Mulhall awarded 2024 Reading Australia Fellowship
The Copyright Agency has named Maya Mulhall, a teacher from Blackburn High School in Victoria, the 2024 Reading Australia Fellow for teachers of English and literacy and teacher librarians.
Mulhall receives $15,000 for a research project that will focus on developing a respectful, culturally appropriate, and responsive approach to First Nations literature and investigating how the education system can accurately, respectfully and thoroughly analyse First Nations literature without imposing set colonial frameworks of comprehension.
Mulhall will use the anthology Guwayu – For All Times (ed by Jeanine Leane, Magabala) as inspiration, and she aspires to create shareable resources and pedagogies so that fellow educators ‘can move forward with confidence and respectfully position First Nations’ perspectives at the centre of their teaching’, the Copyright Agency said.
Said Mulhall: ‘As a woman of Irish and white Australian heritage, I have been investigating how to approach this area of study without imposing my voice and running the risk of imposing [a] white schema. The 2023 Australian Teachers’ Survey reflects my concerns, with more than half of respondents aged 35 years and over feeling unprepared to approach First Nations knowledges and cultures.
‘Through community engagement and observing cultural protocols, I want to develop real-world strategies and effective resources to help colleagues embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures within their classrooms in an authentic, culturally sensitive and respectful manner.’
Copyright Agency CEO Josephine Johnston said Mulhall’s approach was ‘thoughtful and consultative, and her project strategy appropriately maps out a pathway to create a much needed and culturally appropriate resource for teachers’.
The annual Reading Australia Fellowship is open to English and literacy teachers and teacher librarians with at least five years’ teaching experience in a primary or secondary school. Bridget Forster was awarded the 2023 fellowship for research to explore questions including how teachers can identify cultural bias and ethical issues in the use of AI in the English classroom and how students can be taught to be ethical users.
Reading Australia was created by the Copyright Agency in 2013 with the goal of ‘making it easier for teachers, through their passion and skills, to spread a love for Australian texts’.
Mulhall will share her research and findings with colleagues next year.
Category: Awards Local news
