Our community of teacher educators conducts research, teaches and advocates in areas related to language, literacy and culture across the entire education system. We have specific expertise in school-age education as well as adult, community and higher education. 

We have a rich experience gained from working with diverse language and cultural groups, including linguistic minorities, immigrant and refugee communities, transnational students, EAL/D (English as an additional language/dialect) /EFL (English as foreign language)/ESL (English as second language) students, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples. We are acutely aware of the politics of colonisation and assimilation and issues of educational disadvantage, and our work seeks to resist the disenfranchisement that these politics cause. 

We explore how deficit framings – set against dominant assumptions about educational background, linguistic heritage, affiliation and expertise, and student and family capacity – create implicit and explicit barriers for engagement and success in multilingual educational communities in Australia and internationally. We identify ways to empower students, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and policymakers with critical awareness and resources in response to the challenges associated with language, literacy and culture in education. 

Themes and signature projects

Developing Content-Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers’ professional learning

Led by Dr Hoa NguyenAssociate Professor Andy GaoDr Dennis AlonzoEmeritus Professor Sue Starfield, Dr Lisa Gilanyi, Dr Hang Nguyen, Trang Hoang.

Research team – who we are

  • Academic staff 

    Honorary staff 

    Casual staff

    • Dr Lisa Gilanyi
    • Dr Sara Mashyekh
    • Katherine Thompson
    • David Coombes
    • Rubee McManus
  •  
    • Professor Bonny Norton (University of British Columbia)
    • Professor Jim Cummins (University of Toronto)
    • Professor Constant Leung (King’s College London)
    • Professor Jo Lo Bianco (University of Melbourne) 
    • Professor Brian Paltridge University of Sydney
    • Professor Zhu Hua (University of Birmingham)
    • Professor Yongyan Zheng (Fudan University)
    • Dr Cathie Burgess (USyd) 
    • Associate Professor Neil Harrison (Macquarie)
    • Dr Mairin Hennebry-Leung (University of Tasmania)
    • Dr Jacqueline Stevenson (University of Leeds)
    • Dr Laura Grassick (University of Leeds) 
    • Dr Hang Nguyen (Vietnam National University)
    • Dr Lan Anh Tran (Vietnam National University)
    • Dr Obaid Hamid (University of Queensland)
  •  
    • Felipe Balotin
    • Priyanka Bose
    • Tracey Donehue 
    • Jie Fan  
    • Carla Guedes 
    • Alex Harper 
    • Noryani Neni Binti Ahmad Jamain 
    • Fernadita Jayanti  
    • Jiao Li
    • Ting Liu 
    • Jamila Al Maawali 
    • Hanna Morrison  
    • Eun Kyong Park 
    • Bita Dwi Rahmani 
    • Rodrigo F. Arellano 
    • Junjun Ramdani  
    • Alice Sun 
    • Susanne Stanyer
    • Anna Xavier

Current activities

  • Online, monthly (complemented by face-to-face seminars pre- and post-COVID19)

  • Online monthly meetings including collaborators in Australia and overseas (complemented by face-to-face seminars pre- and post-COVID19)

Courses and programs

  • Master of Teaching, Bachelor of Education, 
  • Master of Education, Graduate Certificate of Education (TESOL)
  • Master of Educational Leadership
  • MEd (Research), EdD, PhD