Dr Katina Zammit

• Qualifications
• Honours and Awards
• Selected Publications
• Contact

Dr Zammit teaches and researches in the areas of:

• English K-6
• literacy in the primary years
• reading and writing instruction
• pedagogies for engaging students
• multiliteracies
• multimodal texts construction and analysis
• new Literacies and New Learning Environments
• literacy and technology

Dr Zammit believes literacy in today’s world is more than just reading and writing the written word in paper-based texts such as books. Her research, papers and publications are focused on the teaching and learning of multiliteracies, with an emphasis on the intersection of literacy and technology. She works closely with teachers in schools, using a co-researching participatory action research approach to better meet the literacy needs of students. Her current research is on the teaching-learning practices and pedagogy associated with the students acquiring multiple literacies, or multiliteracies. As part of that research she is investigating the usefulness of the New Learning Environments Curriculum and Pedagogical Framework. Her research also explores how to engage students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in learning to be literate and in education in general. Dr Zammit employs a social semiotic approach to the analysis of written and multimodal texts, and classroom discourse. She gained her doctorate in Education with a thesis entitled The Development of Interpersonal Understandings in Young Children: The Role of the Classroom Teacher. In her thesis Dr Zammit employed a semiotic approach to analyse the construction of student hypertext pathways when students were searching for information on a teacher-set topic.

Qualifications

BEd Hons (Sydney), MEd (Sydney), PhD (UWS).

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Honours and Awards

UWS Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award for University Engagement – Commended (2007)

UWS Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award for University Engagement – Highly Commended: Learning Through Community Service Team (2006)

UWS Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award for Social Justice – Highly Commended: Aboriginal Rural Education Program (AREP) team (2005)

UWS Macarthur Developments in Quality Teaching Award (1999)

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Selected Publications
Books

Benzie, D. & Zammit, K. (eds) (2008) Valuing individual and shared learning: The role of ICT, IFIP WG3, 5 International Working Conference 23rd-27th June 2008 CD proceedings. Prague: IFIP with Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education, Czech Republic.

Zammit, K., Sinclair, C., Cole, B., Singh, M., Costley, D., Brown A'Court, L., et al. (2006) Teaching and leading for quality Australian Schools: A review and synthesis of research-based knowledge, Canberra: Teaching Australia: Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.

Chapters

Zammit, K. (2007) Popular culture in the classroom: Interpreting and creating multimodal texts, in A. McCabe, M. O’Donnell, R. Whittaker (eds) Advances in Language & Education, London: Continuum.

Zammit, K. (2006) Multiliteracies, in Fair Go Team (eds) School Is For Me: Pathways to Student Engagement, Sydney: NSW Department of Education and Training.

Callow, J. & Zammit, K. (2002) Visual Literacy: From Picture books to electronic texts, in M. Monteith (ed) Teaching Primary Literacy with ICT, Buckingham: Open University Press

Zammit, K. (1999) Click. Click. Reading and Viewing CDROMs, in J. Callow (ed) Image Matters: Visual Texts in the Classroom, Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association.

Journal Articles

Munns, G., Zammit, K. & Woodward, H. (2008) Reflections from the riot zone: The Fair Go Project and student engagement in a besieged community, Journal of Children and Poverty, 14 (2), 157–171.

Zammit, K. & Martins, R. (2007) Learning through community service: Assisting others, learning themselves, Australasian Journal of Community Engagement, 2 (1), 228-236.

Zammit, K. (2007) Voices from the margins: Literacy development and the impact of technology, Journal of Literacy Research, 38 (3), 127-139.

Zammit, K. & Downes, T. (2002) New learning environments and the multiliterate individual: A framework for educators, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 25 (2), 24-36.

Zammit, K. (2001) A literate person: What does this mean at the beginning of the 21st century? Reading Research and Instruction: Special Issue on Literacy & Technology, 40 (3) Spring 2001, 253-265.

Zammit, K. (2000) Computer icons: A picture says a thousand words or does it? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 23 (2), 217-231.

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