Warren Midgley

• PhD
• Head of Department at University of Southern Queensland

Though universities are eager to leverage the potential of mobile learning to provide learning flexibly, most balk at the cost of providing students with mobile hardware. The practice of ‘bring your own device'(BYOD) is often mooted as a cost-effective alternative. This paper provides a snapshot of student ownership of mobile devices at a regional...

This chapter entails a consideration of the philosophical dimensions of career assessment as an act of social construction. As a philosophical chapter that necessarily renders our own values in this text, we declare our endorsement of social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen & Davis, 1985) and the Systems Theory Framework of career d...

INTRODUCTION This chapter entails a consideration of the philosophical dimensions of career assessment as an act of social construction. As a philosophical chapter that necessarily renders our own values in this text, we declare our endorsement of social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen & Davis, 1985) and the Systems Theory Framewor...

Mobile learning is viewed by many institutional leaders as the solution for a student cohort that is demanding an increasingly flexibility in study options. These students are fitting study around other aspects of their lives including work and caring responsibilities, or they are studying at a geographical location far removed from the university...

In this chapter, we begin with an overview of concepts that relates to the theoretical notion career adaptability (Savickas, 2005). Next we raise concerns about conflation of terminology and concepts. We subsequently present a semantic and pragmatic analysis of career adaptability in order to demonstrate its similarities and differences to social c...

Mobile learning is viewed by many institutional leaders as the solution for a student cohort that is demanding an increasing flexibility in study options. These students are fitting study around other aspects of their lives including work and caring responsibilities, or they are studying at a geographical location far removed from the university ca...

Mobile learning has the potential to expand access to education in developing countries. Little is known about the preferences of students in some Asian countries such as Vietnam. Some of these countries have restricted internet access and may be subject to internet censorship. A study was conducted with forty-four Masters students in Vietnam to id...

Education research ethics, as a subsection of social science research ethics, is a relatively new field of investigation, beginning to take shape around the middle of the 20th century (Kitchener & Kitchener, 2009). Since that time, a number of publications have sought to grapple with the complex issues surrounding the ethics of education research.

Echoes: Ethics and Issues of Voice in Education breaks new ground in the field of education research ethics, by examining different perspectives on the role, influence and importance of voice. Drawing on a variety of philosophical and paradigmatic approaches, Echoes: Ethics and Issues of Voice in Education examines how and the different ways in whi...

Contemporary Capacity-Building in Educational Contexts extends current understandings of what capacities and capacity-building are and of the dimensions that maximise their prospects of success in current educational policy-making and provision. It does this by exploring how capacity-building is implemented among nine groups of research participant...

Educational Learning and Development: Building and Enhancing Capacity explores the topic of educational learning and development in order to examine issues that are impacting, either positively or negatively, on current research in this area. This is explored through ten groups of research participants from various countries, including circus famil...

In a knowledge economy, formal processes of education have long been equated with power. However, learners’ lifelong and lifewide learning increasingly occurs within the context of transnational and distributed knowledge-as-power. This chapter engages with three sets of data in its exploration of how learning may be both personal and agentic. It ca...

Remote Access Laboratories are been used for practical learning activities in engineering education in the universities worldwide. Usually these systems follow a centralised client-server paradigm. This work proposes a peer-to-peer remote access laboratory architecture where participants are both users of experiments as well as makers. The feasibil...

Professional learning and development hold potential for transformational growth and change for educators, and for enhancing their capacities to build the capabilities of learners. Realising this potential requires an appreciation of the philosophies, theories and practices surrounding professional learning and development and how these may progres...

In a knowledge economy, formal processes of education have long been equated with power. However, learners’ lifelong and lifewide learning increasingly occurs within the context of transnational and distributed knowledge-as-power. This chapter engages with three sets of data in its exploration of how learning may be both personal and agentic. It ca...

Contemporary capacity-building assumes varied forms and generates varying degrees of effect and effectiveness. It is therefore useful and important to articulate a scholarly programme for researching capacity-building in its multiple manifestations. This chapter outlines that scholarly programme in three dimensions. Firstly, a concise account is pr...

