Lead Papers

Generating New Realities for the Future

Dr. Michele Bruniges

Chief Executive of the Australian Capital Territory Department of Education and Training
Dr. Michele Bruniges has a strong interest in educational measurement issues, school culture, and the process of managing change. Her priorities include a renewed focus on supporting frontline teachers and school staff and the provision of quality responses to local issues.

Geoff Masters

Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Council for Educational Research
For more than 20 years, Professor Geoff Masters has been an international leader in developing better measures of educational outcomes. During this time, he has chaired the IEA Technical Advisory Committee for the introduction of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); directed the only national survey of Australian primary school literacy levels; and worked with all Australian states and territories to introduce statewide testing programs in literacy and numeracy.

Encouraging Deeper Levels of Learning

Louise Bywaters

The Leadership Practice
Louise has worked as a Primary educator, K-12 curriculum and methodology consultant, Principal, and then District Superintendent. She has also worked in a range of senior leadership positions in the public sector in South Australia, most recently as the founding Director of the South Australian Centre for Leaders in Education. Louise is now Principal Consultant of The Leadership Practice, a consulting firm which focuses on educational leadership at all levels of schooling and pre-schooling..

John Hattie

Professor in the Faculty of Education at Auckland University, New Zealand, and Director of Project asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) Professor John Hattie's areas of research include measurement models and their application to educational problems, meta-analysis, and models of teaching and learning. Over the past four years, Professor Hattie has headed a team introducing a model of assessment for teachers in all schools in NZ, and thus providing schools with evidence-based information about teaching and learning.

Connecting Digital Natives and Immigrants

Vincent Quah

Director, Public Sector Programs,Microsoft Asia Pacific
Explore the ways technology can impact the lives of ordinary citizens, teachers and students with someone who works with it every day. Vincent Quah is responsible for all education and government programs that Microsoft owns and implements in the Asia Pacific region. Working with a large virtual team spanning more than a dozen countries, he has been in the education and research industry for the last 16 years. He has presented in Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Philippines, USA, Canada, Vietnam and China.

Margaret Meijers

Classroom teacher and curriculum coordinator for ICT at New Town High School, a large government high school for boys in Hobart, Tasmania.
Margaret Meijers uses constructivist pedagogies to teach through game development and other new and emerging real-world applications that bring learning to life for students. She was the 2006 winner of the prestigious Teaching Australia Best National Achievement by a Teacher and was also awarded a Hardie Fellowship.

Having the Courage to See Freshly

Greg Whitby

Executive Director, Catholic Education Parramatta
Greg Whitby has a special expertise in leadership development, the challenges for providing learning and teaching in a digital age, and how we might reframe schooling in a digital age. He speaks regularly at conferences and holds workshops across Australia and internationally. He has travelled extensively overseas working with schools and systems in these interest areas..

Brian Caldwell

Managing Director of Educational Transformations
Professor Brian J. Caldwell's work over the last 15 years includes presentations, projects, and other professional assignments in or for 33 countries on six continents. He is author or co-author of books that helped guide educational reform in several countries, most notably the trilogy on self-managing schools: The Self-Managing School, Leading the Self-Managing School, and Beyond the Self-Managing School, and more recently, Re-imaging the Self-Managing School..

Christine Nixon, APM

Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police
As Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Ms. Nixon leads an organization of 14,000 staff and an annual budget of $1.3 billion operating out of 550 work locations, including 330 police stations, throughout the state. She is the Chair of the Australian Police Professional Standards Council, Co-Chair of the Australian Institute of Police Management, and Sponsor of the Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau.

Re-Envisioning Purpose

Alastair Rylatt

Alastair Rylatt Consulting, Sydney
Alastair Rylatt is one of Australia's leading thinkers and facilitators in modern business management. He is an inspiring presenter, expert strategist, and awardwinning author. His personal mission is to stimulate greater enlightenment and innovation in how work is undertaken for the benefit of business and society. His work has taken him to major conferences and clients throughout the world. Over the past 20 years, Alastair has proven his reputation as a consultant and coach who helps create high-performing teams and smarter, better thinking. He has four published books. His latest is Winning the Knowledge Game.

Dr. John Edwards

Managing Director of Edwards Explorations
Dr. John Edwards has a long and distinguished career in educational research, and has been one of the major research grant recipients in cognitive science in Australia. He is internationally recognised for his research on thinking, and on tapping human potential. He is one of the few top international researchers to have turned his research on thinking into award-winning practice in education, elite sport, and business and industry.

Leading From Within

Chris Presland

Principal Liaison Officer with the NSW Department of Education and Training
Chris Presland has a strong history of developing a shared understanding of learning across subject areas, leading to improved teaching and learning and greater levels of professional dialogue between teachers. In 2005, Chris received a 2005 Macarthur Outstanding Educator Award from the Australian College of Educators, and in 2006 he received a “National Outstanding Achievement by a Principal” award from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. He is an ACEL-NSW Fellow.

Father Jose Marie Legaspi

President, Learn.ph Foundation, Inc.
Learn from an experienced leader of primary and secondary teachers in science and technology. In March 2002, Fr. Jomar established Learn.ph Foundation, Inc. in order to address the digital divide among the marginalized sectors of society, especially in the public school system in the Philippines. His work in the public school system provided him a platform to develop a nine-point education strategy, using the systems theory, on initiating and sustaining an ICT enabled education reform at the grass root level. In the last five, years, Fr. Jomar has actively pushed for radical transformation of basic education curriculum, in-service and pre-service training programs, leadership programs and community involvement in the Philippine public school system to address the challenges of 21st Century learning.

Leoni Degenhardt

Principal, Loreto Normanhurst
Dr Leoni Degenhardt has been involved in the field of education for over thirty years. This year her school won a prestigious National Quality Schooling Award for its work on developing a new holistic paradigm of schooling. Also this year, Leoni successfully completed a PhD study, based on the documentation and analysis of this ongoing, values-based, reinvention process in her own school. Her thesis is entitled ‘Reinventing a school for the 21st century: a case study of change in a Mary Ward school'. She was made a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators in March 2006.