LPLC People
The Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures (LPLC) consists of a core team of eleven researchers. The centre's capacity to provide a focus for cross and interdisciplinary research is reflected in its associate, affiliate and adjunct membership, with active collaboration across schools, divisions and institutions, both local and international.
- Staff Members
- Key Researchers
- Researchers
- Associate Members
- Affiliate Members
- Adjunct Members
- Project Research Staff
Our Graduates
Staff Members
Rob Hattam
Rob Hattam is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UniSA
and currently Acting Director of the Centre for Studies in Literacy,
Policy and Learning Cultures (LPLC). He has had extensive experience in
co-directing interdisciplinary educational research projects in
multi-sited ethnographic studies in over 100 schools that have focused
on teachers’ work, the cultural dimension of schools, and teaching and
learning practices. He has been involved in Australian Research Council
funded projects on teachers’ learning in the devolving school; early
school leaving; and middle schooling; and projects such as: Re-thinking Reconciliation and
Pedagogy in Unsettling Times; Redesigning pedagogies in the North
and
Schooling, Globalisation and Refugees in Queensland. He has published
in a range of journals including Pedagogy, Culture and Society, British
Journal of Sociology of Education, British Educational Research Journal,
and Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. He has
been involved in book projects with others that include Schooling for a
Fair Go, Teachers' Work in a Globalising Economy, and Dropping Out,
Drifting Off, Being Excluded: Becoming Somebody Without School. Recently
he published a book entitled Awakening-Struggle: Towards a Buddhist critical
theory.
Sarah Rose,
Centre Research Assistant/Office manager
Sarah works as Office Manager for the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures (LPLC) and in addition provides research assistance to all members of the Centre for Research in Education (CREd), within the School of Education. She completed a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education with the University of South Australia in 1997 and a Masters of Education with the University of Southern Queensland in 1998. In the past Sarah has worked as Research Assistant on various projects including the Socio-economically disadvantaged students and the development of literacies in school project (1998-2001) and the Children of the new millennium project (2002-2004), but now provides research assistance to CREd members.
Key Researchers
Barbara Comber
Professor Barbara Comber is a Key Researcher in the Hawke Research
Institute and the LPLC, and Professor in the School of Education.
Her research interests include literacy, teachers' work, social justice,
critical literacies, popular culture, poverty and education, and
school-based collaborative research. She has recently co-edited three
books: Turn-around pedagogies (Comber & Kamler, 2005) Look again:
longitudinal studies of children's literacy learning (Comber & Barnett,
2003) and Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (Comber &
Simpson, 2001). She is currently working on a number of research
projects with teacher-researchers in different locales. These include
Mandated literacy assessment and the reorganisation of teachers' work
(an ARC funded project); The future SACE school to work literacy and the
The future SACE school to work literacy and numeracy projects (both funded by DECS).
Previous projects include Urban renewal from the inside out: students and community involvement
in re-designing and re-constructing school spaces in a poor
neighbourhood (with Helen Nixon, Jackie Cook and Stephen Loo) and
River Literacies (an ARC Linkage Grant with Phil Cormack, Helen Nixon,
Bill Green and JoAnne Reid (Charles Sturt University) and Andrew
Connolly (PETA).
Phil Cormack
Associate Professor Phil Cormack is a Key Researcher in the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures. His work involves research on the history of adolescence, schooling, reading and literacy; on literacy and place; on middle school pedagogies; and on boys and literacy. He has experience as a school system manager, curriculum adviser, curriculum writer and teacher in primary, secondary and middle school settings. Phil is currently working on an ARC funded project - Teaching reading in Australia: An historical investigation of early reading pedagogy, the figure of the teacher and literacy education with Bill Green (Charles Sturt University) and Annette Patterson (Queensland University of Technology); and the The future SACE school to work literacy and the The future SACE school to work literacy and numeracy projects (both funded by DECS).
