A/Prof. James Ladwig

Biography

James G. Ladwig is currently associated with the School of Education for the Faculty of Education and Arts. Prior to this, Associate Professor Ladwig served as Principal Research Fellow (January 2008 - December 2009) for the Research Institute for Social Inclusion and Well-Being (RISIW). Associate Professor Ladwig had also served as Chair of the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning committee for the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. He is internationally recognised as a leading researcher in school reform, the sociology of education, educational policy and the philosophy of education. He designed and directed major studies of school reform in several Australian state systems, as well as overseas. His methodological studies have gained wide audience since the mid 1990s, particularly since the publication of his Academic Distinctions (1996), in which he critically analysed the limited impact of radical sociological studies of school knowledge and proposed an alternative research agenda. His theoretical studies in analysing schooling as a world cultural institution have been gained recognition in English, Portuguese and Spanish. He has served as Principal Research Fellow for the University of Queensland, visiting Research Professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore and has designed several major research studies across these institutions. At Newcastle, the studies Ladwig developed have drawn in excess of 1.7 million dollars. He was a founding member of the Centre for Professional Learning in Education at Newcastle.

Since the late 1990s, Ladwig's research has been specifically designed to have impact on the nature and direction of educational policy and school reform. Now known as the key architect of the NSW Quality Teaching framework, a model of pedagogy developed from his studies of school reform, Ladwig impact carries across most Australian states and territory, as well as overseas. Specific foci of his school reform work include the development of pedagogically focused school reform, instructional leadership, educational governance and educational equity. He chaired the evaluation advisory group for Queensland school reform initiative known as the New Basics, and consulted on the creation of Singapore's Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice. He is frequently invited as a keynote speaker for research conferences and professional bodies, nationally and internationally.

Since 2002 Ladwig has published journal article, book chapters and invited essays in the USA, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Brasil, Finland, and the UK. Ladwig is on the editorial board of Pedagogies, and serves as a regular reviewer for the American Educational Research Association major review journals, the American Educational Research Journal, and several other international journals around the globe. He has served as an invited reviewer for Portugal's educational researcher council and Canada's Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Wisconsin - USA, 1992
• Master of Education, Harvard University, 1987
• Teachers Certificate, State of Missouri - USA, 1984
• Artium Baccalaurei, Washington University - St Louis, 1984

---

Research

Research keywords

• Curriculum and social identity
• Pedagogical quality
• Pedagogy and Achievement
• Quality teaching
• Research methodology
• Teacher professional development
• The philosophy of education
• The sociology of education

Research expertise

In terms of research, scholarship and consultancies, I am recognised nationally and internationally as an authority in socio-cultural understandings of education, with specific expertise on school reform and the restructuring of systems of schooling and on issues of educational equity. My academic work draws from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds outside of education itself, primarily sociology, philosophy and social and political theory. Essentially, I bring these divergent disciplinary perspectives to bear on issues related to a deceptively simple question, How can we make schooling more socially just and equitable? While this question carries at least some salience in most parts of the world, in Australia we are fortunate to have the goal of making school outcomes socially just as a national goal (the current version of these goals are known as The Adelaide Declaration). Within education, the central question of my work relates to the sociology of education, curriculum, pedagogy, educational policy and the restructuring of schooling. Clearly, there are also implications of this question well beyond the bounds of schools.

In the early part of my career, much of my more academic, theoretically based work focused on understanding how educational research historically has not had a major impact on schooling and on proposing methodological and theoretical strategies for altering this history specifically toward making schooling a more just and equitable institution. Since the publication of that work, most of my attention has been focused on doing what I could then only articulate as a theoretical possibility.

This trajectory has had direct impact on the nature of the work I have pursued over the past decade. A substantial portion of my research time has focused on applied research and policy consultation work. This more applied work has translated into many publications that are technical reports to government bodies and funding agencies (in particular, the Department of Education in Queensland, Education Queensland, and the New South Wales Department of Education and Training). These reports are the intellectual property of the funding agency and it takes a very long time to gain approval for publications based on them. The reasons for this focus in my research and scholarship are simple. In order to undertake the longer term, more pure research that we need to meet the goals of the Adelaide Declaration, two conditions must be generated in the Australian context. On one hand, some basic applied research questions need addressing (e.g., how to model classroom practice with instruments that can be used in research addressing broad population questions?). On the other hand, much more alternative and challenging educational practices need to be occurring in schools before we can figure out if any do actually help (my research has documented a remarkably wide-spread mediocrity of teaching in Australia).

Perhaps my strongest impact has come from models of pedagogy I have developed for both research and professional development in Queensland and NSW. These are known quite widely, nationally and internationally, as Productive Pedagogy and Quality Teaching, respectively.

Fields of Research

Code	Description	Percentage
130202	Curriculum And Pedagogy Theory And Development	85
139999	Education Not Elsewhere Classified	15

Centres and Groups

Centre

• Educational Research Institute Newcastle (ERIN)
• Research Institute of Social Inclusion & Wellbeing

Memberships

Committee/Associations (relevant to research).

• Member - American Educational Research Association
• member - American Sociological Association
• Member, Member of Executive 2002 - Australian Association of Research in Education

Editorial Board.

• Board Member - Pedagogies: An International Journal

Learned Academy.

• Member and Board member (2000-2002) - Sociology of Education Research Committee of the International Socioogy Association

Appointments

Member and Chair National Schools Network Research and Evaluation Committee (Australia)	01/01/1993 - 01/12/1998
Member of University Scholarships Committee University of Newcastle (Australia)	01/01/1995 - 01/12/1998
Section Convenor Australian Sociological Association Conference, Newcastle, NSW (Australia)	01/12/1995 - 01/12/1995
Member of the Faculty of Masters of Educational studies course committee University of Newcastle (Australia)	01/01/1996 - 01/12/1998
Chair, Framework Research Advisory Group Education Queensland (QLD's Dept of Education) (Australia)	01/01/2000 - 01/10/2005
Chair of Postgraduate Coursework Programs in Education University of Newcastle (Australia)	01/01/2002 - 01/12/2004
Research Training Co-ordinator Australian Association for Research in Education (Australia)	01/01/2002 - 01/01/2003
School of Education Indigenous Contact Officer School of Education, University of Newcastle (Australia)	01/01/2002 - 01/01/2006
Board Member International sociological Association, Sociology of Education research Committee (Australia)	01/01/2002 - 01/01/2004

Invitations

Increasing student learning - what research tells us about the impact of certification systems Australasian Committee of Chief Executive Officers of Curriculum, Assessment and Certification Authorities, Australia (Conference Presentation - non published.)	2006
Schooling, pedagogy and world curriculum: disciplinarity and openness in curricular reform World Congress of Heads of International Baccalaureate Schools, Thailand (Conference Presentation - non published.)	2005

---

Administrative

Administrative expertise

I have served as coordinator of several courses and programs over the years, including Chair of Postgraduate coursework for the School of Education here at the University of Newcastle. I currently chair the Schools Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Committee, which essentially governs all non-research programs in Education. These positions have required me to develop administrative expertise that includes organisational and personnel management and leadership matters.

---

Teaching

Teaching keywords

• Curriculum Studies
• Educational management
• Educational policy
• Research methodology
• The philosophy of education
• The sociology of education

Teaching expertise

I have taught several courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of the sociology of education, curriculum studies, the philosophy of education, educational policy, research methodology and educational leadership and management.

Of particular note are courses I have designed and written for postgraduate coursework students that build on my research agenda, in particular in the areas of instructional leadership and in curriculum and pedagogical reform.