Building interactive relationships: The risks, dilemmas and learning initiatives

associated with partnerships with ‘real’ purpose

Colleen Cooling, Trudy Graham, Teresa Moore and Bernadette Walker-Gibbs

Waraburra State School and Faculty of Education and Creative Arts, Central
Queensland University
 Many teachers already do all kinds of interesting and potentially useful data
collection with their students but in a fridge door context the data is rarely
kept, the analyses are rarely shared beyond the classroom (except on a
family’s fridge door) and it is very rare that data is stored and added to over
time. (Bigum, 2002)

1. Introduction
This paper investigates potential risks and dilemmas when engaging in research
partnerships between Waraburra State School (WSS) and the Faculty of Education and
Creative Arts (EdCA) at Central Queensland University. An outcome of our first
partnership was “Learning Initiatives” (see Bigum 2002, Knowledge Producing Schools).
“Learning Initiatives”, developed in conjunction with WSS, provides a framework for
integrating the curriculum, pedagogy, policy and practice of e-learning and futures driven
discourses between the school, university and the wider community. In this paper we
document a subsequent partnership between EdCA and their pre-service Bachelor of
Learning Management students (BLM) students, and the students, teachers and other staff
of WSS based on the principles of “Learning Initiatives”. We draw on generational
theory and the notion of cyborgs to inform discursive practices amongst the various
participants to provide future directions for research partnerships.

2. Learning Initiatives – Waraburra’s journey

In October 2000, WSS was established as a Learning and Development Centre for
Technology. The operational focus was to develop effective teaching and learning
experiences for Education Queensland teachers using information communication
technologies (ICTs). A research partnership between Central Queensland University
(CQU) and WSS was established to explore two issues:
1. The development and impact of the Learning & Development Centre on WSS and
other schools and teachers in the District;
2. The role of ICT at WSS.

In particular, the participants were interested in exploring how we could move beyond the
practices of ICT for ICT's sake and start to think about partnerships through ICT with our
local community. The purpose of Learning Initiatives fitted well in this subsequent
partnership, as it enabled students to work in teams to solve real-world problems, create
products or performances, and develop community projects for real purposes. Through
this process, students’ work fulfils an identified community need; thereby learning is for
real purposes not simulated. Students become knowledge creators and producers by
investigating and solving important local community issues and needs.

Learning Initiatives are characterised by interactive relationships with “community”.

These interactive relationships can be in two modes. In the first instance students utilise
expert knowledge available in the community to enable their own learning and achieve
the goals of the initiative. In this mode students have connections to real experts who for
the most part are consultants, to enable them to complete the learning initiative before
them.

In the second instance students produce knowledge, products or services that are valued
by ‘community’. (The definition of “community” here is broad. It may be an individual
or group. It can also be understood at three levels; school community, local community
and global community - In this instance the community are the consumers). In both
modes students are receiving feedback about the value of their work from expert sources.
Their work is legitimatised.

3. Enter the University

Coinciding with this partnership EdCA introduced a new pre-service teaching degree, the
Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) that moved away from the traditional
Bachelor of Education and moved towards a degree where:
Our graduates will be familiar with working collaboratively with other
teaching professionals, and the community. Consequently, they should have
developed a very thorough understanding of the importance of such
partnerships and networks. (Thompson, Smith & Mienczowski, 2002, pp. 1)

As part of the implementation of the BLM, two core courses of this program were being
developed, these being; elearning Manager and The Entrepreneurial Professional. The
focus for elearning manager is on the fact that:
The contemporary educational environment poses a range of challenges for
those wishing to pursue a career in any educational sector. This course
responds to one particularly challenging dimension of educational life and
explores the kinds of technological competencies that are now required of
educators and may be required in the future. (Faculty of Education and
Creative Arts, 2003a)

This is closely linked to another core course The Entrepreneurial Professional which
“Using various approaches to future studies, students in this course will learn to identify,
analyse, research and respond to contemporary organisational concerns in ways that
demonstrate, also, an appreciation of future and possible developments of entrepreneurial
discourses” (Faculty of Education and Creative Arts, 2003b). The links between the
courses, program, the schools, university and Faculty was based on the notions of future
directed learning which responds to more global change.

