A survey of the perceptions of academic staff from three representative universities to recent higher education reform in Australia has revealed a high level of concern in many areas of academic responsibility and a dismal assessment of future prospects. This article reports responses to issues involving the mainstream activities of teaching and research as well as to the standard of undergraduate students and the extent of academic freedom. The quality of new students, of teaching and research are all identified as in decline. Changes in university management to a more corporate style are seen as a threat to academic freedom. Established research universities are concerned that scarce research funds are being stretched too far. This perception is leading to new divisions in the unified higher education sector.
Recognition of prior learning (RPL) refers to recognition of non-credentialled or informal learning. In the university context, there are dif® culties in determining the appropriateness and extent of experiential learning since there is no research-based modelling to guide the process. This article draws on an Australian Research Council grant project which aims to draw up research-based, nationally applicable protocols and procedures for RPL in education faculties in Australia. It concludes that there is room for greater development of procedures for recognising prior learning than exists in many faculties of education.
This paper outlines recent developments in Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) with particular reference to the application of RPL in the education and training of teachers. Furthermore it suggests that RPL will become an increasingly important aspect of professional development programmes and puts forward some ideas for the establishment of successful professional development programmes which, by using predetermined credit, incorporate RPL in a simple and effective fashion. At the same time the paper advises university faculties of education to approach RPL processes cautiously and carefully.
In August 2006, Australia's conservative prime minister John Howard convened a history summit in Canberra. The purported goal of the summit was the framing of a nationally‐acceptable curriculum in Australian history. However, as this article suggests, Howard's hidden intention was to use the summit as a device for introducing a narrowly traditionalist syllabus that would be personally pleasing to the prime minister. As it happened, Howard's plan encountered resistance from members of the history education community and, after several diversions and alarms, was discarded when the conservative coalition government was defeated in the general election of November 2007. The author was closely involved in these proceedings and this article constitutes a contextualisd memoir of events.
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