Maxine Cowie
Director Starjump VSL Pty Ltd
Box 8070, LPO North Rd, Brighton East
2 Francis Street Brighton East, Vic. 3187
Phone: 0409396148 or 0395927253
ABN: 98915219125
Note: The Starjump office is situated in the Early Education Program building.
Maxine Cowie Dip Teach GDAE Maxine established Starjump in the early 90’s to research and develop a literacy program for visual spatial learners who sometimes also have a literacy learning difficulty. She has spent the past 27 years focused on developing her understanding of the complexities of teaching literacy to visual spatial thinkers. Initially this was in Aboriginal education in far North Queensland where in the early 80’s it was recognized that Aboriginal people had extremely strong visual spatial cognitive abilities. She was involved in the trialing of maths programs and specifically designed literacy programs for Aboriginal kids whilst she taught at Hopevale. She later explored community education in the Solomon Islands.
On returning to Australia, she worked as an Education Officer with Special Duties for the Inspector of Schools throughout Cape York Peninsular and Torres Strait Islands in Cairns. She was based at Education North which was a centre where literacy programs were being researched and developed for use in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island schools. Whole language approaches were being developed with specific attention to English as a second language and cultural needs of Aboriginal kids. However, she was very aware that there were some fundamental neurological differences in thinking that were not being accommodated into the programs being developed. She did not know how to nor did she have the authority to contribute to the research at that stage and in the position she held. She left and became a special needs teacher where she discovered urban aboriginal kids, and 10 to 15% of the non-indigenous kids had similar cognitive profiles and had very similar literacy learning difficulties.
She left the Qld education department and moved to Melbourne where she established Starjump and began her own research and program development. Her work has crossed paths with that of Dr Linda Silverman who, in the early eighties, identified the visual spatial learner in the highly gifted population. Linda is a leading academic and author in the field of gifted education, having written several books and hundreds of papers including the text book “Counselling the Gifted and Talented” and more recently “Upside Down Brilliance – The visual spatial learner.” Maxine has in the past few years drawn on Linda’s profound work in the area and together with her own experience in the field has developed the Starjump Program as it is today. Her work continues to be supported by Linda Silverman and an international network of colleagues dedicated to recognizing and developing further our understanding of this group of students.
The program is currently being trialled at Berwick Primary School where, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the program in the classroom setting is being conducted. ACER - The Australian Council for Educational Research and the Independent Schools Association of Victoria will be conducting an independent evaluation of the Starjump Program in 2009 as well.
The program is being adapted for use in indigenous communities, where local indigenous languages and cultural content will be able to easily be embedded into the program by local people.
A Starjump centre has recently opened in Kuala Lumpur with centres planned throughout the Asean region.
The program is now available in Sydney and Canberra. We also have have a sub licensee in Narre Warren in Melbourne. Students from all over Australia participate in the Starjump program externally as well. Please click on the Australian Locations menu to find out more.