2025 VATE State Conference

 

2025 VATE State Conference
Demanding Space: Architects of Change

Deakin University, Burwood - Thursday 20 November and Friday 21 November 2025

 

Conference program
Download and read the full conference program here. 

We are excited to return to Deakin University, Burwood for the 2025 VATE State Conference on Thursday, November 20 and Friday, November 21. A section of the conference will also be live streamed via Zoom including all the keynotes, guest speakers, panels and a small range of workshops. You can find more information about registering to attend the conference in-person on the State Conference event page. You can find more information about registering to attend the livestreamed component of the conference on the Livestream State Conference event page. Interstate delegates who wish to register can contact the VATE Office.

Please note: The Conference registration pages may load slowly due to the large number of workshops on offer.

 

Keynote speakers

   

 
 

‘A Twilight of Knowing’: Education and truth-telling in a post-truth era

How do we engage in truth-telling in a ‘post-truth’ society? Amidst rising backlash and denialism, how can educators navigate truth-telling in their classrooms and communities? Drawing from his global and local research, Matthew will explore the relationship of education and truth-telling; discuss teachers' vital role in truth-telling, and related processes of treaty-making, reconciliation and self-determination. Connections between education and truth-telling are frequently invoked, including here in Victoria in recommendations made by the landmark Yoorrook Justice Commission. All eyes are now on how the unfolding Treaty process – the first of its kind nationally – might influence educational reform. Australians of all ages identify school education as one of the most significant barriers to truth-telling and social change, and little is known about how school education can support truth-telling. Truth, in a settler society, remains a fickle thing. As historian Anna Haebich has argued, the Australian public drifts ‘in a twilight of knowing’ about the impacts of colonisation on First Nations people. How might educators engage in truth-telling, combat denialism and post-truth politics, and navigate the ethical challenges posed by truth-telling in the classroom?  

Dr Matthew R. Keynes is a non-Indigenous historian, and Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne. Matthew is currently leading an international project on truth commissions, exploring how educators in Australia and the Nordic states are engaging with truth-telling. His books include the monograph Education and Historical Justice: Redress, Reparations and Reconciliation in the Classroom (Bloomsbury 2025) and Historical Justice and History Education (Palgrave 2021).
   

 

Digital news literacy in the classroom: Supporting informed and engaged young citizens

 

  

Young Australians aged 13-16 have grown up alongside the rise of social media platforms. Not surprisingly, social media is the main source of news for teens, after friends and family. News engagement has long been established as an important pre-cursor to civic engagement. Young Australians who are interested in news are more likely to leverage technology to improve their school or town, get involved in social issues or help other people. However, the Australian Government has legislated to ban anyone under 16 from using popular social media platforms and it remains unclear what impact this will have on teens’ news and civic engagement. News literacy education can increase young people’s engagement with news while developing their critical, social and technological capabilities. This is important since most teens are not confident that they can identify misinformation online and are unsure how algorithms shape online news engagement. Although teens are interested in learning more about these topics, only one in four say that they are receiving annual news literacy lessons in school to help them decide who and what to trust online. This keynote will examine innovations in news literacy pedagogy and consider what we know about how effective interventions are when it comes to developing and supporting informed and engaged young citizens.

Dr Tanya Notley is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. She is recognised for her 25+ years of experience working with NGOs, government agencies, public cultural institutions, universities and the United Nations in the areas of digital inclusion and media literacy. Tanya has led 10 media literacy research projects since 2017 including collaboration with more than 20 industry partners. She leads two longitudinal national surveys: one on adult media literacy (2024) and one on young people’s news literacy (2023). She also leads a national project that examines the role media literacy can play in addressing misinformation. Tanya is a founding member of the Australian Media Literacy Alliance and served as the co-chair from 2020 to 2023. She serves on the media literacy project advisory panels for several organisations including the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia.