This chapter explores the relationship between consciousness and capacity-building in current educational settings. In particular, it elaborates the distinctive associations between varying levels and states of consciousness on the one hand and the potential to enhance individual and group learning and teaching capabilities on the other. The author...

Contemporary scholarship should equip practitioners, policy-makers and researchers with ideas and insights to be able to identify new and potentially transformative educational futures that enhance capacity-building and share the fruits of that capacity-building as widely as possible. This chapter takes up that challenge by using a synthesised anal...

Resilience is generally considered to be a capacity to act and adapt in the face of adversity or constraint, and is the result of a complex interplay of risk and protective factors. Initially focused on the individual, the resilience concept and research have extended to groups such as teams and communities. In this chapter, we examine conceptualis...

Residents in regional and rural communities remain distant from many of the affordances and opportunities associated with urban centres of population. Conversely, regional and rural residents have been characterised as being particularly resilient owing to having to adapt to changing circumstances. Against this backdrop, it is crucial for those res...

The multiple forms of capital represent a powerful framework for understanding certain approaches to capacity-building. This chapter explores how particular groups of learners and educators exhibit specific forms of capital and how the participants in the associated research projects gain access to and mobilise those forms of capital to generate ce...

The multiple theoretical understandings related to the concepts of diversity and identity provide useful frameworks for exploring capacity-building in a range of complex and, at times, highly contested contexts. This chapter explores how participants in a number of education research studies make sense of diversity and identity as they seek to buil...

Effective knowledge sharing is crucial to the long-term capacity-building of learners, in order to ensure the sustainability of individuals, teams and communities. This chapter explores three sites of knowledge sharing practices: circuses in the Netherlands; an Australian senior secondary art classroom; and an Australian university education resear...

Fostering capacities by encouraging creativity is a critical role undertaken by educators in a diverse range of learning contexts. Creativity is seen to be an essential skill for twenty-first-century living and enhances the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Documentation of creative learning provides important insights into the potentia...

The concluding chapter of this book challenges the reader to engage with the ‘hot topics’ and ‘wicked problems’ presented throughout the chapters on the topic of educational learning and development and the potential for capacity-building for both educators and learners. The new perspectives generated by interrogation of this topic enable the reade...

Collaboration is often promoted as an important strategy to enhance capacity-building. In the education sector it draws upon long-standing practices of social constructivist learning and teaching, which value working and learning from others. This chapter examines the collaborative process through the shared experiences of individuals and groups in...

Leadership can be multi-faceted and multidirectional. Developing leadership capacity requires consideration of a variety of leadership models and reflection on an individual’s and group’s capacity and the contexts in which they are working. Professional development is required for leaders at all levels to enhance capacity, increase networking oppor...

The multifaceted interplay between changes and continuities has a complex relationship with the opportunities for, and strategies of, capacity-building. This interplay is evident also in efforts to promote long-term and sustainable educational learning and development within and across specific educational sites. This chapter examines this interpla...

In a world of rapid technological advances, the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in educational contexts has grown exponentially. Similarly, the form and focus of research into ICTs for lifelong, life-wide learning and development and the resultant contributions to the literature are extremely diverse. This chapter brings a...

An ongoing challenge for instructional and syllabus designers and teachers and facilitators who seek to implement these curricula is finding and maintaining an appropriate balance between differing learning and teaching styles. Differences in cultural and language backgrounds, previous learning and teaching experiences, and the personal characteris...

The study of individual differences is concerned with understanding the variations from person to person, such as through personality and cognition and how these differences are related to human behaviour. Fundamental to the study of individual differences has been the measurement of variation utilising a range of assessment and evaluation techniqu...

Beliefs and practices of formal, non-formal and informal learning have undergone radical changes since the late nineteenth century, when didactic instruction gave way in many societies to learner-centred methods. From the late twentieth century, global competition and a shift to neoliberalism have informed the commodification of education. Data fro...

Educational learning and development is evidenced in a range of sectors and is of interest to a range of stakeholders, particularly in regards to its capacity-building potential. This introductory chapter seeks to conceptualise and contextualise this area in the following three ways. The first section will present various approaches taken in concep...

