Dr Amy Farndale

Dr Amy Farndale is a researcher, course coordinator, lecturer, and tutor in early years language and literacy, working mostly on Kaurna Country. She is an experienced preschool and school teacher, having worked in Australia, the UK, Paris and Kenya for over two decades. Amy is a member of UniSA's RESI - Research in Education and Social Inclusion. Her passions lie in supporting people, both young and mature-aged, to communicate well and in diverse ways.

Research Record

Dr Farndale's PhD expertise lies in supporting bilingual preschoolers' language development and identifying ways educators are aware of power, interactions and emotions that support bilingual language learning. She was awarded a deLissa Scholarship to undertake the research with culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers, with Professor Pauline Harris. Dr Farndale's case study and action research, inspired by ethnographic techniques (participant observation included), explores conceptual frameworks incorporating Bourdieu's (1991) cultural and linguistic capital, social interactionist theories of Rogoff (2004), Vygotsky's SCT (1978) and Reggio Emilia principles (Rinaldi 2013), as well as culturally responsive pedagogies. Amy additionally draws from Systemic Functional Linguistics' context of culture and situation (Halliday 2004), and diverse preschoolers' communication through multiple modes (Antsey & Bull 2012). Amy has worked for both UniSA and the department for education since 2001.

Amy incorporates theories of emotions in her research on functional language use (Plutchik 2001; MacIntye 2002; Swain 2013)--she argues that:

         'emotions impact on people's speech and expression and that emotions should be considered within the context of culture and                 situation (field, tenor and mode). Emotions act as our amplifier to speak, or not, and if we do speak, emotions impact on what we               say and to whom. When educators are aware of this, they can adapt the context to encourage more opportunities for children to               communicate with others.'

Balancing bilingualism is another concept explored by Amy who argues that education should not be dominated by English, but rather should incorporate children's community, family and home languages. More recently Amy has been authoring an articles about communicative capital - how children who are bilingual translanguage at preschool with their community, how Aboriginal and all children can be encouraged to express themselves in many ways (moving props for instance), and how children with Autism can express themselves through the 'moving language' to create stories. Her pedagogy highlights inclusion, Aboriginal perspectives, and recognition of children's communicative capital.

Amy's most recently led collaborative project (with an undergrad student, Amelia Lambden, who received a UniSA vacation scholarship, Sue Hill and Celia Couthard - an Adnyamathanha dual language book illustrator) involves studying the power in first nations children's literature and locating from where educators can source dual language Aboriginal texts in South Australia for 3 to 6 year olds. 

Acknowledging the power of children's multiple languages and understanding the contexts in which children express themselves and ways children express themselves, through social interactions, with attention to how emotions affect language learning, is Amy's life mission.

Dr Farndale's supervisory interests lie in supporting researchers of translanguaging and literacy in the early years of education. 

Her view of literacy draws from the Early Years Learning Framework (2009, p. 46) in that 'literacy incorporates a range of modes of communication including music, movement, dance, storytelling, visual arts, media and drama, as well as talking, listening, viewing, reading and writing' in the many languages of our communities.

Courses I tutor, lecture and coordinate

Amy is a member of the UniSA literacy team and teaches in the Bachelor of Education program where she leads classes in Studies in English Education 1 and 2. Amy also leads classes in the Masters of Education program for curriculum specialisation (literacy focus) and the ECE literacy intensive Birth to 5.

Preparing pre-service teachers for supporting culturally and linguistically diverse learners is Amy's specialty. She continues to consider herself a preschool teacher for life, albeit from a distance now, as she works for UniSA full-time as an academic (drawing attention to the injustice of an English only curriculum). Reducing English language dominance and de-colonizing the curriculum are goals Amy sets herself in her teaching and her research. Amy enjoys making supervision visits to local preschools to liaise with undergraduates on professional experience and educators in the field. 

Personal life

Amy shared-care parents a 12 year old daughter who loves musical theatre - dancing, singing, and acting - communicating in multimodal ways expressing her culturally diverse British, German, Kenyan, Australian heritage. Amy has taught some Swahili at the Kenyan ethnic school association, she learned Bahasa Indonesian in her own schooling, and previously self-taught some French during her working travels teaching bilingual children in France. Being curious and demonstrating cultural humility is part of Amy's identity. 

Department for Education and Child Development,

TESOL research group UniSA,

de Lissa Research group, UniSA, School of Education UniSA

Translanguaging research group

West Torrens Partnership DECD

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master of Education (Early Childhood Education) University of South Australia

• Bachelor of Early Childhod Education with Honours University of South Australia

Work history

2015-2019

Tutor of Studies in English Education 1, UniSA

2014-2019

Preschool Teacher and Acting-Director at Kurralta Park Community Kindergarten, DECD/DfE

2012-2018 

Case Study Researcher - Bilingual preschoolers' social interactions, emotional challenges and functional language use while learning English as an additional language.

2008-2010

New Arrivals Program Teacher / Intensive English Language Classroom Teacher at Richmond Primary, DECD

2002 - 2018

Early Years Teacher in various metropolitan and country locations for the DECD

2007-2008

Volunteer Teacher - library project coordinator in Kenya.

2006

English Tutor/nanny in Paris, France

2001 & 2005

Key stage 1 teacher in England