Wednesday Onsite Presentation Session 1

Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice & Praxis

Session Chair: Jia Yi Chow

09:30-09:55

65383 | Academic Adaptation and Stress Associated With University Life: Insights From the First Year Students

Narangerel Tsedendamba, Mongolian National University of Education, Mongolia

Otgonsuren Gungaarentsen, Mongolian National University of Education, Mongolia

University attrition rate is increasing around the world and there is a consequence for the student who is dropping out, university, and society as a whole including costs, psychological issues associated with perceived feeling of failure, and issues around employability and job satisfaction (Sosu & Pheunpha, 2019). About 80% of the students who study at the Teachers’ School, Mongolian National University of Education are from country Mongolia and most of them come to the capital city to do their tertiary education. Due to the differences between rural and urban lifestyles, and expectations of tertiary education, the dropout rate is increasing especially at the beginning of the first semester. There is an urgent need to better understand the need to drop out of the university and find ways to support these students to adjust to university life and the life outside the university. This study aims to explore the issues associated with adjusting to university studies and its relationship with attrition. It used student adaptation to college questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1999) and student life stress inventory (Gadzella, 1991) to collect data from 80 first year students. The findings revealed that the students needed support in many aspects of their studies including support with navigating technology, homework, living expenses, and stress management. There is a need to have a strategic plan in place to support these students to seamlessly transition into university and city life during the first half of the first semester.

09:55-10:20

65998 | The Testimonies of Sick People: A Teaching Proposal

Wladimir Chavez, Ostfold University College, Norway

Pathographies, also known as narratives of illness or literature on illness, are written testimonies of patients, doctors or relatives of sick people. In the academic world, there are some concerns about narrative of illness as a genre. Scholar John Wiltshire considers them as a "wild, disordered field". In fact, narratives of illness are little-known in the context of autobiographies or testimonial literature, and they have been largely ignored by scholars. However, they have become popular in recent years. Both in traditional books and electronic literature, these narratives develop a variety of communicative strategies. This presentation suggests a teaching approach of this kind of narratives, with examples taken from pathographies written by patients such as Hiro Fujita (Japan), Leo Montero (Spain), Juan Secaira (Ecuador) and Maria Manonelles (Spain). The teaching proposal focuses not only on literary strategies, but also highlights the social and cultural aspects of the literature of illness, with special emphasis on the identity issues; a person’s sense of self is highly likely to change with the advent of a serious disease. This type of works could invite the student to reflect on the essential questions of humanity, for instance happiness, life, death and love.

10:20-10:45

66960 | Exploring the Approaches to Aesthetic Competence-based Curriculum and Instruction From Life Aesthetics Practitioners’ Phronesis

Chi Hui Huang, National Academy for Educational Research, Taiwan

Aesthetic education is an important aspect of holistic education, and aesthetic competency is included in the core competencies of Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education. How students learn to perceive aesthetics in classes and transform it into aesthetic competency is what the researcher concerns about. The connotation of aesthetics changes with time and space, and needs to be integrated with social, cultural perspectives and context. The opinions of aesthetic life practitioners can help us realize the way how aesthetics is implemented in life, besides, they can also become models for students' learning. The purpose of the study is to analyze the practical wisdom of life aesthetics practitioners (taking diet as an example), design a diet aesthetics experimental course, and evaluate the learning effect accordingly. Two classes in a junior high school in New Taipei City were selected for quasi-experimental research. The design of the course adopts the "designbased research (DBR)" method. The questionnaires results showed that the performance of the experimental group was significantly better than the control group. In addition, further analysis was carried out according to each construct, including three aspects of aesthetic education and 4 learning objectives. Finally, the researcher makes some suggestions for implementation in the future.

10:45-11:10

67261 | The Impact of Covid-19 on Shaping the Design and Delivery of Physical Education in the Singapore Context

Jia Yi Chow, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted learning experiences for students globally and for one particular subject, the effect was even more significant: Physical Education. Without a doubt, lock downs and Home-based Learning (HBL) challenged PE teachers to re-think and redesign pedagogical practices, such as leveraging technology, to continue to support meaningful learning for the students at home. In Physical Education, where collaborative work and problem-solving can be accentuated in hands-on practical settings, the challenge was indeed significant. HBL meant that there was a complete absence of opportunities to be engaged in meaningful play with their peers. PE teachers had to conduct PE lessons through online platforms (e.g., Zoom) and design, curate PE learning packages through the Student Learning Space (SLS) (Ministry of Education, Singapore). In this sharing, descriptions of how Singapore PE teachers navigated the challenges will be presented. The implications on the review and re-thinking of relevant pedagogical practices in the PE context will also be discussed. Innovation is certainly seen as a way forward with pedagogy learning the way.