2010 Middle Years of Schooling Conference Newsletter

Professor Paul Deering

Since 1993 Paul Deering has been a professor of education at the University of Hawai'i.  He directs the Master of Education Degree with a Middle Level Emphasis as well as teaching at all levels from undergraduate to doctoral.  This Master Degree program has produced ten presidents of  Hawai‘i Association of Middle Schools (HAMS) and six Educators of the Year, and is now offered online as well as in-person.  Paul has published and presented on middle years education, collaborative learning, literacy, multicultural education, teacher empowerment, school culture and research methods.  Paul has served on the board of the National Middle School Association , is a past president and board member of HAMS, and is active in the American Educational Research Association.  Paul has worked with educators throughout the U.S., as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India.    He began his career at Harding Middle School in Lakewood, Ohio, teaching social studies and outdoor education

Dr Gary Stager

For 28 years, Gary Stager, an internationally recognized educator, speaker and consultant, has helped educators on six continents create more productive environments for learning.
2010 marks Dr. Stager's 20th anniversary of working in Australia. He led professional development at the world's first laptop schools in Melbourne and Queensland and since that time has worked with countless government and independent schools across Australia. He has worked closely with Departments of Education and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne. . A long-time colleague of Dr. Seymour Papert, Stager's doctoral research involved the creation of a high-tech alternative learning environment for at-risk adolescents.
Gary has designed online graduate school programs since the mid-90s, was a collaborator in the MIT Media Lab's Future of Learning Group and a member of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's Learning Team  .He is a Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University where has taught across six graduate programs and Executive Director of the Constructivist Consortium.  Converge Magazine named Gary a "shaper of our future and inventor of our destiny." The National School Boards Association recognized Dr. Stager with the distinction of "20 Leaders to Watch" in 2007.

Professor Erica McWilliam

Erica McWilliam’s career has spanned nearly four decades as an educator. She has taught in a wide range of school settings, from small regional schools to large urban schools, both in the government and non-government sectors. She now works as a researcher and educational leader in the Creative Workforce 2.0 program at QUT as an internationally recognised scholar in the field of pedagogy, with a particular focus on workforce preparation of youth in schools and higher education. She is well known for her contribution to educational reform and its relationship to “over the horizon” work futures in the context of the new knowledge economy across the entire spectrum of formal learning environments from early years to doctoral education within university contexts. Her latest book, The Creative Workforce: How to launch young people into high flying futures (2008) is published with UNSW Press in Sydney.

Dr Thelma Perso

Thelma was a classroom teacher of mathematics in Western Australian schools for over 20 years, 8 of which were as Head of Department. During this time she completed a Masters degree and PhD in Mathematics Education, and lectured in teacher education as an adjunct lecturer at Curtin University of Technology.  In 1998 she became the Senior Curriculum Officer for K-12 Mathematics with the Department of Education in WA. She received a Churchill Fellowship to investigate Indigenous numeracy in Canada and New Zealand in 2002 and this resulted in the researching and publishing of the book  Improving Aboriginal Numeracy for international educators. In 2003 she moved to the ACT to take up a position as Curriculum Manager, during which time she concurrently managed the development of the ACT curriculum. She is currently the Executive Director of Curriculum for Education Queensland.

She has written and/or edited over 30 books for teachers on mathematics education, outcomes-focussed education and pedagogy, Algebra education for students, and Working Mathematically as well as presented hundreds of teacher workshops and key-note addresses at conferences in Australia and overseas.

During her time in Queensland she has led the development of the Curriculum Framework for state schools (soon to be released) which includes curriculum guidelines for teachers of students with Disabilities and ESL Learners, and the DETA support document Scoping and Sequencing Essentials; Years 1-9.

In 2007 she was invited by the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to be the only ‘schools person’ on a 5-member panel to review the teaching and learning of Numeracy in Australia (report released in July 2008).

Ms Robyn Barratt

Robyn Barratt has worked in South Australian schools and in State and National Projects for over 30 years. These include work with adolescents, and the Junior Secondary Review in SA; the National Schools Network; and the National Middle Schooling Project (ACSA). Currently she is supporting fledgling teachers by lecturing in the ‘Middle Schooling for the Middle Years’ Course at UniSA.

She has a strong commitment to rethinking education for the 21st Century by exploring our current understandings of learning, and is therefore fascinated by the link between our beliefs about teaching and the conditions we set up for learning. 

Ms Margot Foster

Margot Foster has worked in the South Australian public education sector for 30 years – in the early, primary and middle years in complex schools as classroom teacher, science coordinator and school leader, and then in a range of leadership positions at district and state level such as School Development Officer, District Coordinator and Regional Equity Manager.  She is sought after as a speaker and currently works regularly with school and preschool leaders across SA engaging them in professional learning regarding instructional leadership, pedagogy and learning.

Between 1999 and 2009 Margot worked within the Curriculum Services Office to design and lead the state-wide Learning to Learn Initiative.  This program gained an international reputation as a leading edge innovation focussed on 21st century teaching and learning. It was the forerunner to similar initiatives overseas and led to the declaration of the SA position on teaching and learning, the SA Teaching for Effective Learning Pedagogy Framework to be released in 2010.  She currently leads this work.

Margot is passionately committed to redesigning schooling through a focus on learning.