Keynote speakers

Tim Rawlings

Head of Training Product Development,  PwC Skills for Australia

Tim Rawlings

ACAL have invited Tim Rawlings to address the conference because most people involved in adult literacy across Australia are in some way impacted by the work of PwC’s Skills for Australia. PwC’s Skills for Australia is the Skills Service Organisation (SSO) aligned to foundation skills and education. PwC’s role is described on their website as ensuring that training packages, and therefore vocational qualifications, reflect employers’ and students’ needs, both now and in the future. The SSO writes and monitors training packages. PwC’s Skills for Australia website explains that To do this, we will engage with employers and students across Australia, conduct detailed industry research and collaborate with experts in the vocational education sector before reviewing and developing training products. There are half a dozen good reasons why we want you to attend this keynote address:

1. Currently PwC’s Skills for Australia are rewriting the 91 FSK units and reviewing the three FSK qualifications. This includes decisions around the qualifications required to deliver FSK.
2. PwC’s Skills for Australia support the ongoing management of the TAE training package, which includes one of Australia’s few remaining formal pathways for becoming a qualified literacy teacher: The Graduate Diploma in Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice.
3. For those of you teaching nationally accredited courses PwC’s Skills for Australia also has a role. No course can be accredited with ASQA unless first scrutinised and endorsed by the SSO. ASQA require letters of support and associated documents before they will consent to review applications to accredit or reaccredit any course that falls within a very broad framework that they consider to be covered by foundation skills (including ESOL courses, HSC equivalent courses, pathway courses and Aboriginal studies, to name a few).
4. The role of the SSO has wide reaching implications for the field of adult literacy across Australia; from what is taught to adult learners, to who teaches it, and ultimately to the future status of the field in terms of qualifications and pathways.
5. Even for those not teaching the training package or nationally accredited courses, the SSO’s decisions can have an impact, for example, on the availability of training (due to demand driven by the content and qualifications set in the FSK).
6. Attending the keynote address by Tim Rawlings will give you an opportunity, as an expert in the sector,  to understand the role of the SSO and how you can contribute to the engagement and decision making that is crucial because it ultimately effects your learners.

Tim’s experience includes assisting Registered Training Organisations with quality, student experience and compliance matters. He has also worked in the Queensland Government as Senior Policy Adviser to the Minister for Education, Training and Employment.

Tim’s international experience includes projects in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates related to economic analysis, public policy and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector entities. He has also been a subject matter expert for projects improving the quality of TVET in south east Asia.

PwC Skills for Australia

Dr. Jenny Horsman

Community-based researcher and educator, Canada

Dr Jenny Horsman

Jenny will be in Melbourne as keynote speaker for the Australian Council for Adult Literacy’s annual conference September 13th and 14th 2018. She is interested in travelling anywhere in Australia, and beyond in the region, during September/October to collaborate with educators of adults and children, counsellors, shelter workers, administrators, and others working in formal and informal educational settings. Jenny is passionate about addressing the impact of violence on learning, and eager to share more than 30 years of research, study, and innovative practice in this area. She is delighted to be returning to Australia for the third time, and looks forward to connecting and sharing knowledge with others with experience addressing this issue, and those interested in exploring the possibilities for the first time.

Jenny offers presentations, workshops, and consultations, face-to-face and online. She values combinations of face-to-face and online work, to create continuity and support those addressing this issue, as they meet the inevitable challenges of changing systems, hearts, and minds! She has seen that working with full staff teams from large and small organizations, can make a profound impact. She likes to engage support staff, janitors, principals, and everyone else in a setting, as well as those more usually viewed as educators, in understanding the neuroscience, and exploring the challenges in their day-to-day work. She has learnt that every interaction teaches, the key question is will it teach students they/we cannot learn, don’t belong, or support long-term educational success, and the changes students dream of making in their lives?

Jenny is a community-based researcher and educator. She has developed curriculum, conducted training, delivered workshops and lectures in many parts of the world, and participated in consultations and juries for the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Her passionate focus since the early 90s has been the impact of violence on learning at all ages, in all settings, and the ways educational interactions would change if we all acknowledged and addressed these impacts. She has written extensively on literacy and pedagogy, and violence and learning, including the books Something in my Mind Besides the Everyday, Too Scared to Learn, and several manuals including: Take on the Challenge. She is also an avid cyclist, “upcycler”, and gardener, growing and nurturing community, chosen family, and the earth.

