Eidos

What people are saying about Eidos

The gap between what counts as knowledge at universities and what is useful for practitioners is too large. It is equally obvious that universities need to reach out to and integrate in regional meaning construction networks.

The picture of university-community engagement that emerges is one of unrealized potential, for both universities and regions.

For regional communities, the problems will include economic development, job creation, social services, migration; interdisciplinary messes that need more robust solutions than multidisciplinary research centres which are vulnerable financially and administratively".

Catherine Burnheim, Higher Education Scholar, Australia

"A key strategy to building and sustaining democracy lies in the unique constellation of intellectual, social and financial capital embodied within the modern university. The key lies in the expertise embodied within the modern university, the socialisation role of mass higher education and the promotion of social cohesion in sustainable democratic societies. Universities and communities have the collective resources and capacity to co-produce and co-create powerful strategies for i) solving global problems manifested in the local community; and, ii) helping both to become national and global leaders, including defining their identity, building a foundation for teaching and research, delivering social and economic benefits; and, providing social, cultural and physical capital and infrastructure.

Professor Bruce Muirhead, CEO, Eidos

I was very pleased when they were able to advise government after extensive evaluation that we were on the right track and that children are being prepared for school after participating in the prep year. It is an internationally recognised evaluation and what it did was add legitimacy to the idea of the prep and, along with a range of feedback that had been gathered internally within the department from the trials schools themselves, it gave us, the government, the confidence to make the investment, the very substantial investment of public funds into the program and make it universal and that will happen from 2007. I want to acknowledge the Institutes role in that and it was a very important reminder to me of the value of rigorous interdisciplinary research and the need for more of it. The Honourable Anna Bligh MP, Queensland Deputy Premier and Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Trade and Innovation (Formerly The Minister for Education and The Minister for The Arts) Launches Eidos in May 2005

Eidos is aptly named because it is about the power of ideas - it is an institute of ideas. It is about harnessing Queensland thinking to power far-reaching education and social policy reforms in Queensland. We are determined to see Queenslands education reforms work. Sophisticated, widely based research by Eidos will help put them in place and evaluate their ongoing success". The Honourable Anna Bligh MP, Queensland Deputy Premier and Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Trade and Innovation (Formerly The Minister for Education and The Minister for The Arts) launching Eidos May 2005

The real value of Eidos is its potential to harness expertise across disciplines and across universities, not only to establish the best possible research teams to compete for tenders but also to undertake research critical to educational policy making in Queensland". Ken Smith Director General Department of Education and the Arts
Queensland

"I would like to pass on my congratulations for the success of the Research Director's Congress and Eidos + Launch held this week. I appreciate the effort that went in to finalising the documentation around Eidos and organising the two days' events - from the Eidos breakfast through to the Minister's launch. As you are aware, various officers from DEA attended different sessions over the two days and the feedback received has been positive. It appears that the nature of the discussions and the opportunities for networking that were offered were highlights". Ms Zea Johnston, Assistant Director General, Department of of Education and Arts

Comments from some of the more than 1300 participants, government agencies, universities, schools, community agencies and politicians who participated in Eidos' Fulbright Senior Scholar Activities over the four week period:

Just a quick note to thank you for making possible the forum featuring Professor Ira Harkavy which we held in Education House on Tuesday morning. We had a very positive response from departmental staff. Professor Harkavy provided a level of knowledge and experience that was much respected and highly relevant. The ensuing discussion was thought-provoking and insightful. I would appreciate your passing on to Professor Harkavy my appreciation for making his time and expertise available to our agency.

I would like to repeat my sincere thanks for your research seminar and the workshop with the postgraduate students/early researchers last Thursday. After you left to go to the Empire Theatre, several participants referred to how much they had enjoyed and derived from your session, and to your generosity and passion for engaged and impactful research. Your workshop also came at an important time for the group; we are gathering momentum and people who perhaps feel a little hesitate about research are warming to it, and your input helped enormously in that regard. Thank you!

Thanks so much for your significant contribution to our university Community engagement deliberations here at Swinburne; the team here were so impressed not only with your extensive knowledge base but with your energy and enthusiasm. One of the executive management team fed back that after the session with you his head "was spinning" and that you had provoked a lot of thought. After our last session with the schools we have set plans in motion for a pilot program with 7 schools. Ira, I realise that we set a very punishing schedule for your time here with us at Swinburne but you seem to handle it with such ease managing to give each group focused and fresh attention.

