Education

Dr Audrey Grant is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Educational Studies, and convenes the Master of Adult Education, and the Graduate Diploma and Graduate Certificate programs in literacy, adult literacy and basic education (ALBE). She specialises in literacy and adult education, with related interests in qualitative research, managing organisational change, globalisation and workplace education and training.

A regular presenter at international conferences, Audrey has also participated in study programs in Africa, China, Vietnam and Ireland. In July 2000, Professor Shirley Brice Heath and Audrey were the literacy consultants and keynote speakers at the Vernacular Literacy in the Pacific Conference in Papua New Guinea.

Audrey has played a leading role in adult literacy research and training in Australia, and in professional development initiatives in language, literacy and workplace education, involving teams of teacher educators, practitioners, researchers and higher degree students. Some of this work has been published in books, including Opportunity to do Brilliantly: TAFE and the Challenge of Adult Literacy Provision in Australia. (AGPS).

Audrey's research interests encompass interview, case study and discourse based analysis, focusing on:

• social practices and uses of literacy in school, family, community and the workplace;
• narrative approaches and biography (multi-storied studies of experiential learning and teaching, literacy biographies, identity and lifestories);
• reconceptualising literacy policy, provision and pedagogy in contexts of social change and globalisation and multiliteracies;
• sociocultural analysis of organisational change, development and globalisation;
• restor(y)ing of public and community education for citizenship and sustainable futures.

Three current projects are researching the learning biographies and life stories of young people and adults; the biliterate reading biographies of Chinese postgraduate students; and the development of reflective assessment practices and on-line descriptive indicators to support reading, writing and advocacy in secondary schools.

• The phenomenon of literacy: three adult literacy students' experiences of their school years.
• Vernacular education and language programming at the provincial level within Papua New Guinea.
• Teachers' theories of reading: A case study of professional development.
• A study of the agricultural extension program in Malawi, based on staff and farmers' perceptions.
• Good beginnings: A search for authenticity in adult education practice and identity.
• Becoming literate in an emerging literate society: a case study of the Abun people of Irian Jaya.
• Women's lives and literacies in Egypt.

• Education: towards restor(y)ing a vision of education for the third millennium (we've had the restructuring!)
• Understanding the contexts of vernacular literacy
• A multistoried approach to research: narrative, literacy and discourse
• Vernacular Literacy in the Pacific: the Tasks - the Contexts.