These Faculty changes are, in turn, linked to broader changes within CQU, which is
rapidly expanding to what it describes as a ‘global’ university with campuses locally
interstate and internationally situated. In the context of globalisation and a ‘technoscape’
culture (Appadurai, 1990), two key dominant discourses circulate and add further risks
and dilemmas to an already complex partnership. These are the perception of the
university, and EDCA, as changing from a teacher centred to a ‘student/consumer’ focus
(Baillie & Moxham, 1998) and the requirement for academics to be ‘computer literate’
(Ling & Ling, 1998). Perceptions of being on the ‘cutting edge’ of educational innovation
are currently associated with computer use and the notion of the ‘smart’ lecture hall
where educational experiences are technologised experiences. Wacjman (1991, p. 144-
145) argues that ‘being on the cutting edge’ of the latest technology signifies directions of
the future and is highly valued in Australian society.

The image of universities generally is changing as a response to these dominant

discourses and pressures to re-conceptualise the university into a ‘market orientated
business’ (Currie, 1996a). CQU could be described as an entrepreneurial university
through the focus on customer service and technology use. In this context there is a focus
on the development and maintenance of industry partnerships where there is increasing
emphasis on community links. As a research institution the university is encouraging or
directing research towards industry partnerships in the local region (Moore, 2003).

4. Building Interactive partnerships

Partnerships between schools and universities don’t just happen. Just because there is
‘encouragement’ from various sectors and institutions does not ensure that this
partnership could not implode. This partnership worked because of the shared
understandings among the stakeholders that were constantly negotiated. The very act of
writing this paper has proved to be an interesting learning experience regarding
interactive partnerships. The concept of nomadic consciousness (Braidotti, 1994) is
helpful here in that this allows us to explain the ability of the four researchers, and the
student teachers involved with these two units, to transgress any stereotypical image
around who uses technology. This representation breaks down any real or imagined
binaries that seek to label technology users as consequences of markers of difference.
These markers of difference include mindsets around gender, age, physical ability, socio -
economic background and social capital.

Drawing on our own experiences, the four researchers built up a contextual framework
around the courses and student teacher placement that formed the ‘headwork, fieldwork
and text work’ (McWiliam, Lather & Morgan, 1997) constituting this research project.
Lather (1986, p. 263) talks about reciprocity where this creates a fertile and supportive
environment that in turn generates ‘rich’ data and presents the opportunity for the
researchers to be an intimate part of the research process. While the participants (that
includes the researchers) have diverse backgrounds, knowledges and experiences, our
collaborative partnership highlights the way in which alternative representations can be
developed through a new mindset evolving out of real partnerships that offer real
outcomes for both the university and the school.

What has to be recognised within partnerships such as these is that research is a highly
politicised context and process where there is always the question of legitimacy and
credibility. Shared understandings of realities are built up through mutual trust and
negotiation. Legitimacy and credibility can be seen in the way in which we position
ourselves as researchers and what we regard as ethical research. The dilemma we had to
face is to ensure that we asked ourselves “who benefits from this research?” What we
weighed up was:
 • Public ‘good’
• Personal benefit
• Who really benefits.
At the cornerstone of these discussions was how to provide meaningful experiences for
all the stakeholders, but specifically the school and university students and staff. What
needed to be negotiated was ‘worthwhile’ links with all participants. The next section of
this paper focuses on how to reconcile more global pressures and the ‘how’ of building
‘real’ interactive partnerships.

5. Partnerships in action
This negotiated partnership and learning is also happening in a rapidly changing
generational context where there is a new generation of learners and literacy practices. It
is generally accepted that this change is linked to the technological and information
explosion and our changed perceptions around today’s youth (Green & Bigum, 1993;
Kincheloe, 1998; Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1998; Buckingham, 2000; Walker-Gibbs, 2001;
2003). As Steinberg and Kincheloe (1998) argue:
New times have ushered in a new era of childhood …. few observers have
appreciated the fact that the information explosion so characteristic of our
contemporary era has played a central role in undermining traditional notions
of childhood. Those who have shaped, directed, and used the information
technology of the late twentieth century have played an exaggerated role in
the reformulation of childhood. (emphasis in original, p. 1)

Media culture provides a means by which Echo Boomers shape their identities. “Media
culture has come to dominate everyday life, serving as the ubiquitous background and
often the highly seductive foreground of our attention and activity, which many argue is
undermining human potentiality and creativity” (Kellner, 1995, pp. 2-3). At the centre of
our partnerships, then, is a shared hope to provide relevant education to the new
generation of learners and Learning Managers (teachers) that incorporates new literacy
understanding. As Luke (2002) argues,
…. a missing piece of the puzzle of understanding how the new literacies are
situated, about understanding the power and the interplay of the “local” with
the “global”, the “micro” and the “macro”, is an engagement with the way
that systems, governments, legislation, policy, and the new relations between
the state and the non-government and corporate sectors set up enabling and
disenabling institutional sites for the realization of multiliteracies. (p. 190)

