Welcome
My name is Leonie McIlvenny and teaching is my passion. I currently work across many contexts and each provides me with a wonderful opportunity to work with school aged students, undergraduates or education practitioners. In any given week I could be mentoring teenagers in the GeniusU Teen Quest, lecturing undergraduate teachers in scientific inquiry around sustainability or digital literacy, conducting PD sessions for teachers on how to incorporate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into their teaching / learning programme, or creating online courses. I love that each context gives me the opportunity to teach new skills, challenge thinking, inspire learning or reinvigorate old habits and mindsets. Even after 39+ years working in the education arena as a primary school teacher, teacher librarian, lecturer, curriculum writer /consultant, online course developer and library consultant (to name a few) I still get a buzz out of working in this space.
I have always tried to be in the vanguard of new educational thinking and was lucky to have been involved in a number of innovative programs (for their time) including the ASP Infrastructure Trial for the Department of Education (WA), Teaching Teachers for the Future (a federally funded research project involving universities from around Australia) a Learning to Learn programme developed at Aquinas College and more recently the Teen Quest programme. Each of these was based on "new ways of thinking and doing" that challenged old paradigms.
As a teacher librarian Inquiry Learning was always a key focus of the learning programmes I developed - seeking to find the answers for oneself by asking the question "I wonder why?". The introduction of digital technologies as a platform and mechanism for transformational learning has allowed me to focus my efforts in the past few years on exploring the affordances of a range of technologies to disrupt and challenge the way we deliver curriculum. Developing digital resources to support teachers and students has also been a key focus for the past 15 years. Details of these projects can be found on the Websites page but some examples are listed below:
* Studyvibe, a website dedicated to supporting students with their research and study skills;
* The Research Safari - designed for middle school students to develop their information literacy competencies;
* The Knowledge Compass - a series of questioning frameworks to help develop critical and creative thinking;
* Inquiring About the World - an online scientific inquiry unit that is part of the Bachelor of Education Course at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia;
* The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Project - which explores how the UN SDGs can be used to develop an integrated unit of work that helps develop key transversal competencies; and
* The Professional Teachers Portfolio Challenge which supports teachers to develop a professional teaching portfolio that addresses the Australian Teaching Standards.
I have always tried to be in the vanguard of new educational thinking and was lucky to have been involved in a number of innovative programs (for their time) including the ASP Infrastructure Trial for the Department of Education (WA), Teaching Teachers for the Future (a federally funded research project involving universities from around Australia) a Learning to Learn programme developed at Aquinas College and more recently the Teen Quest programme. Each of these was based on "new ways of thinking and doing" that challenged old paradigms.
As a teacher librarian Inquiry Learning was always a key focus of the learning programmes I developed - seeking to find the answers for oneself by asking the question "I wonder why?". The introduction of digital technologies as a platform and mechanism for transformational learning has allowed me to focus my efforts in the past few years on exploring the affordances of a range of technologies to disrupt and challenge the way we deliver curriculum. Developing digital resources to support teachers and students has also been a key focus for the past 15 years. Details of these projects can be found on the Websites page but some examples are listed below:
* Studyvibe, a website dedicated to supporting students with their research and study skills;
* The Research Safari - designed for middle school students to develop their information literacy competencies;
* The Knowledge Compass - a series of questioning frameworks to help develop critical and creative thinking;
* Inquiring About the World - an online scientific inquiry unit that is part of the Bachelor of Education Course at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia;
* The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Project - which explores how the UN SDGs can be used to develop an integrated unit of work that helps develop key transversal competencies; and
* The Professional Teachers Portfolio Challenge which supports teachers to develop a professional teaching portfolio that addresses the Australian Teaching Standards.
We only get one chance at this life and we need to work out what impact / legacy we a want to leave behind.
For me I want to help my students be the best versions of themselves they can be and for them to also 'feel the fear and do it anyway'.
Do what you love and love what you do
While education has been my vocation I have used my love of a challenge to take me outside my comfort zone to try new things. And so, whether it is participating in the 21km ocean swim to Rottnest Island, cycling at the velodrome, climbing mountains in Scotland, travelling in a container ship from Western Australia to England, or scuba diving with sharks, sea lions and sting rays, my motto is "feel the fear and do it anyway". This is the basis for all the work I do today and what I try to promote with my students - a sense of agency and self efficacy where they take control of their own learning and celebrate their own uniqueness; where they ask the question "What is possible?" and "What difference can I make?"