Too often difficult behaviour frustrates educators and students and makes educational success and personal change elusive. But Jenny has seen that turning towards the “hard stuff,” and understanding the survival based underpinnings of such behaviour, can lead to transformation, and more success than we often dream might be possible.

Jenny’s website

Dr. Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker

Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, Canada

Dr. Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker

Darlene will be in Melbourne as a keynote speaker for the Australian Council for Adult Literacy’s annual conference September 13th and 14th 2018.

Her focus on narrative inquiry methodology is mirrored by her deeply felt commitment to literacy, critical literacy, and narratives of experience as they apply to equity and inclusive education in school systems.

During her tenure, Darlene has completed two major research projects which spanned over many years on students and families affected by poverty, and educators who work in elementary school communities affected by poverty across southern, western, eastern and northern Ontario.

Her current area of narrative inquiry study has its focus on social justice, equity, and well-being in secondary school systems and post-secondary teacher education. Her current research program brings together two large school systems, community organizations across southern Ontario, parents, high school and university students, educators, administrators, and advisory members in the formation of a Youth Strategy Collaborative Network. Its focus is on the development of an interactive research-informed and practice-based human rights strategy that is guided by some foregrounding principles: changing mindset; shifting practices for learning and leading; fostering youth voice, parent engagement, and community access.

Darlene is interested in extending her visit in Australia to collaborate with educators of adults and children, counsellors, parent groups, administrators, and others working in formal and informal educational settings. In Canada, she is frequently invited to speak to various organizations including: District School Boards, Research Panels/Partnerships, Ontario College of Teachers, Principal Associations, Canadian Women’s University Council, Child Youth Network, and the community at large in Canada and internationally.

Darlene’s University web page

Lynne Matheson, Arch Nelson Address

Lynne Matheson

Each year the Arch Nelson address pays tribute to an individual who made an enormous contribution to the community, both locally and internationally and who reached out to enrich the lives of people from many walks of life. Those who work in the adult language, literacy and numeracy fields hold dear the memory of such significant people along their educational journey and it is the motivation to ‘make a difference’ that is celebrated through Arch Nelson’s spirit.

This year’s Arch Nelson address will be presented by Lynne Matheson, a longstanding member of the VALBEC executive committee.

More on Arch Nelson

Cultivating ‘heart power’

The level of literacy in our society is an index of the respect, the affection and the compassion we have for each other, and that these things, respect, affection and compassion are – or should be – basic to our way of life.
AJA Nelson (On the importance of being literate, 1981)

Lynne will use Arch Nelson’s memoir, as a starting point to reflect on how our values are intrinsic to our professional identity and how we live them serves our students and by extension, society. She will reflect on the words of key figures in the LLN landscape and other significant texts and voices that tell the stories from the field and their transformative effects on the lives of students.

In line with the conference theme, there will be opportunity to celebrate the strengths of the adult educator and the sector, reflect on aspects of adult learning and consider questions for the future.

The force of Arch Nelson’s concern for people, his ‘heart power’ as demonstrated in the stewardship of ACAL, and further evidenced in the vibrancy and longevity of VALBEC over more than four decades, will be acknowledged and celebrated.

Lynne has been involved in education all her life. After starting her career as a secondary school drama teacher, she moved into adult literacy education in 1989. She worked as a coordinator of further education and volunteer programs and adult literacy teacher. She has been a member of the VALBEC executive committee since 2000 and Fine Print editorial group since 2002, with a recent term as Fine Print editor (2014 – 2017). The importance and value of professional development has been a driver throughout her involvement with VALBEC. She has been the convenor of numerous conferences, as well as contributing to the annual program of forums and workshops. She has always been passionate about writing, exploring professional identity and adult learning.

Lynne was part of the group of writers for Fancy Footwork: adult educators thinking on their feet editors: Delia Bradshaw, Beverley Campbell and Allie Clemans (2007). She worked on the development and production of VALBEC publications: Reading the Fine Print: a history of the Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council (VALBEC) 1978 – 2008 by Beverley Campbell (2009), A Fuller Sense of Self a collection of stories told by adult literacy students, describing their life and learning by Tricia Bowen (2011), and A Fuller Sense of Self 5 years on – The Digital Stories (2016).

Lynne has maintained connections that have kept her informed and involved in the LLN field, beyond her time teaching and coordinating programs at the Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre. She currently works part-time as a Learning and Development Consultant at Melbourne Polytechnic.

Conference sponsors, supporters and exhibitors