As an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education, I see literacy as a complex web of liveliness, affect, fluidity, and emergence (Burnett & Merchant, 2020). During my research, I applied a post-humanist approach to case study methodology to better understand the following question: In what ways can drama be integrated into a secondary ELA classroom to develop literacy practices by moving learning from the page to the stage?

My research demonstrated that drama helps students engage in meaningful instances of embodiment and relationality while also developing their identity and creativity (Cowan & Albers, 2006). Drama helped the students to see literacy as event through various means of communication (i.e., movement, gesture, and posture). Students created masks, scripts, and performances to understand and embody the characters in Othello. Excitingly, exploring literacy through drama proved to be a way of learning that builds student agency and has the potential to reinvigorate literacy learning (Galgut et al., 2017).

I want to share how drama builds student capacities as text decoders, users, participants, and analysts (Albers & Sanders, 2010). While also creating spaces for quality teaching and learning that call upon student voices and experiences. I also hope to share stories from my research participants and show how drama can have a home in all classrooms.

Works Cited:
Albers, P., & Sanders, J. (2010). Literacies, the arts, and multimodality. National Council of Teachers of English.
Burnett, C., & Merchant, G. (2020). Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 41(1), 45–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1460318
Cowan K., & Albers P. (2006). Semiotic representations: Building complex literacy practices through the arts. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 124-137.
Galgut, O., Border, S., & Fenwick, A. (2017). The benefits of students as partners for developing digital literacy in medical education. Medical teacher, 39(10), 1102-1103.

The emphasis on the importance of a college education in U.S. society remains strong. However, for children who have experienced foster care, this aspiration often seems unattainable (Salazar, 2013; Uesugi, 2009). Foster children are recognized as one of the most vulnerable groups within our school systems (Zetlin, 2006), often overlooked and lacking dedicated advocacy for their educational needs (Morton, 2015). High school graduation rates among foster youth significantly lag behind their peers, with only 42-63% completing high school by age 18 (National Working Group on Foster Care & Education, 2014). This disparity is attributed to frequent placements resulting in school changes, behavioral issues leading to suspensions and expulsions, poor attendance, and academic struggles (Morton, 2018).

Despite these challenges, a substantial 84% of youth in foster care express a desire to attend college (National Working Group on Foster Care & Education, 2014). However, the reality is stark: only 33% enroll in post-secondary education at community colleges, four-year institutions, or universities (Barth, 1990), and less than 3% achieve a bachelor's degree (NFYI, 2017; Glasmeier & Nadeau, 2017; Haviicek, 2011; Needell et al., 2002).

This presentation will share findings from a qualitative, phenomenological study, with 60 college students who aged out of foster care. They identified their hope for the future and the obstacles they encountered on their journey to earning a bachelor's degree. The research study and findings call for inclusionary teaching practices rooted in trauma-informed pedagogy to create equitable practices in schools.

This paper aims to explore how the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) standards translate into quality teaching practices, identifying key characteristics that align with effective teaching in contemporary educational settings, with a focus on designing support structures for early-career teachers in schools.

This emerging study leverages Schön's (1983) model of reflective practice and Hattie's (2009) Visible Learning Theory. These theories underscore the importance of reflective teaching and evidence-based strategies in achieving quality education.

This research employs a qualitative approach, combining literature review and in-depth interviews. The literature review synthesizes existing research on AITSL standards and quality teaching characteristics. Complementarily, interviews with teachers from Australian schools provide insights into their practices and reflections on how AITSL standards informs their teaching and have helped shape their growth along the Classroom Practice Continuum (AITSL).

Preliminary findings from the literature review and interviews indicate a strong alignment between AITSL standards, effective teaching practices and coaching support structures. Key characteristics of quality teaching identified include reflective practice, adaptive teaching strategies, deep content knowledge, and a strong commitment to professional learning. The interviews reveal that teachers who frequently engage in reflective practice and professional development are more effective in implementing AITSL standards, resulting in improved instructional quality and student learning experiences.

This study's findings are particularly relevant to the conference theme of "Characteristics of Quality Teaching." By providing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of AITSL standards, the paper offers valuable insights for educators and policymakers seeking to enhance teaching quality. The research underscores the importance of professional standards in fostering reflective and informed teaching practices, contributing to the global discourse on quality education. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the practical implications of adhering to professional teaching standards and the transformative impact on educational outcomes.

This research explored how non-arts-based, non-gifted education-based teachers foster creativity in their classrooms, identifying distinct profiles of creativity-fostering teaching practices. Guided by a sociocultural perspective, this study integrates Glăveanu's (2013) 5As of Creativity with the Basic Psychological Needs mini theory of intrinsic motivation (Chen et al., 2014) to understand teachers' experiences of and motivations in fostering creative classrooms.

