LPLC Publications
The
Centre's commitment to disseminating its research is reflected in the
range of its publications for academic and education industry
readerships, locally and internationally, and in education and beyond.
Selected publications are available as PDF files for download below
(download
Adobe Acrobat).
Publications by LPLC researchers
Recent publications available for download are arranged by author below. Full publication lists are available on the LPLC members' individual homepages which can be accessed through the People page.
Barbara Comber
Literacies with currency: Teachers work to make a difference (PDF 79kb)
Barbara Comber
Keynote Address presented at the AATE/ALEA National Conference
2005, Pleasurable learning, passionate teaching and provocative debates,
Gold Coast, Queensland, 1st – 4th July, 2005.
Urban renewal from the inside out:
Spatial and critical literacies in a low
socio-economic school community. (PDF 1.83Mb)
Barbara
Comber, Helen Nixon, & Louise Ashmore, with Marg Wells & Ruth Trimboli
Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual
Meeting, Symposium (Convenor Joanne Larson) From 'From "Situating" to "Spatializing"
Literacy Practice: Studies of spatial, critical, and digital literacies across
contexts’. Montreal, April 10-15, 2005.
Re-searching literacy development: Visible and invisible repertoires in
middle primary school (PDF 168kb)
Barbara Comber and Helen Nixon
Paper for the Symposium Engaging Student lifeworlds:
Researching literate repertoires, representing classroom complexity and imagining curriculum,
NZARE/AARE in Auckland, New Zealand, 3 December 2003.
Literacy curriculum for ‘at-risk’ children:
Discursive practices and
material effects (PDF 173kb)
Barbara Comber
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Educational
Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1-5, 2002.
Reporting the literate student: Teachers' professional knowledges and the risks for disadvantaged students (PDF 137kb)
Barbara Comber
Unpublished paper 1996
Phil Cormack
Redesigning pedagogies in middle years: Challenges for teachers working with
disadvantaged students (PDF 368kb)
Sam Sellar & Phil Cormack
Paper presented at the Redesigning Pedagogy: Culture, Knowledge and Understanding Conference,
Singapore, 28-30 May 2007
English curriculum as dispositif: Constituting adolescence in a
school subject (PDF 505kb)
Phil Cormack
Paper for presentation at the American
Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 9-13 April 2007
River literacies: Disursive constructions of place and environment in
children's writing about the Murray-Darling Basin
(PDF 866kb)
Phil Cormack, Jo-Anne Reid & Bill Green
paper presented at the Senses of Place Conference, University of Tasmania, Hobart,
5-8 April 2006
Formations of a problem: Adolescence and schooling in the early twentieth
century (PDF 727kb)
Phil Cormack
Paper presented at 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, Montreal, April 2005
A problem subject? English/literacy Teaching: Middle
schooling and
curriculum history (PDF 388kb)
Phil Cormack & Bill Green
Paper presented as part of the symposium, 'Rethinking Curriculum, Rethinking
History: New Perspectives on the Field' at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, Montreal, April 2005
Tracking English as a curriculum field: Historical tensions in a school
subject (PDF 373kb)
Paper presented at the 2004 Annual Conference of AATE, ACTA,
ALEA and PETA, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, 4 - 7 July 2004
English/literacy and anxiety
about the future: A case-study from the turn of the 20th Century
(PDF 302kb)
IFTE Conference, Melbourne, July 2003
Adolescence, Schooling and English/Literacy: Formations of a Problem in
Early Twentieth Century South Australia
Phil Cormack
PhD in Education
Thesis
Table of Contents and Summary
(PDF 178kb)
Introduction (PDF 1.17Mb)
Chapter 2 (PDF 383kb)
Chapters 3 & 4 (PDF
482kb)
Chapters 5 & 6 (PDF
3.67Mb)
Chapter 7 (PDF 3.71Mb)
Chapter 8 (PDF 3.10Mb)
Chapters 9 & 10 (PDF
428kb)
References (PDF 142kb)
Appendices (PDF 6.46Mb)
Sue Nichols
Fathers in educational research (PDF 278kb)
Sue Nichols
Paper given at the Gender and Education Conference. London, March 25-27 2009
A conceptual framework for
researching geographies of opportunity and the networking of knowledge (PDF 320kb)
PowerPoint presentation
Sue Nichols
Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Conference
symposium Resourcing families: Geographies of
opportunity and the networking of knowledge about children’s learning and
development. New York, March 2008
Helen Nixon
Resourcing parents of infants to support literacy learning and
development: An examination of textual networks and information pathways (PDF 290kb)
PowerPoint presentation
Helen Nixon
Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Conference
symposium Resourcing families: Geographies of opportunity and the networking
of knowledge about children’s learning and development. New York, March,
2008.
