Research in Languages, Literacies, Literature (LLL)

— formerly CREME*

A pluralistic approach to research

Teaching and learning in 21st century Australia means taking on the diversity of Australia's plurilingual environment. 'Diversity' is far from a neutral term. Many children come to school from different life-worlds and some of these children experience socio-economic disadvantage because of their distinct lived world. For this reason, our research focuses on diversity and difference, and tackles disadvantage head-on, while aiming to provide teachers and learners with new ways of understanding languages, literature and literacies.

This pluralistic approach to Languages, Literacies and Literature is reflected in the LLL naming of our network. The term, languages, acknowledges the different languages spoken by many learners in Australia in addition to English and the need to take account of these in educational research. The term literacies refers to practices that encompass multimodal and multimedia forms of literacy, including those influenced or transformed by digital technologies.

Multimedia research in literacies and language

Use of interactive multimedia technology in English Language Teaching

Current projects in this domain include disciplinary literacies, metalanguages for verbal, visual and multimodal texts, Montessori education and literacies of place. Our work on literature is in nascent stages and includes research on oral and digital storytelling, picture-book semiotics, narrative interpretation and the role of metacognition in critical approaches to literature. Whilst many of our current research projects focus on school contexts, others investigate learning in other communities of practice – on-line assessment and feedback, Business English, and multimodal authoring.

Our goal

Our overall goal is to generate new understandings of languages, literacies and literature in schools and other communities of practice and to enhance the work of teachers and learners. We support researchers, teachers, students and others involved in English, literacies, TESOL/EAL/D and Languages Education, through individual and collaborative research projects and supervision of higher education research students.

*CREME

The work of LLL researchers builds on nationally significant work of the Centre for Research in English and Multiliteracies Education (CREME) from 2006–2012, led by Professor Len Unsworth.