Is where Professor Toni Downes says her commitment and drive come from. Professor Downes is Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) new Dean of the Faculty of Education. 

 

Her former colleagues agree, saying she has an “obsessional intellectual commitment” as well as being “very committed to what she does” and has “a thorough intellectual devotion”. The accolades are plentiful.

 

People in privileged positions that have had access to strong educational opportunities should be making sure that the world’s a better place as they pass through, says Professor Toni Downes.

 

 

Like her immediate predecessor, the ‘visionary’ Professor Bob Meyenn, Professor Downes started out as a primary teacher before studying for her Masters at the University of Toronto. It was the late 1970s, and she was studying “educational computing”, unheard of in Australia at that time.

 

“When I arrived at the University of Toronto, everything was computer based…they were very early adaptors of computer technologies. At Sydney University at the same time, in 1978, if you wanted to use a computer, you would punch a card and walk over to the computer centre. And that was still true when I came back in the early 1980s. At the University of Toronto, in the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education , you were sitting at a terminal with a screen, and that was really unusual.

 

“I had an instant love affair with the technology and its potential for teaching and learning.”

 

Professor Downes finds comparing books and the internet a very useful analogy, “I do that all the time.

 

“I always use the comparison when someone describes to me how horrific it is for a young child to sit in front of a screen for two or three hours and be totally absorbed. So I say to them, would you be that horrified if they were sitting in front of a book for two to three hours?

 

“If you capture a three year old’s face…you know that rapt attention look? Those wide eyes? And then you scroll around and there’s a book in their hands, parents and teachers have a very different reaction then if you scroll around and it’s a screen. I continually challenge people to ask why this is so.”

 

Her own children are very computer savvy and have been from a young age. “We always had rules. We went through a period of time when we had no games on our computers, we took time to teach them some responsible behaviours and to be honest it has made a huge difference to the two girls’ employability, which does suggest that we are starting to reach a stage where homes without technology and homes with technology are creating a divide.”

 

Which makes school computers very important to a child’s education. The Charles Sturt University initiative HSC Online is a good example of this. Professor Downes is pleased that CSU is involved and says it puts an enormous amount of resources on the web for children in Years 11 and 12, but the statistics show it’s kids at home accessing this site, not teachers and children at school. Again, in her research she asks – why is this so?

 

What else attracted her to CSU?

 

“The things that brought me here which will form my vision is this university seemed to be at a particular point in its history where it was ready to do something serious in Indigenous education.

 

”I’m passionate to help CSU develop its own version of an Indigenous education program that relates to the needs of our regions. And certainly attracting and retaining Indigenous students within that framework is essential.

 

 “The second area I’m particularly interested in is the University’s mission statement of being at the leading edge of flexible and distance education. I think I can make a strong contribution there because I know about the teaching and learning but I also know enough about the the potential of the technology. I’m not a technical person, but I’ve been in the field long enough so I understand what’s possible.

 

“I think the University is already focusing on some of those possibilities.

 

“The third area I’m really interested in is the scholarship of teacher education. Are we doing the best we can in our pre-service programs to produce quality beginning teachers, given the fact that what it is to be a teacher today is much more complex than it’s ever been, and it’s much more uncertain."

 

Professor Downes will be overseeing a faculty which is a clear leader in the field of teacher education, encompassing four schools across the CSU’s campuses in Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga. About 100 CSU academics are now involved in research and lecturing in early childhood, primary and secondary education, vocational education and training as well as recreation and human movement programs. More recently, the work of CSU has reached to Ontario in Canada where about 500 applicants competed for a little over 100 places to undertake the University’s Bachelor of Primary Education Studies.

 

Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Ross Chambers says Professor Downes has a commitment to social justice which will serve CSU’s regional communities well.   “This is a great appointment and the fact that CSU can attract someone of Professor Downes’ calibre is a tribute to our Faculty of Education. She is the ideal person to build on the Faculty’s achievements and take it forward into the next phase of its development.”

 

 

Professor Downes has also brought two research projects with her from the University of Western Sydney (UWS), She believes they will dovetail well into her work at Charles Sturt University.

 

The first, a three year longitudinal study, concentrates on why girls are failing to fully participate in IT in schools and in careers. She maintains this project will keep her up-to-date with what is happening in schools, a connection she says will make her a better Dean. Her second project is looking at innovative ways of creating partnerships between universities and schools to improve teacher education around the use of computers in education, thereby keeping up her scholarship in teacher education.

 

It is not easy to reconcile this busy, driven Dean of Education with the woman. She’s an expressive and expansive woman with short platinum hair and a big infectious laugh which erupts often, one of those impressive people who speaks quickly and in long, complicated, complete sentences.

 

Her former colleague from UWS, Dr Bronwyn Cole, Head of Program for Primary Education, says Professor Downes “claims to be shy”. She goes on to add, “I think she’s outgoing and enjoys social activities and her family has always been very much a part of that, she enjoys the company of people; family and friends."

 

It’s a theme her colleagues return to time and time again. Her dedication, her focus, her passion and her commitment.

 

Another former colleague Professor of Education at UWS Michael Singh says Toni Downes has a “reputation for having a deep understanding of both teacher and school education, even an obsessional intellectual commitment to the field”.

 

With this devotion to the teaching profession, does she ever miss primary teaching? There is a long pause….

 

“I miss…the absolute trust. Primary children are unique in the fact that they are at a stage in their development where they place trust in you as a benevolent adult and as a wise teacher. That type of relationship you can’t replace. Not with adolescents in high school, not in pre-schools.

 

“But I don’t miss teaching, because my leadership style means I’m teaching all the time, but I’m teaching sitting alongside people. I’ve had two phone calls today from heads of schools who need ways of solving problems. Sitting alongside them solving problems is a form of teaching.”

 

And the move to Bathurst in the NSW central west?

 

“I love it…even the weather. I’m prepared for the weather…I’ve lived in Canada and I’ve worked in PNG. At breakfast this morning, on the balcony, looking out over the town, I thought, how blessed that I could be sitting there, three minutes from my office, overlooking such a beautiful part of the country.”

 

I am very happy and sad…happy for CSU, sad for UWS, says Professor Michael Singh, Professor of Education UWS.

 

But back to that drive and commitment she’s so well known for.

 

“My philosophy of life is that all people, especially those in privileged positions such as myself that have had access to strong educational opportunities should be making sure that the world’s a better place as they pass through.

 

“My passion for Indigenous education came from my childhood, I took all my childhood holidays down the NSW South Coast and we used to fish near a large Indigenous community  I remember being about 12 and my dad drove me through that community and I couldn’t comprehend why the place was so run down, and why I had so much …. that kind of stayed with me…and when I began working at UWS in 1987 I had the opportunity to teach in the Indigenous program and this allowed me to put my commitment into action in an important way.”