An instrumental case study with a mixed methods design was employed. Phase One involved 25 public middle school teachers, deemed “everyday” teachers because they do not teach traditional arts courses, nor do they self-identify as “artistic”. Instead, they teach the “everyday” content (e.g., Reading, Math, Science, History). These teachers responded to an online survey measuring two dimensions: (1) nine creativity-fostering behaviors (evaluation, flexibility, frustration, independence, integration, judgment, motivation, opportunities, and questions; Cropley, 1995; Soh, 2000), and (2) satisfaction levels of intrinsic motivation (competence, autonomy, and relatedness; Reeves et al., 2018; Roth et al., 2007). Statistical clustering techniques were used to identify initial patterns in the survey data. In Phase Two, eight teachers participated in semi-structured interviews and a card-sorting task, uncovering contextual factors underlying their quantitative responses. Phase One and Two data were integrated to create descriptive profiles.

Two distinct profiles emerged: "The Struggle Is Worth It" and "The Struggle Is Real." Teachers in the "Struggle Is Worth It" profile reported higher motivation levels and more frequent engagement in creativity-fostering behaviors. Conversely, those in the "Struggle Is Real" profile described significant barriers to fostering creativity. Both profiles revealed a new understanding of how creativity can be integrated into teaching, highlighting different pathways to defining and achieving quality teaching.

The findings suggest that further investigation into creativity-fostering behaviors is crucial for helping in-service teachers enhance their understanding and practices of quality teaching and learning, ultimately promoting educational equity.

I propose a roundtable discussion focusing on my development of a teaching resource about the partition of British India. This would link with the theme of curriculum design for equitable teaching.

A fairly recent and hugely influential time in British history, this event saw the largest mass migration of people in history and was a catalyst for the migration of thousands of south Asian communities to the UK, changing the demographic into the modern multicultural society we live in today.

Despite ruling over the region for over 300 years, curricular across the UK has failed to acknowledge this history, silencing the lived experience of many citizens and descendants of citizens who lived through the Empire and partition of the Asian sub-continent.

Teaching the history of British India is essential for fostering equitable education, highlighting the complexities of colonialism, power, and resistance. Incorporating this history into curriculum design promotes critical consciousness (Freire, 1970), enabling students to understand the socio-political dynamics that shaped global inequalities and contemporary race relations. Through a postcolonial lens (Spivak, 1988), educators can address marginalised perspectives and encourage empathy, fostering a more inclusive historical narrative. By integrating voices of colonised people, curriculum design becomes more equitable, with students developing a nuanced understanding of power, identity, and justice.

This resource is a series of lessons to be taught across the BGE curriculum from P6 – S2 stages. Each lesson would help to build the narrative around the emergence of Empire in the sub-continent, life under colonial rule, inequalities, resistance and activism to encourage change to the eventual partition into two distinct nations. Each lesson encourages a research led approach for both learners and teachers to collaborate in developing their understanding and ask critical questions of decisions made, advantages and disadvantages to various communities and the impact of those.

A community of practice can be identified as a ‘shared domain’ of interest (Finn et al 2020) which is dynamic and evolving; encompasses person and context; is made up of sub-identities (Smith & Rushton, 2023). As Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Geography teacher educators, we have created a social space: (a community of interest) to evaluate the position of geography within Scottish education, particularly at points of transition: How does learning and teaching in People, Place and the Environment in the primary and secondary Broad General Education (BGE) transfer into the delivery of ‘powerful knowledge’ in the academic geographical context? The community of practice is exploring three areas which are underpinned by ‘transitions’:

• the tensions which exist surrounding the delivery of geography within the curricular context
• self-efficacy of non-geographical experts delivering geographical knowledge within the BGE social studies
• the time-space value of content knowledge delivered by institutions for pre-service teachers

As teacher educators, paradoxically we work at the intersection between the world of university and school, which means that there are affordances and constraints to what we see and do (Olsen & Buchanan, 2017). Therefore, to gain insight into the complex geo-educational landscape we seek to bring together a wider community of practice which is underpinned by academic engagement and research, formal education and social and professional interactions (Smith & Rushton, 2023: p.253). This community will include primary and secondary practitioners, third sector providers and ITE to promote equity and inclusion in practice, noting areas for collaboration and identifying areas where practitioners are restricted by knowledge, time and space. It will also aim to strengthen partnerships with schools and encourage engagement events/training at Higher Educational institutions.