Professional Educator Volume 1 Number 1 October 2002

Educators across schools and the further and higher education sectors are addressing rapid change and providing for new, complex and varied learning needs. So it's important that we find room for debate, for educational practitioners and researchers to engage in the conversations that make the educational enterprise truly collaborative. Professional Educator aims to bring that professional discourse to you, to help build a 'learning profession' through the development of data-driven and evidence-based approaches to learning and teaching. Professional Educator aims to be a powerful resource - by educators, for educators - that supports, challenges and extends those working in the diverse range of education and training environments Australia-wide. You'll find educators talking together in these pages. Our aim? To incorporate the views of all those in the profession, to evolve to meet your changing needs. Let us know what you think and what you want. Much that appears in the public and professional arena in the name of education comes from outside the profession, while the wealth of research and the work and conversations of educators that might be happening locally or in specialist arenas remains hidden. Professional Educator makes the findings and outcomes of contemporary research readily accessible, explores how professional educators are interpreting, applying and value-adding to such research, and provides support to enable educators to enhance their professional practice. Professional Educator bridges the divide between theory and practice - in ways that not only acknowledge and value the work of educators, but also assist in transforming the profession to respond more effectively to contemporary needs. You'll read about it here. Try professional standards: what's the current picture and what do professional educators say? Try lifelong, lifewide learning: what are the emerging needs for teachers, and which traditional educational matters continue to concern educators in the classroom? Information and communication technologies, online, off-campus learning, middle schooling, education and the law: what's the state of play for Australian school education and further education? You'll find out in Professional Educator.

For further information on articles, please check the links.

The Profession

Teacher professionalism and the new 'Gradgrindery'
by Terry Hayes

The last four years have seen a flurry of professional standards activity following on from the publication of the Senate Inquiry into Teaching report, Teaching is a Class Act, with three major Australian Research Council projects undertaken by national subject associations investigating subject-specific standards in Mathematics, Science and English literacy (STELLA), and considerable cross-fertilisation between these projects. A Commonwealth-funded project has investigated information and communication technology standards for teachers, as well as work in Western Australia on leading teacher competencies...

Links: www.dest.gov.au/schools/publications/2002/RaisingStandards/RaisingtheStandards.pdf

Teaching Practice

Behaviour management: A no-frills approach
by Christine Richmond

Managing the behaviour of students effectively in the inclusive classes of today is a demanding business. Most teachers are relentlessly challenged by the task of managing well. Ask almost anybody teaching today and their conversations turn to difficulties associated with managing the behaviour of troubled or troublesome students...

New Teachers

Preparing educators for the Twenty-first Century
by Mary Kalantzis and Andrew Harvey

Lifelong learning and lifewide learning have led to new perceptions about the role of educators. Lifelong learning recognises that education does not end - or begin - at school. This is evident from the mobility of today's workforce, the demands for continuous upskilling, and the fact that many vocations of the near future have yet to be visualised. While educators of the future will still be considered providers of knowledge, their role will diversify and expand well beyond this...

New Technologies

Towards collaborative global education networks
by Gerry White

In March 2002, Australia's national online education and training agency education.au limited hosted a Global Summit of Online Knowledge Networks in association with the bi-annual World Congress on Information Technology held this year in Adelaide. The summit brought together leaders, specialists and policy makers from all sectors of Australian education and training and from around the world with a view to establishing a network of international alliances to address issues of common concern...

Links: www.edna.edu.au/edna/page1.html
www.education.gov.au

From the Classroom

A little more conversation: Middle Years education
by David Reynolds

'We need to create the conditions for teachers to focus on the needs of their students at a particular year level and develop collaborative approaches with their teaching colleagues and students that deal with those needs.' Put simply, educators need the time with their students for both to get connected. Beyond that, says David Reynolds, educators need to look at the multi-disciplinary curriculum and ways to help students in managing their own learning. 'I'm interested to explore further the benefits of a problem-based learning approach for adolescents and to examine other classroom-based initiatives that are helping kids with their learning.' That, in a nutshell, is Reynolds's research brief, after receiving a Lindsay Thompson fellowship to investigate Middle Years approaches to learning...

Post-compulsory

Online research: Ten key messages for teachers and managers in VET
by Hugh Guthrie

For the last three years the National Centre for Vocational Education Research has been managing nine research projects into online learning funded through the Flexible Learning Advisory Group (FLAG), examining a diversity of topics, including:

• operational issues
• the scope of online usage in the VET sector
• online delivery in the VET sector: improving cost effectiveness
• e-business and online learning: connections and opportunities for VET
• learner views and teaching practice
• learner expectations and experiences: an examination of student views of support in online learning
• 'The secret is the teacher': quality in online learning, taking the learner’s view
• one size doesn't fit all: pedagogy in the online environment
• the development of quality online assessment in VET
• regional and rural learners
• 'where to' with online learning in regional Australia?
• learning online: benefits and barriers in regional Australia

Links: www.flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/
www.opentraining.com
www.tafefrontiers.com.au
tafe.ivt.com.au/courses.php
www.ncver.edu.au

National Perspective

The national perspective
by Steve Holden

Professional standards

Agreement across all states and territories is comprehensive: educators need to define teaching in terms of professional standards articulated according to some kind of professional career structure...

ICT competency

While standards across the school sector appear likely to be codified in terms of wide - and extending - professional capacity, it looks likely that standards in terms of information and communications technology (ICT) will be defined in terms of 'minimum competency'. Given the ubiquitous nature of ICT as a learning tool - and that's nationally, not just in New South Wales - any ICT standards are going to bleed significantly into any other formulation of professional standards...

Links: www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya/taskfrce/taskfrce.htm
www.dest.gov.au/schools/teachingreview/default.htm
www.dest.gov.au/schools/publications/2002/RaisingtheStandards/RaisingtheStandards.pdf
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/edt/ves/index.htm

Issues in Education

Schools and the law: Current and emergent issues
by Douglas Stewart and Andrew Knott

Despite a comparatively low level of litigation in Australia impacting on schools, there is an increasing willingness to seek legal redress for alleged harms. While in past years litigation was largely to do with the physical welfare of students and mainly on school grounds, today there are many other circumstances in which actions against schools and educators have been, or are likely to be, initiated...

Links: www.victorialaw.org.au
www.lawfoundation.net.au
www.austlii.edu.au

The Professional Educator is published four times a year and distributed free to all members of the Australian College of Educators. To find out how to join ACE, click here .