The award recognises the outstanding practice in the delivery and provision of teacher education nationally.

Dr Macdonald is a senior lecturer in arts education at UTAS, she said she was really excited to receive the award because a lot of the work she does involves multi-stakeholder collaboration.

"To be recognised and receive this award is really indicative of a range of people's efforts and support in making sure that teacher education is of a really good quality," She said.

"Especially for arts educators which is really nice to see that's been recognised."

Dr Macdonald said another UTAS educator received the award two years ago.

"I think collectively what we do here at UTAS is recognised as excellent quality, not just what I do but what we do across the board," Dr Macdonald said.

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Dr Macdonald received the award in recognition of her work in developing arts teacher education in the era of online-based learning.

"All of my teaching is online which creates its own set of challenges for the arts being an embodied discipline and practice," she said.

"All of my pre-service teachers come through from having done some kind of contemporary or fine arts degree across the five art forms.

"They have lived and experienced and embodied the arts so to suddenly be asked to come in a learn and engage online, without that living, breathing human interaction is really daunting. For me also in that space it was challenging."

Dr Macdonald wanted to break down the technological barrier for pre-service art teachers through increased opportunities interacting and engaging with actual teachers who are working in schools.

"For me, that became the importance of collaborating with teacher professional associations, industry and education stakeholders who create professional learning opportunities that my teachers could participate in alongside in-service teachers," Dr Macdonald said.

"Arts people thrive in challenge so we're really good at looking at challenges as opportunities and that's the line I've taken with this work."

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