Despite many claimed benefits, teacher collaboration remains patchy, under-theorised, and resisted. At the same time, new large teaching spaces offer teachers opportunities to teach in teams within and across school subjects to enhance teacher and student learning. In this paper we aim to contribute to theorising the nature and means of this form…

Surprisingly little has been written about the notion of virtual teams in schooling contexts and less on the role of virtual teams in the professional learning and development (PLD) of teachers. Virtual teams are groups that use technologies to collaborate to address common goals. Members may work at in different locations, in different…

Consensus moderation, where collaboration and discussion take place to reach an agreement on mark allocation, is a frequently used approach to quality assurance in higher education. Unit coordinators play a vital role in facilitating consensus moderation, yet limited research has focused on their role in moderation practices. This study explored…

Pressure on labour-supply has rekindled concern about the low participation of men in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and public debate about the 'appropriateness' and 'value' of male educators in these settings. We examined this issue from the perspective of all staff (N = 23), in two Australian ECEC centres employing a male educator. A…

Teacher collaboration continues to be deeply grounded within effective professional development. Teacher teams, where small groups of teachers work together in teaching and learning, have become progressively more popular and are considered one of the most effective approaches to improvement and growth. However, teacher teams are situated within a…

There is little empirical research related to the readiness and capacity of academics for team-based collaboration. This case study used the existing literature about collaboration as a term of reference to examine the perceptions of a group of academics engaged in course design and how prepared they were individually and as teams for…

This paper focuses on a document analysis for an Australian case study, which contributes to a larger international study on teacher leadership. The aim of this paper is to ascertain how teacher leadership is understood and conceptualised from an Australian documentary perspective spanning the national, state, regional, and local education…

This paper analyses the development of a collaborative relationship between one academic and one educational development professional (EDP). The paper aims to assist academics and EDPs to establish successful long-term collaborations. Improving the success of such collaborations is important because the adoption of technology enabled learning and…

The authors of this paper are academic developers in an Australian university. In this paper, we discuss the outcomes of a small pilot study about value tensions; completed to inform a larger research project about the possibilities of making collaborative collegiality an explicit aim of a curriculum review. After interviewing four course leaders,…

As initial teacher education students transition to the profession, the experiences offered by the university and partner institutions require intentional, careful, and strategic planning, to ensure positive relational, organisational, and pedagogical experiences for all stakeholders (Lynch & Smith, 2012; Moss, 2008). To minimise the tensions…

At the turn of this century, expectations for learning mathematics by students with Down syndrome were low. Research and practice continued to indicate considerable difficulty with number and calculation (Bird & Buckley, 2001). Unfortunately, most authors extrapolated difficulty with number to difficulty with mathematics in general, even…

The process of planning mathematics lessons is complex and presents challenges for teachers, specifically in their Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). In this paper, I describe findings from case study research in which a Year 1 teaching team engaged in professional reading and used a specific planning proforma to enhance their MKT.…

Peer review of teaching has become an accepted educational procedure in Australia to quality assure the quality of teaching practices. The institutional implementation of the peer review process can be viewed as genuine desire to improve teaching quality or an imposition from above as a measure of accountability and performativity. One approach is…

Universities are increasingly recognising the need to broaden the experience and understanding of their students beyond a single disciplinary approach, to produce graduates more capable of solving the problems of a multidisciplinary world. At the University of Tasmania, a "breadth unit" programme is underway with the dual purpose of…

This research study interrogates the self-reported perceptions of seven experienced Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE) teachers about the professional learning influencing their classroom teaching after being involved in a number of initiatives to improve their teaching in New South Wales (Australia). The results indicated that the teachers'…