“Come in and look around.” Professional development of student teachers through public pedagogy in a library exhibition

Authors: Anne Hickling-Hudson & Erika Hepple, Queensland University of Technology

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This paper describes a public pedagogy project embedded into The Global Teacher, a subject within the Bachelor of Education program for student teachers at an Australian university. The subject provides a global perspective on socio-political issues that shape education. In 2013, The Global Teacher introduced an approach that asked student teachers to create a museum-style exhibition depicting six global education themes. This exhibition was displayed in the State Library and the public were invited to engage with the installations and the student teachers who created them.

Our paper describes how the project was implemented by means of close collaboration between the QUT teacher educators, curators at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), and student groups working
on visually translating their understandings of global educational issues into a public exhibition. We discuss what was learned by our students and ourselves, as teacher educators, by engaging in this public pedagogy.
Keywords: global education, public library, group work, transformative learning, social justice, public learning space.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinmail  Share a copy of this abstract.

This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.