Month: October 2019

This week, Griffith Uni held their 2019 Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Griffith Awards for Excellence in Teaching (GAET) are awarded by the University to recognise and reward teachers, teaching teams, professional staff and programs for their contributions to student learning. GAET are awarded on the basis of a University-wide application process. These awards a very competitive and prestigious.

I am delighted to announce that I was awarded: Highly Commended for Excellence in Teaching Awards Sessional Academic Staff category!

Whoohoo!

This is a great honour and a lovely surprise!

So this week, I attended the 2019 Griffith Teaching Excellence in Teaching Awards night at Griffith’s Gold Coast with the other awardees, colleagues, friends and family.

It was a fantastic night!

Congrats to all the nominees, highly commended and award winners!

I was very pleased to see many colleagues I work with also being recognised like: Dr Dawn Adams, Bronwyn Reid O’Connor, Prof Stephen Billet and the wonderful Kungullanji Program and Indigenous Research Unit teams (below). Congrats all!

I adore teaching and take student engagement seriously.

As I say to my classes – I work to create the kind of class I wish I had as a student.

My teaching and learning pedagogy is underpinned by a commitment to community, care, confidence and curiosity.

I feel very honoured to be working with such amazing people who are up for exploring alternative ideas, working hard, sharing experiences, expanding knowledge and having a bit of fun along the way.

A massive big THANK YOU!

Thank you to all the managers,  course convenors, colleagues and students who nominated me.

I was overwhelmed and very moved by the amount of thought and enthusiasm people put into my nomination. Award nominees are not told who nominated them – but you know who you are – and THANK YOU!

Also, a massive thank you to all the other staff and students who wrote in, supplied references and filled out end of course SET (Student Evaluations of Teaching) surveys that helped evidence my nomination.

Below is some anonymous student feedback about my teaching from previous classes. Such feedback is heart-warming, motivating and humbling.

GAET Award Categories

Each year, Griffith Excellence in Teaching Awards recognise 15 categories:

• 4 Group Excellence in Teaching Awards, one for each Griffith Academic Group (Arts, Education & Law, Health, Business & Sciences)
• 4 Group Educational Leadership Awards (one for each Academic Group)
• 4 Group Active Learning Awards (one for each Academic Group)
• 3 Excellence in Teaching Priority Area Awards one for each of the three categories:
  • Early Career Award
  • Sessional Academic Staff Award
  • Innovative Assessment Award

GAET Award Assessment Criteria

Some people have asked me what/how the GAET is awarded. The GAETs are assessed based on submissions responding to criteria one, three and four (below) only, but may also include criteria two and five (optional).

• Criterion 1: What approaches to teaching and learning have you employed to influence, motivate and inspire students to learn?
• Criterion 2: What curricula, resources or services have you developed that reflect a command of the field? (OPTIONAL)
• Criterion 3: What approaches to assessment and feedback do you incorporate that foster independent learning?
• Criterion 4: What evaluation practices do you employ that bring about improvements in teaching and learning?
• Criterion 5: What innovation, leadership or scholarship has influenced and enhanced learning and teaching and/or the student experience in your practice? (OPTIONAL)

Find out more about the award winners at the Griffith Celebrating Remarkable Teachers website. 

A few years ago I attended the Australian Walking and Cycling Conference in Adelaide. There I met the amazing Freestyle Cyclists’ South Australian co-ordinator and National Vice-President Dr. Sundance Bilson-Thompson. Not only an incredible man and devoted cyclist, but Sundance is also active in pushing for Australian bike helmet reform (removal). Since meeting Sundance, I have kept up with Freestyle Cyclists work, news and campaigns. Their approach, research and commitment are impressive! In support of this community action group of highly motivated cyclists trying to effect positive community change for the betterment of all bike riders, I am reposting here their latest article commenting on the current Australian Helmet Law and statistics. Enjoy! NG.

This is a guest post by Chris Gillham, who maintains Cycling Helmets a rich repository of facts and statistics on Australia’s helmet law disaster.

With Australia’s National Cycling Participation surveys suggesting either a decline of more than a million from 2011 to 2019 (if the population percentages of 2011 and 2019 are applied only to the 2018 population) or 539,046 (if the 2011 results are applied to the 2010 population and 2019 results are applied to the 2018 population), how many of them are instead driving a car to their friend’s place, the shops, etc?

Australian Bureau of Statistics data can be handy, although we concede they only show the numbers of vehicles and not how often people drive their vehicles.

They show that in 2011, there were 13,152,834 registered passenger vehicles and motorcycles in Australia.

In 2019, there are 15,374,253 passenger vehicles and motorcycles registered in Australia. That’s a 16.9% increase since 2011.

