Query: Critical awareness

title: Community Engagement: Cultivating Critical Awareness

title: Data Power in Education: Exploring Critical Awareness with the "Learning Analytics Report Card"
abstract: The burgeoning field of learning analytics (LA) is gaining significant traction in education, bolstered by the increasing amounts of student data generated through educational software. However, critical discussions of LA are in short supply. Drawing on work in the cultural studies of data and critical algorithm studies, this paper begins by examining three central issues: the distancing and "black boxing" of LA disciplinary practices, the mythologizing of objective data, and the concern for future prediction. The second section describes the design and implementation of the "Learning Analytics Report Card" (LARC) a pilot project that sought to develop experimental approaches to LA. As such, rather than seeking to simply produce analytics, the LARC attempted to foster critical awareness of computational data analysis among teachers and learners.

title: The Development of a Critical Reading Learning Model to Promote University Students' Critical Awareness
abstract: Critical reading awareness can empower readers through critical reading skills used to understand ideological messages and domination act in language practice. The aim of this research was to develop and test a critical reading learning model to enhance university students' critical awareness. This Research and Development study was carried out by following three main steps that were product development, product validation, and examination of product effectiveness. 56 students participated in this study. They came from the Indonesian Language Department, Negeri Makassar University, Indonesia. The qualitative data was analyzed with the use of domain analysis and the quantitative data was analyzed using t test. The developed learning model was proven valid and feasible through experts' validation. In addition, the results of the effectiveness test indicated that the learning model could improve students' critical reading skills and students' critical reading awareness of understanding, evaluating, and responding to texts.

title: Taking the TESOL Practicum Abroad: Opportunities for Critical Awareness and Community Building among Preservice Teachers
abstract: This chapter examines the experiences of four native English speaking preservice teachers in a faculty led study abroad program in South Korea. It elucidates the ways in which these preservice teachers experienced personal and professional growth with an increasing critical awareness of the power imbalance embedded in English language teaching in the global context. Data were collected via students' weekly online discussion posts, electronic portfolio artifacts, and focus group interviews. Findings indicate personal and professional growth in participants' self perceptions as a result of at least two fundamental aspects of the program: 1) the intentionality with which participants were exposed to a critique of English language teaching in the Korean context and 2) the residential nature of the experience, which provided intensive peer collaboration among practicum participants. The chapter concludes with recommendations for implementing a TESOL practicum abroad as a meaningful and consciousness raising opportunity for preservice teachers' professional development. Taking the TESOL Practicum Abroad: Opportunities for Critical Awareness and Community Building among Preservice Teachers

title: An Investigation of Iranian EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the Use of Critical Awareness Techniques in Reading English Academic Texts
abstract: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the Iranian EFL students' attitudes towards the use of critical awareness techniques in academic reading. To this end, 30 Iranian students who were studying English for several years were selected as the subjects of the study. The selected participants were given an introduction to the course. The participants went through a course in which ten reading comprehension passages were covered. In teaching reading comprehension passages to the language learners, a critical based framework was selected and adopted based on the tenets of critical reading as well as Van Dijk's (2000) socio cognitive model. In effect, in teaching the reading passages the students' consciousness and awareness were raised to encourage the students to get a deeper understanding of the texts. The subjects discussed their experiences from going through a critical based approach. In effect, the subjects argued about the advantages and disadvantages of the worked model in terms of the learning and retention of the materials. The results of the study indicated that the students had a positive perspective towards the critical awareness techniques utilized in the academic reading passages. The subjects emphasized that English language learners need to learn diverse strategies to improve their reading comprehension rate. Effectively, the results of the study indicated that the students prefer to be taught utilizing a critical based approach to be able to improve their critical thinking towards the perspectives and ideologies behind the texts. They added that consciousness raising equips them to be able to get access to the profound meanings of the texts.

title: Critical Awareness Raising in Myanmar

title: The Integration of Personal and Professional Selves: Developing Students' Critical Awareness in Social Work Practice
abstract: How social work students incorporate personal and professional selves in the contexts of field education represents a cornerstone of effective and sustainable practice. This paper presents a qualitative component of a study that tracked 15 third year bachelor of social work students across their first field placement to document their use of self, critical reflections and experiential learning. The project examined students' assessed 'use of self' assignments to understand their capacity for and development of critical awareness across this placement. Students were most articulate in being able to identify stressful situations that arose from placement in terms of what they were thinking (mind) and feeling (emotion) and to a much lesser extent to what they were sensing (body) Over time, students demonstrated a growing critical awareness to better identify and respond to their self reported tensions. The findings provide developmental insights into how students integrate personal and professional selves and potentially shift from reflective and reflexive practices to incorporating praxis in their work. Through considering the linkages between self and practice, this paper explores student experiences whilst on placement and the associated developmental tasks of critical awareness.

title: Promoting critical awareness in the initial training of preschool teachers in Greece: resistance and perspectives
abstract: This article focuses on the development of future preschool teachers' critical awareness through the introduction of two 'new' subjects intercultural education and media education in the curriculum of an early childhood department in Greece. The current social and political context, the structure of preschool teachers' training in Greece and the design and evaluation of the operation of these courses that are designed to raise students' critical awareness are discussed. Particular attention is given to students' resistance to the specific issues taught, which appears to result from their personal beliefs and the institutional inertia of the education system.

title: Short Term Study Abroad for Texas Preservice Teachers: On the Road from Empathy to Critical Awareness.

title: Promoting "Critical Awareness" and Critiquing "Cultural Competence" Towards Disrupting Received Professional Knowledges
abstract: There is a compelling argument that universities should be committed to advancing the Indigenous agenda. With respect to social work, as well as to nursing, psychology, and allied health, this commitment is often translated into a single goal: that graduates should be "culturally competent" While acknowledging that there can be tactical advantages in pursuing this goal the current paper develops a practical critique of the expectation that cultural competence is an unproblematic "add on" to professional education. Using a single case study as an example how the subject "individual development" is transmitted as a monocultural and unproblematic formation we argue that it is impossible to learn to work cross culturally without developing a capacity for reflective self scrutiny. Less likely to be a flag of convenience than "cultural competence" an allegiance to "critical awareness" prompts the interrogation of received knowledge, for example how human development and personhood is understood, as well stimulating an engagement in the lifelong process of reflecting on one's own ideological and cultural location.