paperback. With the great deal of time spent on public transport, waiting for lectures and more importantly being in boring lectures allows a lot of time reading. This was my very own golden age of reading. Whilst reading young adult fiction I once read seven or eight books a day. Since taking a job as a teacher I still look back with a great deal of fondness about this time. The fact that teaching takes a lot of a person's time, might be something you have heard about before, so I will not waste time on this topic. I am more interested in different ways that this can be addressed and overcome. So, in no particular order, here are some solutions I have found to help.
Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but n... more Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but now I am a teacher. Thinking about it, it is hard not to see this fact as a massive downer. As a university student I was the strange person you rarely see, walking quickly with my head down reading a paperback. With the great deal of time spent on public transport, waiting for lectures and more importantly being in boring lectures allows a lot of time reading. This was my very own golden age of reading. Whilst reading young adult fiction I once read seven or eight books a day. Since taking a job as a teacher I still look back with a great deal of fondness about this time. The fact that teaching takes a lot of a person's time, might be something you have heard about before, so I will not waste time on this topic. I am more interested in different ways that this can be addressed and overcome. So, in no particular order, here are some solutions I have found to help.
This paper shares insights from an international community of educators who have been using socia... more This paper shares insights from an international community of educators who have been using social media as a virtual space for a scholarly reading group: #edureading. The collection of educator narratives presented in this paper show how social networks on Twitter and Flipgrid were used as inclusive environments for teacher-led professional development. This paper is both a report of research involving five practitioners inquiring into their collective experience, and an exercise in building the scholarly capacity of the #edureading group. The accessibility of the social media platforms, as well as the collaborative, inquiry-based approach to scholarly reading, emerge as key themes in the educator narratives. The findings of this research emphasise that professional learning occurring in virtual spaces is open to social mediation using the norms of social networks, rather than the norms of workplaces, jurisdictions or education sectors, and that this can lead to a greater sense of ...
It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Aust... more It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Australia as ‘in crisis’. The consequences of pandemic policy have provided opportunities for groups to exploit the cascading crises facing teachers. We argue the online political ecosystem recognises teachers as a trope useful for retaining or gaining power. Astroturfing is the process by which political actors seek to present policy platforms emerging in an organic way from ‘the people’. We detail how teachers were targeted as political leverage, within political frames that centred vaccinated teachers. We examine theTeachers’ Professional Association of Australia (TPAA), an example of an astroturfed member group. Using a qualitative approach to digital sociology we analysed the strategies used by the TPAA to manufacture a crisis associated with teacher vaccinations and answer this research question: in what ways was digital astroturfing present in the TPAA campaign against mandatory vaccinations? We find sufficient evidence to indicate that astroturfing did occur, and was employed by the TPAA in an effort to weaken traditional union movements in Australia producing a form of union uberfication. Such a development poses an existential risk to existing teacher associations and trade unions and more broadly to the health of democracies.
The Australian Curriculum, and therefore the Australian education system, continues to be a site ... more The Australian Curriculum, and therefore the Australian education system, continues to be a site of contestation and review. The Australian Curriculum has become dominated by third parties playing knowledge games with the document to win elections. This paper draws on ongoing research into political knowledge games in educational policy making in the ongoing debates about History and Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) in the Australian Curriculum. The actions are undertaken by various politicians via an analysis of social media activity. The findings indicate that the development of curriculum, which is something that should be undertaken via a democratic process that privileges community engagement and majority influence, is at risk of being subverted by these actors through ideology-borrowing, laundering and acquisition. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what teachers and traditional advocacy groups should be concerned with in an age where curriculum is determined by social media.
This study sought to examine the relationships between school facilities, school resources and te... more This study sought to examine the relationships between school facilities, school resources and teacher career intentions. The hypothesis of this study is that teachers are affected by their teaching context, as manifested through the facilities and resources that they have available to them. It is hypothesised that this effect of the teaching context impacts upon teachers’ enjoyment, motivation, and satisfaction, of and for teaching. Further, it is predicted that this impact upon enjoyment, motivation and satisfaction will ultimately impact upon teachers’ career intentions, and likelihood of remaining at their current school, and more widely, within the teaching profession. The key research question the study addressed was: ‘What is the relationship between teacher career intentions and teaching resources and facilities?’ In addition, a series of sub-questions were imbedded in the research. The first sub-question was ‘What facilities do teachers most value in respect to their ability to teach effectively?’ The second was ‘What resources do teachers most value to allow them to teach effectively?’ The third was ‘What is the connection between teaching experience and self-reported likelihood of teacher movement?’ This study found that teachers’ intentions were affected by their resources and facilities, with resources being more impactful than facilities. It also suggest that teachers have different perceptions of the resources and facilities at their school, depending upon their intentions to move schools or leave the profession.
PurposeThis paper explores the features of pracademic practice within online spaces where pracade... more PurposeThis paper explores the features of pracademic practice within online spaces where pracademics, academics and teachers interact.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses autoethnographic case studies to showcase the boundary-spanning thinking of two pracademics, one a practicing teacher, the other an early career researcher, to provide an overview of how pracademics are engaging with research and the profession online in Australia, in 2021.FindingsThe paper describes five key features that are central to the development of pracademic practice. They are rigour and depth, discussion beyond immediate cultural context, accessibility, knowledge creation and collaboration.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is focused on the teacher and early career researcher perspectives on pracademia, due to the extant literature focusing on the well-established academic perspective primarily. It focuses on fora within the Twitter social media platform and the #edureading group specific...
Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but n... more Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but now I am a teacher. Thinking about it, it is hard not to see this fact as a massive downer. As a university student I was the strange person you rarely see, walking quickly with my head down reading a paperback. With the great deal of time spent on public transport, waiting for lectures and more importantly being in boring lectures allows a lot of time reading. This was my very own golden age of reading. Whilst reading young adult fiction I once read seven or eight books a day. Since taking a job as a teacher I still look back with a great deal of fondness about this time. The fact that teaching takes a lot of a person's time, might be something you have heard about before, so I will not waste time on this topic. I am more interested in different ways that this can be addressed and overcome. So, in no particular order, here are some solutions I have found to help.
Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but n... more Here is my thinking on myself as a reader and writer. To be honest, in the past I was both, but now I am a teacher. Thinking about it, it is hard not to see this fact as a massive downer. As a university student I was the strange person you rarely see, walking quickly with my head down reading a paperback. With the great deal of time spent on public transport, waiting for lectures and more importantly being in boring lectures allows a lot of time reading. This was my very own golden age of reading. Whilst reading young adult fiction I once read seven or eight books a day. Since taking a job as a teacher I still look back with a great deal of fondness about this time. The fact that teaching takes a lot of a person's time, might be something you have heard about before, so I will not waste time on this topic. I am more interested in different ways that this can be addressed and overcome. So, in no particular order, here are some solutions I have found to help.
This paper shares insights from an international community of educators who have been using socia... more This paper shares insights from an international community of educators who have been using social media as a virtual space for a scholarly reading group: #edureading. The collection of educator narratives presented in this paper show how social networks on Twitter and Flipgrid were used as inclusive environments for teacher-led professional development. This paper is both a report of research involving five practitioners inquiring into their collective experience, and an exercise in building the scholarly capacity of the #edureading group. The accessibility of the social media platforms, as well as the collaborative, inquiry-based approach to scholarly reading, emerge as key themes in the educator narratives. The findings of this research emphasise that professional learning occurring in virtual spaces is open to social mediation using the norms of social networks, rather than the norms of workplaces, jurisdictions or education sectors, and that this can lead to a greater sense of ...
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