Alfred Deakin Professor Jill Blackmore AM
Professor Jill Blackmore is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation. Her research interests are globalisation and education policy, administrative and organisational theory, educational leadership and reform, organisational change and innovation, teachers’ and academics’ work, and all their policy implications from a feminist perspective.
Her interest in flexible learning spaces derives from being on the planning committee for Fitzroy High School and an interest in the affective and built conditions as well as school cultures and leadership that are conducive to professional and student learning.
Dr Debra Bateman
Dr Debra Bateman is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Deakin University. She is extraordinarily interested in futures studies, and how school practices are shaped and involved in shaping the ways that learners perceive their futures. Debra is particularly interested notions of innovation – whether in space, time or practice. In 2010, she was awarded an ALTC Citation for Outstanding Innovation in Teaching and Learning.
The schools involved in this project have challenged my own thinking, and much of the literature around effective learning spaces. Insofar as the design of physical spaces is important, the innovations are undoubtedly linked to the craftsmanship and skill of school leadership teams, teachers in classrooms, communities and the students. For me, the concept of innovation continues to be quite subjective as what appears to one person as an innovation doesn’t seem as fitting for another. At the very least, innovations in education are always creative and responsive in considering complex aspects of learning.
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