Learning, Teaching and Inquiry 1: Identity, Diversity and Adolescence

This course will introduce students to concepts associated with learning and teaching in the secondary years, including adolescence and identity development as well as existing correlations between socio-cultural diversity and school engagement and outcomes. To examine strategies for learning about and responding to the strengths and the needs that secondary school students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds bring to their learning. To explore research into how students learn, and the implications for inclusive teaching. Students will explore the links between social and cultural diversity and outcomes from education, with a focus on the adolescent, and consider socially just responses to diversity. Students will analyse the social construction of adolescence and the positioning of the secondary years as an important time of development both as individuals and as learners. The potential influence of students' own identities and subjectivities on teaching practice and pedagogy will be considered. Theories of learning relevant to secondary schooling will be investigated, highlighting the diverse range of learning abilities