Guest speakers

     
 

English teachers have superpowers 

There’s a very telling question I’m fond of asking artists, writers and journalists about the single most critical factor responsible for that impactful career choice. Was it the school they went to? Was it their extra-curriculars? Was it their parents’ influence? No. Nine times out of then, it was their English teacher. That’s right: where they are today is thanks to their English teacher’s unique, creative and ambitious teaching style. That number one pivotal reason is you – every single day, you change lives. Right now, however, the ways students learn both within and beyond the classroom are under threat. Generative AI risks robbing students of creativity, spontaneity, critical thinking and even truth. Government-mandated lesson plans risk robbing teachers of the creativity and spontaneity that bring lessons to life, as well as dynamic approaches to critical thinking that help separate fact from fiction. English discipline professionals educate the thinkers, writers and citizens of the future, empowering them to apply creativity in venturous ways. Drawing on my work railing against the ‘Content Mindset’ and championing creative civic engagement, let’s spend some time galvanising our professional autonomy and focusing our advocacy: for engaging educational experiences that transform lives and enrich the nation.

Esther Anatolitis works venturously across the cultural and civic fields that create Australia’s future. As Editor of Meanjin, Hon A/Prof at RMIT School of Art, and a member of the National Gallery of Australia Governing Council, she is a highly respected champion of artists’ voices. Across two decades, Esther has held arts and media leadership positions across all platforms and artforms. She has served many government policy bodies and arts boards, presented guest lectures all over Australia, and is a former board member of the National Advocates for Arts Education. Her strategic consultancy Test Pattern honours the values of art, tenacity and democracy, working across Australia on strategic development, creative precincts and public policy. A prolific writer and broadcaster, Esther’s work is published and translated widely, and she is a sought-after speaker and commentator on arts and civic matters.

Photo credit: Sarah Walker
   

 

 

Enhancing belonging to the profession: Rediscovering joy, connection and purpose in teaching work

Australia is facing a teacher shortage crisis. Only 30% of teachers report that they intend to stay in the profession until retirement. The reasons teachers give for wanting to leave include excessive and emotionally intense workloads, wellbeing and safety concerns, and declining respect for the profession. Despite these challenges, many teachers report a strong sense of belonging to the profession. Our research has found that the relational and care work of teaching is central to teachers’ experiences and influences their likelihood of remaining in the profession. In this address, I will explore possibilities for reprioritising joy, connection, and purpose in teachers’ relationships with students and with each other. We will consider how prevailing discourses that focus on narrow measures of performance constrain the ways teachers can access such outcomes in their work - and how these constraints might be challenged to transform schooling experiences for both students and teachers.

Dr Fiona Longmuir is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership and co-leader of the Education Workforce for the Future Impact Lab, School of Education, Culture and Society, Faculty of Education at Monash University. Fiona’s research focuses on educators’ working conditions, principals’ emotional labour, and the role of school and system leadership in supporting student engagement and agency. She has expertise in crisis leadership, social cohesion, and social justice in education. She has published on topics including, teachers’ working conditions and retention, leadership in complex contexts, and student agency in school reform. Fiona teaches in the Master of Educational Leadership, specialising in social justice, policy enactment, and educational change. She led the Graduate Certificate of Principal Preparation from 2019 to 2021 and contributes to leadership programs for international school and system leaders. Previously, Fiona spent over a decade as Director of Research in Innovative Professional Practice at Educational Transformations, leading national and international studies on school leadership and system effectiveness. She also worked 15 years with the Victorian Department of Education and Training as a teacher, and curriculum, school and network leader. Fiona is a Victorian Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders.
   

 

 

 

  

 

Panels

P1: Research Dialogue

What matters to you as an English teacher?
Exploring the connections between teacher identity, agency, wellness, workload and sustainability

In teaching, who you are matters. The personal and the professional are intrinsically entwined. While there are few opportunities to explore teacher identity in schools, research shows that teacher identity can directly influence sense of purpose, agency, growth, wellbeing and ultimately the motivation to remain in the profession (Rushton et al., 2023; Sachs, 2005; Varadharajan & Buchanan, 2021). 

