B Ed Dip Teach (SACAE), M Ed (UMaine), Ed D (WMich) My career is focused on addressing the perplexing whole-of-organisation challenge of making schools and universities better at learning and teaching. I have been engaged in the design and/or leadership of major organisational change projects in Asia, the Americas, and Australia. My theory and practice approach has attracted over 20 million dollars in grants, contracts and direct funding for software system development, transforming learning spaces, human resource models, curriculum innovation, and comprehensive organisational design. My background includes serving as a strategic educational adviser to two major international computer corporations (at different times) and as a strategic consultant and speaker on educational change internationally. My books include Transforming the Measurement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Routledge (Bain & Drengenberg, 2016); Rising to the Challenge of Transforming Higher Education. Springer (Bain & Zundans-Fraser, 2016);The Learning Edge: What technology can do to educate all children. Teachers College Press (Bain & Weston, 2011); The Self-Organizing School. Rowman & Littlefield (Bain, 2007), and The Self-Organizing University. Springer (Bain & Zundans-Fraser, 2017) which was informed by experiences with change processes at Charles Sturt University. I am currently working on a new book with colleagues on the future of teacher preparation. My portfolio of scholarly research includes publications in international peer-reviewed education, psychology, and technology journals that describe theory, and research-to-practice projects for technology mediated change in educational organisations. I enjoy doctoral supervision and currently lead a team of students working on a range of projects related to my theory to practice approach. In addition to my work at Charles Sturt, I have held continuing faculty appointments at the University of Western Australia and Lehigh University in the USA and received competitive Faculty, University, State and National awards for leadership and innovation, teaching, and research in the United States and Australia. I served as Associate Headmaster of Brewster Academy, a college preparatory school in the United States, leading a multi-million dollar comprehensive school design and change project for over a decade. When not teaching, researching or consulting, I am a keen very amateur adventurer and have sailed the Pacific from the US to Hawaii and across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand as well as completing a number of long distance cycling adventures in the US and Australia. Prior to the Smart Learning Initiative, I worked with the Inclusive Education Team at Charles Sturt on innovative approaches to course design that has produced two doctoral theses with two in progress as well as numerous publications. This work also resulted in three successful competitive tenders for the team, two from the NSW Department of Education and one with the Catholic Education Office - Parramatta. I served as Associate Headmaster of Brewster Academy working for over a decade with the community to build a comprehensive model of school change and innovation. This included designing a software operating system for the school, designing the model of career progression and remuneration, professional development, and curriculum development as well as consulting on the design of physical space for a school focused on research-based learning and teaching. This work transformed the school educationally in a manner that also secured its fiscal position in the competitive US independent school marketplace. Further, the experience created the opportunity to engage with a learning community in a deep and sustained authentic change process described in my 2007 book, the Self-Organizing School as well as many journal publications. In addition, I have consulted on major change projects in Thailand, Hong Kong, Brazil, and the US and led an international educational consulting group for five years that provided organisational design, including technology planning, software design, and professional development to school leaders from Europe, Canada, The United States, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. The work undertaken in a consulting capacity stemmed from the testing of ideas and concepts derived from the self-organising school project. Working with colleagues and organisations, my work has attracted extensive direct and indirect funding. Following is a sample of the grants and contracts that have either funded my work in collaboration with colleagues or resulted from those efforts. I enjoy teaching in all formats. My teaching has been recognised with the following awards: I have taught in the following areas: Designed and co-implemented Brewster Summer Institute, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, a field based training program for teachers including training in authentic assessment, technology, cooperative and collaborative learning and curriculum design. Designed and co-implemented FutureSchool Institute, an international training program for school change agents including the design of policy, needs assessment, curriculum and personnel programs. The program included public and private school and system level leaders from eight nations. I have served in the following leadership capacities:
Professorial Staff
Associate Professor Alan Bain
Associate Professor
Bathurst
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I am a research practitioner. This means that I research and write about what I do in applied settings working with colleagues and communities building better theory and practice to create change in educational organisations. As such, my work is an emergent expression of engagement with the profession. Most recently, I served as Director of the Smart Learning Initiative at Charles Sturt University working with university leadership, the Smart Learning team, and faculty members of the university to take on the challenging task of becoming a leader in learning and teaching. That work has produced two books (below) with one in progress entitled the Self-Organizing University and a suite of software tools.
