Excellence in Teaching

Excellence in Teaching By Liana Gooch Deputy Principal

Korowa was privileged to have Nicola Devlin (Humanities) and Candice Egan (Dance and Drama) selected for the Teaching Excellence Program (TEP), a flagship program of the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. The program’s 250 successful applicants are regarded as some of Victoria’s most highly skilled and exceptional classroom teachers.

Fostering excellence and collegiality across the teaching types and sectors, participants over a year will learn from master teachers and international experts, and work collaboratively while focusing on building classroom teaching practice within their discipline areas. This supportive professional environment facilitates rich conversation from a variety of viewpoints and reflection, enabling each individual to deeply consider their own personal teaching philosophy. Upon graduation, the participants will become Academy Fellows who will retain connection with the Academy and mentor other teachers in the program. Nicola Devlin, Head of Learning, has previously participated in the University of Melbourne Network of Schools in which she developed the Korowa Critical Thinking Framework; a framework designed to assist students and teachers build their critical thinking, creative and problem-solving capacity. Her interest in this field is reflected in her present TEP project which revolves around how to facilitate critical, empathetic and open-minded dialogue in relation to challenging and controversial topics through the lenses of Humanities, particularly History. TEP also enables Nicola to collaborate with other Humanities teachers to develop high quality Humanities curriculum, and create resources which foster diversity, inclusion and social justice. Candice Egan, co-author of the paper ‘Dancing Earthquake Science Assists Recovery from the Christchurch Earthquakes’ (Egan, Quigley 2014), which she wrote after her lived experiences throughout the earthquakes as both a resident and Director of Dance in a secondary school, has a professional and personal interest in the use of Arts for recovery from disaster contexts. Her TEP individual and group inquiry project focuses upon how the Arts curriculum and learning can assist students in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic; a focus on the studied benefits of embodied learning (Dance and Drama) and applied learning programs within school environments. With the recent opening of the new Dance Studio in Korowa’s Sports and Wellbeing Centre, she is looking forward to activating and celebrating newly developed 21st century Arts learning programs.