Dean's Award for Innovation for Learning and Teaching

Working collaboratively in partnership with professional colleagues, Prof Umesh Sharma, Dr Christine Grove, Dr Stella Laletas and Mr Simon Finkelstein, provided insights into their work undertaken on transforming pre-service teacher capability to teach in inclusive classrooms. Their work addressed a reported critical challenge in teacher education that relates to inadequate preparation of pre-service teachers to teach in inclusive classrooms whereby while pre-service teachers learn a great deal about inclusive education theories and strategies, they often fail to apply the knowledge in classrooms. The team demonstrated how, by changing teaching practices through university-school collaboration, and through the application of the '3H framework' – heart, heads, hands - they have been able to bridge the gap between theory and practice and thus have a positive impact on pre-service teacher preparedness. In addition to three quality publications, to date their work has resulted in the development of a new teacher education collaborative framework which will appeal to teacher educators in Australia and internationally, and which is likely to be adopted as best practice collaboration between universities and school.