School of Education Executive

“To lead innovation and change in education we must navigate a terrain that is steeped in history and tradition, and find opportunities to disrupt practice and transform learning,” says Professor Joanna Barbousas, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education, Impact and Innovation and Dean of the School of Education. “I aspire to collaboratively lead education transformation that has national and international reach.”

Professor Joanna Barbousas

Professor Joanna Barbousas is Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education, Impact and Innovation and Dean of the School of Education at La Trobe University, and Professor of Teacher Education. She brings over 29 years' experience in education, teaching practice and education policy. She has held significant leadership roles in at the Australian Catholic University and was the former President of the Victorian Council of Deans of Education. Since joining La Trobe University in 2016 she has transformed the School of Education making it a leading provider of teacher education in Australia. Professor Barbousas’ research focuses on new visions in teacher education and role of partnerships and sector collaborations to drive the status of the teaching profession. She is an invited member on government steering committees, advisory groups, and expert panels. Professor Barbousas has led the development and expansion of the award-winning NEXUS program funded through the Commonwealth Government High Achievers Teachers Program and supported by the State Government of Victoria to deliver an innovative employment-based teacher education program in Secondary and Primary for regional/rural and hard to staff schools in Victoria and expanding into New South Wales.

Associate Professor Melissa Barnes

Associate Professor Melissa Barnes is Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching in the School of Education. Associate Professor Barnes’ teaching focus and research interests are situated within the fields of teacher education, competency-based assessment, education policy and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She has led research initiatives that focus on how policies impact and shape teaching and learning, with a focus on system-wide change in instructional and assessment practices both in schools and teacher education. She is trained as both a primary school teacher and an English-as-an-Additional-Language teacher. Associate Professor Barnes has taught in schools in the United States, Germany, Vietnam, Brunei and Australia. She is the Chief-Investigator for both the Momentum Schools and Momentum Extension projects, which examine and track the enablers and barriers to school-wide instructional change over time. She has published in journals such as Teaching and Teacher Education, Critical Studies in Education, Higher Education, Educational Review and Teachers and Teaching.

Professor Therese Keane

Professor Therese Keane is Associate Dean, Research and Industry Engagement and Professor of STEM Education in the School of Education. Professor Keane is a champion for empowering women in STEM. She has worked in a variety of school settings where she has taught IT and lead in K-12 education as the Director of ICT. Professor Keane’s research and expertise lie at the intersection of ICT issues related to children, young people, teachers, parents, principals, ICT education, educational technologies, technological innovations, and gender in computing. Her work is interdisciplinary and theoretically robust but at its core is a concern with how various educational settings (early education, primary and secondary schools) and their stakeholders learn, use breakthrough technologies and teach with and about alongside new innovations, as well as the way it is negotiated, integrated and even, at times, resisted. In pursuing these research interests, she continues to investigate, several diverse avenues for research such as educational, humanoid, social robots; AI; computational thinking; computing education; children and programming; virtual reality and how these technologies are used by children and by extension educational stakeholders. Professor Keane has serviced on several state, national and international boards. She is Deputy Editor of Education and Information Technologies, the official journal of the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Education covering the complex relationship between information and communication technologies and education. She has published 18 textbooks in all units of VCE Senior Information Technology in Victoria since 1995 and has worked with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority in the development of the VCE IT Study Design and various roles associated with VCE assessment.

Professor Miriam Tanti

Professor Miriam Tanti is Associate Dean, Partnerships in the School of Education and Executive Director of Nexus. Professor Tanti is an experienced educator who has dedicated more than 20 years to collaborating with teachers, schools, and school systems. Throughout her career, she has played a pivotal role in fostering engagement and innovation among key educational stakeholders and industry partners, both nationally and internationally. At present, she holds the position of Associate Dean Academic Partnerships and serves as the Executive Director of the Commonwealth-supported Nexus program - an innovative pathway to enter the teaching profession. Nexus represents an employment-based pathway designed to attract and prepare a diverse cohort of high-achieving prospective teachers for roles in metropolitan, regional and rural secondary and primary schools in Victoria and New South Wales. In support of this work, her research explores the influence and impact of school and university partnerships on teacher development, including preservice teachers, mentor teachers, and communities of practice. Her efforts in this area have been instrumental in advocating for an integrated approach to initial teacher education. Additionally, her other area of exploration and research focuses on the meaningful integration of digital technologies in education. Her collaboration with Microsoft and Telstra resulted in the development of simulations designed to equip preservice teachers for their professional experience and the teaching profession. This initiative not only is at the forefront of evidence-informed contemporary educational practices but also garnered the endorsement of key regulatory authorities.

Professor Bernadette Walker-Gibbs

Professor Bernadette Walker-Gibbs is Deputy Dean and Associate Dean, Academic in the School of Education. She has led education initiatives in higher education, schools and with communities in Victoria and Queensland. Professor Walker-Gibbs is recognised as an outstanding educator with commendations for teaching and research excellence. She has an international reputation in research for her leadership of large scale, longitudinal studies in teacher education, and for international comparative studies in rural education. Professor Walker-Gibbs’s career has focused on ensuring quality education and opportunities for all students. Her research and teaching is shaped by working with and in communities to understand how and why context matters, to better support pre-service teachers to develop partnerships built through mutual trust, respect and negotiation.

Mr Blair Herbert

Mr Blair Herbert is Senior Manager in the School of Education. He has worked in in the tertiary education sector for over 20 years and has held a number of senior administrative roles throughout this time in both New Zealand and Australia. Mr Herbert holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration from the University of Auckland.

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