Current GoingOk projects:

Reflecting on Learning - QUT Units

Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Accessible Assessment Project

Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia
Benowa State High School, Queensland, Australia
Kedron State High School, Queensland, Australia
MacGregor State High School, Queensland, Australia

Highly Accomplished and Leading Teachers

Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia,
Independent Schools Queensland, Australia

Preparing Assessment Capable Teachers

Queens University, Canada.
King's College London, United Kingdom.
University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Prior Research:

The Emotional Work of Being an Assessor

Willis, Jill & Gibson, Andrew (2020) The Emotional Work of Being an Assessor: A Reflective Writing Analytics Inquiry into Digital Self-assessment. In Fox, Jillian, Alexander, Colette, & Aspland, Tania (Eds.) Teacher Education in Globalised Times: Local Responses in Action.

The Emotional Work of Being an Assessor: A Reflective Writing Analytics Inquiry into Digital Self-assessment.

Digital tools are reshaping how we understand assessment and evaluation in educational contexts as they create new forms of digital assessment data. Such data has been critiqued by educational scholars as it is increasingly associated with high stakes accountability, with the computational interpretation and abstraction occurring at a distance from the authors and their learning experiences. This chapter explores an alternative, educative vision for digital tools and the assessment data they collect. It is a case study of how a digital self-assessment tool captured evidence of early career teachers developing their assessment capability. It also positions an innovative digital research methodology within global sociological concerns about digital assessment tools, to consider how they might inform locally meaningful data stories.

Ethical challenges and guiding principles in facilitating personal digital reflection

Gibson, Andrew & Willis, Jill (2020) Ethical challenges and guiding principles in facilitating personal digital reflection. In Burr, C. & Floridi, L. (Eds.) Ethics of Digital Well-Being: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Springer Nature.

Ethical challenges and guiding principles in facilitating personal digital reflection

We reflect on the ethical challenges associated with designing, developing and implementing a socio-technical system for personal reflection. During our work in creating and refining GoingOK, we have encountered ethical challenges relating to issues associated with vulnerability, safety, anonymity, privacy, transparency, agency, trust, identity, well-being, and resilience. We discuss ethical challenges as they occurred in four key activities: (1) promoting author well-being, (2) negotiating meaningful participation, (3) balancing stakeholder interests, and (4) initiating socio-cultural sensitive analysis. We then identify four guiding principles that have directed our work and helped us address the ethical challenges. They are the (1) interaction principle, (2) pragmatic principle, (3) respect principle, and (4) trust principle. We conclude with our thoughts on how both the challenges and the principles might inform other work.

Looking for leadership

Willis, Jill, Crosswell, Leanne, Morrison, Chad, Gibson, Andrew, & Ryan, Mary (2017) Looking for leadership: The potential of dialogic reflexivity with rural early career teachers. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice.

Looking for leadership: The potential of dialogic reflexivity with rural early career teachers

Many early career teachers (ECTs) begin their teaching careers in rural and remote schools in Australia, and do not stay long, with consequences for their own lives, and for their students, schools and communities. By understanding how first year ECTs navigate personal (subjective) and contextual (objective) conditions, opportunities to disrupt patterns of ECT attrition may be found. This paper explores the online longitudinal reflections from two rural ECTs. Margaret Archer’s three dimensions of reflexivity were used to analyse what personal, structural and cultural resources were activated by ECTs as they discerned and deliberated the costs of being a rural ECT.

Early career teachers in rural schools

Crosswell, Leanne, Willis, Jill, Morrison, Chad, Gibson, Andrew, & Ryan, Mary E. (2018) Early career teachers in rural schools: Plotlines of resilience. In Wosnitza, M., Peixoto, F., Beltman, S., & Mansfield, C. (Eds.) Resilience in Education: Concepts, Contexts and Connections. Springer, pp. 131-146.

Early career teachers in rural schools: Plotlines of resilience.

This chapter explores the plotlines of resilience as narrated by three early career teachers (ECTs) in rural schools and the deliberation process they undertook in response to their key challenges. Regular online reflections about their transition into rural teaching were collected through www.goingok.org, a digital tool (see Gibson A, Willis J, Morrison C, Crosswell L, Not losing the plot: creating, collecting and curating qualitative data through a web-based application. In The Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) 2013 Conference, July 2013, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD. (Unpublished), 2013). Drawing on a transactional-ecological theory of resilience, the qualitative analysis was informed by current literature (see Day C, Gu Q, Resilient teachers, resilient schools: Building and sustaining quality in testing times. Routledge, Oxon, 2014; Mansfield CF, Beltman S, Broadley T, Weatherby-Fell N. Teach Teach Educ 54:77–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.016, 2016) that highlights the dynamic and ongoing process of interaction between the contextual and personal factors. The analysis was also informed by Archer’s (2000) theories of social realism that enables the interplay between the personal powers of humans to act (PEPs), the affordances and constraints of the structural-material (SEPs) and cultural-discursive systems (CEPs)

Towards the discovery of learner metacognition from reflective writing

Gibson, Andrew, Kitto, Kirsty, & Bruza, Peter (2016) Towards the discovery of learner metacognition from reflective writing. Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(2), pp. 22-36.

Towards the discovery of learner metacognition from reflective writing

Modern society demands renewed attention on the competencies required to best equip students for a dynamic and uncertain future. We present exploratory work based on the premise that metacognitive and reflective competencies are essential for this task. Bringing the concepts of metacognition and reflection together into a conceptual model within which we conceived of them as both a set of similar features, and as a spectrum ranging from the unconscious inner-self through to the conscious external social self. This model was used to guide exploratory computational analysis of 6090 instances of reflective writing authored by undergraduate students. We found the conceptual model to be useful in informing the computational analysis, which in turn showed potential for automating the discovery of metacognitive activity in reflective writing, an approach that holds promise for the generation of formative feedback for students as they work towards developing core 21st century competencies.

Turning points in narratives of research design

Morrison, Chad, Willis, Jill, Crosswell, Leanne, & Gibson, Andrew (2014) Turning points in narratives of research design : research innovation stimulating unique responses to existing challenges for beginning rural teachers. The Journal of Educational Enquiry, 13(1), pp. 3-17.

Turning points in narratives of research design : research innovation stimulating unique responses to existing challenges for beginning rural teachers

This paper explores methodological turning points in researching narratives of early career resilience mediated by the complexities of remote teaching. Innovative, flexible and discursive research design facilitated exploration of emerging narratives using digital technologies. Data were regularly interrogated with participant-researchers to reveal the undercurrents of imbued meaning. Dialogue with participant-researchers enhanced interpretations of data plots and text-based explanations of narrative turning points, providing valuable insights throughout analysis. Reflections on the affordances and tensions in this process illustrate the significance of innovation but also the complexities associated with online collaboration. Consequently, empowering the participant-researchers throughout the life of the research was critical in understanding their narratives of teaching.