Queensland University:
Professor of Education: Dr. Jill Willis Visit:
Below is a section of the biography for Dr. Jill Willis straight from the QUT website.
"Background Jill Willis is a senior lecturer in Education. She has always been interested in the transformative power of learning, and how social collaboration and innovative structures can support learner agency. She is the Master of Education course coordinator and teaches in the Leadership and Management study area. She also supports pre-service teachers in developing skills in pedagogy, assessment and curriculum planning."
Jeff and I had the pleasure of visiting with Dr. Willis. We had sent her a copy of our course objectives for the EDGR 635 Assessment and Evaluation Course prior to our meeting to give her a vision and purpose of our travels and visits. She was thankful for that information prior to our visit. She found it interesting to see what our objectives were at the Master's level, as they do not have a course for assessment at the Master's level.
She walked us through the AC (Australian Curriculum) in a good amount of detail. It was a similar discussion to what I had with the Head of Curriculum at Chapel Hill State School, but put more clarity on the curriculum for me. We talked again about the following areas:
Learning Areas and Content Descriptors: Subject/content areas taught and the standards they are taught to.
General Capabilities: Skills to be taught. This made me think a lot of our transferable skills.
Cross Curricular Priorities: These are what Australia feels is important to be taught. These will change as Australia's visions and values change.
We also discussed the grading system A, B, C, D, E. I spoke in more depth and detail about both the Australian Curriculum and the grading system in my post with the Head of Curriculum at Chapel Hill State School, so I am not going to repeat myself here.
Dr. Willis spoke of teacher's having flexibility in the classroom on how they teach the curriculum. She also spoke of how assessment was not originally a part of the AC. Then went on to say that Queensland is different from other States because the majority of their assessments are internal with only about 25% of their assessments being external. This allows teachers in Queensland more freedom with formative and summative assessments within the classroom than in other states in Australia. This connects with the political conversations I had with other educators through out the week that I have spoken of in previous blog posts. The fact that Queensland is still not quite on the same page as the rest of the country with implementing the AC. The push to have this happen appears to be getting stronger based on my conversations with teachers in the schools this week.
Several educators this week, including Dr. Willis, have spoken about Australia looking to the United States for educational trends. They have also spoken about assessment with the National curriculum being more knowledge-based, which is interesting and odd to me. I feel that the United States is moving toward a more skills based educational approach than a knowledge-based one. At least in Vermont anyways. Dr. Willis also spoke of how education has been largely interdisciplinary teaching for a long time, and is now moving away from that approach with the new Australian Curriculum.
It was a very thought provoking meeting. It clarified a lot of what I had spoken about with other educators throughout the week and yet at the same time, left me wondering and thinking of more questions around the approach to education in Australia versus the approach to education in the United States. Overall, I feel both countries approach to education in may similar ways.
Professor of Education: Dr. Jill Willis Visit:
"Background Jill Willis is a senior lecturer in Education. She has always been interested in the transformative power of learning, and how social collaboration and innovative structures can support learner agency. She is the Master of Education course coordinator and teaches in the Leadership and Management study area. She also supports pre-service teachers in developing skills in pedagogy, assessment and curriculum planning."
Jeff and I had the pleasure of visiting with Dr. Willis. We had sent her a copy of our course objectives for the EDGR 635 Assessment and Evaluation Course prior to our meeting to give her a vision and purpose of our travels and visits. She was thankful for that information prior to our visit. She found it interesting to see what our objectives were at the Master's level, as they do not have a course for assessment at the Master's level.
She walked us through the AC (Australian Curriculum) in a good amount of detail. It was a similar discussion to what I had with the Head of Curriculum at Chapel Hill State School, but put more clarity on the curriculum for me. We talked again about the following areas:
Learning Areas and Content Descriptors: Subject/content areas taught and the standards they are taught to.
General Capabilities: Skills to be taught. This made me think a lot of our transferable skills.
Cross Curricular Priorities: These are what Australia feels is important to be taught. These will change as Australia's visions and values change.
We also discussed the grading system A, B, C, D, E. I spoke in more depth and detail about both the Australian Curriculum and the grading system in my post with the Head of Curriculum at Chapel Hill State School, so I am not going to repeat myself here.
Dr. Willis spoke of teacher's having flexibility in the classroom on how they teach the curriculum. She also spoke of how assessment was not originally a part of the AC. Then went on to say that Queensland is different from other States because the majority of their assessments are internal with only about 25% of their assessments being external. This allows teachers in Queensland more freedom with formative and summative assessments within the classroom than in other states in Australia. This connects with the political conversations I had with other educators through out the week that I have spoken of in previous blog posts. The fact that Queensland is still not quite on the same page as the rest of the country with implementing the AC. The push to have this happen appears to be getting stronger based on my conversations with teachers in the schools this week.
Several educators this week, including Dr. Willis, have spoken about Australia looking to the United States for educational trends. They have also spoken about assessment with the National curriculum being more knowledge-based, which is interesting and odd to me. I feel that the United States is moving toward a more skills based educational approach than a knowledge-based one. At least in Vermont anyways. Dr. Willis also spoke of how education has been largely interdisciplinary teaching for a long time, and is now moving away from that approach with the new Australian Curriculum.
It was a very thought provoking meeting. It clarified a lot of what I had spoken about with other educators throughout the week and yet at the same time, left me wondering and thinking of more questions around the approach to education in Australia versus the approach to education in the United States. Overall, I feel both countries approach to education in may similar ways.
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