Current projects

Subject coordinators: Leading professional development for sessional staff

In August 2009, Dr Gerry Lefoe (Project Leader), Associate Professor Jo McKenzie, Professor Yoni Ryan and Associate Professor Janne Malfroy were successful in their ALTC grant submission (Leadership for Excellence in Learning and Teaching Program).

Their project, Subject coordinators: Leading professional development for sessional staff, aims to enhance the quality of teaching through the development of leadership capacity of subject co-ordinators, thereby improving capacity for academic leadership and management of the teaching team. The intended outcomes include:

• A Leadership capacity development framework that includes targeted professional development for subject co-ordinators to enable them to create contexts for learning about teaching practice by sessional staff
• Adaption of Integrated Competing Values Framework for use by subject co-ordinators to develop their own leadership skills (Vilkinas, Ladyshewsky and Saebel, 2009)
• Improved communication and teamwork to enable quality improvement of subject
• Enhanced recognition of all members of the team enabling them to teach more effectively
• Good Practice Examples, video triggers and other identified resources from across the participating institutions collated and available through a website to support subject coordinators in their leadership and management of teaching teams; and
• Influence on institutional policies, guidelines and practices in leadership and management of teaching teams involving sessional academics, specifically including role and responsibility statements for subject co-ordinators

For further information, please contact Dr Gerry Lefoe.