Rob Hattam
Rob Hattam is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UniSA and currently Acting Director of the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures (LPLC). He has had extensive experience in co-directing interdisciplinary educational research projects in multi-sited ethnographic studies in over 100 schools that have focused on teachers’ work, the cultural dimension of schools, and teaching and learning practices. He has been involved in Australian Research Council funded projects on teachers’ learning in the devolving school; early school leaving; and middle schooling; and projects such as: Re-thinking Reconciliation and Pedagogy in Unsettling Times; Redesigning pedagogies in the North and Schooling, Globalisation and Refugees in Queensland. He has published in a range of journals including Pedagogy, Culture and Society, British Journal of Sociology of Education, British Educational Research Journal, and Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. He has been involved in book projects with others that include Schooling for a Fair Go, Teachers' Work in a Globalising Economy, and Dropping Out, Drifting Off, Being Excluded: Becoming Somebody Without School. Recently he published a book entitled Awakening-Struggle: Towards a Buddhist critical theory.
Susan Nichols
Sue Nichols is an experienced educational researcher whose work spans the early years, schooling and higher education. Her diverse portfolio of research and publication covers the fields of literacy, pedagogy, learning difficulties, parent involvement and teacher research and is informed by theories of discourse, subjectivity, gender, and sociolinguistics. She has written chapters in several internationally published books including Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies as well as articles for Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy and Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities. Her research in the field of parents and literacy broke new ground in its focus on mothers’ and fathers’ negotiation of their literate labour and understandings of their children’s literacy development. She is currently exploring the notion of parents’ learning networks: textual, social, physical and digital and is Chief Investigator with Helen Nixon and Jennifer Rowsell (Rutgers University) on the ARC funded project Parents' networks: the circulation of knowledge about children's literacy learning.
Helen Nixon
Helen Nixon is Associate Professor of Education. Her teaching and research
are in the field of literacy studies, in the areas of literacy and
social justice, literacy and popular culture, and literacy and
information and communications technologies (ICT). Helen is currently
Chief Investigator along with Sue Nichols and Jennifer Rowsell (Rutgers University) on the ARC funded project Parents'
networks: the circulation of knowledge about children's literacy
learning. She has also been Chief Investigator on: Literacy
and the environment: A situated study of multimediated literacy,
sustainability, local knowledges and educational change (ARC Linkage
project); Reinvigorating middle years pedagogy in 'rustbelt' secondary schools
(ARC Linkage project); and with colleagues in Education, Journalism and Architecture she was Chief
Investigator on a Myer Foundation funded project (2004-2005) Urban
renewal from the inside-out: Students and community involvement in
re-designing and re-constructing school spaces in a poor neighbourhood.
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Researchers
Marie Brennan
Professor Marie Brennan is Professor of Education at the University of South Australia, where she has recently finished a five year term as Dean of Education and Head of School at the University of South Australia. Her previous academic jobs were at the University of Canberra, Central Queensland University and Deakin Universities. Prior to being an academic, Marie worked for almost twenty years in the Victorian Education Department in a range of positions. Marie is on the Board of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, and is active nationally in promoting the education sector, as well as conducting research, supervising doctoral students and providing leadership in the School of Education.
Rosie Kerin
Rosie completed her Doctor of Education Research Portfolio in September 2006 and as such has begun her research career in education. While undertaking her doctorate, Kerin was employed as a Literacy Consultant for Catholic Education in South Australia (2001-2006), working with teachers in classrooms and professional learning contexts. Prior to that appointment she was employed as a research assistant across a number of projects at the University of South Australia and has worked as an independent literacy consultant in Adelaide, Alice Springs and Singapore.
David Lloyd
David Lloyd is a lecturer in the School of Education in science and mathematics education. He teaches in the undergraduate program, B ED (Primary and Middle) and in the Graduate Certificate of Education. David coordinates a general study, Local and Global Environments, that draws on many areas of learning including science, mathematics and environmental studies. His current research is in improving pedagogies in middle schooling. Other research interests include Science education; Middle schooling; Conceptual Mediation Program; Futures Education; Environmental Education and Transpersonal studies.
