Contact Jan by e-mail at jan_turbill@uow.edu.au.
Jan Turbill is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, where she also directs the Centre for Language Education. She has been the coeditor of the Australian Journal for Language and Literacy for the past four years.
Beginning in 1964, she taught kindergarten through Grade 2 for the Department of School Education in New South Wales. In 1976 the department invited her to become a language consultant for schools in a metropolitan region of Sydney. For the next 9 years she was involved in the development and implementation of syllabus documents for reading and writing from kindergarten through high school. It was during this period that she completed a master’s degree in linguistics at Sydney University and was made a fellow of the Australian College of Education for her contributions to early literacy development.
In 1985 Jan changed careers and began lecturing in language education at the University of Wollongong. She was awarded her doctorate from the university in 1993. In 1996 Jan was invited to spend 4 months as a visiting professor at Hamline University (St. Paul, MN, USA), where she was named Graduate Teacher of the Year.
Jan’s research has ranged from early literacy development to the professional development of teachers and, most recently, the use of technology as a support for literacy learning in the early years of schooling and as a medium for professional learning for teachers. She is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including No Better Way to Teach Writing (1982), Now We Want to Write (1983), Towards a Reading-Writing Classroom (1984, with Andrea Butler), Coping with Chaos (1987, with Brian Cambourne), and Responsive Evaulation (1994, with Brian Cambourne). Her most recent book, Teaching Reading in the Primary School, coauthored with Pauline Harris, Phil Fitzsimmons, and Barbra McKenzie and published in 2001, was written as a text for undergraduate students. She is also a coauthor, with Andrea Butler, Brian Cambourne, and Gail Langton, of the Frameworks staff-development program.
In 1999 Jan and Brian Cambourne were awarded an Australian Research Grant that funds a doctoral scholarship over three years to study the relationship between staff development (Frameworks) and change in teachers’ classroom practice and student learning.
Jan lives in the southern suburbs of Sydney, about 5 minutes from the beach. Her 85-year-old mum lives in a granny flat at the rear of the property. She has three wonderful nephews, aged 30, 27, and 8. She enjoys gardening and playing golf -- when she can find time!