Creating discomfort in the name of transformative pedagogy

A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies is a third year course in a Bachelor of Education program. This course asks pre-service teachers to create, produce and publish a narrative text for students in the upper years of primary (VELS Level 4, school years 5-6). This course moves away from a traditional lecture-tutorial model and instead promotes, individualised self-directed learning, a teaching collective instead of a set tutor, encourages reflection and transfer and intentionally creates discomfort. For many students this alternative framework and assessment caused discomfort, frustration and unease about their learning. This paper uses course documents and students' on-line discussions and journals to explore the complexity of supporting students' learning while still challenging students' thinking about young people, teaching and learning. As a way of making meaning of the experience this paper will examine the tension of discomfort and support; a tension which has the potential to shift, transform, and inform the learning of pre-service teachers.