Teaching writing in a changing semiotic landscape. (Word doc 58kb)
Helen Nixon
Special issue of L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, guest edited by Per-Olof Erixon (Sweden) and Helen Nixon (Australia),
7(4), 2007.
Cultural studies of young people and the media: New patterns of inclusion and exclusion? (PDF 840kb)
Helen Nixon
Paper presented in the symposium: Socio-cultural constructions of the school-aged
learner in the changing worlds of digital media: new forms of
marginalisation? with Ola Erstad (ITU, Norway) and Julian Sefton-Green (WAC,
UK) and discussant Olga Vasquez (UC San Diego, USA) at the First Congress of
the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR) held in
Seville, Spain 20-24 September, 2005.
Urban renewal from the inside out:
Spatial and critical literacies in a low
socio-economic school community. (PDF 1.83Mb)
Barbara
Comber, Helen Nixon, & Louise Ashmore, with Marg Wells & Ruth Trimboli
Paper
presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Symposium (Convenor Joanne Larson)
‘From "Situating" to "Spatializing" Literacy Practice: Studies of spatial, critical, and digital
literacies across contexts’, Montreal, April 10-15, 2005.
Textual diversity: Who needs it?
(PDF 129kb)
Helen Nixon
IFTE Conference,
Melbourne, July, 2003.
Sue Shore
Professional development for VET
practitioners: Customising pathways (PDF 260kb)
Sue Shore & Janet McMillan (Douglas Mawson Institute of TAFE)
Paper presented to the Quality in VET Conference, 2 September, 2004, Adelaide.
The social literacies of literacy provision: Exploring the 'deep starting points' of inclusion/exclusion
Sue Shore
Address to the 25th Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference, Bridging the divides EXCLUSION/INCLUSION, 1-2 November, Manly, 2002.
Racialised discourse and 'adult learning principles':
Some thoughts about
difference and VET (PDF 50kb)
Sue Shore
Paper presented at 2001 AVETRA conference, Research to Reality: Putting VET
research to work. Adelaide, South Australia. 28-30 March, 2001.
The changing demands of TVET:
A global issue with local implications
Sue Shore
Paper presented at UNESCO TVET Asia Pacific Conference, Adelaide
25-29 March, 2001.
Books
Language teacher research in Australia and New Zealand (2008)
Edited by Anne Burns & Jill Burton
Chapter by Jill Burton
Over the last 30 years, inquiry-based teaching has become a highly valued
component of professional development and practitioner research in Australia and
New Zealand. This volume of the Language Teacher Research Series focuses on
teaching and learning experiences in those two countries, which encompass a
large geographical area with diverse policies and practices. The authors examine
their various learning environments and share reflections and insights that can
promote effective teaching practices, cross-cultural understanding, and improved
learning outcomes in English language classrooms in other parts of the world.
Following are some of the topics covered:
- Tailoring teaching materials to stimulate authentic learning and communication
- Designing research procedures to fit individual inquiry purposes and needs
- Focusing on oral communication skills and reading for meaning as ways to advance student learning
- Understanding student factors that can hinder progress in English language learning
- Bridging differences between students from varied educational cultures
Highs & lows: Canadian perspectives on women and substance use (2007)
Edited by Nancy Poole & Lorraine Greaves
Chapters by LPLC students Nancy Poole and Shaughney Aston
Edited by one on our Canadian PhD students, this book documents the past 10 years of practice in and research on women's substance use in Canada. The editors worked with over 100 contributors across the country including psychologists, social workers, therapists, academics, alternative health care providers, as well as the women themselves. It describes the significant contributions made by researchers, program providers and advocates in the area of women and substance use. The book brings together a variety of viewpoints and reflects a rich diversity of voices and perspectives.
Fresh water: New perspectives on water in Australia (2007)
Edited by Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay
Chapters by Phil Cormack, Barbara Comber and Rob Hattam
Is water a resource or is it the source?
Is it something to be consumed or does it have a life of its own?
