Critical Literacies in the Classroom

Allan Luke is Emeritus Professor of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is an Adjunct Professor, University of Calgary, Affiliated Professor, University of British Columbia, and is an Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University, China.


Luke's work on language and literacy education, educational sociology and policy, race and culture in schooling has influenced educational systems and research internationally. It has been translated into Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Swedish. Taking his first academic position in Australia in 1984, he has taught in the Aboriginal and Islander Teacher Education Program at James Cook University of North Queensland and was Dean of Education, University of Queensland, Foundation Dean of Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, and research professor at Queensland University of Technology. He has served as Deputy Director General of Education and Chief Advisor to the Minister for the state of Queensland. Luke has written over 300 articles and chapters, reports and monographs. He has undertaken policy consultation with the governments of Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Kiribati and Ontario and with the Van Leer Foundation (Israel) and the OECD. Since 1990, he has co-authored major Australian state and federal government reports on: adult literacy competence standards; middle schooling; state literacy policy; intercultural relations in the workplace; and early childhood care and policy. In 2013, was Chair of the most extensive empirical study of Indigenous school reform in Australia to date. His foundational work on literacy and multiliteracies is used in state curricula and policy in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. From 2003-2005, he established the largest government funded educational research centre in the Asia-Pacific at Singapore's National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Luke has received the Educational Press Association of America Merit Award (1989), the American Educational Research Association Curriuclum Studies Book Award (2003), membership of the International Reading Association Hall of Fame (2003), the Gold Medal of the Australian College of Education (2005), IBM/Bulletin Australian Educator of the Year (2004), the Australian Literacy Education Association Research Award (2014) and Lifetime Membership of the Queensland Teachers Union (2013). He has presented the Havens Institute Sociology Lecture, University of Wisconsin (1997), the Garth Boomer Lecture of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association (2001), the Radford Lecture for the Australian Association of Educational Research (2002), the Garth Boomer Lecture of the International English Teaching Association (2003), and the American Educational Research Association Distinguished Research Address (2011). He holds honorary doctorates from Rajabhat University, Thailand (2002), Simon Fraser University (2005) and James Cook University (2014). In 2016, he was awarded the 14th annual Distinguished Research Lifetime Achievement Award from the (US) Literacy Research Association.