Talking Teachers

Podcast Description

Don & Jane are members of the Life-wide Learning and Education Research Group in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. They have spent decades involved with education in schools as classroom teachers, head teachers, policy advisors, curriculum experts, course developers, partners in school-based research studies and the advancement of undergraduate and postgraduate teachers including inservice teacher professional learning.

Hosts: Dr Don Carter & Associate Professor Jane Hunter

Producer: William Verity

Podcast playlist

EPISODE 4

A former Director General looks back to look forward

September 05 · 33 MIN

Dr Ken Boston began his professional career as a university lecturer, after being awarded his PhD in Earth Sciences. He then went into the education bureaucracy to go on to a distinguished career in Australian and international education. Dr Boston is a former Director-General of Education in South Australia and New South Wales, a former Director-General, Education and Training and Managing Director, TAFE NSW and former CEO of Britain’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. He was also a Gonski school funding reforms panellist.

Show notes

ABC Radio National interview with Dr Boston on 6th June 2023 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/archived/edpod/dr-ken-boston/3057944

Boston, K. (September, 2016). What Gonski really meant, and how that’s been forgotten almost everywhere. Inside Story. What Gonski really meant, and how that’s been forgotten almost everywhere

Boston, K. (February, 2017). Gonksi at five. Vision or hallucination. Inside Story. Gonski at five: vision or hallucination?

Hare, J. (May 2022) Gonski has been politicised, bastardised and cherry-picked: Ken Boston

https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/gonski-has-been-politicised-bastardised-and-cherry-picked-ken-boston-20220217-p59x8w

EPISODE 5

Indigenous teachers in schools

September 05 · 22 MIN

Randall Mumbulla is a final year teacher education student in the Bachelor of Education (Primary) Program at the University of Technology Sydney. Randall was also one of the winners of the recent ‘If I was Prime Minister’ essay competition, run by the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF) with the award being presented to him by the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.

In this second episode of Talking Teachers, we speak with Randall about this award and his experiences as an Indigenous teacher education student.

Show notes

Lorenza, L., Carter, D., Baguley, M., de Bruin, L., Levido, A., Meiners, J., Zouwer, N.,Booth, E., & Stanton, L. (2023). Stage 1 Initial Findings Report for the Emerging Priorities Program. An examination of primary teacher, student and parent experiences of arts learning online during COVID-19 lockdown. CQUniversity. https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Stage_1_Initial_Findings_Report_for_the_Emerging_Priorities_Program_An_examination_of_primary_teacher_student_and_parent_experiences_of_arts_learning_online_during_COVID-19_lockdowns/23699763

Lowe, K., & Galstaun, V. (2020). Ethical challenges: the possibility of authentic teaching encounters with indigenous cross-curriculum content?. Curriculum Perspectives, 40, 93–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-019-00093-1

Moodie, N. (2019). Learning about knowledge: threshold concepts for Indigenous studies in education. The Australian Educational Researcher. 46, 735–749. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00309-3

Thomson, A. (12 December 2022). Indigenous voices: why we urgently need windows and mirrors, EduResearch Matters blog, https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=15464

EPISODE 3

Exceptional teachers for disadvantaged schools

September 05 · 27 MIN

Jo Lampert is a Professor of Social Inclusion and Teacher Education and Director of the Commonwealth and State supported NEXUS alternative pathway into teaching. NEXUS is a community-engaged teacher education program designed to prepare culturally diverse, high-quality teachers for metropolitan, regional, and rural secondary schools in Victoria, many of which are hard-to-staff. Jo was founder and co-director of the National Exceptional Teacher for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program for ten years prior to moving to La Trobe University in 2017 – where over the past 5 years she developed NEXUS. In 2022 she took up a professorial role in teacher education for social transformation at Monash University.

Over the past twenty-five years, Professor Lampert’s internationally recognised research has included Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, teacher education for high poverty schools and community-engagement in teacher education. She has been CI on many Australian Research Council grants including a current Indigenous Discovery on co-design and educational policy. She has research collaborations in Canada, the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Spain, and Brazil and is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. With a background in literary studies Professor Lampert is known for her research in children’s books about September 11, 2001. She tweets @jolampert

Show notes

Kettle, M., Burnett B., & Lampert, J (2022). Conceptualising Early Career Teachers’ Agency and Accounts of Social Action in Disadvantaged Schools, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 47(8):1-17.

Lampert, J. (11 August 2022). Why that one tweet went viral (and what we must do now to fix “teacher shortages”) EduResearch Matters blog, https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=14048

Lampert, J., Mcpherson, A., & Burnett, B. (1 May 2023). Teacher shortages: Is teaching family-friendly now? EduResearch Matters blog, https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=16599

Shay, M., Sarra., & Lampert, J. (2023). Indigenous education policy, practice and research: unravelling the tangled web, Australian Educational Researcher, 50(1):73-88