Tony Jarrett

Associate student
About
Tony Jarrett

Tony Jarrett’s PhD study is examining how a new teaching syllabus will impact on children during a natural disaster. The inclusion of an Inquiry Learning unit on bushfires for Year 5 and 6 geography students in NSW comes at a time when all governments are wanting to place an emphasis on prevention and mitigation as the personal and social costs of responding to and recovering from disasters grows rapidly. Tony’s research will investigate what extent enablers and inhibitors impact effective, scalable and sustainable disaster resilience education.

Tony has been involved in education and community resilience in the sector for over a decade, and previously worked in community engagement at the NSW Rural Fire Service where he was a CRC end-user. Tony was instrumental in the delivery of bushfire safety and disaster resilience education programs across NSW.

Student project

NSW Stage 3 students (Years 5 & 6) how bushfire affects people, place and the environment. NSW Rural Fire Service member experts support teachers to deliver education outcomes and disaster resilience education (DRE) activity. However, there is no understanding of the enablers and barriers to consistent, sustained and quality support from members. This project will identify and explore in-depth the DRE practices being applied by classroom teachers, the contribution of NSW Rural Fire Service experts to the classroom, and what DRE learning outcomes can be attributed to those NSW Rural Fire Service experts.
Supervisory panel:

Lead end user

Children represent the most vulnerable demographic group in disasters – across the globe it is estimated that 30-50% of fatalities are children - while they are also most vulnerable to psychosocial impacts. Early research indicates that children are a resource for reducing current disaster risks and can also mitigate future risks.

The role of children’s disaster education in managing risk has been recognised as a major priority in the federal government’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. Yet, despite a recent surge in child-centred disaster research, the social, psychological, economic and political mechanisms that enable children to both understand and take action to reduce disaster risk remain largely unexplored and the evidence-base for best-practice remains limited.

This project is conducting a nationwide evaluation of programs and strategies based on a child-centred disaster risk reduction framework. It will develop cost-effective programs that reduce the risk and increase resilience for children, schools, households and communities.

This project developed an index of the current state of disaster resilience in Australian communities – the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. The Index is a tool for assessing the resilience of communities to natural hazards at a large scale and is designed to provide input into macro-level policy, strategic planning and community engagement activities at national, state and local government levels.

Deliverables include the development of disaster resilience indicators, maps of disaster resilience at multiples scales, a State of Disaster Resilience Report, and examples that use the Index in a natural hazard resilience planning context.

AFAC19 poster
24 Aug 2019
This Project will identify and explore in-depth the DRE practices being applied by classroom...
Enablers and inhibitors to the sustainable implementation of effective teacher delivered disaster resilience education through the Geography Syllabus
18 Sep 2018
The NSW Geography Syllabus requires that all Stage 3 students (Years 5 and 6) in New South Wales...
Disaster resilience education: a practice framework for Australian emergency management agencies
29 Jun 2017
Disaster resilience education for children and young people has been identified as a key mechanism...

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