Rate My Professor Carly Steele

Dr Carly Steele is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Master of Education Course Coordinator at Curtin University in the Faculty of Humanities. An applied linguist and fully qualified teacher, she brings over 12 years of experience in diverse educational contexts across Australia, including urban cities, rural areas, remote Western Australia and Northern Territory communities, Far North Queensland, and Sydney. She earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2021, with a thesis exploring language awareness and contrastive analysis for teaching Standard Australian English as an additional language or dialect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary school students. Prior to her current role, Steele served as Lecturer at Curtin University from 2021 to 2024 and at James Cook University from 2019 to 2021. She coordinates and teaches professional experience units in postgraduate and undergraduate Initial Teacher Education courses.

Acknowledging her positionality as a non-Indigenous white researcher, Steele's research centers on culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and assessment practices, particularly through participatory action research with classroom educators. Her work addresses Indigenous education, language education, EAL/D learning, educational equity, translanguaging, and the language practices of First Nations children transitioning from home to school. She has published extensively in high-impact journals on topics such as distraction in Australian language education policy (2024), using contrastive analysis for Indigenous contact language speakers (2025), and non-Indigenous initial teacher education students navigating the cultural interface (2023). Steele co-edited the 2025 Routledge volume Celebrating First Nations Languages and Language Learning in Australian Schools: Stories Across Generations of Language Activism, Advocacy and Allyship. Her contributions include key chapters like The Diverse Indigenous Creole Languages and First Nations Language Repertoires in Queensland, with Information for Educators (2025). Steele has received prestigious awards, including the WAIER Early Career Award (2023), the M.A.K. Halliday Prize for Outstanding Research in Applied Linguistics (2022), Curtin University Humanities Early Career Researcher of the Year Award (2023), and a Teaching Excellence Award. Through her advocacy, she promotes inclusive, equity-driven education and has influenced discussions on language rights and culturally responsive pedagogies in Australian schooling.