Cathy Phillips Email and Phone Number

Cottage by the Sea project

The Supporting Oral Language Development (SOLD) Program aims to work with preschool educators to enhance their knowledge in developing young children’s oral language skills.

The School of Education is one of the larger schools in the University and operates across 4 campuses – Melbourne Burwood, Geelong Waurn Ponds, Warrnambool and Cloud (online). It is a leading provider of primary and secondary teacher education, early childhood educator preparation, educational leadership and adult, vocational and applied learning education. Our strong partnerships with Deakin Alliance schools promote an applied approach to preservice and ongoing teacher education. In the context of a rapidly changing and innovative digital world, we are working to achieve significant advancement for a sustainable future, including leadership nationally and internationally across disciplines and professional knowledge. The PLEdHub@Deakin offers a number of unique and innovative professional learning opportunities for educators and teachers that aim to: deepen knowledge; enhance teaching and learning evidence-based practices; improve education outcomes for children, young people and adults; build productive partnerships; and develop research and learning communities that engage in critical collaborative conversations with leading academics and colleagues across early childhood, school education systems, vocational education training, higher education, and community.

Deakin's Access Quality Teaching (AQT) program, formerly known as National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program, is founded on the Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program devised by Professor Jo Lampert and Professor Bruce Burnett, initiated at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The program aims to improve the outcomes of vulnerable children in low socio-economic status (SES) schools by supporting our most capable teachers to teach in the schools that need them most.We invite our highest achieving, pre-service teachers entering their third year of the Bachelor of Education (Primary), Bachelor of Arts/Master of Teaching (Secondary), or Bachelor of Science/Master of Teaching (Secondary) to join a group of like-minded peers committed to improving equity through education.For the remainder of their degree, the selected pre-service teachers complete their regular initial teacher education course and engage together in a Community of Practice model to explore issues related to poverty and disadvantage. They also complete their remaining school experience placements in low socio-economic schools.To date, Deakin has a strong alumnus of over 100 AQT graduate teachers working in schools across Victoria and Australia.