CQUniversity is one of only five Australian universities selected by the Indonesian Ministry of Education to work with a group of 10 Indonesian universities on improving the quality of teacher education.
The new Indonesia-Australia Teacher Education Cooperation officially launched in Jakarta on 24 September and aims to address teacher education in five key areas: literacy, numeracy, inclusive education for special needs, school leadership; and interdisciplinary approaches.
Leading CQUniversity’s role in the initiative, Senior Lecturer in Education Dr Karena Menzie-Ballantyne believed the Cooperation with Indonesia provided the opportunity for new perspectives and projects that could be transformational for teacher education in both countries.
This aligns with the objectives and priority areas of both SDGs 4 and 17, and UNESCO’s new Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.
“Excellence in teaching is the single most powerful in-school influence on student achievement,” says Menzie-Ballantyne.
“And similar to Australia, Indonesia is undertaking wide-ranging reforms to transform its current and future teacher workforce.
“These include the new teacher professional standards to continue to improve teacher professional knowledge; professional practice and professional engagement providing more opportunities for teacher learning through harnessing technologies; developing new career pathways; and developing more robust performance reflection and review tools for teachers and school leaders.”
She says that “sharing knowledge from our Australian experience with the 10 Indonesian universities could be of significant benefit at both the national level and throughout Indonesia’s diverse provinces”.
Proud history of educational collaboration
Indonesia and Australia have a long history of collaboration in education, including sister school relationships, scholarships for award and non-award studies, twinning and joint degree programs, institutional collaboration, and development cooperation.
Backed by Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, the Cooperation will focus on initial teacher education, particularly developing partnerships and projects that enhance the professional learning of the lecturers and pre-service teachers involved in the one-year mandatory program that teachers must pass to be eligible for certification (Indonesian teacher registration).
“By working together, the 15 universities involved in this Cooperation hope to address shared challenges and support Indonesia’s efforts to improve the quality of Indonesia’s teacher education, as well as the capacity of their lecturers to produce high quality graduates who are ‘classroom ready’,” says Menzie-Ballantyne.
