Peter Botsman Award 2006

Margaret Miller

Margaret Miller has made a tremendous contribution to English teaching in Qld over the last 10 years in particular. She has held a variety of highly responsible curriculum oversight and development positions across years 1 -12 and has devoted enormous energy to developing and ensuring quality syllabus documents and teaching and assessment practice.

Margaret began her career as a teacher at Mt Isa State High School in 1974 and was English Department Head at Kalkadoon High School from 1979 to 1986. Since 1987 she has been at Clifton High School, apart from a 4 year secondment to the Queensland Studies Authority to work on the 1-10 English syllabus.

First, over her entire teaching career her classroom practice has been innovative and challenging, always at the forefront of theoretical application. Secondly, in the Darling Downs region, she led her Head of Department colleagues as Panel Chair and coordinator of the English Subject Master Network. Over a number of years she took on the extra responsibility of lecturing pre-service teachers at USQ. This was a very demanding role completed in addition to normal teaching duties.

Margaret has been involved in a project with Griffith University’s Associate Professor Claire Wyatt Smith. This involved exploring the link between pedagogy and assessment. In 2003 she co-wrote, with Robyn Colwill, “Queensland Senior English”, a textbook which is widely used in secondary English classrooms.

Her major contribution to English teaching in Qld has occurred since 2001 as she chaired the Senior Syllabus Advisory Committee and then wrote Levels 5 & 6 for the 1-10 English syllabus. This work was undertaken with both passion and rigour as Margaret strove to produce a document which would enable quality English teaching in Queensland schools.

With her secondment to QSA completed, she is now back at the chalkface putting her work into practice as Middle Schooling HOD at Clifton S.H.S.