This book arose out of a Water Justice Symposium as a result of an Academy of Social Science and the Humanities grant won by LPLC and HRISS members in 2005. It contains chapters by Phil Cormack and Barbara Comber - Doing justice: Young people's representations of the Murray-Darling Basin, as well as Rob Hattam with Daryle Rigney and Steve Hemming - Reconciliation? Culture and Nature and the Murray River. Fresh water: New perspectives on water in Australia offers a range of innovative insights into the history, politics, ethics and cultures of water in Australia, and its global environmental context, that suggest a need to radically rethink our relationship with this fundamental substance. Contributors from fields as diverse as anthropology, environmental science, indigenous studies, cultural theory, law, urban planning and visual arts discuss the various ways in which we are caught up with water, and the environmental futures that we must enable if we are to sustain ourselves and to let water live.
Literacies in place (2007) Barbara Comber, Helen Nixon & JoAnne Reid (eds), Primary English Teaching Association
In 2004 Barbara Comber, Phil Cormack and Helen Nixon of the LPLC and
Jo-Anne Reid and Bill Green from Charles Sturt University won an ARC Linkage
Grant to critically examine the accomplishments of the Special Forever
project – a 15 year partnership between the Primary English Teaching
Association (PETA) and the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC). The
Special Forever project aims to influence the attitudes of those living
and working in the Basin towards the need for sustainable environmental
practice, by encouraging school children in the region to contribute poems
and stories to an annual anthology (see the
Special Forever website). The
book Literacies in place: Teaching environmental communications edited by
Barbara Comber, Helen Nixon and Jo-Anne Reid and published in March 2007,
reports on one aspect of that research. It provides accounts of the work of
a group of primary school teachers, all of whom live and work in the
Murray-Darling Basin, share a commitment to the Special Forever project, and
have made a commitment to rethink and extend the repertoires of multimodal
literacy they have available to use with their students. The chapters
explore sustainability in their own particular, local, place in its relation
to larger concerns for the Murray-Darling basin as a whole, and for national
and global concerns for the environment.
Rethinking middle years: Early
adolescents, schooling and digital culture
(2006) Victoria Carrington, Allen and Unwin
In this book Victoria Carrington argues for the need to move beyond developmentally based models to see middle years pedagogy in historical, social, economic and political contexts. Setting research from Australia alongside international experience, she emphasises the importance of understanding the risk society, and young people's immersion in digital technologies and consumer culture. She shows how teachers and schools can use this understanding to work more effectively with early adolescents, and how policy-makers and education leaders could reshape the middle years reform agenda to improve professional practice and student outcomes.
ADHD who's failing who?
(2006) Brenton Prosser, Finch Publishing
From Dr Brenton Prosser's extensive research and interviews with young people and their families - ADHD who's failing who?: understanding the impact of ADHD on our young people, schools and society - explores not only how our kids with ADHD are failing society, but how our society is failing these kids. Brenton looks at the myths and facts associated with ADHD; environmental factors that may be contributing to the disorder; how the ADHD label affects how children see themselves and how others see them; and whether medication is the first or last resort. ADHD who's failing who? aims to help parents, teachers, educational advisors and health professionals make informed decisions about how they can support children with ADHD.
Turn-around
pedagogies (2005) Barbara Comber & Barbara Kamler (eds), Primary English
Teaching Association
Every classroom teacher is aware of that one student who is in danger of falling behind their peers in achieving expected literacy levels. In this volume, teacher recount how they were able to change their students' performance in the classroom and, in doing so, reflect upon their own practice. The case studies in each chapter illustrate how the teachers implemented practical ideas and strategies and embraced students' interest in new technologies, encouraging students to actively take responsibility for their own learning.
Globalising
Education (2005) Michael Apple, Jane Kenway, Michael Singh (eds), Peter Lang
Publishing, NY
Chapters by Helen Nixon & Sue Shore
Because "globalization" is expressed in many ways and evokes complex responses, it demands various lines of analysis. Globalizing Education shows how this phenomenon is mediated and mitigated by a range of educational policies, pedagogies, and politics. It identifies the forms of educational governance associated with neoliberal globalism and their manifold effects on nation-state education systems, highlighting the colonizing minority-world imperatives and retraditionalizing ramifications. It also shows how the global cultural economy-the disjunctive flows of images, people, and ideas-both challenges and reinforces conventional educational trajectories. The global/national mesh-works created by drugs, technology, and unions are among the complicated connectivities explored. This book exposes the more pernicious effects on education of neo-liberal and corporate globalization and explores and identifies innovative and transformative educational policies, pedagogies, and politics.
