Community of Practice

AADES Communities of Practice

An AADES Community of Practice (CoP) brings together teachers and leaders from member schools across Australia and New Zealand to investigate a shared question of practice over an extended period, typically twelve months or more. Each CoP works in person and online to build a shared understanding of what effective practice looks like in the distance, online and virtual context.

CoPs are not webinars or one-off projects. They are sustained, collaborative inquiries. Members bring their own school context, examine the evidence together, trial approaches, and produce a resource that the wider AADES membership can use. The work is grounded in classrooms, drawn from across jurisdictions, and shaped by the unique realities of teaching at a distance.

Why CoPs matter

Distance, online and virtual schools sit at the edge of much of the research base in education. Most evidence-informed practice has been developed and tested in face-to-face settings, and translating it into our context takes deliberate, collective work. A CoP is how AADES does that work, by asking practitioners across jurisdictions to interrogate them together and produce guidance that actually fits our schools.

For participants, a CoP offers something rare: sustained professional dialogue with colleagues who understand the virtual context, structured time to think deeply about a single area of practice, and the opportunity to shape a resource that influences thousands of teachers across the region.

Previous Communities of Practice

CoP 1: Differentiation in the distance, online and virtual context (2023–2024)

The inaugural AADES CoP brought together representatives from every Australian state and territory and from New Zealand. Over twelve months the group examined what differentiation looks like when teaching is mediated by screens, asynchronous tasks and dispersed cohorts. The work culminated in a webinar and a published resource.

CoP 2: Trauma Informed Practice (2024–2025)

The second AADES CoP turned to trauma informed practice — an area of growing importance given the cohorts many distance schools now serve. Teachers and leaders from across Australia and New Zealand shared their learning across four focus areas: Igniting Passion and Purpose, Engagement, Behaviour Regulation, and Instructional Planning. The accompanying resource, Trauma Informed Practice in Distance/Virtual Education, will be published on this site.

Current Community of Practice: Artificial Intelligence in Virtual Teaching and Learning

The third AADES CoP is now underway, examining how artificial intelligence is reshaping teaching and learning across virtual settings in Australia and New Zealand. The focus is deliberately broad — AI is not a single tool or a single problem, and its implications stretch across pedagogy, assessment, curriculum design, student agency, teacher workload, ethics and policy. Representatives from AADES member schools are working together to map what’s emerging across jurisdictions, identify the practices that are genuinely useful in virtual contexts, and surface the questions schools should be asking.

The CoP will present its findings through a webinar, with a published resource to follow.

Joining a Community of Practice

CoP membership is drawn from AADES member schools. If your school is part of AADES, talk to your school’s AADES representative or executive team about nominating for the next CoP. If your school isn’t yet a member, becoming part of AADES opens access to CoP participation alongside webinars, the biennial conference, the awards program, and the broader network of distance, online and virtual schools across Australasia.