It was lovely to meet you in Canberra at CHASS on the Hill, and a great privilege to be partnered with you to lobby Andrew Laming, Liberal Member for Bowman. I appreciated greatly your wisdom and support. Your work linking community renewal to university goals and enterprise is fascinating - so if you can find time - I would really appreciate being included on materials you e-mail Andrew Laming. Also, I wish that I'd had more time to discuss with you the advice you share with new researchers.

It was a pleasure to meet you and I enjoyed our discussion. Thank you for sending on the guidelines. The provisions in those guidelines involving the community in all the stages of the research design (which can not only assist the impact of the research but also its quality) and emphasis on dissemination I found particularly apposite.

Our thanks for your company and presentation this morning at our Tweed Gold Coast Campus. Those gathered certainly appreciated the perspective you offered regarding meaningful community partnerships for universities. While providing a stimulating conversation; you also became a catalyst for colleagues within our institution to meet and speak about their regional engagement aspirations. We wish you well for your travels in Australia.

After attending the masterclass I really started thinking about everything in terms of what I can do to make a difference. Obviously, being a PhD student does mean that I am not in a position to really initiate institutional change.

Congrats to you, Colin and all your staff for what appears to have been a great Fulbright Senior Specialist Program. It sounds like there will be some exciting opportunities to build on from Iras visit. Happy to discuss any ways in which Fulbright might be able to assist progress this ongoing relationship and network.

Good morning, Ira, and many thanks - thanks too for agreeing to join us on the journal's Board. We promise not to overburden you! It was good to see from Bruce's follow-up email that your visits to other institutions have created just as much interest and excitement as at USQ. I'm only sorry that I'm not able to attend the farewell function in Brisbane. I trust you enjoy the remainder of your time in Australia, and thank you once again for sharing your important and energising work with us.

Ira's visit went extremely well - he spent time with my colleagues discussing issues over breakfast and then presented to approx 50 QUT staff interested in community engagement. His was an inspiring performance. He's given us quite a bit to think about. Many thanks for including us in his schedule.

What our associates and members have been saying about education and social research

Eidos was 2005 Premier Sponsor of the Australian Association for Research in Education's National Conference held in Sydney, Australia:

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in trouble. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by what is policy (Ball 1994) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been coerced into an era of cooperation. Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself against policy.

Trevor Gale, Monash University.
Towards a theory and practice of policy engagement: Higher education research policy in the making AARE President Address, 2005

"The key, I believe is a ground shift in the balance of agency, not just in schools but in the wider society. I want to argue that todays social transformations are of such a depth and significance that they demand a fundamental rethinking of the nature of education. A key to much contemporary social change is to be found in the nature of subjectivity where as citizens, workers and cultural beings, we are more and more required to be users, players, creators and active consumers more than spectators, delegates, audiences or passive consumers.

In the domain of citizenship, we witness the emergence of increasingly critical self-governing structures of civil society. What the root causes small government conservatism, globalisation, or the new dynamics of a post cold-war world the realities of this change are everywhere to be felt. When a greater capacity to decide and act is devolved to civil society, a higher level of participation and reflexity is required of citizens.

The internet is governed, not by any state, but through the community of experts and interested parties that is the world wide web consortium. Diasporic communities are governed, not by home governments but by highly distributed community organisations whose points of connection are common cultural principles. In education we are witnessing the rise of community and private schooling and the self-managing public school. And the need for teaching to become an increasingly self-regulated profession".

Professor Mary Kalantzis, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Radford Address "Elements of a Science of Education"

"Policy is never a simple extension of evidence-based research. The research conclusions have to be redefined and remade for entry into the policy process. Each story is unique. Let me illustrate by some examples of change successful and less successful.

Sometimes there is a single powerful idea, a great insight, as the pivot for social change. Australias embrace fifteen years ago of HECS is a stunning example. An academic and advisor, Bruce Chapman, devised a concept a way of ensuring that when University students were successful in the workforce they repaid part of their education costs a blend of economic efficiency and social equity.

Another such example was the embrace of an idea straight from the research to transform child support policies. This was the concept of a tax-based child support system, post-divorce, that tied the payment to the income of the non-custodial parent. These intellectual mechanisms were breakthroughs, more clear-cut than most solutions in social policy".

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large, The Australian.

Paul Kelly is one of the best-known and respected observers of Australian public life. As the Editor-at-Large of The Australian he has published many important commentaries and reflective essays.