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Praxis Learning Journal
Student Notes
Communicating your academic, professional, and
personal development and empowerment
Total marks: 40
– Submission Checklist of Excellence = 2 marks
– Contextualising your Journey = 5 marks
– Key Learning Moments = 15 marks
– Praxis Statement = 19 marks
1 Overview
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 to discover the 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. It’s
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.
2 TAP 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 formula T + A = P results
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.
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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.
3 Praxis Journal
The assessment has 4 components (these may or may not be subheadings – we don’t care
how you do it, we just need to be able to find them to mark them):
– Submission Checklist of Excellence = 2 marks
– Contextualising your Journey = 5 marks
– Key Learning Moments = 15 marks
– Praxis Statement = 19 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 6th 2023.
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
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members of the learning community during tutorials and online, those notes must be repackaged 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.
3.1 Submission Checklist – needs to be attached to start of submission
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). It is

3.2 Contextualising Your Journey (approx. 200 words or equivalent)
In learning module 1, 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.
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3.3 Key Learning Moments (700 words or similar)
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. You need to be able to show
evidence of this (i.e. the inclusion of artifacts of learning):
• 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 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. These resources should be influenced by the reading you are
doing throughout the semester – but might include additional work.
Remember 700 words means it is absolutely NOT possible to discuss everything, and that the
challenge is to tell your narrative within that word count.
3.4 Praxis Statement (600 words or similar)
For the 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 it is about
emphasising 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.
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4 Format
In the spirit of Paulo Friere’s, 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 below.
4.1 List of Accepted File Types – please note you can only submit ONCE

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5 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 SIX) 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 reference list 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.