3rd Global Conference
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Friday 9th February - Sunday 11th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 6: From Philosophy to Action
Chair: Raelene Anderson
Engagement of Students with
Challenging Behaviours in a Specialist Unit
Laurelle
Bird
Nowra Public School,Program Teacher Suspension Unit, Nowra, NSW, Australia
Engaging
students with challenging behaviours is an issue that confronts educators
daily. Students who have entrenched behaviours that
result in suspension from school are often more difficult to engage. Over
the past four years, in the Shoalhaven area, a unit has been operating
that provides an alternative educational environment for students suspended
from primary school.
The unit provides an opportunity for students
from Kindergarten to Year 6 to develop strategies, through explicit
teaching, to modify their behaviour whilst in a small setting. Students
attend the unit for a minimum of four days and a maximum of 20 with
a limit of six students attending at any one time.
Students are
encouraged to acknowledge how their behaviours have led to their suspension. This
can be confronting for children. Staff
aim to promote an environment that is calm, respectful and positive. Students
are given clear instructions and consequences and also time to consider
their choices. In addition, the equipment used reinforces the
concepts taught and engages students.
Students need
to identify inappropriate behaviours and practice the skills they acquire
to modify these behaviours during their placement. This
enables them to transfer these skills to their home-school setting
and their life. This purposeful environment is safe and
structured. Students develop a heightened awareness of their behaviours,
how to manage these behaviours and how to prevent these behaviours
impeding their educational and social success in the future.
Using an
action research model, a reporting system that graphs behaviours observed
on a daily basis was developed and refined. The graph
allows the teacher to visually demonstrate the improvements or areas
where further modification is required. This is a useful tool
for motivating students and reporting to parents and schools. Once
motivated, students are more likely to engage in the process of change.
The aim being that the student self-monitor and self-manage their behaviours.
Not
all students will engage in this model but it appears that, for many,
the opportunities presented impact positively on every aspect of their
life.
Imagination, Thinking and Education: Dewey’s
Notion of Imagination and its Facilitation in the Philosophy for Children
Classroom
Jennifer
Bleazby
School of Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Australia
The
imagination has traditionally been thought of as the antithesis of
reason. While reason has been conceived of as an abstract,
objective, rule governed method of delivering us knowledge of reality;
imagination has been considered unconstrained, arbitrary, fanciful,
particular, and subjective. As such, education, which has traditionally
focused on the cultivation of reason and the accumulation of facts,
has devalued the imagination and encouraged children to transcend their
imaginative natures.
When the imagination has been considered
epistemologically and educationally important, it is has normally been
thought of as a distinct form of creative thinking that compliments
critical thinking. In this
paper I will draw on the work of John Dewey to argue that imagination
is not merely a distinct form of thinking, but is actually integral
to all thinking. Dewey describes thinking as the reconstruction
of problematic experiences. Problematic experiences evoke imagination,
because they compel us to imagine alternative possibilities, in which
a fragmented, incomplete situation is a reconstructed, coherent, meaningful
whole. We must also imagine means for realizing these alternative
possibilities. Without the capacity to imagine problematic situations
as other than they are, there would be no need for thinking because
there would be no need, or means, for reconstructing experience. This
notion of imagination is not purely subjective and severed from reality. It
actually enables us to interact with reality in a meaningful, transformative
manner.
I will then address how, in contrast to traditional pedagogies,
Philosophy for Children (P4C) facilitates this Deweyian ideal of imagination. P4C’s
classroom community of inquiry involves the imaginative construction
of alternative possibilitities as a means to reconstructing philosophical
problems. Importantly, P4C helps children imagine possibilities
that are useful for reconstructing problems, as opposed to merely encouraging
reverie. The communal nature of the classroom also facilitates
imagination by exposing children to the alternative perspectives of
others, which requires the use of the sympathetic imagination. Furthermore,
I will explore how the imaginary, as well as the fantastical, can help
children develop philosophical ability and understanding, especially
in logic, critical thinking, metaphysics and ethics. Finally
I will briefly address the importance of the teacher’s imagination.
Distinctively Public: Young People, Fire Offending
and the Creation of Citizenship in the UK
Andy
Ruddock
School of English,
Communication & Performance Studies, Monash
University, Australia
Within media & cultural studies, “creativity” is
a productively elastic term elucidating paths between audience research,
public policy and the framing of young people as citizens with rights
(as opposed to problems in need of control).
In the UK, youth-as-problem
narratives are constantly invoked in public discussions on anti-social
behaviour. In Merseyside, the local
Fire & Rescue Service is tasked with acting against youth fire
offending as a particular variety of ASB. This paper is based
on a study of the BEACON programme, a 12 week MFRS course emerging
from this imperative.
My argument is that BEACON hinges on creative
forms of self production. Interviewing young people who felt that the
course had helped them fulfil their potential, clear dynamics emerged
that reflected communication and framing themes. My study of
the project began from the assumption that mainstream media would be
central in forming ideas about fires and the fire service. This
hypothesis was rapidly dismissed. However,
media were implicated in a wider communicative project, where young
people combined a number of symbolic and communicative resources to
frame and project themselves as productive citizens; projections often
resting on conscious self critique.
The experience of BEACON students
therefore harnesses a number of issues in media studies, specifically
the need for expanded and grounded analyses of creative industries,
the interrogation of what “audience” and “public” mean
in an era of mobility, convergence and individuality, and the
question of how all of this leads to critical interventions into public
policy. BEACON signals two things; that symbolic creativity
occurs outside the creative industries, and that fractures in institutional
understanding of ASB creates spaces for scholarly participation in
public debates on “the youth problem”.