Improving the professional knowledge base for education: Using knowledge management (KM) and Web 2.0 tools

Improving education systems is an elusive goal. Despite considerable investment, international studies such as the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) project and the McKinsey Report How the world’s best performing schools come out on top indicate that improving teacher quality is more important than increased financial investment. Both reports challenge governments, academics and practitioners to adopt new ways of sharing and building knowledge. This paper makes the case for national education systems to adopt tried and tested knowledge management and web 2.0 tools used by other sectors and highlights the neglected potential of teacher educators as agents for improvement

Historical Perspective on Spiritual Education in Australian Schools Part I: The Contribution of Religious Education

This is the first of two articles devoted to an historical perspective on spiritual education in Australian schools. It begins with an understanding of what is meant by spiritual education and a brief outline of its historical context. It then proceeds to develop the proposition that religious education has been the main area of the school curriculum in which a spiritual and moral dimension has been addressed. This is achieved by a ‘big picture’ historical perspective on religious education in Government schools and the interrelation between religion studies and denominational religious education. Attention is drawn to an emerging initiative which is the subject of the subsequent article