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PurposeThe purpose of this article is to understand the role and value of mentorship for young people with blindness and low vision (BLV) through their education and work journey and to provide a conceptual framework for developing mentoring opportunities for young people with BLV.Design/methodology/approachExperiences of formal and informal mentorship were gathered within two distinct groups: adolescents with BLV in Australia and young adults with BLV in Canada. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured individualized interviews regarding the experiences, understanding, and valuing of mentorship within these groups.FindingsResults indicate the importance of informal role models and formal mentors within the lives of participants and how these become more refined and specific over time. Australian students valued role models as examples of success and inspiration for their own goals. Canadian mentees desired mentors as examples of personal lived experiences and providers of career-specific advice.Originality/valueThe study is original in its focus on the role of mentors for young people with blindness or low vision.

The opportunity to undertake teaching degrees entirely via online learning has proliferated in the last decade. Research shows that students choose to engage with content and application activities when they are directly aligned to assessment. The researchers trialled praxis-based assessment which required completion of practical learning tasks embedded in core learning content over two semesters in two Australian Initial Teacher Education courses. The aim was to enhance online student engagement in practical learning. Insights into the student perspective were gained through a survey, interviews, and learning analytics. The results from this study showed praxis-based assessment increased student confidence, classroom readiness and embodied understanding of theory.

This article presents the findings from interviews with thirteen parents of students with severe vision impairment who attend mainstream schools in Queensland, Australia. Participants were interviewed about their experiences in advocating for their children in a range of educational contexts. These experiences varied greatly depending on a number of factors, such as attitudes to inclusivity and ableism, perceptions of vision impairment, school culture, teacher-parent communication, and competing agendas. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the authors provide illuminating data on three broad themes: parents’ experiences of advocating for their children, parents’ experiences of utilising support networks and funding, and parents’ suggestions for schools and teachers. Important recommendations for teachers, schools, parents, students, and service providers are offered, with specific advice to develop a community of care, collaboration, and high expectations for students with vision impairment.

This article presents the experiences of 2 mothers whose children were born blind. It relates their journey moving from the grief experienced when presented with the unexpected challenges of supporting a child with special needs to a position of empowerment after gaining the necessary knowledge and skills to integrate into their new and reimagined lives. This research addresses the following question: “What is the role of Early Intervention Specialists (EISs) in supporting parents of children with unexpected congenital blindness?” Using case study methodology, the authors interviewed 2 mothers in Australia, when their children were aged 5 years and again 5 years later to gather a longitudinal understanding of their interactions with EISs. These narratives underscore the critical importance of the specialized knowledge EISs provide in empowering caregivers to take control of their child's therapy needs and advocate for their full participation within educational contexts and the community.

Online learning was initially introduced to support face-to-face learning, but now represents a dominant pedagogical approach in Higher Education. The rapid shift from face-to-face learning to onli...

Online learning has been widely adopted in higher education but there is a need to better understand the nature of student engagement with online courses. For example, there are questions about whether students engage with courses as educators intend and what features of online courses engage students to enhance learning. Bringing together student and educator perspectives, this article reports on a study that identified ‘pedagogical touchpoints’ – opportunities within online courses for student engagement – to ascertain whether a better understanding of these could improve online course design and student engagement. Data were collected across three undergraduate online courses. Data analysis produced three key findings: mapping pedagogical touchpoints against dimensions of engagement reveals patterns that may inform enhanced course design, students’ engagement with pedagogical touchpoints varies according to their learning needs and desires, and mapping pedagogical touchpoints can inform course design at both conceptual and practical levels. Discussion of the findings highlights that purposeful design of online courses, including strategic planning for pedagogical touchpoints, can maximise the potential for student engagement and consequent learning.

Pre-service teachers in Australian Initial Teacher Education programmes gain classroom experience through supervised, formally assessed professional experience placements and internships. This in-s...

As educators, we aim for students to seek, identify, and utilize a range of feedback to gain an understanding of their present performance in relation to learning goals, and ultimately to identify and use tools to close the gap between present and desired performance. We strive for all students to be their “own first assessors”—intelligent deciders—and develop the independence to self-assess the quality of their own work when they leave higher education institutions and enter the workforce. For students with a print disability such as vision impairment or blindness, traditional forms of feedback may not be successful in providing the information they need to close the gap. The most important issue for these students is access to feedback and agency in the feedback conversation. It is incumbent on higher education educators to find ways to provide equity of access to the provision and reception of feedback for all students. As such, this chapter explores ways for providing feedback to students with a vision impairment to ensure they are able to contextualize and utilize the feedback to improve learning outcomes. This is achieved by aligning the use of mobile technologies and audio feedback with the key principles of connectivism—autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness—to provide educators with recommendations.

Publishing in the academy is a high-stakes activity often used to measure academic staff progress and inform promotion. Many universities have increased pressure on academics, even at the earliest stages of their careers, to publish in high-ranking journals resulting in increased stress and uncertainty. The authors of this paper are members of a writing group in an Australian regional university, established to support each other towards success in quality research and publishing. Over the 2020–2021 summer semester, six members of the group decided to reflect on their experiences, emotions and outcomes throughout the writing process by participating in four reflective arts-based activities. Theoretical frameworks of reflection and metaphor were used to share findings. Strong evidence of having to grapple with meeting university expectations in tension with personal goals and passions was ever-present. The importance of drawing on both personal resources and significant others to manage these tensions through self-care practices was also evident. Implications resulting from this research include recognising the pressures placed on academics to publish only in specifically ranked journals. Overall, the arts-based reflection was critical in uncovering deeper feelings about the pressures of publishing and supporting higher education employees’ well-being and self-care during the writing process.

A career in academia requires long days teaching, marking, and preparing content, and nights answering emails, researching, and connecting with online students. Amongst this intense schedule, there must, however, be time for attention to a partner, children, and friends, and ideally recreation and self-care. Sometimes this is manageable, but how do female academics cope when they add to this mix, the mothering of a child or children with disability? This chapter relates the stories of the authors straddling the worlds of academia and disability to negotiate an unexpected journey, balancing the unpredictable nature of disability and the sometimes unforgiving expectations of the university. These intersecting autoethnographies highlight that the Academy requires not just a shiFt, but a shove into the realities of ableism.

Thousands of students with vision impairment or blindness attend mainstream schools in Australia. Their experiences depend on multiple pertinent factors, including teachers' understanding of the legal requirements to abide by the inclusive education agenda, schools' understanding of the nature of vision impairments, and the challenges they present to learning. Educators' willingness to take on advice regarding adjustments to the curriculum, assessment, technology, and learning environment are also critical to success for such students. This chapter puts forward the voices of students with vision impairment or blindness to provide a picture of the types of alternative formats used in schools today, including braille and assistive technologies. The voices share how important it is for students to be included in all areas of their education to achieve a sense of belonging and acceptance affording them true inclusion. A list of practical recommendations to assist teachers encourage inclusion academically, socially, and physically is detailed in this chapter.

In higher education learning environments, there is a dual need for educators to use supportive strategies to motivate students throughout the course, while also aiming to increase the capacity of students to self-regulate their learning. Using instantaneous tools to deliver formative or summative feedback through digital technology has been shown to lead to higher achievement and retention rates. This chapter shows how digital badges can provide instantaneous feedback to support students to feel belonging in the online community and develop self-regulation skills. Instantaneous feedback tools can be used to provide teacher presence throughout higher education courses to increase student engagement, retention, and achievement.