Intentional collaboration

The opportunity was to facilitate intentional collaboration through co-designed professional development, growing deep and sustainable learning partnerships in the education sector.

Opportunity

ENABLE is a coalition of Queensland based state high schools in the Logan and the Scenic Rim, an area that boasts a vibrant and varied range of learners. In collaboration with Griffith University, ENABLE identified an opportunity to pioneer a co-designed teacher professional development program across the network by identifying, supporting and showcasing successful school-based projects that addressed local needs and conditions across a range of priority educational areas. The program looked to create a sense of shared understanding and collaboration between schools and colleagues by featuring quality professional learning by teachers for teachers.

Action

The co-developed program focused on building an understanding of Action Research within a school environment and the process for identifying, implementing and evaluating a site based project. Designed to showcase successful strategies for addressing priority educational areas within the network, participants were asked to submit a proposal to present to a wider group of peers at a one-day conference titled “50,000 futures”. The panel selected one project from each school to be presented to over 400 peers with the aim of sharing knowledge and solutions to common challenges and opportunities faced in this region. Projects focused on a range of educational areas such as wellbeing, gifted and talented education, childhood trauma and deep learning.

Impact

The primary purpose of the program was to provide quality professional development for local educators by local educators. These action research projects provided participants with the opportunity to build knowledge of how action research can be conducted within a school and provided the opportunity to share learnings with peers across the network, providing valuable resources for other teachers to adapt to their environment. The conference was titled “50 000 Futures” because the impact extended beyond the projects and conference with 50 000 being the number of students who could potentially benefit from these collaborations. Building on the success of the inaugural partnership, expressions of interest are in place to select the next round of projects designed to address additional emerging trends and challenges faced by the local education community.

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