This Dialogue Seminar, the third in a VATE series that brings teachers and researchers together, will examine the notion of teacher identity and its link to maintaining a positive, healthy and thriving workforce. The following key questions will focus the discussion: What sustains English teachers and enables long-term commitment to the profession? What is the relationship between identity development and teacher agency? If teacher identity is situated, relational and dynamic, what contextual factors powerfully shape and shift who we are in schools? What tensions and paradoxes do teachers currently confront as they make decisions about how to act and how to be? Do issues of workload and wellness force teachers to compromise on aspects central to identity? And finally, how can we support teachers to engage in meaningful ‘identity work’ so that they better understand what they do, feel and believe – and can share this with others?

Panel chair

Associate Professor Amanda McGraw (Federation University)

Panel guests

Allie Baker (Beechworth Secondary College), Kate Blandford (Hoppers Crossing Secondary College), Graham Parr (Monash University)

P2: Avenues of advocacy: 'Selfie yachts', forums and social media

The political activism of young people

In a recent Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece, ‘Activists like Greta Thunberg care more about fame than facts’, journalist Susanne Moore savaged Greta Thunberg for what she called her ‘Insta-activism’, a form of advocacy more interested in publicity fame than facts, more concerned with the phenomenon of ‘omnicause’ in which activists like her flit from one disparate cause to the next, be it ‘eco stuff, trans rights and Free Palestine’ rather than engage in sustained, well researched activism. Moore says it is a ‘moronic vacuum where analysis goes to die’. The piece provoked considerable controversy with many correspondents defending what they saw as the altruism of ‘youth activists’ like Thunberg.   As one correspondent wrote, such activists have been provoked into action because of the inaction of previous generations.

One such activist is Anjali Sharma, best known for her work in climate change when, as a 15-year-old, she participated in a High Court action against the then Environment Minister Sussan Ley for the latter’s failure to exercise duty of care in protecting young people for the future effects of climate change. In a recent The Saturday Paper article, ‘Young voters demand bold politics’ she cited the way young people considered issues thoughtfully and voted strategically as a way of putting pressure on the Labor government to take action on issues important to their generation.

In a previous Age article ‘Social media helped me find my voice. It’s a shame others won’t have the same chance’ (18 September 2024), Sharma foregrounded the importance of social media in enabling that activism, both in increasing her knowledge base, and developing networks for both advocacy and action. In that context, while recognising the obvious dangers implicit in the misuse of social media, she saw the Labor government’s proposed bans and restrictions on such for young people under 16 as short sighted and counterproductive. ‘The proposal to ban young people from social media amounts to a strangulation of our political capital, of our ability to engage meaningfully in political processes that affect our lives and futures.’

This panel invites a number of young people to discuss matters related to their political activism. What issues engage them? What avenues of advocacy do they utilise? What role has social media played in allowing them to ‘find their voice’? And how might we, as educators, respond to young people’s activism?

Panel chair

Terry Hayes, VATE Council and Life member

Panel guests

Jules Arpula, Alix Livingstone

P3: A Place at the table: Literature and representation in the English classroom

‘A place at the table’ is more than a metaphor for inclusion: it’s a call for advocacy, equity, and action. It’s not just about being present in the room; it’s about having a voice that shapes the conversation. For students, it means seeing themselves reflected in the stories they read, being invited to share their own narratives, and being empowered to speak up and push back against systems that silence or exclude. For educators, it’s a reminder that inclusion doesn’t happen by accident – it requires intentional choices, courageous conversations, and a deep commitment to building classrooms where every student feels seen, heard, and valued.

In this dynamic panel discussion, two authors will reflect on their own journeys to claim a seat at the table – through storytelling, resilience, and the power of voice. They’ll share how literature can act as both mirror and catalyst, sparking empathy, fostering inclusion, and inspiring critical thinking, and give educators practical ideas for how to include diverse texts on their booklists and celebrate representation in meaningful ways. With a focus on identity, voice, and representation, this conversation will challenge and inspire educators to think deeply about the stories they teach and the voices they centre.

