Congratulations to our MGSE Researchers in September

September was a great month for a number of our researchers across MGSE, with recognition for their outstanding contributions to the field. Congratulations to colleagues for success with these awards, prizes, and appointments.

• Dr Sonja Arndt was successful in gaining a 2023 ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for her proposal, Constructing a Framework for Early Childhood Teachers’ Cultural Wellbeing. Her project aims to raise early childhood teachers’ cultural wellbeing and belonging, by strengthening anti-racist orientations and inclusion in their teaching teams. Sonja will work with early childhood teachers in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland to generate new knowledge in this area, by sharing their culture stories in multimodal ways. 

• A/Prof Hernan Cuervo received the Research Excellence Award by the Society for Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA – the National Association of Rural Education). Hernan’s award recognises significant contributions to Australian Regional, Rural and Remote education discourse, and will be presented in the 2022 National Conference for Regional, Rural and Remote Education in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, this week.

• Professor Nicola Yelland has been appointed as a Member of the Assessment Sub-Panel in the Social Sciences (Education) by the Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic. Nicola’s appointment was confirmed on the recommendation of the Council for Periodic Assessment of Research, Development, Artistic and Other Creative Activities, after being nominated by the University of Melbourne.

• Dr Bonita Cabiles was presented with the Penny McKay Memorial Award at the ACTA International TESOL Conference on 27 September for her doctoral thesis, Participation and cultural and linguistic diversity: An in-depth qualitative inquiry of an Australian primary classroom. The Penny McKay Memorial is jointly awarded by the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA), and the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand (ALTAANZ) for an outstanding doctoral thesis which benefits the teaching and learning of second/additional languages in Australian schools and pre-schools. 

Congratulations on these exceptional achievements.