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Dr Mike Danaher has been Head of the Bachelor of Arts and its cognate suite of courses since 2016. Mike recently led changes to the BA as part of CQURenew. Mike is also a senior lecturer in history. Mike’s research specialises in Japanese Studies and Educational Research. He has over 34 publications, including 5 books, 11 authored book chapters, 16 journal articles, over 15 conference presentations and 1 design product. Mike has been invited to undertake a number of live interviews on Singapore and Sydney radio stations to offer commentary on topical political issues in Japan.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number four seeks an equitable and widespread education that enables an outcome of sustainable development by 2030. Intersecting the studies of society and earth processes, a geographical education is well placed to make cohesive sense of all the individual knowledge silos that contribute to achieving sustainability. Geography education is compulsory for the first three years of the secondary education curriculum in Australia; however, research has shown that many geography teachers are underprepared and report limitations in their teaching of sustainability. This article engages with this research problem to provide a critical reflection, using experiential knowledge as an analytical lens, on how tertiary level geography training at one Australian regional university can equip undergraduate teacher education students with the values, knowledge, and skills needed to develop their future students’ understanding and appreciation of the principles of sustainability. The authors unpacked a geography minor for a Bachelor of Secondary Education degree at Central Queensland University and, deploying content analysis, explain how three units in that minor can develop these students’ values, knowledge, and skills through fostering initiatives and activities. The analysis was framed by elements of pedagogy that offer learners a context for developing active, global citizenship and participation to understand the interdependencies of ecological, societal, and economic systems including a multisided view of sustainability and sustainable development. The study concluded that the three geography units engage student teachers in sustainable thinking in a variety of ways, which can have a wider application in the geography curricula in other teacher education courses. More importantly, however, the study found that there is a critical need for collaboration between university teachers of sustainability content and university teachers of school-based pedagogy in order to maximise the efficacy of sustainability education in schools.
Michael Danaher; Jiaping Wu; Michael Hewson. Sustainability: A Regional Australian Experience of Educating Secondary Geography Teachers. Education Sciences 2021, 11, 126 .
AMA StyleMichael Danaher, Jiaping Wu, Michael Hewson. Sustainability: A Regional Australian Experience of Educating Secondary Geography Teachers. Education Sciences. 2021; 11 (3):126.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMichael Danaher; Jiaping Wu; Michael Hewson. 2021. "Sustainability: A Regional Australian Experience of Educating Secondary Geography Teachers." Education Sciences 11, no. 3: 126.
University students’ international study tours vary widely in intent, duration, effect and meaningfulness. The understandings enabled by critical interculturality (Dervin, Critical Interculturality: Lectures and Notes. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017; Murphy-Lejeune, An experience of interculturality: Student travellers abroad. In G. Alred, M. Byram, & M. Fleming (Eds.), Intercultural experience and education (pp. 101–113). Sydney, NSW: Multilingual Matters, 2003) can contribute significantly to gleaning further insights into such study tours as potential sites of educational border crossings that can facilitate genuine and enduring learning transformations. This chapter deploys the research method of thematic analysis to explore the reflections by a group of Australian university students on their study tour experience to China in November 2018. This analysis demonstrates both the affordances and the limitations of university study tours abroad in disrupting existing intercultural stereotypes, thereby creating possibilities for the educational margins related to intercultural otherness to be traversed by critically intercultural insights, and for intercultural voices to be communicated and articulated.
Mike Danaher. “Greetings from Nanning and Qinzhou!”: Student Reflections on an Australian University Study Tour to China as an Experience of Critical Interculturality. Researchers at Risk 2020, 179 -193.
AMA StyleMike Danaher. “Greetings from Nanning and Qinzhou!”: Student Reflections on an Australian University Study Tour to China as an Experience of Critical Interculturality. Researchers at Risk. 2020; ():179-193.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMike Danaher. 2020. "“Greetings from Nanning and Qinzhou!”: Student Reflections on an Australian University Study Tour to China as an Experience of Critical Interculturality." Researchers at Risk , no. : 179-193.
