ACE on the Road - Erica McWilliam - Canberra

The 21st Century Teacher: From Sage to Guide to Meddler

Presented by Professor Erica McWilliam
Adjunct Professor, Program Leader, Creative Workforce, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology, Professor of Education in the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Singapore

Wednesday 13 May 2009
Two Sessions:
4:00-6:00pm (includes afternoon tea)
7:00-9:00pm (includes light refreshments)
Clive Price Suite 1, University of Canberra University Drive, Bruce. Click here to download the map.

Bookings:
ACE members: $30.00
Non Members: $40.00
Student members: $10.00 (Student ID req)
**Groups/ Teaching/ Executive Teams of
5 or more receive members' rates.

Click here to download the brochure and registration form.

Professor Erica McWilliam

Most baby boomers know that 'every eye on me' was the catch cry of the instructive teacher in the twentieth century. A teacher's job was to instruct, inspire, scold, cajole. A 'pupil's' job was to listen, attend, absorb, regurgitate. The predominance of that style of teaching is supposed to have changed, and for many, it has. Where we once spoke of pupils and teachers, we now speak of 'the child-as-learner' and teachers as 'facilitators of learning'. Where once every eye was to be on the teacher, now learners are to be focused on their own learning and that focus should last for life.
For contemporary teachers, this means a shift from 'sage on the stage' to 'guide on the side'. The modern teacher understands that 'child-centeredness' is the driving logic of pedagogical work, and that powerful learning may occur when a teacher spends less time instructing and more time providing support for learners and learning.
In this presentation, Erica McWilliam explains why a further move is needed for this century, with teachers increasingly seeing themselves as 'meddling in the middle' of the curriculum, co-creating and assembling knowledge and cultural products with students and collaborating in evaluating their worth.

Who is Erica McWilliam?

Professor Erica McWilliam's career has involved four decades as a teacher and educational researcher and she has taught in a wide range of Australian school settings, from small regional schools to large urban schools, in the government and non-government sectors.
Erica is the leader of the Creative Workforce Program in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, based at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She has also recently taken up a professorial appointment with the National Institute of Education in Singapore. Her scholarship covers a wide spectrum, as is evidenced in her numerous publications on creative capacity building, innovative teaching and learning, research methodology and training and educational leadership and management.
Professor McWilliam is well known for her contribution to educational reform and its relationship to "over the horizon" work futures in the context of the new knowledge economy.
Her latest book, "The Creative Workforce: How to launch young people into high flying futures", was published last year with UNSW Press in Sydney.