Breaking out of the Package: Educating literacy and numeracy teachers with agency

Keiko Yasukawa

doi:10.5130/lns.v18i2.1899

PDF

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/lns.v18i2.1899

Keiko Yasukawa

University of Technology Sydney

Abstract

What knowledge, skills and dispositions are needed by adult numeracy and literacy teachers to help their learners imagine and build better lives for themselves and sustainable futures for their children and community? What resources can teachers draw on to be able to exercise agency as a group of professionals to give voice to the needs and aspirations of their learners? Using the contemporary Australian adult numeracy and literacy context as a point of reflection, I argue that some degree of propensity to take risks is needed by teachers if they are to exercise agency as professional educators, and that the universities have a renewed role to play in creating spaces for educating risk-taking educators.

Issue

Vol 18 No 2 (2010)

Section

Refractions

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.

Author Biography

Keiko Yasukawa, University of Technology Sydney

Keiko Yasukawa is a Lecturer in Adult Education at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She teaches and researches in adult numeracy and literacy. As an active member of the Australian Council for Adult Literacy and the NSW Adult Literacy and Numeracy Council, she has been involved in advocacy for a national literacy and numeracy policy renewal. Her email is keiko.yasukawa@uts.edu.au.

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content

Abstract

Article Details

Keiko Yasukawa, University of Technology Sydney