Dr John Willison

Biography/ Background

John Willison
B.Sc. Dip. Ed., M.Ed.(Sc.Ed.), Ph.D.(Sc.Ed.)

John is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Learning and Professional Development, coordinating the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education for academics from all faculties at the University of Adelaide. This work has lead to rich and varied collaborations on various aspects of curriculum design and assessment, within the university, at the national level and internationally. His work on ‘Graduate Attributes’ has directly informed national level frameworks for Engineering Graduate Qualities, and work on ‘Reflective Practice’ has lead to close collaborations with South African Universities.

 

Research Interests

John’s principle research interest centres around the ways that academics conceptualise and implement the explicit development of their students’ research skills in content-rich courses. He leads an initiative considering Research Skill Development (RSD) and Assessment in the Curricula of disciplines in all faculties across whole undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

In addition, the RSD conceptual framework is currently being utilised in Canada, Iran, Ireland, South Africa and the United States of America. The close conceptual connection between the skills associated with research in a discipline, and the skills required and developed in Work Integrated Learning is a stream of current interest; interviews with students from various contexts are pointing to the value they place on research skills once they are employed.

See www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/rsd for details

John  welcomes other opportunities of collaborating with colleagues.

 

 

 

 

Publications

Peirce, E., Ricci, M., Lee, I. & Willison, J. (2009). First year human biology students in the ivory tower. Proceedings from the Uniserve Science conference, 1&2 October, Sydney.
Willison, J. (2009). 'Multiple Contexts, Multiple Outcomes, Once Conceptual Framework for Research Skill Development in the Undergraduate Curriculum'. CUR Quarterly 29 (3): 10-14.

Willison J, Pierce E, Ricci M (2009). Towards student autonomy in literature and field research. Proceedings of the Higher Education Research and Development Conference, Darwin July 7-9, 2009.

Willison, J., Schapper, J., and Teo, E. (2009). 'Multiple Methods of Improvement of Research Skills in Business Ethics and Business Law'. Paper presented at QATLHEBEC conference, University of Melbourne, on 6 February 2009.

M. Mohammadzaheri, L. Chen, A. Ghaffari, J.W. Willison (2008). A Combination of Linear and Nonlinear Activation Functions in Neural Networks for Modeling a De-superheater. Simulation Modeling Practices and Theory (2008), doi: 10.1016/j.simpat.2008.09.015

Willison, J.W. & O'Regan, K. (2007). Commonly known, commonly not known, totally unknown: A framework for students becoming researchers. Higher Education Research and Development 26 (4) pp 393-410. Available from http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/rsd/links

Willison, J. W. (2007). Vision and Choice, ethical characteristics of Academic Development Programs, . Journal of University teaching and Learning 4 (2) pp72-87. Available from http://jutlp.uow.edu.au/

Willison, J. W. (2007). A research vignette's Impact on the emergence of a metaphorical framework. In P.C. Taylor, & J. Wallace (eds). Qualitative inquiry : New possibilities in science and mathematics education . Springer.

Willison, J. W., & Taylor, P.C. (2006). Complementary epistemologies of Science teaching: Towards an integral perspective. In Aubusson, P, Harrison A & Ritchie S. (eds). Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education. Springer, Netherlands.

Willison, J.W. & O'Regan, K. (2005). 2020 Vision: An information literacy continuum for students. Research and Development in Higher Education: proceedings of the HERDSA Conference July 3-6, 2005, Sydney.

Willison, J.W. (2002). Classroom factors affecting student scientific literacy: tales and their interpretation using a metaphoric framework. Published thesis: http://adt.curtin.edu.au/theses/available/adt-WCU20030702.104943/

Willison, J. W. (1999). Who writes the recipes in science? Possibilities from four years of action research with students and their scientific literacy. Research in Science Education, 29 (1), 111-126.

Willison, J. W. (1996). HoW R U integrating hands-on, writing and reading for understanding into your students' science learning? Australian Science Teachers Journal, 42 (4), 8-14.

 

Entry last updated: Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011