An example of our partnership in action, and multiliteracices in play, occurred at “Beef

2003”, a global site promoting Rockhampton and the local beef industry. It involved local
people marketing (producing) to a global audience (consumers) where the students from
WSS were able to showcase their school and their technological activities, as highlighted
in the following vignette by Colleen Cooling:
I’m a teacher working with fifteen other soon to be teachers (BLM students
from CQU) and we were there because we wanted to capture digitally ‘the
stories’ of Waraburra’s year seven students and teachers’ learning outside the
classroom, in the real world, their local world. I also wanted the uni students
 to see firsthand the products of the students’ learning on show at the new
complex. The year seven students had already created a documentary on the
Beef Industry and were onsite filming the opening of the complex, which had
been digitally captured from its beginnings. The manager of the saleyards,
who had been interviewed by the students in the previous year, had invited
the students to the opening and given them a space to set up a display area,
where they could show their finished products to the public. These products
included the video documentary, animations depicting the story of beef. eg
“Paddock to Plate”, interactive quizzes relating to the industry, drawings and
diagrams of the industry in the future, one of which had won a State
Competition for ‘Future Farming”. On show too, was the learning with
ICT’s. Children with cameras, both still and video, capturing the story as it
was. Editing their film to make a short movie and creating slide shows of the
event and its importance to the Beef Industry, locally, nationally and globally.

The notion of the cyborg (Haraway, 1995) allows us to read the interaction between the
user and the technology. This concept enables the construction of the user to be seen as
streamlined with the technology. In other words the technology becomes an extension of
the user. Cyborgs operate with ease and comfort in the ‘technoscape’ culture (Appadurai,
1990). Digital media have changed how we ‘know’ the world and assumptions that
influence us (Carlsson, 1995). It is important to understand that this change can be seen
to be a struggle by different generations. What is generally acknowledged is that today’s
generation is different from previous generations. As Tapscott (1998) states: “[t]oday’s
kids are so bathed in bits that they think it’s all part of the natural landscape. To them, the
digital technology is no more intimidating than a VCR or toaster” (p. 1). Colleen
continues with her vignette:
Can you imagine, children with cameras capturing the occasion and Uni
students, with cameras, capturing the year seven students. Why were the Uni
students capturing the children? They were learning to use new technologies
and products (cameras, PowerPoint, movies, animations) to create multimedia
products to ‘sell’ the initiatives, undertaken by teachers at Waraburra, and
inform, impress, convince, whoever would look and listen.

Picture this… a room full of children actively engaged in editing a movie,

sharing stories and multimedia products with whoever wanted to look and
listen. Proud teachers standing back watching, Uni students photographing
and filming the room. Meanwhile outside, another group of children have a
camera down in the selling pens, behind them, loom the uni students with
their cameras.

A uni student recognises John Anderson, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister,

who shows an interest and moves toward the children and begins to ask
questions as to why they are there and what they were doing with cameras.
The children, with some encouragement from the uni students, invite him to
their display room. There he is shaking our hands and getting down with the
 children to look at and learn about what they have been and are doing: a
priceless learning opportunity for all in the room (including John Anderson).

Today’s youth immerse themselves in this media culture (Giroux, 2000) and are seen to
be able to navigate this landscape in ways not demonstrated in the past. From this we, as
educators and researchers, can learn from our students as they learn from us, developing
real partnerships with real purposes.

6. Some Future directions – Beyond the Fridge Door: Partnerships with ‘real’
purpose
One of the fundamental principles of the BLM is establishing closer ties between school
and industry. The two courses (elearning Manager and The Entrepreneurial Professional)
could easily have been taught independently of this partnership. Waraburra State School
could continue to be a Technology Learning Centre and provide effective teaching and
learning around ICT use. However, what our partnership has done is to ensure better
quality end results by providing an effective learning environment producing future
Learning Managers rather than traditional teachers. If both the purpose is ‘real’ and the
stakeholders have common goals, we will have multiple pay offs. The act of writing this
paper and submitting it to a conference, where this knowledge is disseminated and
promoted to a wider audience, helps to contribute to the ‘official knowledge’ behind the
rhetoric of new literacies (Luke, 2002). Although the initial reason for forging networks
may have been influenced, in part by the broader educational and political issues, it is the
continued negotiation of ‘real’ partnerships for a common goal that will ensure their
survival.

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