TOPIC:
What are the
'Basics' of Learning for the Future? Changing Roles for Teachers.
Trained in the past, educators do their
work in the present but prepare a succession of young people
for the future. The challenge for educational leadership is to
maintain the best of the past, to recognise the imperatives of
the moment and to be astute enough to anticipate the future.
Given the increased pace of change - as reflected in changing
private and community values, changes in the nature and role
of the public sector and the technological and organisational
transformation of the nature of work - designing educational
experiences that are satisfying to all is a challenging and onerous
task. This presentation will examine the factors that impinge
on educational decision making and explore the role educational
leaders need to assume if we are to maintain social cohesion,
individual well being and a robust economy. Key challenges for
educators include working with communities of diverse cultural
and linguistic backgrounds and adjusting ourselves to being part
of a globalising, high technology world. Moreover, with the end
of the Cold War, market forces seem to be squeezing out the public
sphere. In this context, the task for education systems is to
ensure a sense of belonging and social cohesion as well as producing
highly skilled people who are active citizens.
Brief Biography
Professor Mary Kalantzis is Dean of the
Faculty of Education, Language and Community Services at Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology. She was a part time Commissioner
of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1994
to 1997 and Chair of the Queensland Ethnic Affairs Ministerial
Advisory Committee from 1995 to 1997. Her publications include
co-authorship of Minority Languages and Dominant Culture
with Cope and Slade (Falmer Press, London, 1989); Cultures
of Schooling: Pedagogies for Cultural Difference and Social Access,
with Cope, Noble and Poynting (Falmer Press, London, 1990); and
Productive Diversity (Pluto Press, Sydney, 1997). Her
latest books are an edited collection, with Bill Cope, based
on the work of the New London Group, Multiliteracies: Literacy
Learning and the Design of Social Futures (Routledge, London,
2000) and A Place in the Sun: Re-creating the Australian Way
of Life (Harper Collins, Sydney, 2000).
