Marguerite has a multidisciplinary background in Visual Arts, Education, Guidance and Counselling and Art Therapy; therefore, her work history has been in education, private practice, small business and the community sector; where she continues to volunteer. Her employment roles have included teaching, leadership, counselling, art therapy, consulting, curriculum development and governance.
In Marguerite’s role as a course coordinator and tutor at UniSC, she has enjoyed creating innovative learning experiences that include embedding mental health and wellbeing, game-based learning and career development into curriculum. Her multidisciplinary background has now culminated in her current PhD focus which is a study using art-led research to explore the implications of concepts from the field of Futures Studies on career education curriculum. Why? Because career is about human actions, and our actions have implications for the world we live in. Using a critical Futures focus, I am interested in whether our innate human anticipatory aesthetic towards futures, has potential to inform career education curriculum that could proactively meets the agency needs of more than human futures.
Notable Projects:
- JustAsk Initiative: part of the innovative team behind UniSC's peer support workshop – JustAsk. This program was developed in collaboration between UniSC academic staff and community partner, Peachtree Perinatal wellness. Project member.
- First Year Experience Grant: Embedding a serious game into the curriculum of a first-year course – A scenario-based games embedded in the curriculum of TPP108 and UCC106. Project lead.
- UniSc Seed Funding, Games for learning and Orientation: The Universal Student – a game developed for orientating and enabling a sense of belonging for first year students at UniSC. Project member.
Teaching areas
- TPP101 Academic Skills for Success
- TPP102 ICT for Academic and Professional Applications
- TPP108 Professional People Skills for Study, Community and Society
- TPP107 Critical Thinking in Society
- UCC106 Professional People Skills for Study, Community and Society
- EDU115 Creative Expression and Play through the Arts
- EDU214 Teaching Arts in the Early Years
- EDU328 Professional Experience: Managing Learning Environments
- EDU420 The Psychology of Learning
- COU180 Therapeutic Communication Skills
- COU101 Theories of Counselling: From Freud to Integrative Practice
- COU265 Strengthens Based Counselling: Collaborative Approaches
| Title | Author/s | Published | Access |
| Stop the clocks: Enabling practitioners and precarity in pandemic time(s) | Anita Olds, Susan Hopkins, Joanne Lisciandro, Angela Jones, Juliette Subramaniam, Marguerite Westacott, Ana Larsen, Rebekah Sturniolo-Baker and Helen Scobie | 2023 | Critical Explorations of Equity in Higher Education, 11, 1, 12 - 27 |
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S Elsom, M Westacott, C Stieler-Hunt, S Glencross, K Rutter |
2023 |
Interactive Learning Environments, 2023 |
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| Marguerite Westacott | 2022 |
On the Horizon, 30, 3, 163 – 170 |
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S Elsom, C Stieler-Hunt, M Westacott, S Glencross |
2022 |
2022•research.usc.edu.au |
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| Marguerite Westacott, Claire Green and Sandra Elsom | 2021 |
Reimagining the Academy: ShiFting Towards Kindness, Connection, and an Ethics of Care, 97 – 117 |
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Marguerite Westacott |
2019 | ||
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Using an alternate reality game to facilitate student engagement during orientation |
Sarah Glencross, Sandra Elsom, Marguerite Westacott and Colleen Stieler-Hunt | 2019 |
Student Success, 10, 2, 13 – 22 |
| Melinda J Lewis, Helen Grimmett, Briony Lipton, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel, Sandra Elsom, Marguerite Westacott, Claire Green and Amelia Walker | 2019 |
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 4, 2, 695 - 711 |
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On our radar: Supporting student and staff mental wellbeing in enabling education |
N Crawford, M Westacott, H Scobie, A Jones, K Hansen, J Subramanim |
2019 |
Proceedings of the 2019 Equity Practitioners in Higher Education …, 2019 |
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Games for Education, Learning and Orientation (The GELO Project) Evaluation and Final Report |
Sandra Elsom and Marguerite Westacott |
2019 |
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Nicole Crawford, Joanne Lisciandro, Angela Jones, Megan Jaceglav, Deanna McCall, Rosalie Bunn, Helen Cameron, Marguerite Westacott and Sharon Andersen |
2016 |
Proceedings of the 2016 Foundation and Bridging Educators New Zealand, 1 - 18 |