Welcome to the Melbourne Graduate School of Education

I am delighted to welcome you to the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) website. Here you’ll find information about our courses and programs, research activities and events, and about the ground-breaking changes taking place in the MGSE and across the University.

You have no doubt heard about the Melbourne Model, the University’s transformation of its course structure that takes effect from 2008. The Melbourne Model evolved out of the Growing Esteem strategy, which has provided an endorsement of the MGSE’s traditional strengths and a structure in which we can develop further.

One of the most significant changes associated with the Melbourne Model is the move to a graduate school model. On 26 October 2007, the University unveiled its new graduate schools, with plans for Faculties to assume their new graduate school name and branding in 2008.

The impact of this move is felt nowhere more strongly than in our Faculty, which will be known as the Melbourne Graduate School of Education from 1 January 2008.
The move to a graduate school is set to revolutionise higher education in Australia, and Melbourne will become the first Australian university to introduce a comprehensive graduate school model of education.

In relation to our course offerings, 2007 has been an exciting year as we fine-tuned a revolutionary new program, the Master of Teaching, which will be introduced in parallel with the last intake into our two undergraduate programs, Bachelor of Education (Primary) and Bachelor of Early Childhood Education. The program offers a professional teaching qualification at a higher academic level than anything else available, in a realistic time frame and with much more practical classroom experience.

The MGSE is on almost every measure the leading research faculty in education in Australia. Our success in gaining research funding through the Australian Research Council (ARC), the peak funding body for academic research, consistently exceeds the national average, and speaks for the calibre of our researchers and our outstanding contribution to education research.

The Melbourne Education Research Institute (MERI) is the umbrella agency for the MGSE’s research activities, which are structured around these four strategic research programs:

• Development of symbolisation capacities in young children
• Education, equity and social identities in the 21st Century
• Education needs of Asia-Pacific knowledge economies, and
• Master teachers in the making

In concert with our 11 research centres and academic clusters, MERI is playing a lead role in fostering research of genuine international significance and strengthening the nexus between research and teaching in the MGSE.

Knowledge transfer is at the core of what we do as an education institution, and our comprehensive network within the wider education community includes school principals, teachers, school course advisors, educational organisations, government bodies and other educational institutions within Australia and internationally.

Whether you come to the Melbourne Graduate School of Education to study, work, collaborate on a research project or network with our staff and students, we look forward to welcoming you warmly into a productive and collegial environment.

Professor Field Rickards
Dean, Melbourne Graduate School of Education

• Academic profile of the Dean
• Dean's Awards
• Teaching and Research Excellence Awards
• Dean's Lecture Series
• Master of Teaching