Invitation for parents to Education Journal Club event

The Pymble Institute is honoured to welcome the College’s inaugural Research Fellow, Dr Debra Dank, to our community next week. The purpose of a Research Fellow is to bring expertise from fields beyond the school gates to students and staff, and to aid in building connections with the world of academia. When Dr Hadwen and Dr Loch began working on the idea of a Research Fellow last year, a commitment was made to appoint a First Nations woman as the inaugural Fellow. This is in recognition of the importance of expanding our skills in research to include researching with First Nations people and understanding how to do this respectfully and inclusively. 

In connecting with Dr Dank, a Gudanji/Wakaja woman whose country is in the Gulf of Carpentaria area in the Northern Territory, the College is gaining much more than expertise in Dr Dank’s specialities of semiotics, language and narrative at the tertiary level. As a primary and secondary teacher, and one of the founders of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, Dr Dank also brings rich experiences in teaching literacy and making reading an integral part of children’s lives. Dr Dank is the acclaimed author of We Come With This Place, which has won four prizes in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. These are the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, the Indigenous Writers’ prize and the overall Book of the Year 2023. We Come With This Place was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize and an excerpt from it was just included in the 2023 NSW Higher School Certificate English examination. 

Parents are invited to an evening with Dr Dank on Tuesday 31 October as part of the journal club hosted by Dr Loch.

Students and staff will also be involved in workshops with Dr Dank in the areas of research ethics, creative non-fiction writing and literacy research, and we look forward to exploring a research project with First Nations Ex-Students of the College.