Jan Herrington

Providing foreign language students with opportunities to engage in meaningful and purposeful communication and culturally authentic interaction with peers and native speakers is critical to successful second language acquisition and the development of intercultural competence . This paper describes research that investigated how selected native speaker mentors supported foreign language university students as they completed authentic collaborative tasks in an online community of learners. Intermediate and advanced level students of Italian at an Australian university collaborated with each other and with their assigned mentors through online resources provided in the course website. Data were collected and analysed through multi-data sources including online interactions, forum posts and individual and focus group interviews with mentors and students. Findings suggest that native speaker mentors actively supported students’ learning and provided effective scaffolding across a number of domains. The paper concludes with specific recommendations to guide mentors and language educators in the process of assisting student collaborative learning.

This paper describes a research study that investigated foreign language student engagement in reflective practice through reflective portfolios. Over the course of one academic semester, students in an Italian as a foreign language course at an Australian university and selected target language native speaker mentors interacted and collaborated with each other in blended learning mode with the aim of completing two situated and authentic tasks designed according to an authentic learning framework. As part of the project, students wrote their observations on the progress of their collaborative work in a reflective portfolio and participated in individual and guided focus group interviews. The findings suggest that the opportunity to contribute their thoughts in writing in reflective portfolios encouraged students to reflect on their own individual learning processes and to engage in a process of collective reflection and collaborative problem solving.

Actively encouraging foreign language learners to establish a meaningful connection with the target language culture - by engaging in authentic activities with other learners and native speakers in real-world communicative contexts - is a critical goal of foreign language education. This paper describes a design-based research study that investigated how students of Italian at an Australian university engaged with and responded to a web-based learning environment which integrated authentic learning tasks to facilitate social interaction and meaningful collaborative language practice with native speakers of the target language. The findings suggest that the use of the critical elements of authentic activities actively supported student learning across different domains. A major outcome of this research was the development of a set of design principles and guidelines for the design and development of authentic foreign language learning environments that could inform and guide other language educators within their specific educational context.

This paper describes a research study that investigated foreign language students’ collaborative practice in a blended, authentic learning environment. A group of intermediate and advanced level students of Italian at an Australian university interacted and collaborated with each other and with a group of native speaker mentors through a web-based learning management system and in face-to-face mode. As part of the project, students were required to complete two authentic tasks designed according to an authentic learning framework. In order to complete these tasks, students assigned themselves into small collaborative groups and negotiated their roles and responsibilities with little or no intervention from the class teacher apart from the requirement that communication took place in the target language. This paper describes the different phases of the collaborative process and the strategies employed by learners to overcome some of the challenges and problems encountered. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for language educators seeking to support student collaboration and foreign language development in a blended language learning environment.

Over the past decade Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies and perspectives have been mandated across the Australian national curriculum and all teachers are now required to demonstrate strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and have a broad knowledge of Aboriginal histories, cultures and languages. This paper describes a project focused on enabling Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) to play a critical role in transforming these initiatives into real and sustainable change through authentic, technology-based pedagogy. Indigenous research methodologies and design-based research (DBR) were used to investigate the potential educational roles for AEWs enabled by e-learning and new technologies. The project, called Skilling Up: Improving educational opportunities for AEWs through technology based pedagogy was funded by the Office of Learning and Teaching. This paper reports on the findings of the study conducted in Western Australia, including pre-study survey results, together with a description of a unit of study to provide opportunities for AEWs to use technologies in their work, and to create authentic digital stories for use in teacher education. The development of design principles for the design of such environments is also discussed.

Mobile and social media over the last decade has created significant shifts in society: how we communicate and collaborate, and in learning and teaching. This paper discusses a study that investigated how mobile social media tools and affordances could be harnessed to facilitate a student-determined learning experience (heutagogy). A design-based research (DBR) approach was utilised to analyse and investigate a set of draft design principles that was established in collaboration with a group of teachers and literature. The draft design principles guided the design of a first year course that was iteratively implemented and evaluated over 2 years with two different cohorts of students. As a key outcome of the DBR, a set of refined design principles is presented. These principles are capable of guiding other practitioners in designing and facilitating student-determined learning in authentic contexts using mobile devices, and social media affordances.

The work of Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) in Australian schools is complex and multifaceted, and yet it is often misunderstood, or worse, devalued. Added to this, the conditions of employment for many AEWs is often insecure, with minimal pay, few opportunities for career progression or meaningful professional development. Despite this there continues to be, as there have been for decades, research findings, policies and reports attesting to the invaluable role of AEWs in schools and communities. The theoretical standpoint of Nakata's (2007) ‘cultural interface’ is used in this paper to critically (re) examine the role of AEWs in Australian schools. Drawing from relevant past and contemporary literature, this paper draws attention to past and contemporary theorising and policy concerning the roles of AEWs. It asserts that if the work of AEWs is to be better understood and valued then it must be reconsidered in a more transformative way that benefits both the students and schools which they support.

Achieving communicative competency in English classes has been a key goal in contexts where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). During this process, however, integrating the difficulty and complexity of real life tasks into classroom teaching has often been disregarded. Lack of opportunities for authentic language use often results in learners’ gaining extensive knowledge about the target language (know what) while they are weak in using the language in a meaningful way (know how). Accordingly, while learners can talk about grammar rules, they usually fail to use these rules for real communicative purposes in unstructured genuine settings. The present study employed a design-based research approach to investigate the use of authentic activities in EFL classes. For this purpose, an e-learning environment was created based on initial design principles of authentic activities and implemented in three pre-university level EFL classes in North Cyprus in two research cycles. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, work samples, and observations. In accordance with the findings and continuous literature review, 11 design principles were derived from the initial design principles for the EFL context in order to facilitate competency-based foreign language use.

In addition to providing a useful repository for learning products, ePortfolios provide enhanced opportunities for the development of advanced learning skills. It can be argued, however, that ePortfolios are not being implemented effectively towards fulfilling this important function. This paper presents an investigation of an ePortfolio environment that scaffolded the learning of pre - service teachers. The environment was embedded within the PebblePad platform and utilised the Blog function to provide students with activities that were designed to enhance and support the skills and dispositions required to undertake action research. Prompts were provided to students to scaffold the completion of an action research project and provide additional activities that supported the enhancement of reflective thinking. The research study utilised an eLearning Lifecycle that provided a cyclic framework of review and implementation. The purpose of this model was to identify design principles for future iterations of ePortfolio - based learning environments. Findings suggest that the prompts and the ePortfolio environment were effective in scaffolding students’ reflective thinking. Additionally, design principles are suggested to ensure this research has both practical and theoretical significance for implementation in similar environments.