Shelley Peers, the QUT 2010 Outstanding Alumni Award winner for Education, speaks about the Primary Connections program - its aims, underlying philosophy, and impact.

The Stronger Smarter Learning Communities project is a national landmark project emphasising high-expectations and relational approaches to Indigenous Education in a range of targeted school sites across Australia. This seminar evaulates and critiques the project, and explores its impact amongst indigenous communities.

This seminar considers some of the tensions inherent in policy initiatives related to school assessment practice in England currently, and presents an example from developments in distance learning assessment practice at the Open University in England to enhance the authenticity of assessment, to ensure its functional role and formative potential for masters’ level students studying the course ‘Curriculum, learning and society: investigating practice’.

This lively seminar will discuss working examples of pedagogical patterns, where they are derived from and where they are used in practice. Hear speakers debate the key issues involved in using pedagogical patterns: the induction and development of teaching staff; the collaboration across a distributed workforce; and embedding innovation within traditional institutional and course structures.

Rhonda Davidson-Irwin’s unique approach to music and education will inspire you to follow your own journey in whichever direction it takes you. Rhonda was recently a guest of the Chinese and Russian governments and travelled to their countries to educate and perform.

The oz-Teachernet has been a test bed for award-winning ideas and approaches in digital pedagogy which have been increasingly adopted by the mainstream. Dr Margaret Lloyd and Dr Shaun Nykvist speak on this technology and its impact in the classroom.

This talk by Professor Kerry Mallan of QUT's Faculty of Education will canvass a range of issues relevant to the lives of young people growing up in a network society. In particular, the discussion will draw on a current Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research project as well as other research to illustrate the ways in which youth give accounts of themselves and interact with friends and others in online networks such as MySpace, Facebook, MSN, and blogging sites.

Lynne Hinton is principal of Buranda State School in Brisbane. She has led the school through a process of exciting and innovative curriculum and pedagogical reform, resulting in outstanding outcomes for students, teachers and the school itself. This presentation gives an insight into learning at Buranda State School, and describes the changes that have occurred as a result of teaching philosophy to all students over the past decade.

Recent events in our own and other higher education institutions show how knowledge is an ambiguous and contested terrain. In this seminar Associate Professor Kapitzke will discuss her current work in the area of knowledge cultures within a context of global ‘innovation’ economies.

This seminar situates early learning and care policy and research in Australia in an international context. Distinctive policy approaches exist to support work and family life, early childhood education and care in different parts of the world.

Associate Professor Anne Hickling-Hudson considers how her double location as a Caribbean/Australian citizen places her, as a researcher, in a crossroads constituted by the pull of origins and the imperatives of an institution on the other side of the world.