Bright Young Things

May 2006

Monash University's Education faculty is a leader in teacher training but is also highly respected for its research. To keep that academic light shining, the faculty has begun a quest to attract recent graduates back to university.

Report: Robyn Anns
Photography: Melissa Di Ciero and Timothy Burgess

Susanna Del Vescovo has a plan. The Monash Education honours researcher wants to provide Australian teachers with strategies to help high-needs migrant pupils make the most of the educational opportunities in their adopted country.

Fellow honours researcher Matt McDonald has a similarly altruistic goal. He hopes to help outdoor education leaders maximise the learning experiences of their students.

And Michelle Ball wants to improve the social and emotional development of kindergarten children.

All three students reflect the type of person the Monash Education faculty is seeking to help address its looming shortage of researchers.

The average age of the research staff in the faculty is between 40 and 50, and many of those will begin thinking about retirement within the next decade.

Associate Professor Ilana Snyder, the faculty's Associate Dean, Research Degrees and Induction, is leading a team charged with attracting some of the brightest and youngest back to academe.

The team's strategy seems to be working. A total of 28 graduates applied to undertake honours research in 2006, of whom 26 were successful. In previous years, the number of honours researchers in the faculty has been between six and nine.

"At the end of 2005, we wrote to all our high-achieving final-year students inviting them to consider doing honours," Dr Snyder explains.

Course leaders in the faculty also addressed final-year lectures at which hundreds of students across various subjects were present. "The message was simple: think about doing a research degree," Dr Snyder says.

"Over recent decades, people have been taught how to be teachers and then moved on. The best of each year's crop of education graduates achieve well-rewarded positions in education, so it is not surprising that people have not been so keen to do research.

"When people do a higher degree, they often do it to expand their knowledge and give their career prospects a boost, and there is nothing wrong with that. But we have also asked them to consider what they can give back through research, and I think this altruistic, intellectual point of view has found appeal with many people."

Dr Snyder says other universities have the same emerging problem of 'baby boomer' researchers nearing retiring age, but she believes Monash has been one of the first -- if not the first -- to actively do something about the situation before it becomes a problem.

"The profession is ripe for this, and universities have a professional responsibility to 're-stock' with new academics -- people with new ideas and recent experience in the field," she says.

"We are very conscious that often students are here for four years, get their training for their profession and achieve professional success -- and we never see them again.

"Now we are reaching them in their final year of studies, and we are making the honours degree a direct path to doctoral studies so they can go on and do a PhD if they wish.

"We need people who are thinkers, who question the status quo and strive to improve education and methods of teaching.

"I like to think we are leading the way on this and that our action now will stand us in good stead. Monash has an excellent reputation as a teaching and research institution, and developing this new crop of bright young education thinkers will help ensure that reputation grows into the future."

Migrant methods

Help over the hurdles: Ms Susanna Del Vescovo.

It was as a trainee teacher and teacher support at Forest Hill College -- a Melbourne secondary school with a large refugee population -- that Susanna Del Vescovo became aware of the hurdles faced by refugee children.

She noticed a large gap between the knowledge and understanding the children had on arriving in Australia and what they were expected to know and how they were expected to perform.

The experience prompted her to undertake research she hopes will give Australian teachers strategies to help high-needs migrant pupils make the most of the educational opportunities in their adopted country.

Learning to read and write English, and assimilate into the school system and the wider culture, are particularly difficult for children from poor and war-torn countries, Ms Del Vescovo, who completed her Monash Bachelor of Education in 2005, says.

"I think my research is particularly relevant, as Australia has an influx of refugees at the moment who come from places where their education has been very fragmented because they have lived in refugee camps in countries like the Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa."

Kids' play

Emotional intelligence: Ms Michelle Ball.

Children in Australia's kindergartens and pre-schools are expected to learn about caring and sharing while also learning numbers and letters. But kindergarten teacher Michelle Ball wonders if kindergartens are promoting emotional and social development in the young effectively enough.

For her honours thesis, the 27-year-old is examining how social and emotional skills are taught to pre-schoolers. "Emotional intelligence is just as important as literacy and numeracy in very young children," Ms Ball, a kindergarten teacher at Murrumbeena Kindergarten, says.

"I think the focus of kindergarten and pre-school teaching at the moment may be too much on academic and cognitive teaching. The priority should be social and emotional development.

"Many educators believe social and emotional development is accomplished through on-the-spot teaching -- by getting kids to share toys as they play.

"But it is not being done to any sort of formula, it is not being monitored and the results are not being evaluated. It is ad hoc and relies on the individual teacher."

Ms Ball believes such personal development should be built into the pre-school curriculum. "But first we need to understand how social and emotional development fits into a play-based curriculum. That is one of the things I will examine in my research."

Ms Ball, who completed a Monash Graduate Diploma in Education in 2002, says she is excited at the prospect of being able to put her research into practice in her role as kindergarten teacher.

An outdoor education

Sporting life: Mr Matt McDonald.

Every year, secondary school students from across Australia enjoy the challenges of camping and other outdoor activities under the guidance of leaders who are trained in outdoor activities and safety but who are not necessarily qualified teachers.

Now a Monash honours student wants to find out how professional outdoor education leaders can achieve better educational outcomes for their students.

Matt McDonald says his current role teaching the VCE subjects Outdoor and Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education at Haileybury College's Keysborough campus in Melbourne 's south-west led him to believe that educational development for outdoor leaders would make a good research topic.

Mr McDonald, who completed a Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Science double degree at Monash in 2004, says he hopes to use his research to create a professional development program for outdoor educators that could be used industry-wide.

"The main focus for outdoor education leaders is safety and risk management for the young people they lead, and they do an exceptional job," he says.

"There's a fine balance between providing opportunities for educational development while also having complete dedication to the risks involved.

"This research project will not only extend me intellectually, it will also help me develop professionally and allow me to put something back into my profession."