Katherine Lindsay

‘Asking for the moon’? a critical assessment of Australian disability discrimination laws in promoting inclusion for students with disabilities

The aim of this paper is to critique the dichotomy between the legal regulation of disability discrimination in Australia, particularly in the State of New South Wales, and inclusion policy as espoused by public education authorities. It is argued that the law and inclusion policy are aiming at different outcomes. As a result, through legal regulation, New South Wales undermines the human rights of individuals with disabilities by restricting their access to ‘mainstream’ education. Extracts from a variety of sources are used to enable the voices of students, parents, carers, advocates, teachers and members of the judiciary to be heard, a novel approach in a paper which is essentially concerned with the law. The paper begins with a consideration of the context in which disability discrimination in education laws operate, and the distinctions between policies and practice in that context. The paper then asks to what extent disability discrimination law is capable of expressing inclusive ideals. Finally, the paper suggests means by which international law norms could be incorporated into New South Wales law and policy, so as to achieve effective human rights protection. The paper concludes with Carlas story, which serves to demonstrate that inclusive ideals have not yet been appropriately incorporated into law or practice in New South Wales.

Course evaluation matters: improving students’ learning experiences with a peer-assisted teaching programme

In the rapidly changing global higher education sector, greater attention is being paid to the quality of university teaching. However, academics have traditionally not received formal teacher training. The peer-assisted teaching programme reported on in this paper provides a structured yet flexible approach for peers to assist each other in reinvigorating and refining their teaching practice. Academics participated in this national, multi-institutional trial for varied reasons: the majority voluntarily, others to increase low student evaluation of course scores and some as part of a graduate certificate teaching qualification. Here we report on how academics used the scheme, and the teaching areas they focused on. Student evaluation of course scores increased in the majority of courses, suggesting the changes made had a positive effect on students’ learning experiences. The experiences of the multi-institutional trial reported here may benefit others considering such a scheme to reinvigorate and refine teaching practice and improve course evaluation scores.

Formative observation of teaching: focusing peer assistance on teachers’ developmental goals

Abstract Peer observation of teaching can provide valuable insights into effective educational practices. By adopting a developmental focus, peer observation can also provide insights into how practices might be enhanced and, importantly, how enhancements in practices might be aligned to teachers’ development goals. However, a review of peer observation of teaching undertaken at Australian universities demonstrates that observation instruments and protocols typically do not explicitly afford alignment of peers’ observations with teachers’ developmental goals. Analysis of observers’ uses of popular peer observation instruments through the deployment of the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme through multiple institutions across Australia has informed the development and trial of a novel observation instrument and protocol design that is aligned with observer use characteristics, and provides a focus on development goals. This study will be of interest to teachers and academic developers researching and implementing goal-oriented curricular and pedagogical development through peer observation.

Assessing distributed leadership for learning and teaching quality: a multi-institutional study

ABSTRACT Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development scheme called the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme. The Scheme brings together expertise from teams of academics, coordinators, and institutional learning and teaching portfolio holders to the shared goal of enhancing learning and teaching quality. A distributed leadership benchmarking tool was used to assess the Scheme’s effectiveness, and we found that (i) the Scheme is highly consistent with the distributed leadership benchmarks, and that (ii) the benchmarking tool is easily used in assessing the alignment (or otherwise) of teaching and learning quality initiatives with distributed leadership benchmarks. This paper will be of interest to those seeking to assess implementations of distributed leadership to improve teaching quality and leadership capacity.

Developing educational goals: insights from a Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme

Abstract The rapid changes facing higher education are placing increased focus on the quality of the student experience, achieving learning outcomes, and employability expectations. As a result, academics in teaching roles are increasingly measured on performance via student evaluations amplifying attention on professional development initiatives for academics. One such initiative is the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme currently in practice across many Australian universities. The critical component of the scheme is the establishment of teaching goals that provide focus and direction for the peer partnership. This study addresses two questions: (1) Around which aspects do academics set their goals for teaching improvement? and (2) How do academics’ goals align with the SMART goal-setting framework that is prescribed in the scheme? Findings from five Australian universities showed that goals align with a variety of educational areas yet many were underdeveloped, or misaligned with the proposed strategy. The implications of this are discussed and a framework for setting education goals for teaching improvement is developed.