Community-school partnerships are an established practice within environmental science education, where a focus on how local phenomena articulate with broader environmental issues and concerns brings potential benefits for schools, community organisations and local communities. This paper contributes to our understanding of such educational…

Universities and teacher employment bodies seek new, cost-effective ways for graduating classroom-ready teachers. This study involved 32 final-year preservice teachers in an innovative school--university partnership teacher education programme titled, the School-Community Integrated Learning (SCIL) pathway. Data were collected using a five-part…

Using metaphor to clarify pedagogical understanding and to anchor teacher beliefs and knowledge to meaningful contextualized mental maps can have powerful consequences in schools. Frequent changes in school staff and clientele present schools with the challenge of how to share culturally specific messages quickly and effectively to those new to…

Universities in Australia and worldwide, are building a new generation of learning and teaching spaces which are designed to encourage and support active and collaborative modes of learning and teaching. However, there is little evidence to show that students will recognise the contribution these spaces make to their learning. Temple (2008) argued…

This article analyses the conceptual and policy contexts of the Australian government's "Building the Education Revolution" (BER) programme. This $A15 billion commitment to renewing school facilities is the Australian government's largest single measure of economic stimulus in response to the recent global financial crisis. Public debate…

Excursions to museums and science centres generally are great fun for students and teachers. The potential educational benefits beyond enjoyment, however, are rarely realised or analysed for their efficacy. The purpose of this paper is to describe four educational enrichment programs delivered at the Gravity Discovery Centre (GDC), near Gingin,…

The rapid expansion in higher education in the 1960s and early 1970s brought a reexamination of university teaching and learning, placing significant attention on the role of faculty development. The steady growth of this field has been reflected in the establishment of centers, offices, and divisions at many colleges and universities that are in…

This paper analyses the change and innovation strategies that Charles Sturt University (CSU) used from 2007 to 2009 during the implementation and mainstreaming of an open source learning management system (LMS), Sakai, named locally as "CSU Interact". CSU was in January 2008 the first Australian University to implement an open source…

This paper is concerned with teacher collaboration in Higher Education. Specifically, it focuses on how a "community of practice" emerged and developed during the process of enhancing first year transition for pre-service teachers. It is written from the perspective of five teacher educators and is situated within the literature of the…

Reviews research on Australian initiatives to introduce senior school or multi-campus models of secondary education provision and presents three case studies to examine the potential of this approach. Asserts that the approach facilitates the provision of a broad and relevant curriculum, provides a more appropriate schooling environment for…

From 1980 to 1995, the University of Western Sydney at Hawkesbury (formerly Hawkesbury Agricultural College) in Richmond, New South Wales, Australia, pioneered an innovative undergraduate degree in Systems Agriculture based on experiential education, systems thinking, and adult learning theory. Today this program is in trouble and has reverted…

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning movement is now truly international although national and contextual differences affect its implementation. Institutional capacities for and openness to innovation vary widely and cannot be readily predicted. The research university referred to in this article has a conservative reputation in Australia, yet…

This paper takes a large-scale social perspective in describing a national project in Australia that was premised on local school communities working together and contributing ideas for the benefit of their students, and potentially, the whole country. The project was intended to improve schools' capacity for educating boys, and in the long-term,…

Fourteen innovative educational programs implemented by countries in Asia and the Pacific region are described to aid other educators engaged in planning and implementing innovative programs. The programs are: faculty-oriented breakfast programme (Australia); farm school on the air (India); multimedia, inservice teacher training for primary…

This article provides brief accounts of significant current innovation and research in Australia. (Editor/RK)