Freerk Ykema

Keynote Address:
Worldwide schools and teachers are confronted with the same problems: schools are getting bigger and are more than ever before curriculum based, there is less time to interact with students, money is running out, pressure and stress is increasing etc. What drives us teachers to go on, what is teaching all about, do we still remember, can we inspire each other in our work? How can Rock and Water help us to remember the real calling of education?

About Freek:
Freerk Ykema is the founder of the Rock & Water Program. He has worked as a Physical Education and Remedial Teacher and Counsellor at Schagen in the North of the Netherlands in a comprehensive school. In 1995, Freerk trialled the Rock and Water course at his school to help address boys' motivation and self-confidence. Rock and Water is a most well known course in the Netherlands and has become a standard subject in the curriculum of many Dutch schools. The program won a national award in The Netherlands for targeting boys’ education. Freerk is currently training teachers in countries throughout the world to deliver the Rock and Water program to help boys (and girls) achieve their real potential.

Dr Ian Lillico

Keynote Address:
This keynote will examine contemporary strategies to better engage, motivate and teach boys in our schools, homes and workplaces. Ian will outline the major findings from the Commonwealth Government’s intervention into boys’ education over the last few years and compare a host of effective strategies that work. Ian will talk of the need to connect with boys using our heart as well as our mind. A highlight will be using visual strategies to improve boys’ literacy. Ian will also discuss the value of Rock and Water for boys and will examine strategic ways of connecting with them in order to manage their behaviour and improve their aptitude for work.

About Ian:
Dr Ian Lillico (father of three sons) is the former Principal of City Beach High School in WA (recently retired) and international consultant in gender, boysÕ education and middle schooling. He has done action research in gender throughout Australia and New Zealand from 1992 and in the Northern Hemisphere during his Churchill Fellowship in 2000. He has been with the Education Department of WA for 31 years and has held the positions of Teacher, Head of Department, Deputy Principal and Principal.

Ian is the founder and CEO of the Boys Forward Institute. He has a PhD (Education), is a National Fellow of The Australian Council of Educational Leaders (ACEL) and was the ACEL 2006 National Travelling Scholar. He now provides professional development for teachers, parents, students and a host of other organizations throughout Australia and internationally. His website is www.boysforward.com

Ms Deborah Hartman

Keynote Address:
How schools can best meet the needs of both boys and girls is the subject of an ongoing educational debate. Policies about Gender and Education do not reflect this lively public, practitioner and academic debate. Rock and Water has been an important strategy for schools in meeting the needs of boys and girls in Australia for over 10 years.  The theories and practices underpinning the program are still leading the discussion.  Will gender policy ever catch up?

About Deborah:
Deborah Hartman has had an extensive career as an educator in the primary and tertiary education sectors, including many years experience in indigenous education. She has been a university educator/researcher in the field of educating boys since 1999. She is currently Research Development Manager at the Family Action Centre.

As an early career researcher, MS Hartman's work has had a significant impact on the field of educating boys. She has been an invited keynote speaker at many conferences in the field and sat on a federal government advisory committee on the topic in 2003. She was chief investigator for a federal government innovative research grant on boys' literacy in 2004 and she has written, edited and published a number of well respected books, book chapters, articles and practitioner journals in the field. Her research led to the development of a Masters by coursework program specialising in the field of educating boys, which is the first of its kind in the world. She currently supervises masters’ student research in boys’ education.

Ms Hartman is also completing her PhD in the field of gender and education. Her doctoral research investigates the academic, public, policy, and practice discourses in the field of boys' education in Australian schools. Deborah has also conducted many research, evaluation and professional development consultancies with schools and teachers.

Her current research and evaluation interests include strength-based approaches to gender and other differences, inclusive practices in schools, and university, school and community partnerships in engaged research.> She maintains a strong interest in strength-based approaches to positive outcomes for indigenous children and communities. She is committed to community engagement and engaged research by universities and as research development manager, leads the Family Action Centre research team in developing engaged research and in combining research, teaching, community service and dissemination strategies in all Family Action Centre projects.

Deborah has written, edited and produced several practitioner publications grounded in research. For several years she was commissioning editor and chair of the editorial committee of the Boys in Schools Bulletin, building it to be a well respected tri-annual practitioner journal. The Bulletin is currently available as a free web based newsletter.

Dr Arne Rubinstein (MBBS, FRACGP)

Keynote Address:
Rites of Passage ( ROP ) have been used by indigenous societies and communities for thousands of generations and all contain similar elements. The transition from boy to young man or girl to young woman is key to the healthy development of our children and to the fabric of the communities we live in. Sadly appropriate contemporary ROP are lacking in todays society. Rock and Water is one of the few healthy and appropriate ROP that boys and girls can go through. This presentation will look at how the elements within a Rock and Water program directly mirror those in a ROP and if tied in together can have enormous long term impact on all involved, including the facilitators.

About Arne:
Dr Rubinstein was a General Practitioner specialising in Adolescent Health and Emergency Medicine for 15 years. In the 1990Õs he ran designed and ran innovative drug prevention and sex education programs in High Schools in Northern NSW. In 2000 he sold his medical practice and became the founding CEO of The Pathways Foundation, a unique organisation that creates contemporary Rites of Passage for adolescent boys and girls and which now runs in 8 locations nationally.

Dr Rubinstein has studied extensively on the topic of Initiations and Rites of Passage in communities around the world. He was a senior facilitator at the first international conference on Rites of Passage in Hawaii in 2008 and he has written a model outlining the fundamental differences between ÒNormal Boy PsychologyÓ and ÒHealthy Man PsychologyÓ, those differences being the reason why all indigenous societies initiated their boys.

Arne has designed and facilitated multiple workshops and run seminars in Australia and internationally..

In 2008 he received a nomination for Australian of the Year and in 2007 he was a finalist for the Australian Non Profit CEO of the Year.

Currently Dr Rubinstein is the CEO of Liminal Space, a social enterprise set up to support young Australians to reach their full potential by creating strong and supportive family and community relationships through teaching key life skills and facilitating a Rite of Passage.