Michele Anstey
Dr Michèle Anstey is co-director of ABC: Anstey and Bull Consultants in Education (www.ansteybull.com.au) and conducts professional development in literacy and children's literature throughout Australia as well as providing consultancy to state and private education systems. Formerly an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Queensland she was also Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Education, won the University Award for Excellence in Scholarship and was awarded a National Award for Excellence in Practice, Design and Delivery of Open and Distance Learning. As Director of and Principal Adviser to the Literate Futures Project for Education Queensland a state-wide professional development initiative for all teachers she authored Literate Futures: Reading (2002) and Professional Development: The Teaching of Reading in a Multiliterate World: a handbook (2004). She is a former editor of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy and taught in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland in country and city schools and state and private systems. Together with Geoff Bull she has published Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies 2006, The Literacy Landscape 2005, The Literacy Labyrinth (2nd Edition), 2004; The Literacy Lexicon (2nd Edition), 2003; Crossing the Boundaries 2002, and Reading the Visual: written and illustrated children's literature 2000.
Russell Bishop
Russell Bishop is foundation Professor for Maori Education in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He is also a qualified and experienced secondary school teacher. Prior to his present appointment he was a senior lecturer in Maori Education in the Education Department at the University of Otago and Interim Director for Otago University's Teacher Education programme.
His research experience is in the area of collaborative storying as Kaupapa Maori research, having written a book “Collaborative Research Stories: Whakawhanaungatanga” and published nationally and internationally on this topic. His other research interests include institutional change, Critical Multicultural Education, and Collaborative Storying as Pedagogy. The latter area is the subject of a book, co-authored with Professor Ted Glynn, published in 1999. This book “Culture Counts: Changing Power Relationships in Classrooms”, demonstrates how the experiences developed from within kaupapa Maori settings; schooling, research and policy development, can be applied to mainstream educational settings. A further book, “Pathologising Practices: The impact of deficit thinking on education”, co-authored with Carolyn Shields and Andre Mazawi, and published by Peter Lang, investigates how deficit thinking pathologizes the lived experiences of children and prevents minoritized children from achieving their full potential in schools. His most recent book, with Mere Berryman, “Culture Speaks”, examines the experiences of Maori students, their families, their principals and their teachers with the schooling of Maori students. The message of this book is simple; Classroom relationships are paramount; all other actions flow from this wellspring.
He is currently the project director for Te Kotahitanga, a large New Zealand Ministry of Education funded research /professional development project that seeks to improve the educational achievement of Maori students in mainstream classrooms through the implementation of a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations.Linda Gambrell
Linda B. Gambrell is Distinguished Professor of Education in the Eugene T. Moore School of Education at Clemson University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate literacy courses. Prior to coming to Clemson University in 1999, she was Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education at University of Maryland. She began her career as an elementary classroom teacher and reading specialist in Prince George's County, Maryland. From 1992-97, she was principal investigator at the National Reading Research Center where she directed the Literacy Motivation Project. She has served as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association, National Reading Conference, and College Reading Association. She has served as President of the National Reading Conference and the College Reading Association. In 2007-08 she served as President of the International Reading Association.
Her major research areas are literacy motivation, the role of discussion in teaching and learning, and comprehension monitoring. She has authored/co-authored 10 books and over 100 chapters and journal articles on literacy. Her research has been published in major scholarly journals including Reading Research Quarterly, Educational Psychologist, and Journal of Educational Research. She has served on the editorial review boards for the most prestigious peer reviewed journals in the field of literacy. She has served as co-editor of The Journal of Reading Behavior, a publication of the National Reading Conference, and Literacy Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Reading and Writing.
Linda has received professional honors and awards including the College Reading Association A.B. Herr Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Reading, 1994; International Reading Association Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award, 1998; National Reading Conference Albert J. Kingston Award, 2001; College Reading Association Laureate Award, 2002; and in 2004 she was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame.
Peter Johnston
Peter Johnston grew up and taught primary school in New Zealand before moving to the United States to do his PhD at the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. At the time his plans did not include staying in the US let alone getting married and raising a family. He now lives in Albany, New York with his wife Tina and a cat left behind by one of his (three) children returning briefly from college.
Peter's research and writing spring from his fascination with children's learning and, no less, teachers' teaching. He believes that education is not simply about delivering information to children. He thinks it is more about building a just, caring society and that doing so will not detract from our more obviously pragmatic educational goals. In his most recent Stenhouse book, Choice Words, he uses his fascination with the relationship between language and learning to show how this works, moment to moment in the classroom.
A professor at the State University of New York at Albany, Peter and his colleagues Becky Rogers and Cheryl Dozier recently researched their own teaching of beginning teachers in Critical literacy/critical teaching: Tools for preparing responsive teachers. Knowing Literacy, his most recent book on assessment, arose from his interest in the ways assessment teaching and learning are linked. His research on assessment has given him reason to be skeptical of high stakes testing because of its effects on teaching and learning.
When asked to describe himself as a writer, he says that he "binges". While not recommended, this approach has resulted in some eight books and about 50 research articles along with occasional awards from professional organizations, including his induction into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2006.
John Marsden
From an early age John enjoyed the journeys into magical worlds that reading could provide. His teachers in Grades 4 and 6 encouraged him to write, and at the age of nine he decided he wanted to become an author.
After undertaking initial studies in Law at the University of Sydney, John began a teaching course when he was 28. Embarking on a teaching career, he also became more and more interested in writing, and in 1987 succeeded in getting his first book, 'So Much to Tell You' published. A string of huge hits followed, highlighted by the Tomorrow series and Ellie chronicles. John has now sold more than two and a half million books in Australia alone and is an international best-seller, with many major awards to his credit.
In 1998 he bought the Tye Estate, 850 acres of natural bush, on the edge of Melbourne, and later added the property next door. For eight years he ran enormously popular writers' courses and camps at Tye, before starting his own school there, Candlebark, in 2006.
Candlebark is a P-8 school, which has been described by John as 'somewhere between Steiner and The Simpsons'. It's friendly, lively and positive atmosphere has resulted in such early success that it has a four-year waiting list.
Tanya Batt
Who's that crossing my bridge?
Burning bridges, water under the bridge and a good ol' trip trop across the bridge – our stories are our worded bridges, connecting and spanning otherwise uncrossable divides.
Join Tanya Batt, storytelling 'troll'-up and frock-o-holic for a playful audible romp.
Tanya Batt is a self confessed story-o-phile and frock-o-holic who channelled her childhood propensity for talking and her love of dressing up into a real 'imaginary job'. Her story adventures have taken her all over the world, to place both on and off maps. She both tells and writes stories. Her work is characterized by a weaving of the ordinary and the fabulous. She currently dwells on the enchanted Isle of Waiheke where she directs 'The Story Centre' and the 'Once Upon An Island Waiheke Festival of Story'.