Introducing the Global Learning Communities Australian Team

Julie Boyd is a director and CEO of Global Learning Communities International. She is a teacher (K-University), author, psychologist, publisher, administrator, and international facilitator of programs designed to create schools as collaborative and global learning communities. She designs, develops, co-ordinates and implements programs based on the principles of effective learning and teaching and organizational growth for learning and educational communities including schools, districts, states and universities. She works to enable education systems and schools to become more 'human' and to create organizations which model their espoused theories.

Polly Eckert is an educator and national consultant. With extensive leadership and administrative experience as a primary school principal for 16 years- particularly in disadvantaged schools, she currently coaches educational leaders; provides developmental learning programs in management and leadership for private and public organisations; provides programs for teachers in collaborative learning, and researches practices in teaching/learning in schools. She has published widely in the area of collaborative learning, leading learning communities, equity and social justice and transforming organisational cultures. She is involved as a resident consultant for the Cairns Consortium of Schools.

Lou Maroulis has worked as a consultant in both Primary and Secondary School settings for a number of years in the areas of Learning Difficulties, Literacy, Cooperative Learning and Student Welfare. A key focus of her work has been establishing wholes school approaches to the linking of curriculum and student welfare. Lou's many years of teaching experience have provided her with an understanding of the daily challenges of the school and the classroom and a solid basis for translating current educational theory into effective teaching practice. Lou will be based in New York from September '99 to June 2000.

David Brown has taught in primary and secondary schools and in most areas of 'special' education. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study literacy teaching and learning in prisons and youth training centres. David has conducted numerous workshops on student thinking, learning styles, cooperative learning, multiple intelligences and mixed ability teaching at schools and at conferences and seminars around Australia. The focus of David's work with school communities is to support the development of effective learning environments which acknowledge and cater for the individual differences in students and teachers.