Amanda Gutierrez

Background

About Amanda Gutierrez

Amanda has always had an interest in social justice and literacy. Her research projects across her career reflect her desire to develop critically literate students and teacher practitioners. Her Masters project focused on her struggles with her 'white' identity as she implemented a critical literacy program on Indigenous issues with a culturally diverse year 9 class. This class included students who were disengaged and often absent from school. As she reflected on her own place in this context and what critical literacy meant for students often stereotyped as disengaged, she found her relationship with the students improved as well as their interest and literacy levels. Her PhD project shifted the focus from student to curriculum policy and teacher perceptions. She compared two states (QLD and VIC) in relation to curriculum and teacher definitions of critical literacy and teacher hybridizations of critical literacy. Using a Bakhtinian framework to understand ideological becoming, she developed an understanding of what teachers and policy makers in different state contexts perceive critical literacy to be, which voices they engage with, and the values they place on various approaches and theories to English education. Amanda now works as a Senior lecturer in professional practice and literacy at the Australian Catholic University. She works and publishes in the area of professional practice and partnerships in both local and international settings (specifically through partnership work in Myanmar), critical literacy and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy. In both Australian and developing nations, Amanda is interested in using Bakhtinian perspectives to understand the ways teachers conceptualise literacies and teacher standards, and contexts of partnership formation and evolution.