Rate My Professor Von Sawers

Yvonne (Von) Sawers is a senior lecturer in primary English in the School of Education at Curtin University, where she also serves as Coordinator of the Primary Program and holds a Casual Academic position within the Faculty of Humanities. Her career encompasses significant roles in educational administration and teaching, including as a manager in the Office of Early Childhood for the Department of Education Western Australia, a literacy specialist, and a classroom teacher predominantly working with young children. Sawers coordinates key units such as EDUC5032 Introduction to English Reading, EDC235 Teaching Language, Literacy and Literature in Junior Primary, and EDPR3001 English Pedagogies and the Integrated Curriculum, contributing to both on-campus and Open Universities Australia programs.

From 2019 to 2022, Sawers was a lead researcher in the Centre for Excellence in the explicit teaching of literacy, funded by the State Government of Western Australia. Her publications include the co-authored book Teaching Primary English in Australia: Subject Knowledge and Classroom Practice (Routledge, 2024) with Eve Bearne, David Reedy, and Paul Gardner, providing adapted resources for Australian primary English educators. She also co-authored the chapter Pre-service Teachers’ Literacy Abilities: An Exploration Amidst the Criticisms in Literacy Unbound: Multiliterate, Multilingual, Multimodal (Springer, 2019) with Jennifer Howell, examining literacy discourse in teacher education. Recently, she collaborated on the paper What makes a school, a good school? Sharing themes, principles and values for successful schooling, presented at the WAIER Forum 2024 with Carol Carter, Paul Gardner, Sonja Kuzich, Lisa Paris, and Jia White, focusing on Aboriginal primary school contexts. Sawers has provided expert testimony as a literacy educator in the Western Australian Parliament's inquiry into improving educational outcomes.