Education and Social Work Lecture Series

The Education and Social Work Lecture Series features internationally renowned experts contributing to debates and discussions in education, social work and social policy.

The Education and Social Work Dean's Lecture Series is free and open to the public. Upcoming events will be announced here soon. Listen to past Sydney Ideas talks on Soundcloud.

 

Past talks in this series

Event type: Lecture
Date: Wednesday 2 May 2018
Time: 6 - 7.30pm
Venue: Education LT 424, Education Building A35

‘Reflection’ is pervasive in pre-service teacher education programs, yet a shared definition eludes us. Responses to Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner added the word ‘reflection’ to our vocabulary but ignored his attention to an epistemology of practice, which Professor Tom Russell links to teacher candidates’ learning from experience in practicum settings.

Russell argues that the perennial theory-practice gap is a gap between two very different ways of coming to know. His 40 years as a teacher educator have provided a range of interesting experiences that help to illustrate the need for our teacher education programs to recognize explicitly, that much of what prospective teachers need to learn must be learned from professional experience, and that this calls for skills with which many are unfamiliar.

Tom Russell is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University, Canada. His research focuses on how people learn to teach, with particular attention to how beginning teachers learn from their practicum experiences. He holds degrees from Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Toronto.

Event type: Lecture
Date: Monday 19 March 2018
Time: 5 - 6pm
Venue: Education LT 351, Education Building A35

It is estimated that there are 65.6 million displaced people worldwide: 22.5 million are refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18 years. An estimated 10 million people are deemed stateless, and these people are denied access to basic human rights such as housing, health and education. In the Asia-Pacific Region there are also a growing number of people facing climate-induced displacement.

This guest lecture critically explored Australia’s role in the Region, outlining how the Australian government is presently responding to asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons; its policies and programs, as well as how activists, service providers and advocates engage in this space and the challenges they encounter.

Dr Maryanne Loughry is a Research Professor at the School of Social Work, Boston College, and a member of the Australian Government's Minister of Home Affairs' Advisory Council on Asylum Seekers and Detention (MCASD). In 2010 Dr Loughry was made a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia for service to refugees.

Event type: Panel
Date: Wednesday 14 February 2018
Time: 6.15 - 7.30pm
Venue: Education Lecture Theatre 315, Education Building (A35), Manning Road

This lecture argued that learning as we know it is currently changing in nature from its traditional focus on reproduction to a focus on learning as design.

The purpose of education is to contribute to reproducing the knowledge and skills that are relevant for a society.

In traditional societies with a low division of labour this implies focussing on reproducing knowledge that is stable and well known. In societies undergoing rapid change, due to factors such as digitalisation, globalisation and an increasing knowledge production, the situation will be different.

Education and instruction – from preschool to university – can no longer be modelled solely on what is known but has to be forward looking and based on visions of a largely unknown future.

Professor Roger Säljö specialises in research on learning, interaction and human development in a sociocultural perspective, where he has published extensively.

Much of his work is related to issues of how people learn to use cultural tools and how we acquire competences and skills that are foundational to learning in a socially and technologically complex society.

In recent years, he has worked extensively with issues that concern how the so-called new technologies transform human learning practices inside and outside formal schooling. In this field, he has been responsible for the national research program, LearnIT, funded by the Knowledge-foundation and which finished in 2009.

Professor Säljö has also been engaged in interdisciplinary work with colleagues from a range of different disciplines including medicine and health care, various natural sciences, linguistics and several others.

Since 2006 he has been Director of the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), a national centre of excellence funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Professor Säljö is one of the founding editors of the journal Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. He has supervised 47 PhD students to their degree.

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