Rate My Professor Malcolm Mcinerney

Malcolm McInerney is a Lecturer in the School of Education within the College of Education, Behavioural and Social Sciences at Adelaide University. He has been involved in humanities education in South Australia since 1976, teaching as a humanities teacher and coordinator in a range of Department for Education schools from 1976 to 2014. McInerney served as Humanities Manager in the Department for Education from 2008 to 2011 and 2015 to 2023. Between 2008 and 2012, in his departmental and national teacher association roles, he worked on the development of the Australian Curriculum: Geography and History and was significantly involved in the implementation of the Humanities learning area of the Australian Curriculum in South Australian schools. Following part-time casual academic positions at Flinders University from 2012 to 2016, he was appointed as a Teaching Academic at the University of South Australia in 2016, now integrated into Adelaide University. He currently coordinates and teaches the Primary Years HaSS Specialism at the Magill Campus and the postgraduate Masters Secondary HaSS courses at the Mawson Lakes Campus.

McInerney's academic interests include humanities education, geography and history curriculum development, spatial technologies in Australian schools, geographical thinking, conceptual thinking in HaSS, and general capabilities' synergy with HaSS, particularly teaching secondary geography. His key publications feature the report Teaching Secondary Geography (Cambridge University Press, 2021, co-authored with S. Caldis et al.); book chapters such as "The general capabilities' synergy with HASS" (in Making Humanities and Social Sciences Come Alive: Early Years and Primary Education, 2nd ed., 2025; 1st ed., 2019), "Conceptual thinking in HASS" (2019), and "Making geography come alive by teaching geographical thinking" (2019); and journal articles "Geography: The South Australian experience" (with R. Shepherd, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 2006) and "The implementation of spatial technologies in Australian schools: 1996-2005" (International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 2006). Through leadership of professional teacher associations for geography at state and national levels, current leadership of HaSS Association Australia (HAA), curriculum work, professional learning activities, and resource development, McInerney supports HaSS teachers and is considered a leader in humanities education.