Celebrating our Board Chair, Melbourne Laureate Professor Emeritus John Hattie

AITSL’s Board Chair, Melbourne Laureate Professor Emeritus John Hattie, positioned AITSL as the honest broker in Australia’s education architecture. His tenure as Board Chair will come to an end on 1 July 2023.

John’s approach to his work is summed up in two words – ‘impact’ and ‘expertise’. At AITSL, we’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve heard these over the past 9 years.

John always says there is incredible expertise and stunning teaching going on in schools across Australia every day. Our challenge is to value, esteem and scale this up. Based on this conviction, he always encouraged us to build up the profession, and make the expertise that already exists the basis for improvement in our schools. His personal championing of the role of Highly Accomplished and Lead teachers is the greatest testament to this focus.

John’s other key word is ‘impact’. You could argue he has changed the way the teaching profession thinks by championing the idea that teachers need to understand their impact on student learning and use this as the basis for improving their practice.

At AITSL, this has meant a sharp focus on doing what will work best. John’s expertise in research and measurement has helped us to inject rigour in all areas of AITSL’s work. His championing of the teaching performance assessment in initial teacher education is a clear example. This has been a major reform that has changed the debate about teacher preparation from a focus on process to concentrating on outcomes – whether new teachers are really prepared to teach in the classroom.

He has had a profound impact on educational research and teaching practice over the course of decades.

John has led the company through significant change and growth over the past 9 years while maintaining a laser-like focus on AITSL’s purpose and vision.

The profession and Australia’s students will all benefit from the legacy that he leaves at AITSL.

As announced by Minister Clare last week, we also welcome our new Chair, Dr Michele Bruniges AM. Dr Bruniges has worked in education for over 4 decades and is currently the Chair of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Governing Board. Michele was previously the Secretary of the federal Department of Education and a Director on the AITSL Board.

Read more in our media release here.

Read the Hon Jason Clare MP’s announcement here.