ASSESSMENT THREE HANDBOOK

AUTUMN 2024

Praxis Learning Journal

Communicating the development of your academic, professional, and empowered citizen selves

Total marks: 40

1. Contextualising your Journey =3 marks
2. Key Learning Moments =21 marks
3. Praxis Statement =15 marks
4. Bibliography (no marks but must be included for a passing mark on the asssessment)
5. Submission Checklist of Excellence =1 marks
   
   

1Overview

Investigating and Communicating Social Problems (ICSP) is taught utilising an active learning approach. Active learning is learning by discovery, integrating both theoretical knowledge and activities and discussions. You, the student, are central to the learning journey. The learning modules (including online AND face-to-face content) are not about providing you with lots of facts and figures to memorise. They are designed to assist you todiscoverthe key concepts and applications of the subject; to help you develop a critical consciousness of your role as an academic, a professional, and as a citizen in your social world(s).

Your Praxis Learning Journal is a representation of your active engagement in this subject.Its core purpose is to communicate your academic, professional and personal development and empowerment throughout the semester (your audience being the subject markers).There is no right/wrong content, and it is not simply a description or summary of the content covered in each module. Rather a praxis journal is a discussion that highlights your critical self-reflections on your learning within the modules, the subject as a whole, and, more broadly, in relation to the academic, professional and personal pathways that you are travelling.

2TAP Framework

The TAP Learning Framework (T + A = P) is inspired by the work of Paulo Freire, who worked recognised the power and elitism of traditional educational structures. His argument is that knowledge is not just something to passed down through books and lectures, rather it is also something that lies in the practicalities of doing. He framed his work around the idea of developing Praxis: the merging of theory and action. The learning formulaT + A = Presults from attitude that: "[transformation and discovery] cannot be purely intellectual, but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism [in the sense of the act of deliberately doing some], but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis" (Friere 2018:65)

Theory (T): Individual Learning Tasks to complete online (vUWS). These include short videos, reading, and activities to get you thinking about the concepts within each module. These are designed to be undertaken EITHER before and/or after the tutorial. Some theory is best engaged with after the tutorial, when you have personal experiences to develop your understanding.

Action (A):Each module involves a set of activities to be undertaken either in class (physical or virtual group-learning) or asynchronously (independent-learning). These will be delivered through the HyFlex learning model. You need to be actively engaged with the ACTION tasks (i.e. no lurking online) in order to be successful in this subject. This means ensuring that you complete either the Group OR the independent ACTION learning task for each module (not both). Neither Reading or watching videos are considered ACTION.

Praxis (P): Praxis is about development and empowerment beyond the traditional structures of elite education. It is a concept developed by Paulo Freire in his work "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (see Module 1). Praxis is concerned with how we put learning into practice. You are looking at the joining of theory and action, as well as your reflections on your learning and development, and how this will help you be an empowered academic, professional and/or citizen. It is about putting your learning into 'informed practice'. Your Praxis should consider the value of module content BEYOND the subject: i.e. for your greater academic, personal and/or professional pathways.

You develop your praxis through reflection. Once engaged with the theory and action, you can begin to reflect on your learning: where you were when you started the module (or the subject), and how you have developed your understanding and created knowledge. Reflections are always personal and individual. No other student (or tutor, for that matter) will have the same journey through the subject. A series of questions will be provided in each module to prompt your thinking about your engagement and development (but do not only answer these questions in your Praxis Journal). You should try and complete your initial reflections within the weeks of study for a module, when experiences and ideas are 'fresh' in your memory.

3The Praxis Journal

The assessment has 4 components (these may or may not be subheadings we dont care how you do it, we just need to be able to find them to mark them):

• Contextualising your Journey =3 marks
• Key Learning Moments =21 marks
• Praxis Statement =15 marks
• Bibliography (no marks but must be included for a passing mark on the asssessment)
• Submission Checklist of Excellence =1 marks

The instructions contained within this document are designed to help students achieve a credit grade. Higher grades are achieved through more links to scholarly resources, creativity in communicating your ideas, and/or the clarity of your communication. Submission of a formal academic essay is strongly discouraged. An academic essay is an impersonal form of communication, and would not readily convey your personal reflections and experience to the reader. Remember: this subject is not asking you to be the same as you are in other units, it is asking you to be more than you were on March 4^th2024.

The journal itself is a personal account. This means that it should reflect your learning experiences, and your developing understanding of how we investigate and communicate the key social problems in our worlds. Whilst you will interact and collaborate with other members of the learning community during tutorials and online, those notes must be re-packaged individually, and the reflection on learning, as a personal account, must be individual. Copying (or closely mirroring) another students praxis journal will indicate a lack of insight While there is a structure to this assessment, there are many ways to represent the TAP learning framework, within each learning module.

3.1Format (The Creative Element)

In the spirit of Paulo Frieres, democratisation of education and critical consciousness, the form that your journal takes should reflect your voice. There is no need to adopt a formal academic writing style (because very few of us actually use that to communicate the ideas that evolve deep in our consciousness). You have free creative control over the form your discussion takes (and exercising that creativity generally leads to better marks,). The point of this is to make sure that everyone reads at least one thing each module (you only become better at reading if you do it frequently!). The praxis journal assessment allows you to be creative: you are encouraged to be incorporate pictures, sounds, spoken notes, videos, etc. as a way of capturing your learning and involvement with each module. You could utilise a mixture of these by creating a webpage. A list of the acceptable file types is included below.