Active learning; Blended learning; Flipped learning; Inverted classroom; Peer instruction The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model that inverts the traditional classroom so that class time is used...
Mike Danaher. Flipped Classrooms. Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation 2019, 1 -6.
AMA StyleMike Danaher. Flipped Classrooms. Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. 2019; ():1-6.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMike Danaher. 2019. "Flipped Classrooms." Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation , no. : 1-6.
“Research has consistently found that pedagogy informed by knowledge of students’ existing ideas is more efficient in promoting conceptual change than traditional methods of instruction”. Learners in the sub-field of environmental geography exhibit preconceptions that frame and sometimes hinder their knowledge acquisition. Those preconceptions need to be harnessed and where appropriate displaced and replaced with more effective understandings if learning is to be successful. University educators have a crucial role to play in assisting this process. This paper examines a community-based teaching approach within the geography discipline at an Australian university deployed to clarify, then displace learners’ preconceptions and replace them with more empowering capacities. The learning context involves a diverse range of university undergraduates undertaking environmental geography courses for the first time. The examination is framed by the notion of multiple forms of capital, some of which students bring with them to this learning context and others of which need to be acquired during the course of study. The paper employs an exploratory case study design, augmented by a qualitative analysis of students’ and academics’ experiences. The interdependent processes of displacing preconceptions and replacing them with heightened capacities are demonstrated to be crucial ingredients of capitalising (on) sustainable and sometimes transformative learning places.
Mike Danaher. Expanding students' ability to conceptualise the dynamics of changing places in the teaching of environmental geography. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 2016, 25, 244 -257.
AMA StyleMike Danaher. Expanding students' ability to conceptualise the dynamics of changing places in the teaching of environmental geography. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education. 2016; 25 (3):244-257.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMike Danaher. 2016. "Expanding students' ability to conceptualise the dynamics of changing places in the teaching of environmental geography." International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 25, no. 3: 244-257.
Situated ethics (Piper & Simons, 2005; Simons & Usher, 2000) provides a potentially powerful conceptual lens for reflecting on the research significance and researcher subjectivities entailed in contemporary educational research projects. This is the idea that research ethics is most appropriately understood and enacted in the specific contexts of such projects, rather than by reference to timeless and universal codes. This proposition is helpful in drawing attention to the crucial networks of aspirations and interests that bind and separate stakeholders in those projects. The authors illustrate this argument through a reflexive interrogation of their respective empirical doctoral studies (Danaher, 2003; Danaher, 2001). One study focused on multiple and conflicting constructions of wildlife preservation as a site of Japanese environmental politics and policy&making; the other examined educational provision for mobile show communities as a case of Australian Traveller Education. Both projects required the researchers to negotiate tentative and sometimes uneasy relations with research participants that veered between impartial and disinterested observers and partial and interested advocates. In engaging in those negotiations, the researchers enacted situated and provisional ethical positions derived from increasingly explicit assumptions about both the significance of their particular research and the importance of acknowledging their own subjectivities in making claims about that significance. Thus situated ethics is a vital element of evaluating the value as much as the values of conducting research with non–government organisations and on showgrounds.
Mike Danaher; P. A. Danaher. Situated Ethics in Investigating Non-Government Organisations and Showgrounds: Issues in Researching Japanese Environmental Politics and Australian Traveller Education. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning 2008, 4, 58 -70.
AMA StyleMike Danaher, P. A. Danaher. Situated Ethics in Investigating Non-Government Organisations and Showgrounds: Issues in Researching Japanese Environmental Politics and Australian Traveller Education. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. 2008; 4 (1):58-70.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMike Danaher; P. A. Danaher. 2008. "Situated Ethics in Investigating Non-Government Organisations and Showgrounds: Issues in Researching Japanese Environmental Politics and Australian Traveller Education." International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning 4, no. 1: 58-70.