Pedagogies for knowledge-building: investigating subject-appropriate, cumulative teaching for twenty-first century school classrooms. To succeed in today's knowledge society, young people need to quickly grasp the organising principles for building different forms of knowledge. This interdisciplinary project explores how teachers marshall the resources of modern classrooms to apprentice students into subject-specific principles for knowledge-building in Science and History.
Grammar and praxis: investigating a grammatics for twenty-first century school English. The project will investigate English teachers' current levels of knowledge about language (KAL) and kinds of knowledge needed for a twenty-first century English curriculum. Project findings from diverse classrooms will yield vital information about how grammar contributes to development of coherent, cumulative and portable KAL at key stages of schooling.
ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time ....ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time of increasingly multilingual demands in trade and information? The Centre will also secure language heritage, develop new language technologies, connect policy with indigenous and migrant communities, and build strategies to help 1st and 2nd language learning and those isolated by language difficulties.Read moreRead less
Origins of Phonology and Lexicon: Abstract representations before 6 months. Language is one of the most sophisticated human abilities, yet infants learn it easily. The current view is that the origins of language are abstract representations of consonants and vowels that start to form at 6-10 months. However, recent evidence shows that abstraction begins before 3 months, and that carer-infant conversations are vital to the process. This study involves tracking infants’ behavioural and brain deve ....Origins of Phonology and Lexicon: Abstract representations before 6 months. Language is one of the most sophisticated human abilities, yet infants learn it easily. The current view is that the origins of language are abstract representations of consonants and vowels that start to form at 6-10 months. However, recent evidence shows that abstraction begins before 3 months, and that carer-infant conversations are vital to the process. This study involves tracking infants’ behavioural and brain development from 1 to 18 months and analysing carer-infant speech, to determine how early abstraction supports vocabulary growth, how carer speech assists this process, and what early conditions predict language development, thus benefiting earlier identification of language delay, and saving significantly on later remediation.Read moreRead less
Understanding bilingual language acquisition in northern Indigenous Australia: phonological, lexical, orthographic, and family factors. Children's language outcomes are critical for health, social inclusion, education and employment. In northern Australia many Indigenous children grow up as Kriol/English bilinguals in disadvantaged communities; this research will establish the linguistic, educational, and family factors in successful language acquisition for these children.