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RMIT Code of Conduct

As we commence the new year it is timely to refresh our understanding of the RMIT Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct for staff defines how RMIT’s values are demonstrated in the University’s day-to-day activities and outlines the standards of behaviour expected by all members of the RMIT staff community.

 

HE L&T Policy Party – don’t miss out!

Who knew policy could be this much fun?!

Next Wednesday a veritable Who’s Who from the RMIT policy team have made time to spend the morning with us. It will be a great chance to refresh your understanding of RMIT HE L&T policies and to hear about changes for 2019.

Come and meet the RMIT L&T Policy Gurus:

• Murray Alessendrini, Assoc. Director, Integrity
• Kerri Vienna, Senior Advisor, Policy
• Simon Williams, Senior Advisor, Conduct
• Kathryn Wardill, Manager, Assessment Support
• Linda Jen, Senior Advisor, Appeals
• Rowan Simpson, Senior Advisor, Complaints 
  

And at 11:30 our very own Mel Nash will take us through PX policies and processes for 2019.

The session will set us up well for the start of semester. See you there!

When: Wednesday January 30, 9:30 am
Where: 220.2.20

And don’t forget the afternoon Canvas session, starting at 1 pm with Emma to get your Canvas shells ready for QA.

 

 

 

 

New Associate DVC, Education

Professor Sherman Young starts at RMIT on Tuesday 29 January as Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education. Once he has settled in we will invite him to meet the SoEd.

In the meantime you can read a little about him in WorkLife here.

RMIT Urban School is Canvas ready

Congratulations to staff in the Urban School  – all our VCE Canvas shells have passed QA. This is a great position as we prepare for the start of teaching. Many thanks to you all for this effort.

Status of the Teaching Profession

2018 ended and 2019 began with much political attention focused on education.

The Status of Teaching Profession

You may recall that late last year the Federal Government announced an inquiry into the Status of the Teaching Profession. The Australian Council of Deans submitted a response. Thembi and the HE PMs also produced a SoEd submission in collaboration with Kristian Galanti, RMIT’s Senior Adviser Government & Strategic Partnerships. Both responses, submitted just before Christmas, are included below:

• ACDE status of teachers inquiry submission
• RMIT status of teaching inquiry submission

In other news AITSL released its ITE Data Report 2018 in late December. The report summarises a large amount of information about ITE programs and early career teaching. It includes separate reports on 2016 data from all ITE providers. In general the RMIT data looks pretty good, with positive student evaluations of our programs.

Some of this data, most notably the ATAR results, was picked up by the media and you may have seen the publicity early in the new year on teacher education, with Tanya Plibersek’s comments about caps for ITE programs to improve the ATAR. “Labor wants the best and brightest Australians studying teaching. If universities don’t do the right thing and fix this themselves, a Labor government will make them. We hope we don’t have to do this, but we will if we have to.”

Labor threatens cap on teaching degree numbers to address low ATAR entry scores

Collaborating to Improve the Status of Teachers – An ACDE Forum

The continued focus on ATAR is frustrating and misleading and the Australian Council of Deans has been advocating strongly for a change to this emphasis. The group has organised a forum on Friday, 29 March 2019 at the MCG. The theme of this Forum is Collaborating to Improve the Status of Teachers with the aim to find areas of common ground among education sector bodies and to devise practical actions to create change in public perception of the profession.

Forum sessions planned will explore political perspectives, key potential points of intervention to improve the status of teachers, the role of media, whether secondary schools turn off potential teachers, attracting mature age and professionals into teaching and practical future actions that can be taken collaboratively. Details of the agenda for the Forum will be provided shortly.

We have invited the following politicians:

• The Hon Daniel Tehan MP, Federal Minister for Education
• The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Deputy Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Education
• Senator Richard Di Natale, Leader of the Australian Greens

The registration fee is $450.00. If you would like to attend, please let your manager know.

LANTITE

LANTITE continues to generate media attention. Articles in The Age have addressed the changes to LANTITE (the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education) with increasing pressure to ensure we have strong support for our students so they pass LANTITE. Thembi, the PMs and I will be working closely with the SLC and Library to increase our support in this area.

Teachers must now pass mandatory literacy, numeracy tests

Push to raise teaching standards adds up

 

 

 

 

First book of the year

Congratulations to Tasos, Di and Rebecca on the publication of their book Researching and Using Progressions (Trajectories) in Mathematics Education.

This book, edited by Tasos, Di and Rebecca, has its origins in independent but parallel work in Australia and the United States over the last 10 to 15 years. It was prompted by a research seminar at the 2017 PME Conference in Singapore that brought the contributors to this volume together to consider the development and use of evidence-based learning progressions/trajectories in mathematics education, their basis in theory, their focus and scale, and the methods used to identify and validate them. In this volume they elaborate on their work to consider what is meant by learning progressions/trajectories and explore a range of issues associated with their development, implementation, evaluation, and on-going review. Implications for curriculum design and future research in this field are also considered.

A number of distinguished academics from the US and Australia have contributed research chapters.

This book is Volume 3 of the BRILL/SENSE  Series Global Education in the 21st Century edited by Tasos Barkatsas.

Congratulations to all involved.

Happy New Year!

A warm welcome to 2019 to all SoEd colleagues. I do hope you had an opportunity to recharge over the summer break and are looking forward to the year ahead. My thanks to both Jayne and Jeff who kept things kicking along well while I took annual leave. I am looking forward to catching up with you all over the coming days.

Play, Wonder, Empathy – Educational trends from the Innovating Pedagogy 2019 report

The seventh Innovating Pedagogy 2019  report from The Open University highlights ten trends in teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world.

This year, the report has been written in collaboration with the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology (SLATE) in Norway.

The report is free to download from www.open.ac.uk/innovating

The ten trends are:

Playful learning – Evoke creativity, imagination and happiness

Learning with robots – Use software assistants and robots as partners for conversation

Decolonising learning – Recognize, understand, and challenge the ways in which our world is shaped by colonialism

Drone-based learning – Develop new skills, including planning routes and interpreting visual clues in the landscape

Learning through wonder – Spark curiosity, investigation, and discovery

Action learning – Team-based professional development that addresses real and immediate problems

Virtual studios – Hubs of activity where learners develop creative processes together

Place-based learning – Look for learning opportunities within a local community and using the natural environment

Making thinking visible – Help students visualize their thinking and progress

Roots of empathy – Develop children’s social and emotional understanding

 

Thank you

As we finish up for 2018 I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the work you have done to make the SoEd a better place this year – supporting each other, improving our students’ experiences and generating research that makes a difference.

We often underestimate the impact we have, both on each other and more broadly. But small acts of kindness make a difference.

Thanks to you, colleagues will have felt more valued. Thanks to you, our students will have been inspired. Thanks to you, our partners will have been excited about their connection to RMIT.

Many thanks for your collegiality, commitment and compassion this year. All the very best for a happy and safe break over Christmas and a great start to 2019.