Teacher education students bring diverse funds of knowledge to formal education. These funds of knowledge are particularly important for the successful transition of first year tertiary students into higher education. In preservice teacher education contexts, students draw knowledge from varied life contexts and their funds of knowledge become funds of identity when experiences associated with onto-epistemologies are used in the service of identity formation. This descriptive case study draws data from an online first year preservice teacher education unit (subject) to consider examples of funds of identity that can inform the work of practitioners in developing significant and contextualized learning experiences. Students' prior schooling experiences give meaning to their teacher education coursework and project potential teacher identities.

A well known teaching and learning strategy for teachers is Edward de Bono's 'Six Thinking Hats'. Our research examined the engagement and understanding of first year preservice teachers being taught the theory and practice of this strategy through both on-campus and Second Life (virtual) workshops. In both workshops, the six thinking hats were used to judge student response to the use of this approach in their teaching. This pilot study provides insights into the use of virtual worlds for teaching and learning. The paper clarifies methodological issues such as why the Six Thinking Hats were used and the controls that were put in place between real life and Second Life workshops. The results, the challenges that were encountered, the future plans for virtual classrooms, particularly in the area of distance education, and whether this study can be generalised beyond preservice teacher education is discussed.

Universities that engage with diversity embrace the demographic of their broader communities and ensure that their first-year programs cater for diverse student populations (Rissman, Carrington & Bland, 2013). They redress "marginalization of certain forms of knowledge and ways of knowing" (Gale & Parker, 2014, p.747). Students' cultural knowledge and the resources that they bring to their formal education are of great importance to their sense of belonging, an important aspect of the first year experience (Barton & Tan, 2009; Gonzalez & Moll, 2001; Hogg, 2011; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014; Kift, Nelson & Clarke, 2010; Rios-Aguilar et al., 2011). Funds Of Knowledge (FoK) Can be described as social and cultural capital (Rios-Aguilar et al., 2011) In the form of the wide and varied resources that are possessed by adult learners. They are a useful model for research into the understandings and practices that adult learners bring to the classroom (Oughton, 2010).

This article features nine 'narratives of experience' illustrative of academics engaged in an alternative Professional Development (PD) activity, referred to as Writing for Publication, in a regional Australian university. Each narrative adopts a critical stance to academic practice situated in what Ball defines as a 'culture of performativity' perpetuated by a 'global neoliberal environment'. Contrary to professional development built primarily around sporadic content-provision and credential-based activities, Writing for Publication represents an alternative approach to professional development, a loose-coupling model, that gives validation to academics engaged in navigating dominant neoliberal discourses driving higher education filtered through the interstices or sites for identity-creation, agency formation and emerging communities of practice.