Dr John Willison (2nd from right, University of Adelaide) with Facult...

Dr John Willison workshop on "Embedding Research Skills"

Dr John Willison (from the University of Adelaide) arrived on Thursday 9th February 2012 to deliver a general information session and integration workshops, as a guest of the Faculty of Education.

As part of the 'Embedding Research Skills into a 4-year Teacher Education Program' project, academics from the UOW Faculty of Education will be involved in two days of workshops (February 8th and 9th) to explore ways that the Research Skill Development (RSD) Framework can be embedded into subjects throughout the Bachelor of Education (Primary) degree. Dr John Willison (University of South Australia), Dr Lisa Kervin (Faculty Scholar, coordinator of the Research strand in the Faculty of Education) and Professor Vialle (chair, University Teaching-Research Nexus group) will facilitate the workshops with the support of Dr Jessica Mantei (Director, Primary program) and Dr Sharon Tindall-Ford (Associate Dean: Teaching and Learning).

The project team supports the Faculty of Education's view that our students need to embark on their professional teaching careers as evidence-based practitioners. As such, our students need to understand research methodologies, but to also be able to consume and interpret the range of research reported in the field, with further opportunities to engage with their own inquiries.  For this to happen, students need to be engaged with research practices from the beginning of their undergraduate degree; research and the development of research skills needs to be both a product and a process of university education (Willison & O’Regan, 2007). The RSD framework provides an opportunity to carefully examine the “research experiences" our students have, as it extends the responsibility for developing important research skills to a greater number of faculty staff across a greater range of experiences (e.g., incorporating research-informed practices into lectures, tutorials and assessments) to support our graduates in becoming evidence-based practitioners.