Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Fellowship 2008: Dr Clare McBeath WAIER initiated the awarding of Fellowships and Life Memberships in 2004.

Clare has been active in WAIER as a Forum presenter since 1986, publisher of Issues in Educational Research since 1992, a member of the WAIER Committee since 2000, and Editor of Issues in Educational Research since 2001.

Clare's main role on the WAIER executive is as editor and publisher of Issues in Educational Research. Since becoming Editor in 2001, she has established the journal as a regular twice yearly publication. Together with the Business Manager, Dr Roger Atkinson, she has been publishing the journal online as well as in print for over ten years, and in 2008 moved to publish the journal as online only.

In her capacity as a member of the executive committee, she also helps with the WAIER Forum each year, specifically taking responsibility for the publication of the Program Booklet, drawing up the timetable of presentations and coordinating the chairing of sessions.

Clare was employed at Curtin University as a lecturer and senior lecturer for seventeen years. During this time she was awarded her PhD. Her thesis was entitled Curriculum dissemination in TAFE: A study of the educational change process in the Technical and Further Education sector in Western Australia. In 1991 she published Curriculum decision making in TAFE, which was subsequently used as a text book by the graduate and undergraduate students in the Training and Development program until a few years ago. She also edited Case Studies in TAFE Curriculum, as part of the Australian Case Studies in Curriculum series sponsored by the West Australian Social Science Education Consortium.

While working at Curtin, she published 46 papers, and presented 52 conference papers and workshops, dealing with her research in curriculum theory and practice, educational technology, online education and distance education in the fields of training and development, vocational education and higher education.

As Coordinator of the Training and Development program (consisting of the Associate Degree, the Degree, Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and Masters Degree) she oversaw the development of the program for online delivery on WebCT, and was the first Coordinator at Curtin to deliver an entire program this way. She also designed and developed the Graduate Certificate in VET in Schools on line.

She wrote many units for online delivery as the need arose, and has continued to write the occasional new distance education and online units for Curtin since her retirement in 2003.

As well as participating in the WAIER Forum each year, she also works on the annual Teaching Learning Forum held in Perth in late January/early February. She also participated in the organising committee for the ASCILITE national conference in Perth in 2003, the ATEA national conference in Perth in 2006, HERDSA national conference in Perth in 2006, ASCILITE national conference in Singapore in 2007 and the ASCILITE national conference in Melbourne in 2008. In each case, she has reviewed papers, assisted with the selection process, desk top published the Program Booklet, and copy edited and prepared full papers for printing or mounting on the Website.

Her main hobby is travelling, and in the last few years has toured in Italy, New Zealand, the UK, Fiji, France, Spain and Singapore.