In 2011, Australia’s 17yo+ driving age population was 17,534,610 and in 2018 it was 19,717,980. That’s a 12.5% driving age population increase since 2011.

That 4.4% difference between vehicle registrations and population growth can be equated in numerous ways but, most simply, 4.4% of 15,374,253 registered motor vehicles and motorcycles is 676,467 more than if registrations had matched population growth at 12.5%.

That 676,467 excess is comparible with between 539,046 and a million fewer people riding bikes from 2011 to 2019.

Sure, the figures can’t assume that every discouraged cyclists didn’t also have a vehicle anyway, but there could be a proportion who buy a car because they’re discouraged from cycling a few kilometres, or maybe a second family car because the partner is discouraged from cycling, etc. Whatever, the data suggests an increased ratio of vehicles per person since 2011 and raises questions as to whether Australian car registrations would have risen 86.0% from 1990 to 2019 (7,797,300 > 14,504,148) vs 17yo+ driving age population growth of 54.3% from 1990 to 2018 (12,780,937 > 19,717,980).

Traffic speed is used by the Australian Automobile Association to gauge vehicle congestion in Australian cities …

 i.e. traffic congestion has been increasing in all capital cities since 2013.

The most recent AIHW data show there were 34,042 hospitalised road injuries in Australia in 2011 and 38,945 in 2016.  That’s a 14.4% increase.

From 2011 to 2016, car occupant injuries were up 14.1% (16,722 > 19,085), motorcyclist injuries were up 12.6% (7,571 > 8,523), pedestrian injuries were down 0.6% (2,760 > 2,744), and pedal cyclist injuries were up 28.0% (5,393 > 6,905)..

Of course, those are only hospitalised injury figures to 2016 and if we had the extra two years to 2018 the percentage increase would probably be nudging the 16.9% increase in registered vehicles and motorbikes from 2011 to 2019.

Pedestrian data are the exception but although the figures are dated and not entirely indicative, we note ABS recreation surveys showing 4,258,800 Australians walking for exercise in 2011-12 and 3,544,900 in 2013-14, a 16.8% reduction.

The data supports a logical assumption that discouraging cyclists with helmet laws increases the injury risk to all road users.

Village Bicycle Project is doing amazing work mobilising individuals and communities by providing bicycles. They currently have a crowdsourcing initiative for their work in Sierra Leone (see below). Their aim is to raise $5,000 – which is totally achievable with your help. This is an incredibly worthwhile project and I’d encourage you to donate what you feel fits with your principles and budget. This is a great opportunity to show that bicycles really do create change! NG.

We know that getting women on bikes might seem small, but we also know that in rural communities a bike is the key to unlock countless opportunities for education, health and wellbeing. That’s why VBP has a holistic approach to women’s bicycle empowerment based on knowledge, transportation, economic opportunity, and fun.

Who we are: For the last 20 years, Village Bicycle Project (VBP) has been providing bicycles, tools and training to communities in West Africa. We have distributed over 126,000 bicycles, trained over 21,000 people in basic bicycle repair, and taught more than 4,000 women and girls how to ride a bike.  

Our approach: We have been developing our 4-prong approach to getting more women on bikes for the past few years, and in 2020 we are excited to expand our programming in Sierra Leone. Help us reach more women than ever before!

1. Learn to Ride Programs for school age girls:
There are a number of cultural stigmas that hinder women from learning how to ride a bicycle.  Our Learn to Ride (L2R) Programs give them that opportunity in a supportive women’s only class.

2. Bicycle Distribution Workshops for women of all ages:
Our standard One Day Workshop (ODW) provides participants with a bicycle and a half day’s maintenance training so they can keep their bike in good working order.  A major focus of our ODWs has been school-age students with a particular emphasis on young women.

3. Advanced Mechanical Repair classes for women bike entrepreneurs:
For those women that have shown an interest and aptitude in bicycle repair, we offer a full-day Advanced Mechanical Training and support in opening their own shops. We are proud to have launched the first women-owned bike businesses in Sierra Leone!

4. Development of women’s bike racing through the Lunsar Cycling Team:
The Lunsar Cycling Team is a local team in central Sierra Leone that has become one of the premier cycling organizations in the country.  Women make up about 25% of the team and have consistently won the national cycling championship raising the profile of women’s’ cycling and breaking down stereotypes that keep women from riding.

Our goal is to raise $5,000 which covers the cost of shipping a container of 500 bikes and gear to Sierra Leone.  That container and the associated revenue will supply bicycles and funds for one year of women’s bike programming. With a container dedicated to funding women’s bicycle programming, it will enable VBP to plan for program expansion for the entire year.