Sue Shore
Sue Shore teaches in the areas of theory and practice in education and research methods. She is currently supervising a number of of PhD and professional doctorate (EdD) students interested in whiteness, issues of culture and race, and social justice. Sue is particularly interested in exploring theory-practice relations and how these complex issues are worked through ‘in the flesh’. She has undertaken research projects in vocational education and training contexts and community settings exploring ideas about ‘inclusive curriculum practice’ and decision making in community education programs. More recently Sue completed a project on TAFE managers' understandings of whiteness in relation to their decision making and management practices in postschool education and is particularly interested in using whiteness as a theoretical tool to understand the nature of racialised discourse in theory building and policy making.
Lew Zipin
Lew Zipin is a ‘critical sociologist’ of education with a PhD (1999) from the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a teacher and scholar, he is versed in critical social theories and their use in analysing how power inequalities operate in educational institutions and policies. As a researcher and activist, Lew pursues socially just educational change, including through two current LPLC-based funded projects involving collaborations with schools in Adelaide’s northern suburbs: a project on boys’ literacies and identities in relation to curriculum; and a project on redesigning middle school curriculum and pedagogy to incorporate students’ ‘lifeworld funds of knowledge’. Lew engages in similar projects as a consultant with the Adelaide branch of the Australian Education Union. He has authored chapters in internationally published books as well as articles in journals such as Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education; Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies; International Journal of Leadership in Education; and Australian Educational Researcher.
Associate Members
(University of South Australia)
Di Bills
Lynne Badger
Jenny Barnett
Peter Bishop
Gerry Bloustien
Jill Burton
Mike Chartres
Jackie Cook
Vicki Crowley
Margaret Hicks
Virginia Hussin
Bruce Johnson
Zheng Lin
Betty Leask
Cassandra Loeser
Kathy Paige
Brenton Prosser
Alan Reid
Greg Restall
Dale Wache
Affiliate Members
Ted Nunan (University of South Australia)
Ian Reid (International
Centre of Excellence in Water Resource Management)
Lucy Resnyansky (Defence Science and Technology Organisation)
Ronda Schloithe (University of South Australia)
Lyn Tonkin(University of South Australia)
Adjunct Members
Blye Frank(Dalhousie University, Canada)
Pat Grant (University of South Australia)
Bill Green (Charles Sturt University, NSW)
Andy Manning (Mt St Vincent University, Nova Scotia)
Hilary Janks
(University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)
Jo-Anne Reid (Charles Sturt University, NSW)
Von Sanderson (University of South Australia)
Julian Sefton-Green
Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham, UK)
Project Research Staff
Lyn Kerkham,
Research Assistant/Lecturer
Lyn teaches in under-graduate and post-graduate teacher education courses and has a particular interest in literacies education. She has been involved as a research assistant in a 3-year project Teachers investigate unequal outcomes: cross-generational perspectives, and is currently working on Literacy and the Environment: A situates study of multi-mediated literacy, sustainability, local knowledges and educational change. Her interest in place-based education and teachers’ multiple identities are reflected in her recent work towards a PhD.
Philippa Milroy, Research Assistant
Pippa joined us in 2006 as part of the 3-year project Redesigning Pedagogies in the North, where she works with a large group of university researchers and thirty teachers across ten middle schools in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. She also teaches secondary English, Science and Biology. Her education interests include regenerating middle schooling and effective communication of teacher knowledge.
Annmarie Reid, Research Assistant
Annmarie Reid worked as a Teacher Librarian and taught English, History and Drama in a variety of secondary schools for twenty years, before her desire to work with beginning teachers led her to seek employment in the university sector. Annmarie has an MA in Information Studies and has taught post-graduate students at UniSA, as well as BEd students at Flinders University. Her research interests include literacy, middle schooling, oral history, life history writing, story-telling in organisations, beginning teachers and the impact of stress and illness on teachers’ work. Annmarie is currently the Research Assistant for the 2009 futureSACE School to Work Innovation Program: Literacy and Numeracy Project, a joint project between UniSA, Flinders University and the futureSACE Office.
Rochelle Woodley-Baker, Research Assistant
Rochelle has had over 20 years experience in community health, local government and running her own social planning consultancy. Her research interests are in the areas of equity in education, urban sociology and visual sociology, social policy and social and community planning. She has an active research interest in healthy cities, place making, community engagement and women and development. Rochelle is currently working on the University Aspirations Project and teaching Social Planning Techniques in the Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning.