Rate My Professor Sue Ollerhead

Sue Ollerhead served as Senior Lecturer in Languages and Literacy Education at Macquarie University’s School of Education and as Director of the Secondary Education undergraduate program. Prior to her current role at the University of the South Pacific, she held senior academic positions at Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales. Her professional experience includes extensive work as a teacher and teacher educator in language education, as well as roles in educational publishing across North and sub-Saharan Africa, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Ollerhead, who grew up in multilingual South Africa, holds a PhD in Education from the University of New South Wales, Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education from UNSW, Master of Education in TESOL from the University of Sydney, MA in Linguistics from the University of Stellenbosch, BA in English and Journalism from Rhodes University, and CELTA from International House, Hastings.

Her research interests center on translanguaging as a pedagogical approach, multilingual practices in classrooms, disciplinary literacies, oracy across the curriculum, and preparing pre-service teachers to support English additional language learners. Key publications include her book Translanguaging in Australian Classrooms: Towards Plurilingual Pedagogical Knowledge in Teacher Education (Springer, 2025); co-edited books Plurilingualism in Teaching and Learning: Complexities Across Contexts (Routledge, 2018) and Using Multilingual Approaches: Moving from Theory to Practice (British Council, 2019); and articles such as “Teaching across semiotic modes with multilingual learners: translanguaging in an Australian classroom” (2019), “Pedagogical language knowledge: preparing Australian pre-service teachers to support English language learners” (2018), “Teacher agency and policy response in the adult ESL literacy classroom” (2010), and “Passivity or potential? Teacher responses to learner identity in the low-level adult ESL literacy classroom” (2012). Ollerhead received the Macquarie Research Excellence Scholarship (2007–2009), Australian Postgraduate Award (2011–2013), UNSW Overseas Study Program grant (2017), and Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cape Town’s Institute for the Study of English in Africa (2017). She co-edited TESOL in Context.