Professor Barbara Comber
Affiliation: Adelaide University
Discipline: Education
Year elected: 2024
What initially drew you to your field of study?
After my degree, I initially began working as a high school teacher of English and the humanities, but in my first year I discovered that many of my students either could not or had not desire to read and write well enough to enjoy my carefully planned lessons and tasks. That sent me back to university and in my second year of teaching I undertook a Graduate Diploma of Reading as I needed to understand how people learned to read and write. From there my curiosity expanded as I learned alongside a range of students with a range of learning challenges and strengths. I continued to study how literacy was enacted in different classrooms throughout my masters and doctoral work and became hooked on fieldwork. I also learned how to bring sociological and psycholinguistic theory to bear on my everyday pedagogical practices.
What continues to motivate your work?
I am interested in building inter-generational international networks of scholars and front-line educators designing and enacting literacy curriculum for social and environmental justice. I desperately want good things – ethical practices – to go viral. That’s my current obsession. There was a moment, during COVID19, when teaching as a profession gained some reputational value. Unfortunately, I don’t think it stuck. We need to invest in teachers.
What question or issue, in your field, keeps you awake at night?
I worry that children who are disadvantaged receive a more limited education than children who enjoy privileges in all aspects of their lives. In other words, children growing up in poverty can be seen in deficit terms and that in turn impacts the quality and complexity of what they are offered. My over-riding research question continues to be: What kinds of literacy are children in different places offered and what do different children do with these, over time? In this era of fake news, mis and disinformation, and AI, it is more important than ever that all young people learn to question what they read, what they see, what they hear, what they experience. Critical literacy is more important than ever.
What should your field of study be doing more of right now?
I believe educational research has suffered from the effects of negative and limited policy and media. The more teachers’ work is under-valued, the harder it becomes to teach really well. The harder it becomes to recruit and retain excellent committed teachers. The field needs to undertake more grounded longitudinal studies of education that makes a positive difference long-term to diverse students.