Kerrie Anglin is a woman of many talents. Currently serving as Senior School Key Pastoral Care Teacher at St Peters Springfield, Kerrie is also a teacher and coordinator of Legal Studies, serves as WHS and Compliance Officer, is an admitted Lawyer and a committee member and conference convener for the Queensland Chapter of the Australia & New Zealand Education Law Association. Now she has added one more title to this impressive list being that of a published author.
A dedicated teacher in the St Peters Springfield community for the past seven years, Kerrie has recently co-authored a book titled ‘Law and Ethics for Australian Teachers’. The book, which took almost two-and-half years to complete, has been written to support teachers, school administrators and school authorities to navigate and better understand professional, legal and ethical school issues they may encounter in the classroom or wider school environment in a way that is easy to navigate.
How did the idea for the book first start?
This project began when Kerrie met with the parent of a former St Peters Springfield Old Scholar who also worked in the education industry. After some discussion they saw the potential to improve teachers' understanding of their legal obligations in a professional context and discussed the possibility of writing a book for this purpose. Kerrie explains, “the more I delved into the research the more I saw the need for teachers to know this sort of information…better still, that they had legal obligations that needed to be met.”
Taking existing knowledge, qualifications and experience, Kerrie and her fellow authors have created a resource to explain topics such as Duty of Care, Mandatory Reporting, Family Court Orders and Parenting Plans, Suspensions and Exclusions and other legal issues. Chapters in the book include case studies and legislation from all states, detailed scenarios, definitions of key terms and end of chapter questions to help readers understand a variety of issues. In the future, Kerrie aspires to have the book adopted in tertiary education for those studying in education, preservice teaching and the workplace as professional development.
Where can you get a copy?
The book ‘Law and Ethics for Australian Teachers (Mark Butlin, Noeleen McNamara and Kerrie Anglin)’ is published by Cambridge University Press and will be available to purchase in June through Angus & Robertson, Dymocks and Booktopia.