Dr Linda Westphalen

Working in a School of Education has meant that teaching is not only Linda's professional role, it is also her subject matter. A teacher for 35 years, Linda is a national Office of Learning and Teaching Citation winner in 2012, and a 2008 Winner of the Dean of Professions' Prize for Excellence in Postgraduate Teaching at the University of Adelaide. Linda's current teaching is in the areas of culture, diversity and inclusion, pedagogy and engagement, and student safety and well-being. From 2009 to the end of 2015, she coordinated the Fourth year of the School of Education’s Teacher Education Programs. From 2018 until June 2020, she was the Associate Dead of Learning and Teaching for the School of Education, and then Deputy Dean, Learning and Teaching for the Faculty of Arts until the Faculty merger with Professions in March 2022. In July 2022, Linda accepted the role of Associate Dean, Curriculum for the new Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics (F-ABLE).

Linda has also served on the Executive Committee of the Adelaide Education Academy (2018 - 2021), and joined the Adelaide College of Reviewers in 2021. She looks forward to the challenge of new pathways in her teaching areas, such as innovation and online learning in the School of Education. She has also had a key role in conceiving and establishing the School's Masters of Teaching. After reading Paulo Freire's Teachers as Cultural Workers (2005) on a plane in 2018, Linda was intrigued by the idea of how the increasing focus on teacher accreditation is impacting on the profession, and how this might be at odds with teachers' Relational Agency and the demands of 21st century learning for futures that are largely undefined. She is now actively researching this area.

Teaching, Linda contends, is (still) the best, most interesting and rewarding job there is.