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Winner Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts Award for 2005

Awarded to the BEd Adult Education student who demonstrated superior achievement in the areas of academic studies and adult education practice.

1. What is your occupation?

Assistant Associate Director, Academic and lecturer at the Sydney International Campus of Central Queensland University. The mid-city campus has 5,000 international students and faculty exceeding 100 teaching staff.

2. What student achievements helped you win the SMSA award?

At 55 years of age, I felt every bit the ‘mature age student’, on entering the BEd program. Yet I found that my earlier studies and a lifetime of work experience helped me to quickly settle in to the academic regime of being a student once more. Teaching other adults in my own university at the same time also helped me to better understand what it is that BEd teachers are encouraging us to learn, and how to present the results. I guess that this combination of ‘teaching and learning’ really helped me to do well in my studies. And, I enjoyed the experience too. I’ve never scored 100% in any course before I studied e-Learning at UTS!

3. How have you used the content of the BEd in your occupation?

The BEd was a great pathway to reentering the teaching profession. In my work now, I am constantly using the knowledge and skills that come from the BEd. For example, learning about the new developments in the field of curriculum design and student testing have helped me to better understand the students’ perspective of what it is we’re teaching, and why. And the research skills that I’ve learnt during the BEd mean that I am better able to investigate issues that arise at work, and suggest improvements. I was able to use these research skills to devise a classroom intervention technique that helped students to understand and apply proper referencing criteria in their assignments. A relatively small, simple and cheap research effort, but it improved student success in assignments by more than 50% in one term alone!

4. Where do you see your career/lifelong learning going?

My learning journey as an adult educator started more than thirty years ago when I was in the Navy, and responsible for training junior seamen officers. Years later, I am still a student, now in the Doctor of Education research degree at the UTS Faculty of Education. My research poses the question: what does it mean when commercial values interact with an educational paradigm? Exploring the way in which the two conversations of ‘the business of education’ and ‘pedagogic integrity’ are played out in a university site catering exclusively to full fee paying international students will allow me to think about changes that might be appropriate to help us all realise the economic benefits to be gained from the equitable, moral and ethical interaction of the twin practices of business and education.  

Reentering the teaching profession at what some might call a “late career stage”, I am now looking forward to a number of rewarding and fulfilling years helping a new generation of students to synthesise what it is they want to do, and then to set about achieving it. That’s really lifelong learning; for me as well as for the people I help. Perhaps the next step for me will be to hand on my experience and knowledge and help in developing a new generation of adult educators, especially in the much needed field of adult vocational education. And perhaps, at what better place for that than UTS Faculty of Education.