Cultural Perspectives on Indigenous Students’ Reading Performance

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.

Introduction to indigenous education.- Reading and cultural capital.- Research design and methodology.- Challenges in reading faced by indigenous students.- The power of students’ voices.- Meta-analysis of the findings.- Conclusions and implications of the study.- Afterword: What’s next in reading research in schools?.