Armidale academic Dr Jeanette Berman says Australia needs to do more to ensure the education system is a lot more inclusive and equitable.
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"Many schools are not well resourced enough even to get the basic things they need," Dr Berman said after being recognised with an Order of Australia OAM for her services to education.
"And some schools are well and truly over-resourced."
Australia Day honours for the Northern Tablelands:
The highly regarded Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New England's School of Education has spent a lifetime trying to provide better educational outcomes for children.
And in the next six weeks, she is heading to Ecuador with a small team from Melbourne University after being approached to teach them about inclusive education, which is the topic of Dr Berman's co-authored book Sustainable Learning.
Led by Dr Berman, the team has subsequently released the book Learning Intervention and the yet-to-be-published Responsive Teaching for Sustainable Learning on the same topic.
Dr Berman said inclusive education is "about every single student who turns up at their school gate in their community" being provided with what they need to learn.
After being notified of her OAM, Dr Berman said recognition of people involved in education is incredibly important.
"I would see this award as being for everyone with whom I've worked: the families, the children, and all the wonderful teachers who are out there doing amazing jobs.
"I'm only part of a very big system."
Dr Berman said it was while working as a school psychologist for the NSW Department of Education at the start of her career that the foundation for her "strong focus on children as learners" was formed.
This carried through to her time working as the Program Director of Educational Psychology at New Zealand's Massey University from 2013 to 2016 where she said she "felt at home professionally".
"Because the focus was on children as learners and what we need to do to help them learn in the best possible way," Dr Berman said.
"Rather than us trying to make them fit into the schools that we have."
Dr Berman has maintained strong links to UNE's Armidale campus since she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in psychology and mathematics; afterall, her grandfather was the founding Dean of Arts and her mother, father and brother have all obtained their degrees from the local university.
At various times from 1999 onwards, Dr Berman returned to lecture at UNE in Special Education and Educational Psychology.
While lecturing at the University of Melbourne in the Graduate School of Education from 2016 to 2017, she was conferred with the title Honorary Associate Professor, and also became an Associate Professor at UNE in 2017.
She is currently a member of the Australian Psychological Society, School Counselling and Psychology Association NSW and the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology.
Dr Berman continues to supervise PhD students in her role as Adjunct Associate Professor at UNE.
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