Want to read more? Check out these articles about Karim Kamara, our Sierra Leone Country Manager, as reported by Vice  and Cycling Tips .  

Your support is vital to helping us reach more women in Sierra Leone than ever before, please donate today.

FreshLines is an annual multi-day symposium run by Griffith HLSS postgraduates for postgraduates. It offers oral presentations, keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and opportunities to network. This event is specifically designed for Griffith HLSS HDRers and is funded jointly by Griffith University’s School of Humanities, Languages & Social Science and the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research.

I was approached by one of the organisers to submit an abstract for the symposium. Since I am not attending the Griffith Education and Professional Studies (EPS) Research Conference this year, I decided to take the offer! FreshLines will be held over two Griffith campuses (Gold Coast and Nathan) on 23-25th October 2019.

My submission has been accepted and I’ll present on Thursday 24th October.

Symposium Topic

Productive Tensions: Working across Disciplines and Identities

Session Title

Skills, spills and thrills: reconciling bicycles, African girls’ education, materialist cartographies and ethical expert-iments.

Abstract

Academic: I am an athlete-teacher-feminist undertaking a posthuman-educational-emplaced qualitative study. First Date: My PhD explores how bicycles feature in rural African girls’ access to secondary schooling.

This means my study frays the seams of politics, economics, geography, sociology, education and mobility. Instead of using human participants, my PhD positions bicycles as my ‘more-than-human’ research ‘subject’.

My choice to advocate greater critical pluralism of nonhuman agency has unearthed myriad gendered, political, ethical and processual im/possibilities.

This endeavour is both exciting and exasperating.

In addition to more apparent critical race and post-colonialist challenges of being a privileged, white, Australian female researcher undertaking embodied fieldwork in rural sub-Saharan Africa, working with feminist New Materialisms further charges me to engage with multi-sensory, ethico-onto-epistemological complexities (Barad, 2003) that continuously require me to (re)question ‘different ways of becoming’ (Colebrook, 2006).

How do you make sense of yourself (researcher-becoming) and your PhD (academic-assemblage), when you/r (re)search is disciplinary promiscuous and actively working to dissolve traditional academic ways of thinking, knowing and being?

Using key examples from my current PhD project and professional INGO work, this session will share some of my ethical and methodological skills, spills and thrills of applying feminist New Materialisms to trans-disciplinary practice.

Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in culture and Society, 28(3), 801-831.

Colebrook, C. (2006). Deleuze: A guide for the perplexed. London/New York: Continuum

We are very lucky for this month’s New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) to have Geraldine Harris (Griffith Uni, PhDer) presenting aspects of her experience of working with feminist New Materialisms in child-centered leadership and more specifically, some visualizations she has created based on her emerging data analysis.

Geraldine has extensive professional experince as a child advocate working with collective action and leadership facilitation. She is the Director of Equitable Childhoods Consultancy.

Diverse plateaus + visualisations of place-based child-centered leadership

Her PhD topic is: Place based leadership & Social Innovation (Child & Family).

Her recent writing and work contributes to discussions around what are the key trends and principles emerging from the process of implementing a whole of community and government approach to supporting families at risk of vulnerability. Geraldine is an expert in collaborating with professionals, practitioners and researchers to explore early intervention and prevention strategies developed through the Australian Communities for Children initiatives and their efficacy.

Using feminist New Materialisms, Geraldine’s work supports community services, education and child welfare practitioners and policymakers to implement place-based collectives and and suggests alternative ways to look at impact approaches to child development, wellbeing and protection.

For this session, Geraldine shared some of her current PhD musings, visualizations and emerging NM understandings. She also spoke of the challenges and blockages she has experienced which was both reassuring and disheartening to hear.

Current New Materialisms musings

In line with PhD intellectual property and confidentiality (the visualizations and content Geraldine’s shared in this session is her original work and makes up her PhD ‘data’), I’m not sharing details or images of this session – you had to be there to see it. Awesome work!

Below are some other New Materialisms ideas and visuals Geraldine has been thinking-with.

The Fold #SIQR17 pic.twitter.com/LoZ1fiYjbG

— Geraldine Harris (@GerECEC) July 14, 2017

Session Resources

Prior to her presentation, Geraldine recommended the below 3 stimuli to get the juices flowing as each provides interesting but diverse plateaus in which to encounter the complex entanglements of NM – two academic papers and 1 video.

Geraldine set these resources as she found them to be fruitful provocations for NM work, especially after initial readings of Barad, Deleuze & Guattari, Ingold, Massumi & Braidotti.

Iris van der Tuin (2017) presentation at Manchester Metropolitan University Summer Institute of Qualitative Studies (which Geraldine was lucky enough to attend in person!) on Epistemology in a Speculative Key – see below.