Clever marketing strategies, well designed t-shirts, coloured cars, and a social media campaign have increasingly asked members of the Australian public to position themselves as "Giving a Gonski" (see http://igiveagonski.com.au/what-s-gonski/). To badge oneself with this term, is to demonstrate visible support to proposed changes to the funding of Australian schools. I want to give a […]
Author Archives: DebraBateman
It is easy to feel confused, disillusioned and a little disheartened by current critiques and critics of school education as it is portrayed in the media. There are many competing agendas, and a series of conflated issues raised by policy makers, politicians, media commentators and many graduates of the school sector. There is a lack […]
My research and thinking, and even my identity with regard to social networking has evolved, but not in a way I have anticipated. Over the past three years, I have offered a number of conference addresses and keynote presentations focussed on the use of social media and networking in education. I have co-authored chapters in […]
Assessment in Higher Education can be a punishing and torturous time in an academic’s life. It is punishing as a large volume of student work is expected to be graded and their results uploaded in extremely short periods of time. Such expectations demand that this work is done over hours which extend well beyond when […]
This post was published in ACEL’s weekly online newsletter (22/08/20110 The National Curriculum could be cited as one of the greatest political false starts of all time. Recently, as cited across a number of major media outlets (for example, Justine Ferrari, ‘Australian’, 9/8/11) and through the Minister for Education Peter Garrett’s own tweets (@PGarrettMP, 9/8/11, 4.03 […]
In a recent newspaper article (Long way to top 10, The Age (Melbourne, Australia) – 23/10/ 2010), I was reminded of the Federal Minister for Education’s previous incarnation as the leader of the Australian band Midnight Oil. This memory of Peter Garrett in this capacity initiated a small glimmer of hope within my increasingly critical […]
I think I just made up a word – edu-politics – but maybe I didn’t . . . but it doesn’t seem to matter in the madness of the current election campaigns. … So much of this campaign (Australia, 2010) has highlighted the significant role that education plays for a society, and clearly the […]
Currently, there is significant debate over the recent announcement by Victoria’s Shadow Education Minister, Martin Dixon, that a Coalition Government would enforce truancy laws and fine the parents of students who are absent from school over extended periods of time, or who are regularly absent. The application of these fines would occur where an unidentified […]
I am a futures educator. That means I am very interested in the ways that schools equip (or do not equip) students for unknown futures. We cannot assume that things will continue as they always have. As a futures educator, there are some basic themes which underpin all of the work I do with […]