New Learning

Theme 1: Navigating Cultures, From the Local to the Global

• Local cultures and global impacts -  learning to maintain the balance.
• Opportunity and diversity  -  creating the conditions for participation in schools and classrooms.
• From the margins to the mainstream  -  learning minority, immigrant and indigenous cultures and languages.
• Multicultural, cross-cultural, international and global education.
• Gender, disability and socio-economic differences in the classroom.
• Education as a globalising industry  -  international education, overseas students and education export.

Theme 2: New Technology, New Economy-Learning for the Future

• Learning through technology and learning about technology.
• New tools for learning  -  closing the distance with online, on-location, needs-based education.
• New economy and future work  -  what are the knowledge and skills requirements of employment?
• Education as a social investment  -  setting priorities for the future.
• The public, the private and the market  -  trends in educational provision.
• Crossing the digital divide  -  access to learning in, and about, the digital world.
• Educational reform and curriculum redesign for a changing world.

Theme 3: Literacy in a Digital Age

• The 'new basics'  -  what is the core of learning today, and how is it changing?
• Reading and writing after the computer  -  the internet, multimedia, multiliteracies.
• Visual meanings, audio meanings and linguistic meanings in the new, multimodal communications.
• Academic, workplace and community literacies.
• Literacy in learning  -  language in learning across the subject areas.
• Assessing literacies in a meaningful way.
• Multilingual learning for a multicultural world.

Theme 4: Education for Social and Personal Transformation

• Education is everywhere  -  lifelong and lifewide learning, from early childhood to retirement.
• Blurring the institutional boundaries  -  what people need to learn, and where they learn it.
• Competence, ability, capacity, intelligence  -  what are we learning and why?
• Managing and leading change in today's institutions of learning.
• Defining and measuring educational quality.
• Teacher performance and student evaluation  -  measuring educational performance and learning outcomes.
• The changing shape of vocational education and training.
• University learning in changing economic, technological and cultural conditions.
• Changing the role of teachers: challenges for teacher training and professional development.

THEMES