 | Formal Name: Pamela McPherson Personal Title: Ms Position: Director, Teacher Development Services Qualification: M.Ed Adult Education (University of Western Sydney), M.Ed (Information Technology in Education) University of Wollongong, PG Certificate in TESOL, University of Technology, Sydney Telephone: (+61-2) 9850 7674 Fax: (+61-2) 9850 7849 Email: pamela.mcpherson@mq.edu.au Location: W6C 105 webpages: |
Profile
Pam’s Teaching/Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) research and teaching background spans 13 years in the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) and 8 years at the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (NCELTR) and the AMEP Research Centre. In the AMEP she combined teaching with research projects in second language acquisition, bilingual teaching, adult learners with special needs, and teaching disparate learner groups. Her curriculum, program and materials development projects focused on the use of first language resources in teaching and learning and the needs of low literacy learners.
After joining NCELTR and the AMEP Research Centre she took responsibility for teacher training and development programs. Her achievements n this area include acquiring grants for teacher training projects and coordinating their delivery in Australia and overseas; coordinating delivery of the Postgraduate Certificate in TESOL and coordinating the delivery of a national teacher development program for the Adult Migrant English Program. She has conducted research into the use of internet resources in language teaching, the role of tasks in teaching spoken English, the role of Counsellors in the AMEP and modes of delivery for preliterate and low literacy learners.
She also directed a project which produced a course for teaching Australian Citizenship in the AMEP with accompanying multimedia teaching materials.
Research Interests:
- information and communication technologies in language teaching
- participatory methodologies in teacher research
- TESOL research
McPherson, P & Murray, D.E. (2006). Let’s participate: designing a civics course for adult migrants’. In Developing a new course for adult learners. (Eds. M. Snow and L. Kamhi-Stein). (pp 285-309) Alexandria VA: TESOL. https://iweb.tesol.org/Purchase/ProductDetail.aspx?Product_code=295
This chapter describes the processes used to design a content based ESL course. It describes stakeholders’ roles and interests, the processes of syllabus design, and how concepts of citizenship were embedded in a course of English language instruction at differing levels using multimodal teaching materials.
Lloyd, R., McPherson, P. & Murray, D. (2006). Teacher and learner use of new technologies in the AMEP. Sydney: NCELTR.
This publication reports on a study of the ways Australian teachers of adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and their learners use information and communication technologies at home and in classroom learning. It raises important issues about teachers’ understanding of the technologies students need to use for work and study.
Murray, D. & McPherson, P. (2006.) Scaffolding instruction for reading the Web , Language Teaching Research 10. 2 (pp 131-156). http://ltr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/131
Our earlier research on adult esl reading demonstrated that it cannot be assumed that strategies for reading print can be unproblematically applied to the reading of websites. This article reports on research undertaken with teachers to develop a scaffolded approach to teach two kinds of reading activity for websites: reading to navigate, that is reading webpages in order to find a way around websites; and navigating to read, that is navigating websites in order to locate information.
Murray, D. & McPherson, P. (2005). (Eds). Navigating to Read – Reading to Navigate. Sydney: NCELTR.
The research for this book highlighted two distinct but interrelated reading activities learners
need to engage in to use the Web: reading webpages to find their way around a website and navigating webpages in order to find and read information to achieve a language learning goal.
Murray, D. & McPherson, P. (2004). Using the Web to support language learning. Sydney: NCELTR.
McPherson, P. & Murray, D. (2003). Communicating on the Net. Sydney: NCELTR.
These two publications are based on research conducted with ESL teachers on using information and communication technologies to teach English to adult second language learners. Each chapter reviews the literature on use of information technologies in education and applies teaching methods that serves the dual purpose of familarising students with information and communication technologies while advancing their English language and literacy skills.
