Welcome to the Social Partnerships in Learning Research Consortium
The Social Partnerships in Learning (SPiL) research consortium was established in 2007 to support and research the interagency and interdisciplinary relationships that enable effective learning in different disciplines, workplaces and training sites. SPiL is based at the Charles Darwin University.
Latest News
Congratulations go to Professor Michael Christie, for his promotion that recognises his commitment to high quality research in partnership with Yolngu researchers and educators. The recent Teaching from Country: ICTs for Remote Indigenous Knowledge Authorities as Tertiary Educators seminar was an opportunity to explore issues that impact on the engagement of Indigenous knowledge authorities in university teaching and research. The discussion encouraged a lot of discussion inside and outside the seminar and we look forward to the next stage of their work.
The post graduate students in research and coursework units have all been busy, with quite a few entering the final year of their studies. 2010 will see the commencement of a new group of students working in Indigenous contexts in Australia and Eastern Indonesia. We look forward to starting to share across these borders in the coming months with a range of seminars planned. We are always keen to listen to and involve you so feel free to drop us a line SPiL@cdu.edu.au.
Major Evaluation Project Completed Members of the Social Partners in Learning Consortium submitted the final evaluation report from a multi-year project evaluating nine different pilot responses to family violence in the Northern Territory. The pilots were conducted across the Territory, but had a special focus on remote communities. Funded jointly by the Australian and Northern Territory governments, they involved a range of agencies including police and corrections staff, schools, child protection, and not-for-profit agencies, including Indigenous led organisations such as Tangentyere Council and Miwatj Health. Some of the projects focused on prevention, others on meeting the needs of children exposed to violence, or dealing better with high risk families, or training workers in remote communities to deliver perpetrator programs. The SPiL team (particularly Dr. Allan Arnott, Dr. John Guenther, Assoc. Prof. Terry Dunbar, Lorna Murakami-Gold, Emma Williams, Rachel Tuminello and Prof. Ian Falk) developed innovative data collection tools as part of the project, as this emerged as an important issue in Indigenous communities.
Researcher Profile
Stuart Anderson
Mr Stuart Anderson stuart.anderson@cdu.edu.au VET Lecturer/Workplace Assessor
Stuart, who recently completed his Master of Education as the recipient of a 2008 NCVER Building Research Capacity in VET Scholarship and 2008 AVETRA- Ray Barker Scholarship, is a Lecturer and Workplace Assessor for the Primary Industries and Community Services VET Division of the Charles Darwin University. Stuart was also the recipient of the 2007 Vice Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (VET). He has a keen interest in a continuing career within the VET sector that combines innovative, evidence based research with teaching and learning to provide flexible and high quality education – particularly to learners from backgrounds of educational and socioeconomic disavantage. His masters project, saw him collaborating with a group of indigenous community learners situated in Wugularr (south-eastern Arnhem Land) and engaged in VET programs, with a focus on improving VET practice in Community Services and Youth Work. This project involved the development of a customized action research methodology which allowed participants and researchers alike to explore personal histories and notions of community engagement; innovative approaches to delivery and evidence collection; and specifically the integration of community project based pedagogies into workplace situated training and assessment. Findings from this project will be reported in a forthcoming publications from NCVER and in the International Journal of Learning Communities. Stuart is an active member of the Social Partnerships in Learning Research Consortium and will be commencing PhD studies in 2010. His project will again use customized participatory methods with groups of learners from backgrounds of disadvantage to explore digital technologies and digital storytelling as conduits for connecting these learners with formal and informal learning, creating new social networks, and the development employability skills related to digital literacy. Digital stories emerging from this project will be used with participants to create a new digital VET resource for workplace training in Community Services that focuses on the centrality of each person’s unique story in community services work and further developing the skill to be client centered for workers.