Better understanding teaching and teacher education

As a Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor, John is well regarded internationally. He is interested in such things as "How teachers learn how to teach and how they then put that into practice and develop their knowledge, skills and ability over time." A lot of his research is on this important aspect of knowledge of teaching.

John is very interested in developing and articulating teachers' professional knowledge - especially in science - and in so doing, draw more attention to why we need to better value the work of teachers.

Having been a high school science teacher for ten years, John is interested in helping to raise professional self-awareness amongst teachers and to raise the status of teaching more generally. By working to develop teachers' professional knowledge of teaching he sees ways of making clear what it means to be an expert teacher and how crucial that is to enhancing student learning in meaningful ways.

Through his many ARC grants John has been keen to develop a more strategic approach to policy and practice in science education in particular.  That work is also central to his involvement in Teacher Education. 

As Dean of the Faculty of Education, he sees the culture and approach to academia as central to influencing the next generation of scholars and how that might pay dividends in the development of students of teaching that graduate from Monash's teacher preparation programs.

'The Faculty of Education at Monash has always had a very strong reputation in science education, and so it always attracted the best science educators from around the world. This meant that as a young academic, you were always fortunate to have access to the best people in the world. And you were encouraged - and expected - to be able to collaborate with them. This has been a well-established way of operating in the faculty for a long time. We've been very fortunate in the way that we've been mentored and brought on through the system, and we expect to do so the same for the people who follow us.'