Panel chair

Karys McEwen

Panel guests

Ange Crawford, Michael Earp
 
 

Writers Talk Writing
     
 

That glimpse of truth: Writing short stories

Join award-winning short story writer and novelist, Melanie Cheng, for a Writers Talk Writing Masterclass about the craft of short story writing. Melanie will share an easy to use 3 step framework for writing short stories that she has been applying in her Narrative Medicine workshops at The University of Melbourne. The framework was inspired by a PBS interview with George Saunders. It is simple, fun and has been effective in generating high quality, moving flash fiction pieces from medical students with little to no experience in creative writing.

Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Her most recent novel, The Burrow, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Age Book of the Year and the ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year.
     

 

Helping your students find their voice

Whether it be fiction or memoir writing, helping your students find their voice on the page is a powerful tool to aid self-expression, literacy and a deeper understanding of the world we live in. In this one hour Writer Talks Writing Masterclass, we will undertake short writing exercises, examine texts and discuss some of the most memorable contemporary voices in Australian literature.

Sam Elkin is a writer, community lawyer and co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin). Born in England and raised on Noongar land, Sam now lives on unceded Wurundjeri land. Sam’s essays have been published in the Griffith Review, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books and Kill Your Darlings. He hosts the 3RRR radio show Queer View Mirror and his debut book is Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga (Upswell Publishing) is out now.

     
 

A room full of fans: Leveraging fanfiction as a tool for the classroom

Fanfiction is among one of the most hotly debated subjects in the world of literature, with just as many readers and writers praising it as condemning it. As polarising as it may be, fanfiction has been, and continues to be, the bread and butter of some of today’s most successful authors: E L James, Cassandra Clare, Marissa Meyer, Neil Gaiman, Dante. But what is fanfiction exactly? And how can fanfiction lead to more engaged, meaningful writing tasks for students?

 

In this Writers Talk Writing Masterclass, author and artist Jes Layton will run participants through how they can critically engage with students using fanfiction, encouraging thoughtful creativity, rigorous textual analysis and engaged criticism in the classroom. Gain insight into how the things your students love can fuel – or frustrate – inspiration, and how this often overlooked literary form can allow students to master a host of literary and critical thinking skills, and maybe even birth an emerging writer or two.

 

Jes Layton (she/he) is the Executive Director and co-CEO of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. As an author and illustrator, Jes has presented at a variety of local and national writers festivals, conferences and events unpacking queerness, fandom and pop culture. She has also authored essays, articles and comics, facilitated student workshops and hosted reading events contextualising and exploring fanfiction for both fans and those who may not be as familiar. More of Jes’ nonfiction, fiction and illustrative work can be found both online and in print with the likes of SBS, Archer Magazine, Junkee, Voiceworks, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, Affirm Press, Fremantle Press, Black Inc, and Pantera Press among others. Jes’ latest piece ‘Breathe’ can be found in Spinning Around; The Kylie Playlist (Fremantle Press, 2024) and ‘Seeing Colour’ in Everything Under the Moon: Fairy Tales in a Queerer Light (Affirm Press, 2024).

Conference Day 1

Thursday 20 November

9.00am - 10.15am:
President's welcome & Keynote Speaker

10.25am - 11.25am:
Workshops (TW1) & Writers Talk Writing (WTW1)

11.50am - 12.40pm:
Guest Speakers

12.50pm - 1.50pm:
Workshops (TW2) & Writers Talk Writing (WTW2)

2.40pm - 3.40pm:
Workshops (TW3) & Writers Talk Writing (WTW3)

3.40pm – 4.30pm:
VATE Village - Conference gathering

Conference Day 2

Friday 21 November

9.00am - 10.00am:
Keynote Speaker

10.10am - 11.10am:
Workshops (FW1)

11.35am - 12.35pm:
Panels

12.45pm - 1.45pm:
Workshops (FW2)

2.35pm - 3.35pm:
Workshops (FW3)