From April 27 to May 4, 2019, at the invitation of Professor Geoffrey Riordan, Dean of the College of Education of Canberra University, five teachers from the Department of Education and the Institute of Schooling Reform and Development, Huang Zhongjing, Yang Xiaowei, Cheng Liang, Li Lin and Dong Xuan, visited Australia.
During their visit to Australia, the teachers of the Department of Education mainly carried out the following activities.
The first one is academic exchange. Three teachers, Cheng Liang, Li Lin and Dong Xuan, were invited to give an academic lecture at the "Research and Innovation Lecture" of the College of Education, Canberra University. Cheng Liang gave a lecture entitled "The Paradigms of School Changes in China". Li Lin gave a lecture entitled "Teaching beyond Words: Silence and Its Pedagogical Implications in Traditional Chinese Philosophy", and Dong Xuan gave a lecture entitled “Home (lessness) in Urbanizing China: Invisible Violence and Left-behind Children in Martial Arts Schools”. More than 50 teachers and students from Canberra University participated in the discussion and explored the possibility of future collaborative research.
The second activity is to negotiate cooperation between each other. The teachers of the Department of Education communicated with Professor Geoffrey Riordan, Dean of the College of Education of the University of Canberra, Professor Ting Wang, Vice-Dean, and Dr. Duncan Driver, Project Director of the Master of Secondary Education Program. After introducing their respective postgraduate training programs, teacher education and teacher qualification certification system, the two sides exchanged views on issues such as international academic week exchanges, teacher-student visits, credit recognition and so on. In addition, the teachers of the Department of Education also consulted their overseas counterparts on the ongoing construction of all-English majors, with a view to further improving the program of professional construction.
The third activity is to visit some schools. Teachers from the Department of Education also visited two public schools in Canberra, Maribyrnong Primary School and Mount Stromolo High School, and communicated with managers, teachers and students of the two schools. During the visit, teachers paid special attention to the design and application of learning space, teaching organization and the courses and activities aimed at cultivating students' social emotional abilities, which is of great significance to the evaluation of similar OECD projects that the Department of Education is participating in.
The last activity is the consultation talks. Teachers from the Department of Education visited the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), whose headquarters is located in Sydney. David de Carvalho, the department's executive director, Peter Titmanis, the project manager, and Steve Croft, the project technician, met with the visiting team of the Department of Education and connected their Perth branch remotely to introduce the MySchool data platform commissioned by the Australian Federal Government and state governments. And then, teachers of the Department of Education consulted ACARA team on curriculum standard development, evaluation implementation, data platform construction and data collection and analysis to accumulate experience for the ongoing laboratory and data platform construction of the Department of Education.
This visit has further laid a new foundation and opened up a new situation for the future personnel training, scientific research and international exchanges of the Department of Education.
