LEARNING NETWORK NZ - Key Persons
Alison Smith is a trained and registered primary school teacher with many years of experience in the primary sector including classroom teaching at most year levels, associate and tutor teacher work, and a wealth of leadership experience as a syndicate leader, Deputy Principal and Acting Principal.
She has lectured at Auckland College of Education in the Mathematics Department and also worked as a facilitator for professional development and Ministry of Education contracts in a variety of areas including Mathematics, Reading, Assessment and Leadership Skills training. More recently, she taught educational leadership at Unitec New Zealand for over 8 years.
Alison's business, School Leadership Coaching and Consultancy, includes appraisals for principals and middle leaders. She carries out leadership coaching and leadership skills training.
She also works with schools, facilitating their work with implementing an action research approach to change. Other consultancy work has included school community surveys, consultation for Charter review and project evaluation.
She holds a Bachelor of Education, a Diploma in School Management and a Master of Educational Management degrees. She has also completed Ministry-recognised appraisal training with Eileen Piggot-Irvine and has trained as an executive coach with the New Zealand Coaching and Mentoring Centre.
Bill Rogers is an education consultant. A teacher by profession, Bill now lectures widely on discipline and behaviour management issues; classroom management; stress and teaching; colleague support; developing peer-support programs for teachers and developing community-oriented policies for behaviour management, based on whole-school approaches.
He works in every area of education (primary, post-primary and tertiary) conducting in-service programs/seminars for teachers and support staff, lecturing widely at Colleges of Education, Universities and schools, working with parent groups and students in schools.
He has taken seminars, in-services, lecture-programs and developed in-school workshops with teachers (across Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the U.K.) in the past sixteen years. His work is known especially for his commitment to a skills-based approach to discipline and behaviour management and the emphasis on a colleague support focus across the school for the development, and maintenance, of positive behaviours within a rights, responsibility, rules focus. Bill is the author of many journal articles and contributions to magazines (in Australia and the U.K.) and has published a number of books in Australia and the United Kingdom. He also has written for the Times Educational Supplement in the UK. Bill is on the Editorial Board of Emotional & Behavioural Difficulties a journal published quarterly by Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties Association (SEBDA) in the UK.
He has taught at both primary and secondary phase, in schools, and in 1985 took up a consultancy position with the Ministry of Education (in Victoria) to promote whole-school approaches to discipline, behaviour management and student welfare.
In 1988 he was awarded a scholarship to the United Kingdom to research teachers stress; he lectured widely during that visit on topics related to stress and teaching. He also consulted to the committee who drafted the Elton Report: Discipline in Schools (1989) London.
Since 1988 Bill has returned on numerous occasions to lecture at major universities and to conduct seminars and in-service programs with a number of Education Authorities in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Dubai and New Guinea. He has conducted a number of Summer Schools at the University of Cambridge Institute of Education, UK.
Prior to teaching Bill was a parish minister for seven years in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne; a role including chaplaincy in hospitals and schools.
Bill holds a Diploma in Pastoral Ministry (Ridley College, Dip. Min.); Bachelor in Theology (B.Th. Second Class Hons Ridley College : Melbourne University; Diploma of Teaching and Bachelor of Education (Melbourne University B.Ed.). His Master's degree (Melbourne University, M.Ed.) concentrated on research in conflict and conflict resolution among pre-adolescents. His Ph.D. (Melbourne University) researched colleague support in schools as it addresses stress and coping, collaboration and supportive school cultures. A framework for colleague support in schools was developed out of this study. See I Get By With a Little Help : Colleague Support In Schools (2002) Australian Council for Educational Research :Melbourne.
He was made a Fellow of the Australian College of Education in 1998. He has also received an award for Excellence in Education (1993) Victoria, and in 1995 was awarded the Hedley Beare Educator of the Year Award (1998) by the Australian Council for Educational Administration (Victoria). He was appointed an adjunct professor (Education) at Griffith University (Queensland, Australia) in 2000 a post he held for eight years. He is an Honorary Life Fellow at All Saints and Trinity College at the University of Leeds (UK) and is currently Honorary Fellow at the Graduate School of Education : Melbourne University. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Europe and UK over the past 30 years.
