
Our community of teacher educators conducts research, teaches and advocates in areas related to language, literacy and culture across the entire education system. We also research and teach children’s literature, multimodal digital literature and advocate for multimodal literacy education to prepare children for compelling literacy skills in the digital era. 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, literature and culture in education.
ARC Linkage project – with Doctor Sally Baker, Professor Massimilano Tani and Dr Claire Higgins
Led by Associate Professor Hoa Nguyen, Professor Andy Gao, Dr Dennis Alonzo, Emeritus Professor Sue Starfield, Dr Lisa Gilanyi, Dr Hang Nguyen, Trang Hoang.
Led by Doctor Ellen Lee and Doctor Thu Ngo
Led by Doctor Thu Ngo and Professor Len Unsworth (ACU)
Researchers |
Expertise |
|
---|---|---|
Topics |
Theoretical framework |
|
Andy Gao |
Language Education Policy (e.g. medium of instruction, CLIL, language curriculum)
Language Teacher Education
Language Learning strategies (e.g. SLA)
|
Social cultural theory
|
Hoa Nguyen |
Language Teacher Education & Professional Development
|
Social cultural theory |
Sally Baker |
Equity in higher education Academic Literacies and oracy, Supporting Culturally and Linguistically Marginalised Migrants and/or Refugees (CALMMR) in higher education Educational transitions
Advocacy: Refugee education Higher education equity
|
Critical sociological concepts:
|
Thu Ngo |
Multimodal literacy: language, body language, image and sound
Digital literacy: technology in language teaching & learning
Language education
Children’s literature
|
|
Name |
Thesis Topic |
Supervisor 1 |
Supervisor 2 |
Research interests |
---|---|---|---|---|
Hengxi Wang |
ESP teacher identity construction in China |
Andy Gao |
Jasper Hsieh |
TESOL |
Noryani Ahmad |
The Implementation of Systemic Functional Linguistics in Enhancing Anakytical Wtiting Skills among ESL Engineering Undergraduates |
Dennis Alonzo |
Chris Davison |
SFL, Second Language Acquisition |
Muhammad Iqwan Sanjani |
Family Language Policy, Translanguaging, Transnational Families, Migrants |
Sally Baker |
Andy Gao |
Language Policy, Multilingualism, Translanguaging |
Bita Dwi Rahmani |
Teacher Feedback Literacy |
Dennis Alonzo |
Chris Davison |
feedback practices, language assessment, language testing, teacher professional development |
Nina Inayati |
Exploring Language Teachers and Learners’ Experience of Online Informal English Language Learning in Indonesian Higher Education Contexts |
Andy Gao |
Hoa Nguyen |
informal language learning, technology in language learning, autonomy in language learning |
Thi Hoa Le |
Professional development for CLIL teachers |
Hoa Nguyen |
Tony Loughland |
|
Yi Sun |
The Professional Experience of Return TESOL Graduate Teachers in China |
Andy Gao |
Jasper Hsieh |
TESOL pedagogy; teacher education; teacher professional development; educational leadership |
Yixi Qiu (visiting scholar) |
Transnational teachers' and students' epistemic participation in English medium instruction programs |
Andy Gao |
Yongyan Zheng |
Multilingualism; Language policy & planning |
Minghao Chen |
Dual Roles of parent-teachers in the intersection of family language policy and language education policy |
Andy Gao |
Sue Starfield |
Family language policy |
Priyanka Bose |
Understanding Family Language Policy Using Digital Communications Among Bengali Immigrants in Australia |
Andy Gao |
Sue Starfield |
sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, thematic analysis, multimodal discourse analysis |
Hui Wang |
Language Maintenance and Shift in Ethnic Russian Families: A Transnational Study on the Russian Chinese Diaspora in China and Australia |
Anikó Hatoss |
Andy Gao |
Sociolinguistics, language shift |
Alice (shuting) Sun |
International students' experiences of and responses to assessment and feedback in Australian universities |
Andy Gao |
Chris Davison |
Assessment and feedback, Higher Education, International student experience |
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)