Connecting Lives and Learning started in ten state secondary schools in the northern suburbs of Adelaide in 2005. It will continue until 2007 and involves 30 teachers and approximately 1000 students.

This partnership is an innovative example of regional capacity building. The project is the largest of its type in Australia and an unprecedented coming together of five major industry partners with local communities in the north of Adelaide.

• Teaching and Learning
• Student Lives
• Research
• Contact

Teaching and Learning

This project investigates how teachers' understanding of their students' lives can be used to improve teaching and learning. Teachers are involved in researching their practice with a view to improving the learning for their students.

An outcome of the project will be knowledge and practice that connects with the lives of students in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. It will also help teachers find ways to keep students connected with learning.

Benefits for teachers could include:

• Units of work based on the lives of students in your school community
• 1 on 1 mentoring from leading researchers
• Exposure to the latest in educational research
• stronger understanding of local communities
• Improved student engagement
• Improved school retention rates.

Student Lives

All of us find it easier to learn when we see that it has some relevance to our lives. In this project, teachers and students will work together for learning experiences that are connected to students' lives.

This learning will take seriously the skills, abilities and interests that students bring in from their lives outside the classroom. This learning also takes seriously the need to connect students to the official curriculum and ensure they get access to the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to be successful at school.

Benefits for students could include:

• New and inspiring challenges at school
• Having teachers who listen to you
• Being able to choose what you learn about
• Making closer friends at school
• More involvement in your local community
• School making more sense and staying at school more worth it
• A chance to make school more interesting for others.

This project is about investing in our most valuable resource; our young people. It is an initiative that supports students to become active about the issues that matter to them most in their local communities.

Research

Internationally, the middle years of schooling continue to be a major challenge for students and teachers, and thus a crucial site for research and change. Recent research has focused on knowing how to teach in ways that connect with the lives of the students.

In the northern suburbs of Adelaide, the high rate of early school leaving has long been a concern. This project will add to a new wave of ideas about how best to connect middle schooling with the lives of young people.

The RPiN project also aims to:

• Support regional capacity building
• Map teaching and learning practice
• Research influences on youth identity in the northern suburbs
• Build a university-school professional community for research.

Australian research shows that there is an urgent need to rethink what we are doing in the middle years of schooling. This project provides a unique space for a group of committed teachers to work with university researchers to examine what might be possible.

Connecting Lives and Learning is part of the Redesigning Pedagogies in the North research project (ARC Linkage Scheme: Project No. LP0454869). The project is based in the School of Education at the University of South Australia. It is a university-industry partnership that brings together researchers and teachers in the northern suburbs of Adelaide.