Rate My Professor Alyson Simpson

Professor Alyson Simpson is a Professor in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales, Master of Education and Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Sydney, Graduate Diploma in Library Science from the University of Technology Sydney, and a PhD from the University of Western Sydney. With a background as a teacher librarian, she has built a distinguished career in teacher education, focusing on literacy pedagogy. Her research specializations encompass children's literature, English teaching, digital and multimodal literacies, dialogic pedagogy, teacher quality, professional development, reading for pleasure, and teacher attrition. She has supervised numerous research students and contributed to curriculum development in initial teacher education programs.

At the University of Sydney, Professor Simpson has held progressive academic appointments, including lecturer, senior lecturer, Associate Professor, and Associate Dean (Education). She leads major funded research initiatives, such as 'What's the Evidence? A Study on Teacher Quality,' supported by the New South Wales Department of Education from 2021 to 2024, examining teacher effectiveness, early career readiness, and attrition. As Acting Director and Project Lead for the Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT), she oversees evaluations of graduate teachers. Her influential publications include the book 'Children's Literature and Computer Based Teaching' (2005), 'The digital reading path: Researching modes and multidirectionality with iPads' (Literacy, 2013, 154 citations), 'Conceptualising the impact of initial teacher education' (Australian Educational Researcher, 2019, 78 citations), 'Dialogic teaching in the initial teacher education classroom: "Everyone’s voice will be heard"' (2018), and 'Responsible reading: Children’s literature and social justice' (Education Sciences, 2022, 69 citations). Her scholarship, with over 850 citations on ResearchGate, shapes literacy education and teacher professionalism. In 2019, she received the Maurice Saxby Award from the School Library Association of New South Wales for her passion in promoting reading and writing for young people, including decades of voluntary service with the Kids Own Australian Literature Awards (KOALA). She engages publicly through initiatives like the Illuminate Children's Literature course and international panels such as the Literacy Research Panel.