CALL FOR PAPERS
The Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) is pleased to open its call for papers for the 2021 ACEL National Conference. This year’s National Conference will be held in Melbourne and provides an exciting platform for international and national speakers to share their expertise around the theme: Leading excellence through equity. All children have a right to high quality education that provides them with the skills, knowledge and understandings to participate as active and informed members of society. Policy makers, educational leaders and educators across educational systems are key drivers of leading excellence in teaching and learning across all classrooms for all children. Importantly, they also set the agenda for learning and teaching practices within their centre, school or system.
The program of the 2021 ACEL National Conference promises to be engaging, interactive and provocative. It will include interactive expert sessions, special interest group symposium workshops as well as concurrent sessions around the main conference theme, which will be explored more deeply within four sub-themes and provocations as follows:
1. Connection, community and collaboration
It takes a village to raise a child: what does this look like in your context?
• Engagement, representation and dialogue with all stakeholders to improve access.
• Successful models for transforming schools.
• Building collective efficacy for transformation.
• Innovation that inspires success.
• Building successful partnerships with the community.
• Students leading the village.
• Establishing sustainable, meaningful partnerships with parents and carers.
2. Leadership, language and learning
At the head of the wave the evidence is front of you, not behind: how do we create and invite new possibilities?
• Valuing and balancing evidence-based and practice-based approaches.
• Equipping leaders to harness collective wisdom.
• Opportunities on innovation and ideas of practice, and test impact.
• Achieving strong outcomes for students, parents, staff and community.
• Creating a language of leadership that encourages learning for all.
• Using evidence to drive equity.
3. People, purpose, policy and place
One opportunity won’t fit all students, we don’t design schools for one: how do we serve all our learning community (children and young people, staff, parents and carers)?
• Clear vision and the centring of the school within its diverse community of learners and families.
• Policy driving an equity and access agenda.
• How to thrive in disruption and complexity. Equipping educational leaders and staff to succeed within uncertain times.
• Creating a culture of wellbeing.
• Environments that support a psychologically safe space in the workplace to deal with complexity.
• Building collaborative visions – co-creating vision with the whole community.
• The school I wanted to go to. Leading learning environments that students want to attend and engage with.
4. Inspiration, intention and access for all
Our students are natural born learners, diverse learners, intentional learners: what are the beliefs, commitments and/or mindsets required to design and deliver equitable opportunities and outcomes?
• Bringing people on the inclusion journey and challenging beliefs about inclusion. Crafting, communicating and living an inclusive vision that fosters participation from all stakeholders within the school.
• Broadening the concept of measurement. A new paradigm, where metrics for success broaden what we do. Where programming works to broaden awareness and growth for the next generation.
• Redefining how we thrive in the challenges and disruption of a complex world.
• Intraschool collaboration. Rejecting the cult of competition.
Presentations will address research, policy and practice from an organisation, system, school, classroom or stakeholder perspective
If you are interested in submitting an abstract for the concurrent sessions within these themes, apply using the form below.
Join us in September/October and be part of this exploration of how equity marries excellence and how this intrinsically links to moving forward the growth of all educational settings, learning communities and students.