Cultural Perspectives on Indigenous Students' Reading Performance (eBook)

This book explores the contextual, particularly cultural-related, factors that may impact reading outcomes of young Indigenous learners in their early years, underpinned by the conceptual framework of cultural capital originated by Bourdieu. By drawing upon a participatory and exploratory case study, conducted at a regional school in Australia over a period of six months, it highlights the challenges that Indigenous students face in reading, and how the contextual factors contribute to Indigenous students' development in reading skills and their reading performance. This book helps readers to gain a better and deeper understanding of Indigenous culture, the importance of the role that culture plays in Indigenous children's literacy education, and how it shapes the way they learn and think.

Dr Gui Ying Annie Yang-Heim is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Ball State University in the United States of America (USA). Currently, she teaches Literacy Instructions, and Social Justice for Early Childhood and Elementary Education, at the university. She attained her PhD degree, specializing in Curriculum and Professional Studies, from University of South Australia, Australia, in 2021. As a school teacher for over a decade, Dr Yang-Heim has taught various subjects, primarily Literacy and Numeracy, from Kindergarten to High School in China, Australia, and the USA.  She has presented research papers at international conferences, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference, and the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference, and also has research articles published in journals. Dr Yang-Heim has acted as a regular proposal reviewer for journals and conferences. She also serves as an Area Chair for International Research on Literacy Learning and Teaching (Area 12) of the LRA - Literacy Research Association. Her research interests focuses on developing the Pluralistic Model, and using this model to explore the learning needs of Early Childhood/Elementary students from diverse cultural, linguistic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds; and identifying ways to work with pre-service and in-service teachers to cater for the needs of these underrepresented young children in the dominant school settings, with an intent to creating an inclusive and equitable learning environment in which all students can thrive.