List of Accepted File Types

4Praxis Journal Elements

A.Contextualising Your Journey

approx. 200 words or the equivalent of 10% of your submission 3 marks

In Learning Module ONE (START HERE: ACTIVITY), you were asked to think about who you were at that point in time: as an academic, a professional, and as an empowered citizen. This information helps us contextualise who you were at the start of the journey, and where you are at the end. You can express this, however, you want, and there is no expectation of links to resources (after all can you really reference your life). A stronger response might tie their story to scholarly literature, to demonstrate their critical reflection on the person they used to be (and why they were like that). Remember the emphasis in this assessment is on your learning journey, and you need to always be selective of the evidence that explains your personal narrative.

B.Key Learning Moments

700 words or the equivalent of 50% of your submission 21 marks (3 marks/module)

Your praxis journal entry needs to demonstrate your engagement with, and reflection upon, Theory and Action across the semester, and illustrate your reflective practice when it comes to the contribution theory and action make to your learning.For Autumn 2024, you need to overtly demonstrateengagementwith ALL SEVEN MODULES, with regard to both theory and action. Engagement meansdoing and learning fromreadings, videos, tutorial activities, peers, etc. Engagement is not simply telling us what you read: it is demonstrating what you learnt from the process of reading/watching/listening/doing something. To show evidence of your engagement with each module you need to show evidence (i.e. the inclusion of artifacts of learning).

A suggested approach to capturing your learning through engagement would be to complete the Praxis section of each module, where you would think about the following poinbts:

• Discuss the theoretical ideas, readings and/or videos that have influenced your understanding of the content (A strong response would link to scholarly resources when discussing the THEORY material)
• Explain the action tasks that you engaged with (either synchronous or asynchronous).
• Engage self-reflection and demonstrate insight when thinking about your development and empowerment from the module. The impact of the learning does not need to be profound for each module, and there may be times when you feel like you are stagnating, or just not getting it. Honesty is appreciated
• Pull these three elements (coherently) together, so that you can highlight your praxis: your critical consciousness of the value of your learning from your development and empowerment: as a scholar (an academic!), as a developing scholar in your discipline, or as a citizen in your social world(s)

It is NOT possible to discuss everything you need to choose the things that are most important to your learning journey and explain why. To pass this section, you must include details connecting your personal experience to specific resources and/or activities. You should include a mix of modules, and a mix of THEORY and ACTION examples. A good response finds the links between THEORY and ACTION, and takes these further. A very good response would NOT just list the 7 modules, rather they would identify links between modules. The important thing here is to remember to communicate with your audience. If your marker gets bored, they are unlikely to give you a higher grade.

A good discussion will make links toat least 7 scholarly resources(i.e. you should engage with AT LEAST one reading per module). Acceptable scholarly resources include a peer review journal article, or a scholarly book, or articles from The Conversation), with a reference list at the conclusion of the submission. These resources should be influenced by the reading you are doing throughout the semester but might include additional work. You are also strongly encouraged to incorporate more than 7 resources, reflecting the hard work that you have done across the semester (see E. Bibliography below)

Remember 700 words means it isabsolutely NOT possibleto discuss everything, and that the challenge is to tell your narrative within that word count. Be Creative in how you convey your engagement: sometimes words are not the most powerful nor most efficient means of doing this.

C.Praxis Statement

600 words or or the equivalent of 40% of your submission 15 marks

For the final praxis statement, you are required to take a big step back from your fortnightly activities and consider the development of your critical consciousness across the entire subject/semester. This statement is not just a summary of everything, rather the emphasis is on articulating your academic, personal and professional growth and empowerment. You should highlight key contributors (i.e. key learning moments) that have helped to develop your critical consciousness of what it means to investigate, and communicate with a diverse audience, about the challenges our social world(s) face. A good praxis statement will make links to at least 5 scholarly resources (i.e. a peer review journal article, or a scholarly book, or articles from The Conversation), with a reference list at the conclusion of the submission. Remember you want us to appreciate your journey and who you are: this can only happen if you find the words to tell us.

D.Bibliography: A Note on Reading and Referencing

In this assessment, referencing is not a separate assessment citeria, but it is a hurdle for achieving a higher grade (very good grades are distinctions and high distinctions). Think about the in-class discussion (in module TWO) on trustworthy and non-trustworthy sources of information.You want to ensure that the reader can trust your writing.Demonstrating good referencing here, will also demonstrate that you have integrated your active learning to change and develop your praxis as a developing academic.You should get in the habit of referencing everything. All published works (academic and lay readings, texts, youtube videos) need to be referenced and included in the reference list. Unpublished works (slides, online modules) do not need to be included in the reference list, but it should be clear within the text, as to where the content came from (i.e. In learning task 1.1, the topic video by Butland discussed.).

In this assessment, you are encouraged to use (makes links to) scholarly resources when discussing your key learning moments and when creating your praxis statement. In this subject, scholarly resources are peer review journal articles, or scholarly books, or articles from The Conversation).Scholarly resources are NOT videos, government websites, news or social media, random websites, nor Wikipedia (though these can all be used as additional references). A student wishing to receive higher than a credit would include more than the required references. Feel free to find and include additional resources that you have used to develop your understanding. The referencelist can be formatted as you wish, as long as we can tell who created it, when they created it, what it is called, where we can find, and whether it is scholarly or not. You should be individually consistent with your formatting.

E.Submission Checklist

Needs to be attached to start of submission (1 mark)

Submission Checklist of Excellence (table below) needs to be completed (your markers will use refer back to this during the marking process. The purpose of this checklist is to encourage you to reflect on whether you have been fair to your potential in this assessment (i.e. have you put time and effort into preparing it, or did you self-sabotage by leaving it until the day before the due date).

For further information on this assessment, attend and/or watch the recording of FriYAY Discussion Seminar Week 1 (8^thMarch 2024)