Dr. Brian Cambourne, Associate Professor
Brian Cambourne BA. , Litt B., ( UNE) Ph.D ( JCU)
Overview and Summary of Brian Cambourne’s Curriculum Vitae
Brian Cambourne is currently Principal Fellow in the Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong Australia. He began teaching in 1956 when he was 19 years of age, and spent ten years teaching in a mix of one-room schools, and primary and elementary classrooms K-6 for the New South Wales Department of Education. In his tenth year of service for this department he entered the groves of academe as a teacher educator at Wagga Wagga Teachers' College. He completed his Ph.D at James Cook University in Nth Queensland, and was subsequently a Fullbright Scholar and a Post- Doctoral Fellow at Harvard. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Universities of Illinois and Arizona.
Since 1980 Brian Cambourne has been researching how learning, especially literacy learning occurs. He has conducted this research in the naturalistic mode he prefers by sitting in classrooms for many hundreds of hours. Cambourne argues that teachers who are dissatisfied and/or frustrated with the methods they use to teach literacy are prisoners of a view of learning which is based on quite invalid assumptions and which seriously complicates the process of learning to read and write. He argues for an alternate view of learning and an approach to teaching literacy which uncomplicates the process of learning and makes literacy more accessible to more students, especially non-mainstream students. Furthermore, his data show that this approach to learning leads to the development of highly literate, critically aware, confident readers and writers, who continue to read and write long after they have left school. He has a strong prejudice that literacy is a cultural resource which enables the less privileged members of any culture to challenge those potentially elitist groups who seek to keep economic and political power for themselves. He also believes that we can only have better, fairer, and kinder societies if highly productive, critical literacy is made accessible to as many members of a culture as possible.
Between 1990 and 2000 he was engaged in several large R & D projects in the area of staff development in literacy. His co-researchers in these projects were Andrea Butler, Jan Turbill (Australia), and Gail Langton (USA). This R & D produced the staff development program known as "Frameworks" which was adopted in Australia,n ,USA, PNG, and Canada.
From 1999-2006 he coordinated a prize winning, innovative approach to pre-service education at University of Wollongong known as the ‘ Knowledge Building Community’ ( KBC).
Between 2004 and 2014 he has been an academic partner for professional development projects in many Australian schools
Overview and Summary of Brian Cambourne’s Curriculum Vitae
Brian Cambourne is currently Principal Fellow in the Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong Australia. He began teaching in 1956 when he was 19 years of age, and spent ten years teaching in a mix of one-room schools, and primary and elementary classrooms K-6 for the New South Wales Department of Education. In his tenth year of service for this department he entered the groves of academe as a teacher educator at Wagga Wagga Teachers' College. He completed his Ph.D at James Cook University in Nth Queensland, and was subsequently a Fullbright Scholar and a Post- Doctoral Fellow at Harvard. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Universities of Illinois and Arizona.
Since 1980 Brian Cambourne has been researching how learning, especially literacy learning occurs. He has conducted this research in the naturalistic mode he prefers by sitting in classrooms for many hundreds of hours. Cambourne argues that teachers who are dissatisfied and/or frustrated with the methods they use to teach literacy are prisoners of a view of learning which is based on quite invalid assumptions and which seriously complicates the process of learning to read and write. He argues for an alternate view of learning and an approach to teaching literacy which uncomplicates the process of learning and makes literacy more accessible to more students, especially non-mainstream students. Furthermore, his data show that this approach to learning leads to the development of highly literate, critically aware, confident readers and writers, who continue to read and write long after they have left school. He has a strong prejudice that literacy is a cultural resource which enables the less privileged members of any culture to challenge those potentially elitist groups who seek to keep economic and political power for themselves. He also believes that we can only have better, fairer, and kinder societies if highly productive, critical literacy is made accessible to as many members of a culture as possible.
Between 1990 and 2000 he was engaged in several large R & D projects in the area of staff development in literacy. His co-researchers in these projects were Andrea Butler, Jan Turbill (Australia), and Gail Langton (USA). This R & D produced the staff development program known as "Frameworks" which was adopted in Australia,n ,USA, PNG, and Canada.
From 1999-2006 he coordinated a prize winning, innovative approach to pre-service education at University of Wollongong known as the ‘ Knowledge Building Community’ ( KBC).
Between 2004 and 2014 he has been an academic partner for professional development projects in many Australian schools