Modern students are communicating and interacting with mobile technologies in ways that were unknown to generations before them. Rarely seen without a mobile device glued to their hands, students of today have unique and specific expectations about connectivity and accessibility of information. Mobile learning has many facets (Sharples, Taylor, Vav...

Recent research suggests that mobile technologies offer unique opportunities for students to become more engaged with learning activities beyond the boundaries of the learning management system. Mobile technologies have the potential to facilitate collaboration and access to information resources any time and anywhere. As a result, many educational...

Engaging school children early in STEM activities plays an important role in their choice to study engineering in later years. This paper describes a pilot project where Remote Access Laboratory technology at a university is employed in an inquiry-based learning activity with elementary school children in Japan and Australia. Investigation into how...

BACKGROUND Not enough children develop and maintain an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and as a result, there is a skill shortage to meet Australia’s needs in STEM careers. An effective method for developing a deep understanding of STEM concepts is through conducting experiments. A project is introduced that aims to cr...

If effective ways of constructing capacities are to be understood, several means of identifying and assessing multiple approaches to conceptualising and contextualising such capacities need to be developed. This chapter explores and evaluates some of those approaches, adopting an eclectic and culturally diverse approach that considers each approach...

If effective ways of constructing capacities are to be understood, several means of identifying and assessing multiple approaches to conceptualising and contextualising such capacities need to be developed. This chapter explores and evaluates some of those approaches, adopting an eclectic and culturally diverse approach that considers each approach...

It is vital for research teams to assess their activities and outcomes as they grow in confidence and momentum if their capacities are to be enlarged and sustained. The authors use this chapter to conduct a theoretically framed evaluation of the first three years of operations of the research team that they constitute. Attention is given simultaneo...

"Constructing Capacities: Building Capabilities through Learning and Engagement" explores several contemporary manifestations of individuals, groups and communities participating in varying types of learning and thereby engaging effectively and productively with their contexts and environments in order to build and develop their multiple capacities...

Benefits of Remote Access Laboratory technology have been widely acknowledged in engineering education literature. This paper introduces a cross disciplinary project involving academic from the Faculty of Engineering & Surveying and the Faculty of Education and demonstrates how the benefit of remote access technologies can be extended to other non...

A well-established project exists within the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), where students are provided remote access to video-supported laboratory experimentation so as to actively engage in contextual action-orientated learning. In this paper we describe a project in which Remote Access Labora...

This chapter elaborates possible implications of the experiences of writing this research book for the development and sustainability of the authors as a productive and supportive research team. The preceding chapters have explored several different dimensions of research collaborations and in the process have enacted specific elements of collabora...

It is much easier to talk and write rhetorically about the benefits of collaborative research than it is to enact those benefits in the actions and outcomes of a sustainable research team. This is hardly surprising: all manner of obstacles confront those seeking to conduct and publish research in contemporary Australian universities. Some of these...

Sustaining Synergies: Collaborative Research and Researching Collaboration explores the experiences, expectations, potential pitfalls and possible outcomes of team-based education research and publishing. It addresses vitally important questions for those engaging in collaborative research, including: • What are the different forms that can be take...

One key potential research collaboration is the relationship between doctoral students and their supervisors. While this relationship is vital to training new researchers and expanding knowledge frontiers, it is fraught with the risks of miscommunication, exploitation and learned dependency. This chapter presents an account of a small section of a...

This paper reports on the analysis of a narrative discussion group facilitated by the author as a part of a larger study. The participants in this group were two male Saudi Arabian nursing students of a similar age, studying the same course at the same time at the same Australian university, who had chosen to be together in this group. The discussi...

In this paper I report on one theme relating to international student adjustment that is not discussed elsewhere; namely the stress of worrying about dependent family members who have accompanied the student to the host country. The data for this paper were drawn from a larger study into the experiences of male Saudi Arabian nursing students at an...

This paper presents a critical autoethnographic reflection upon a study that I had previously conducted. The original study reports on research conducted in two classes at a Japanese university on the students' attitudes towards different forms of addressing a foreign teacher in a conversational English class. The research incorporated a visualisat...