Annual Conference 2019

Associate Professor
KYM SIMONCINI

Early Childhood and Teacher Education

Research in Papua New Guinea – helping children to flourish at home, school and in play.

In this presentation Kym will describe her research in Papua New Guinea over the last four years. Her projects have included helping women farmers support their children’s learning through dual-language, place-based culturally relevant picture books and talking with their children, creating community designed and built playgrounds with local materials and a Duplo lego program to increase children’s maths skills through play. She has just launched a digital professional development package for teachers using SD cards that focuses on authentic learning and 21^st century skills. Her current projects include of a $15.5M consortium project enhancing children’s access to quality elementary education and increasing their literacy and numeracy skills and a performance- based health promotion project to prevent childhood stunting.

Associate Professor DEBORAH PINO-PASTERNAK

Early Childhood and Community Education

Promoting Self-Regulated Learning in the Classroom

Through this workshop participants will enhance their understanding of student regulation of learning and will discuss effective strategies to enhance self-regulated learning in the classroom. Session suitable to Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary practitioners.

MARGIE APPEL

Lecturer & PHD Candidate

JOANNA SMITH

Lecturer

Assistant Professor JOHN WILLIAMS

Health and PE Teacher Education

Models Based PE Teaching – the theory and practice for excellence in Physical Education pedagogy

This seminar will introduce instructional models as evidence-based pedagogy for teaching contemporary physical education. This workshop is aimed at primary and high school teachers, as well as HPE specialists, to inform and empower self-efficacy and confidence in using evidence-based approaches to deliver quality physical education (QPE). In facilitating this workshop, we will provide and an overview of the following eight instructional models; Direct Instruction, Co-operative Learning, Peer Teaching, Inquiry Teaching, Sport Education, Personalized System of Instruction, Game Sense and Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR). The latter two instructional models, Game Sense and TPSR will be explored in more depth in a practical way that can be transferred straight to the classroom. These models or approaches, designed to be used in a blended way, help us to teach physical education that has educative purpose, with educative purpose being a key idea within the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education. Delegates attending this workshop, will also be given access to supporting video recorded exemplar lessons of the instructional models, by 2018 Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation student teacher award winners.

Assistant Professor SHYAM BARR

STEM/Teacher Education

Transformational Educators lead through Reflexive and Reflective practice

Research has demonstrated that individuals who engage in high quality reflective practice achieve mastery in shorter time periods, better regulate their behaviour and make greater contributions to the development of an adaptive organisation.

Reflexivity has recently emerged as a critical skill influencing leadership and teaching behaviours. This workshop aims to support participants’ understanding of reflective and reflexive practice, the reflexive habits of high performers, and strategies to enhance one’s own reflective and reflexive practice.

Session suitable to Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary leaders and practitioners

Associate Professor
THOMAS NIELSEN

Teacher Education

Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Education

In this session, Thomas will present an up-to-date synthesis of what we have learned from the past two decades of positive psychology and wellbeing education initiatives around the world. Evidence-based principles and practices of what promote student wellbeing in educational settings are outlined—and the good news is that many of these principles and practices can also be used in our own lives, not just in our teaching practices, to improve personal wellbeing and reduce stress and burnout.

Assistant Professor
SITTI PATAHUDDIN

STEM/Teacher Education

Assistant Professor
MAYA GUNAWARDENA

Teacher and Community Education

Forging school-based learning partnerships across Australia and Asia-Pacific region

This is an interactive, conversational, and exploratory workshop. In the first half, three presenters will share their experience of working with schools and communities in varied Asian contexts. In the second half, workshop participants will be invited to reflect on their experiences of, and interest in partnering with schools in the Asia-Pacific region. Together we will reflect on key learnings, challenges, and opportunities that may arise when developing school-based learning partnerships across our region.

The power of mentoring: a critical friend in pre-service teacher education in clinical practice

School clinical placements offer pre-service teachers an authentic environment to learn pedagogical content knowledge and other related skills such as positive classroom management and strategies to increase social emotional learning. It is normal in this practice to identify mentors from school communities to work with pre-service teachers. Mentors are the actors or agents who contribute to their learning of subject knowledge, understanding and skills of being teachers. Mentoring (or coaching) in general has been popularly used as a strategy in educating novices; however, mentoring is usually taken for granted, as there is limited research that investigates the process of mentoring and its impact on teacher learning by both being a mentor or working with a mentor.

Assistant Professor BERNARD BROWN

Teacher Education

Ethical Policies and Practices in Schools

This seminar is focused on key Australian school education policies which have content concerned with ethics. The following questions and discussion points are considered. How can the ethical content in policies be interpreted and what does this mean for those in schools in terms of their practice and understandings? Why is ethics appearing more in Australian education policies in recent years?

Assistant Professor ROHAN NETHSINGHE

Creative Arts/Teacher Education

Play your hearts out – musicking with traditional methods

In this session participants will experience making music through traditional methods of multicultural music and scaffold skills through responding, making (composing) and improvising activities. The transmission approaches used are a combination of traditional multicultural and Western music (such as Kodaly) methods and involves hands on music making (using percussion instruments, body percussion, beatboxing and ukulele) and singing. All activities are based on published research and music pedagogical theories introduced by Dr Rohan Nethsinghe.

Assistant Professor
EMILY HILLS

Teacher Education and TPA Coordinator

The influence of teacher biographies on reflective practice

This presentation will discuss some of the key findings of a doctoral study which investigated how teacher biographies influence professional practice when engaging with the Asia curriculum priority in the English classroom. This presentation will showcase personal narrative methodology and its impact on reflective practice. It will highlight how a deeper understanding of our own personal narratives as teachers can enhance our confidence and efficacy when engaging with concepts that challenge us as educators.