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THE KNOWLEDGE ERA

• KNOWLEDGE ERA SCHOOLING: The Real Difference

• Converging curriculum for the knowledge era

• Will schooling fail the knowledge era?

• Schooling In The Global Knowledge Economy

• Schooling for the Knowledge Era

• Principal in the New World

• Priorities for the New Millennium

• Information: A Commodity for the Global Knowledge Economy

• Information in the KNOWLEDGE era

• Perspective - Radio National

SELF DIRECTED LEARNING

• Leading to Empower Teachers and Students

• Self-managing with the new Student Planner

• Developing Skills for Self Directed Learning

SOCIAL ISSUES

• Are Boys Victims?

• Its Not About Gender

• PeaceBuilders®

• Single Sex Education: A Relic of the Boardroom

• A Résumé For Life

GENERAL

• From Middle School to Middle Schooling

• The role of education in nation building?

• The Current Tertiary Entrance System

• A Vision for the Future: VET

• Thinking of your child’s success? Think Middle Schooling!

• KNOWLEDGE ERA SCHOOLING: Marketing Schools

• The credential divide: not education

• Letter Education Age: The ENTER System

• Information and Technology: They are not the same thing

Its Not About Gender

Sensational reporting about Tertiary Entrance scores (Single-sex scores higher, Sun-Herald, 24/6/2001) and segregating the sexes (School’s classes split on gender, Courier Mail, 25/6/01) illustrates the limited standard of debate on schooling in Australia. The media tends to focus on the supposedly newsworthy elements of schooling research such as the issue of single sex schools, girls doing better or boys failing (How modern teaching styles help girls outclass their male schoolmates, Sunday Telegraph, 24/6/01; Boys need variety: PM, Shepparton News, 15/6/01; Driven to excel, Sunday Telegraph, 24/6/01). Unfortunately, the media fail to raise the strategic issue of relevant schooling.

This current debate ignores the fact that most schools are co-educational, non-selective and comprehensive and most students are not university bound. The research finding that the quality of teaching is the key variable in successful schooling is generally overlooked. There also is no recognition of the important link between schooling and a gender-balanced community. The success of young people in work and tertiary studies should be gauged by how well they are able to work, live and learn with different people, including the opposite sex. A letter adds anecdotally (High social cost of better schools, Age, 27/6/01) by revealing difficulties that high score achieving students from single-sex schools, face in the real world of gender balance. Some societies need to segregate the sexes in education because of their cultures (Afghan women plan university, South China Morning Post, 9/6/01), but this is not the case in Australia.

Australia needs to pursue research that informs us about the learning environment, school culture and the new roles that teachers and additional leaders must play in the knowledge era. What should follow is the establishment of a strategic framework for schooling within which affirmative policies and actions can be implemented to enhance the considerable talents of all young people.

We should then ask some pertinent questions as illustrated in my letter (Education research looks in the wrong place, Age, 26/6/01) such as, for how long will our schools be adequate for girls? As the demand for knowledge workers and its consequent IT enabled skills increases, for example, (Girls flock to career forum, Australian, 26/6/01), girls will start to see that they too are being short-changed by an outdated schooling system.

Dr David Warner
Principal

Eltham College of Education
PO Box 40
ELTHAM 3095

david.warner@elthamcollege.vic.edu.au

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