Smyth,
J., & Hattam, R. with Cannon, J., Edwards, J., Wilson, N. and Wurst, S.
(2004) Dropping out, drifting off, being excluded: Becoming somebody without
school. New York: Peter Lang.
This book deals with one of the most urgent, damaging, and complex issues affecting young lives and contemporary society in general - the escalating high school dropout rate. Though against the wishes of teachers and school administrators, young people's decision to leave school is usually made under circumstances that provide little time or space for discussion. This book provides a disturbing account of how students' voices are overridden - lost in the imposition of curriculum and the rush to impose testing, accountability, and management regimes on schools. Dropping Out, Drifting Off, Being Excluded reveals the complex stories that surround identity formation in young lives and the "interactive trouble" as young people struggle to be heard within inhospitable schools and an equally unhelpful education system.
Peter
Kell, Sue Shore & Michael Singh (eds) (2004). Adult education @ 21st
Century, Peter Lang
Adult Education @ 21st Century tackles tough questions concerning how to respond to and engage with transnational education markets and multicultural diversity in a global environment typified by disorienting changes and continuities. Researchers from different countries demonstrate various ways in which the teachers of adults mediate and mitigate the oppressive consequences of the contemporary transition to globalization and the resentment and alienation to which it gives rise. Based on analyses of their work, the contributors argue that teachers and policy makers involved in adult education are significant agents of innovation. From Germany and Norway, across Malaysia and Australia to Canada, the contributors to this book are engaging in transformative projects that are informed by globally oriented thinking and actions aimed at enhancing local viability. Download order form (PDF 108 kb)
Hattam, R. (2004).
Awakening-struggle: Towards a Buddhist critical social theory. Flaxton, Queensland: PostPressed.
The ground-breaking book offers the first extensive comparison of critical theory with socially-engaged Buddhism. Both traditions are concerned with the same thing, liberating/awakening society, but their contexts are so different that the relationship between them has not received the attention it deserves.
Awakening-Struggle culminates in an attempt to outline a Buddhist-inspired
critical theory, focusing on how personal transformation - understood from a
Buddhist perspective - might be the basis for social change. Against the
tendency of so much social critique to lose sight of personal agency, Hattam
shows us how to think more deeply about the dialectic of self and social
delusion.
Professor David Loy,
Bunkyo University, Japan
Barbara
Comber & Jenny Barnett (eds) (2003). Look again: Longitudinal studies of
children's literacy learning. Primary English Teaching Association.
This book is written for teachers and student teachers, for school principals and anyone else interested in the sometimes puzzling world of learning and teaching literacy. This book takes us inside individual children's literacy development from early childhood up to year 6, specifically looking at what made a difference to that development. By looking first at the child and what was going on for that child, and then by standing back and looking at the factors shaping what was going on, the contributors offer a multi-layered account of each child's development and what made a difference. It is hoped that these accounts, and the questions they raise, will prompt teachers to look again at the students in their classrooms and at what makes a difference to their literacy development.
Brenton
Doecke, David Homer, Helen Nixon (eds) (2003). English teachers at Work.
Australian Association for the Teaching of English.
Launched on July 6, 2003 at the conference of the International
Federation for the Teaching of English at the University of Melbourne,
attended by 1400 international delegates.
Do English teachers around the world share a common set of values,
knowledges and experiences? Do they face the same kind of challenges? What
can English teachers from different national settings learn by engaging in
dialogue with one another?
What histories shape the professional practice of English teachers? What
impact have government policies and curricula had on English teachers' sense
of professional identity? How is globalization affecting English teachers'
work?
English Teachers at Work focuses on the professional knowledge and
practice of teachers of English in a range of national settings. The book
offers a richly differentiated view of English teaching at this particular
moment in time, as a site for dialogue and debate as much as agreement and
consensus.
The book has a strong narrative component, foregrounding the situated nature
of English teachers' experiences. The book embodies a dialectical play
between arguments about the nature of subject English and the rich
particularities of specific communities.
Newsletters/Annual Reports
2008 LPLC Annual Report (PDF 394kb)
2007 LPLC Annual Report (PDF 366kb)
No Newsletter or Annual Report was published in 2006
Newsletter August 2005 (PDF 403kb)
Newsletter April 2005 (PDF 290kb)
Newsletter April 2004 (PDF 260kb)
Newsletter October 2003 (PDF 252kb)
Newsletter May 2003 (PDF 242kb)
Newsletter February 2003 (PDF 265kb)