Australia and New Zealand Comparative Education Society Conference

Entering the Age of an Educational Renaissance: Ideas for unity of purpose or further discord?
24 - 27 November 2009

University of New England, Armidale

The theme for ANZCIES 2009 is Entering the Age of an Educational Renaissance: Ideas for unity of purpose or further discord? It is designed in response to the ever-increasing needs to advance our understanding of educational planning, behaviour, and development.

Is education perceived as a tool for peace? Can we use education to expand our imagination to explore new ways of thinking for collective action? What can we do to view education as a whole---from early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary to lifelong learning? How can the world foster greater co-operation to offset fear of collapse, apathy, and complacency? Indeed, the world has changed, so how should education change with it? These and other related questions will be raised at the conference.

The aim of the conference is to present a series of papers that rigourously analyse discrete practical problems that help guide comparative and international research, uncover dilemmas, fallacies, myths, and/or to seek viable solutions to global and local concerns.

International Leadership Workshop in Thailand

Dr Nattavud Pimpa from the School of Management visited Burapha University in Thailand last month to organise and run a workshop aimed at capacity building in public sector leadership among local civil servants.

The project is an affiliation between School of Management and Burapha University’s Graduate School of Commerce. In 2007, Dr Pimpa won and Emerging Research Grant (ERG) from RMIT to conduct a comparative leadership research in Victoria and Thailand. The results of the project become the contents of the workshop.

Dr Pimpa’s work in the area of research and educational collaboration in international leadership and management won him this opportunity through a grant provided by the Australia-Thailand Institute (ATI), an organisation within the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The workshop, held from Wednesday 29 September to 30 September, in Chonburi. Chonburi is one of the key strategic provinces in logistics, manufacturing and international trade and tourism in South East Asia. The workshop covered the concepts of Australian and Thai leadership characteristics, styles, effectiveness, inter-cultural leadership and team building in the Thai and Australian context. Fifteen local civil servants in the eastern Thailand participated in this workshop and created links among themselves and with RMIT.

“Leadership is a key function in all organisations and I believe that this workshop helps the participants from public health, education and local governance policy in the east of Thailand to implement the concept of leadership to their organisations” said Dr. Pimpa.

Co-organisers of the workshop included Dr. Timothy Moore from the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor Suda Suwannapirom, the Dean of the Graduate School of Commerce, Burapha University.

According to Associate Professor Suwannapirom, projects such as these are important because they ‘help create a strong academic bond between RMIT and the Thai government.’