The School of Education and Pulteney Grammar School partner up
Commemorating the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement between Pulteney Grammar School and the School of Education at the University of Adelaide, 14 August 2017, establishing a Research Hub, Professionals at Pulteney, for providing academic support for teachers in innovation and research for publication.
L to R: Dr Linda Westphalen (Senior Lecturer, School of Education), Mrs Anne Dunstan (Principal, Pulteney Grammar School), Professor Faye McCallum (Head, School of Education), Mr Jarrod Johnson (Assistant Head of Middle School, Teaching and Learning, Pulteney Grammar.
The School of Education: supporting research initiatives in Schools.
The University of Adelaide and Pulteney Grammar School have a long history of association, back to the establishment of our respective institutions in the mid-1800s. This association has undergone a revival, for much the same reasons as the rationale behind our beginnings: to provide for the people of the State of South Australia (albeit now a much bigger student base) the best progressive and innovative education possible.
In the second decade of the 2000s, what began as a teaching association between a lecturer in the School of Education and an IT Education specialist at Pulteney Grammar, gently evolved, first into a critical friendship and then into a research partnership. On 14 August 2017, this research partnership took another evolutionary step into a formal Research Hub, Professionals at Pulteney (P@P), recognised in the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement between Mrs Anne Dunstan, Principal of Pulteney Grammar School and Professor Faye McCallum, Head of the School of Education at the University of Adelaide.
Supported by Dr Linda Westphalen of the School of Education and Jarrod Johnson, Assistant Head of Middle School (Teaching and Learning), teachers at Pulteney are given the opportunity to write for publication, in individual and/or collaborative research, covering such topics as pedagogic/assessment innovations and technologies in teaching practice.
Designed as a responsive and pragmatic Community of Practice, P@P aims to have a positive impact on Pulteney students’ learning and teachers’ academic profiles. The hub is a realisation of one of the goals of the Beacon of Enlightenment Strategic Plan 2013 – 2023, to ‘rekindle the University of Adelaide’s importance to the community by creating research partnerships with industry’ (Beacon 2013: 7). Industry partners can take many forms and working with schools is, for the School of Education, pivotal in maintaining professional currency, fostering best practice in teacher education, working collegially with school leaders and teachers, and nurturing an innovative and research focussed teaching and learning community.
P@P will showcase individual teacher achievements in research in a Middle School Teacher Conference scheduled for September 2018 (coinciding with the opening of a new Middle School Building at Pulteney), so as to provide an opportunity for broader dissemination of research outcomes to the education community.