Workshop Keynote Speakers

Professor Richard Gunstone

Professor of Science and Technology Education
Faculty of Education
Monash University

Dick began his professional life with 12 years of high school physics/science teaching in Victoria, then joined Monash in 1974.

For many years his teaching and research interests have been focussed on:

the nature of student learning in the sciences, how to enhance the quality of this learning, and how better to assess it;

metacognition (the ways people understand and control their own learning) and ways to enhance this; and

teacher development and ways to enhance this.

Over the last decade the contexts in which he has worked to understand all these issues have expanded to embrace a range of undergraduate contexts, in faculties of Science, Engineering and Information Technology, at Monash and elsewhere. He has published extensively.

Associate Professor Marjan Zadnik

Senior Lecturer
Department of Applied Physics
Curtin University of Technology

Dr Marjan Zadnik has a BSc (Hons) in Physics and PhD from the University of Western Australia on isotopic analysis of terrestrial and meteoritical noble gases. He has carried out post-doctoral research in Planetary Science at the Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, and at the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, in Mainz, Germany. Since returning to Australia he has been concerned about the high withdrawal and failure rates amongst first year university science students. This lead to his collaborating on a number of research projects with colleagues from the Science and Maths Education Centre and from the Department of Applied Physics. He has been co-investigator on over 30 competitive grants and awards, and has published widely. He completed an 18 month secondment in the Academic Staff Development Unit to assist academic staff in the Division of Engineering and Science with teaching/learning issues and other professional development.

He has received a number of awards for teaching excellence including Curtin's Vice-Chancellor's "EXCEL" Award in 1993, the CAUT National Teaching Fellow in 1996, Curtin's "Innovative Teaching Practice Award", the Inaugural Student Guild Teaching Excellence Award in 1999 and the Dean of Science Medal in 2000.

Current projects include investigating students learning in a Studio environment, and improving university science teaching through workshops for new and inexperienced staff.

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