QA Forum

About Barbara Pamphilon

My interest in lifelong and life-wide learning has always been a big part of my personal and professional life. Although I enjoyed school and then started university I just didn’t really fit in and so my first profession was as a nurse because in those days they offered free accommodation! However on graduation as luck would have it I took up a job working with children with a disability in a cutting-edge service that used a multi-disciplinary team to help the children to reach their greatest potential - and so through the children and the team my learning took off.

When my own three children arrived, I found that I could only learn so much from books and the professionals and this learning need led to a rewarding involvement with support groups for mothers. Later when I returned to work, I could draw on all of this experience in my role training and supporting volunteers for a regional community service and in a typical lifelong learning way, this led me back to university as I really wanted to have some qualifications and deeper knowledge.

I completed a bachelors degree at the University of Canberra, whilst also working in HIV/AIDS and sexuality education. As a mature age student I just loved the supportive environment for women like me so, after further study, including a PhD that examined the lifelong learning of Australian women born in the first decades of the last century, here I am - teaching in the Bachelor of Community Education and the postgraduate courses in Health and Community Development. My passion is to promote and facilitate learning pathways, especially for those who like me have not followed the conventional education route.