Keynote speakers

ACAL is delighted to announce the following keynote speakers.

 

'Anticipating PIAAC: what to look for, and when to be wary'

Jeff EvansDr Jeff Evans - Emeritus Reader at Middlesex University, UK.

Jeff Evans, a social practices numeracy researcher and research methodologist, has produced critical appreciations of contemporary definitions of ‘numeracy’ and ‘mathematical literacy’, and of various attempts to provide measures for these.

He has recently served on the Numeracy Expert Group of the OECD sponsored Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

 

'Language and Literacy Socialisation: From the local to the global in the remote Indigenous context'

Dr Inge KralDr Inge Kral - Research Fellow, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University

Inge Kral is a linguistic anthropologist with more than twenty years experience in Indigenous education, languages and literacy. Prior to coming to CAEPR in 2003, she was a teacher, teacher linguist, adult literacy educator and education consultant in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Inge's research interests include community-based out of school learning and literacy; youth, digital media and new literacies; family literacy; Australian Indigenous languages and literacy; school to work transitions; and population mobility. She is the author of Talk, Text and Technology: Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community, published in 2012 by Multilingual Matters.

'Tracing the Global in the Local'

Mary HamiltonProfessor Mary Hamilton - Lancaster University, UK.

Mary Hamilton is one of the founding figures of New Literacy Studies that introduced a social practices perspective on understanding and researching literacy.

In recent years Professor Hamilton’s works have included historical and interpretative policy analysis exploring how international influences reach into local practice and the implications of this for tutor and student agency in adult literacy education. Through her publications and research she has developed particular expertise in the international surveys of literacy and the politics of measurement.

 

'Learning from the Other End: Early literacies and language mobilities'

Professor Alastair PennycookProfessor Alastair Pennycook – University of Technology, Sydney

Alastair Pennycook is Professor of Language Studies at UTS. He has been involved in language education for over 30 years in France, Germany, Japan, China, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. He is well known for his work on the global spread of English, particularly in his classic text The cultural politics of English as an international language, (Longman, 1994).

He is currently working on two major research projects, one on early literacy in disadvantaged communities and the other on urban linguistic diversity (metrolingualism).

His most recent (2012) book is Language and mobility: Unexpected places which looks at the ways languages turn up in unexpected places. This follows on from the arguments in his 2010 book Language as a local practice that we need to consider very seriously the relations between language, practices and locality.