Carol S. Dweck is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research focuses on why students succeed and how to foster their success. More specifically, her work has demonstrated the role of mindsets in success and has shown how praise for intelligence can undermine students' motivation and learning. She has also held professorships at and Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured to education, business, and sports groups all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She recently won the Distinguished Scientific Contribution award from the American Psychological Association, one of the highest awards in Psychology. Her work has been prominently featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and The London Times, with recent feature stories on her work in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on such shows as Today, Good Morning America, NPR's Morning Edition, and 20/20. Her bestselling book Mindset (published by Random House) has been widely acclaimed and has been translated into over 20 languages.
Job Titles:
- President and CEO of CMC Leadership
Catherine McCullough, President and CEO of CMC Leadership, is an internationally recognized educator, presenter, speaker, and facilitator. She is an expert in conducting leadership workshops for a wide range of organizations in both the business and public sectors. In addition to her Leadership Development expertise, Catherine specializes in Organizational Relationships, Strategic Planning and Change Management. She is also a certified Executive Leadership coach.
Catherine has an extensive background of senior leadership roles in public education - including Director of Education for a Canadian school board in Ontario - as well as serving as Board of Directors Chair for non-profit organizations. In addition to her Master of Education degree from Brock University, she has post-graduate certificates in Strategic Leadership from the Rotman School of Business and Executive Coaching from Fielding University. She is also a certified trainer in Emotional Intelligence and Cross-Cultural Competency and one of the only Canadian master trainers for Change Style, Leadership Influence, and Paper Planes (Business Simulations).
Catherine was coordinator of the "Strong Districts and Their Leadership" project with Dr. Kenneth Leithwood, education researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and continues to leverage this pivotal research in her training programs.
Both her proven experience and her expertise have allowed Catherine to successfully lead individuals and teams in the pursuit of increased self-awareness and organizational effectiveness. Her gift is communicating passionately and clearly with leaders to help them with proven strategies to reach their greatest potential.
Job Titles:
- Director of Vision Education
Dr Alison Davis is the director of Vision Education, a team providing regional PLD in literacy for schools in Auckland and Waikato. She has a PHD from Auckland University and a 1st class Masters degree in Educational Leadership and Administration. Her specialist areas are literacy, assessment and schooling improvement. She has led the PEN schooling improvement project in Huntly/Ngaruawahia and the Papakura Achievement Initiative in Papakura.
Alison has been on the writing team for Effective Literacy Practice years 1-4 and years 5-8, the newly published oral language handbooks and the revised literacy progressions.
Alison has also written her own texts - Teaching Reading Comprehension 2007 and Building Comprehension Strategies 2010. She is working on her next book, Strategies for Comprehension: Informational text, due to be published in 2012.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute
Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute and president of Curriculum 21, has served as a consultant to thousands of schools nationally and internationally, media organizations, and to a wide range of educational organizations.
Her books Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation, and Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12, both published by ASCD, have been bestsellers. Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping was released in the fall of 2004, by ASCD, and Active Literacy K-12: Cross-disciplinary Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening in Every Classroom was released in April 2006 by Eye-on-Education, Inc.
She has served as adjunct associate professor at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City for over 20 years.
Dr. Jacobs is often featured as a speaker in conferences and workshops throughout the world to address the future of curriculum planning for 21st century learners.
Job Titles:
- Education Researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies
Job Titles:
- Ceo
- CEO / Professional Development
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Grift Education
Gavin Grift is the Founder and CEO of Grift Education. Gavin's passion, commitment, humour and highly engaging style have made him one of Australia's most in-demand presenters. Through his keynotes, seminars, and coaching services, Gavin connects with national and international audiences on how to cultivate authentic collaboration, build success in others and genuinely commit to reflective practice. His belief in the development of defined professional autonomy for educators both challenge and connect the head and heart of his audiences.
Gavin is co-author of numerous articles and best-selling books, including Collaborative Teams that Transform Schools (2016), Transformative Collaboration (2016) and Teachers as Architects of Learning (2018). Most recently, he revised Learning by Doing (2018) with Colin Sloper, for an Australian context. He led the development of PLC networks across Australian, culminating in the establishment of the Centre for Professional Learning Communities. He is committed to growing the legacy of Rick and Becky DuFour's work through the PLC at Work® process, which has been transforming schools in Australia since it's pilot program in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra in 2010.
Ian Jukes is an international speaker and consultant, but first and foremost he is an educator. He has been a classroom teacher, a school, district, and provincial officer, and a university professor. He has worked with educators and organizations in more than 80 countries. He has made more than 12,000 presentations; and, to date, has written or co-written 17 books and nine educational series. Ian has been recognized as one of the top ten educational speakers in America, and was recently rated the top presenter at the EduTech conference in Australia.
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Boosting Student Engagement
James Nottingham has been a teaching assistant in a deaf school, a teacher in primary and secondary schools, deputy in a middle school, and director of an award-winning, multi-million pound regeneration project in the North East.
Today he is the director of his own company, Sustained Success, supporting schools, businesses and sports teams around the world. He is also co-director of p4c.com, a resource and collaboration site for Philosophy for Children, and author of Challenging Learning, a new book exploring the impact of feedback, attitudes, challenge, thinking and self esteem on the learning process.
He spends half of his working life overseas, so relishes time back home in Northumberland with his wife and 2 young children. He also enjoys learning about wine and golf - not that he knows much about either one (yet).
Engaging students is one of the most challenging tasks of being a teacher. There are so many influences competing for their attention. Involvement in leisure and peer-group activities, preoccupations with social media, and commitments outside school are the distractions most frequently mentioned in the research. Add in processing challenges for students with ASD and other conditions, and it's a minor miracle that anyone engages for long! James will show some of the solutions to this issue (that don't include banning them from their mobile phones or social lives!)
Jane Kise is an educational consultant specializing in differentiation, team building, coaching, and school staff development. She is a past President of the Association for Psychological Type International. She is also the coauthor of over 20 books, including her series from Corwin Press: Differentiated Coaching: A Framework for Helping Teachers Change, Differentiation through Personality Types: A Framework for Instruction, Asssessment, and Classroom Management, and Differentiated School Leadership.
Jane holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of St. Thomas. She has worked with diverse organizations, including Minneapolis Public Schools, The Bush Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and numerous other institutions. She has taught writing at the university level and is a faculty member of the Center for Applications of Psychological Type. In 2005, her research on using type in schools won the Isabel Briggs Myers Award for Outstanding Research in the Field of Psychological Type.
John Edwards has always been fascinated with the beauty of the human mind. He began his working life as a research metallurgist. He has worked as a teacher and department head in schools; in state, national and international curriculum development roles; and has written textbooks for schools. Through his extensive university career he has been one of the leading research grant recipients in cognitive science in Australia.
John's research began in his own classrooms which led to publications in the areas of the direct teaching of thinking and what are children thinking whilst teachers are teaching. He has explored areas including: how people think; what tests really test; ways to measure the intellectual demand of learning; how to generate successful change in organisations; innovation and creativity; leadership; internally-driven transformation of schools; and creating productive feedback environments. He worked on a major project using Piaget's clinical method to reveal how South-East Asian children develop science and mathematics concepts.
John is Managing Director of Edwards Explorations, an Australia-based company concerned with exploring and developing human potential. He has worked inside many leading Australian and international companies, and sporting organizations, to research and deliver powerful cultures of learning. He has dedicated a large part of his life to the helping school communities create the schools they know are right for their children.
Dr Edwards is one of the few international researchers to turn his research into award-winning practice in education, in business and industry, and in high performance sport.
Julia Atkin is an education and learning consultant with over 30 years experience in the educational sector. Her work in education has spanned educational research, curriculum design, consultancy and teaching at all levels of the education system internationally.
She has also held positions of Science & Maths Coordination, General Coordination in a small country high school and six months as acting Principal. The focus of Julia's work has been researching how people learn. Through both formal research and action research in educational settings Julia has developed a set of principles of effective learning. These principles, which define the architecture of learning, have been translated into a set of design tools for developing educational programs and services based on how people learn most effectively. Julia is currently working in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and the USA with businesses, industry, universities and schools to design and develop quality educational programs and services based on these principles of effective learning.
Julia has a vital interest in developing, and in helping others learn how to develop, educational services and delivery systems which:
nurture the human spirit of individuals and the organisation
ensure effective learning for all
are customised (specifically designed to meet local needs)
are flexible
are learner driven
integrate the best of learning technology with information and communication technology
include components which help the learner learn to think and learn to
are collaborative, allowing individuals and groups to learn interactively
result in meaningful learning which is transferable from one context to another.
Julia's work is characterised by an innovative approach which bridges the gap between theory and practice. She has received a number of prestigious awards in Australia and overseas in recognition of her work.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Psychology at Stanford