Catherine Attard presented with national Award for Teaching Excellence
Associate Professor Catherine Attard has been recognised with a prestigious Award for Teaching Excellence, as part of the 2016 Australian Awards for University Teaching.
Associate Professor Attard, from the School of Education, received her award at a ceremony held at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in Canberra.
A specialist in mathematics teaching at a primary level, Associate Professor Attard says she aims to make her university classes as interactive as possible.
"In my teaching, the students need to see the relevance of what they experience at university, so I make sure that everything I do is going to be useful to their future careers," she says.
"I give my students assessments that are real and relevant, and replicate the jobs of an actual teacher, such as assessing students and creating interesting maths tasks."
The federal education Minister Simon Birmingham says Associate Professor Attard is recognised as one of Australia's most outstanding university teachers.
"I commend her contribution to enhancing the quality of teaching in higher education," he says.
In order to help teachers once they graduate and begin teaching classes at school, Associate Professor Atttard has created an interactive website Engaging Maths.
"Once my students leave university I don't stop supporting them, which is why I've developed my website, which is also open to the public," she says.
"Through this, we've developed this beautiful community of learners where the cohort really know each other and they have lots of interaction, and we don't need to be in the same room as each other."
Associate Professor Attard is also the immediate past editor of the national journal, Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, and the Director of the Education Knowledge Network within the University's School of Education, which provides high quality professional learning for practicing early childhood, primary and secondary teachers.
She has published several teaching resource books as well as a mathematics board game, Mabble.
Ends
2 December 2016
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