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Dr Susan Creagh

Research Fellow, Lecturer in TESOL Education
Lecturer
School of Education
+61 7 334 67802
+61 7 336 56478
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Researcher biography

Dr Susan Creagh is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Queensland.

Susan has a PhD in Education (University of Queensland), a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics (Northern Territory University–now Darwin University) and an Arts degree and Diploma of Education (University of New England). She is a member of the Australian Association of Researchers in Education (AARE), the Queensland Association of TESOL (QATESOL) and the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA).

Susan has researched and written about the statistical processes used in national education testing in the Australian context which serve to misrepresent the performance of students for whom English is an Additional language. Her PhD was recognised as outstanding research, and was awarded both the Ray Debus Award for Doctoral Research in Education by the Australian Association for Research in Education, and the Penny McKay Memorial Award for an outstanding thesis by the Australian Council of TESOL Associations and the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.

Susan was a Research Fellow at ISSR from 2015 to 2017 , where she researched the relationship between extreme disadvantage and educational outcomes through an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, under the leadership of Professor Mark Western and with The Smith Family, a large charity organisation which supports the education of disadvantaged children and young people in Australia. Susan is particularly interested in quantitative research methods and identification, categorisation and measurement of students and their educational performance.

Susan has more than twenty years' experience as an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom teacher and educational administrator. This experience informs her teaching role within the School of Education, where she lectures in the Bachelor of Education program, the Masters of Education (Secondary teaching) and the Masters of Educational Studies. Her key teaching areas focus on the teaching of English as a Second or Additional Language for students who are speakers of languages other than English. Within the field of English as a Additional Language, she is continuing to focus research on issues relevant to these students, most recently working on action research with ESL teachers to better understand and document the teaching of reading to newly arrived teenagers of refugee background who have had no schooling prior to arrival in Australia and who are becoming literate for the first time, in English as an additional language.

Susan's research has been published in a range of national and international journals, including the Journal of Education Policy and the Australian Educational Researcher.

Publications

Book Chapters (2)
Journal Articles (11)
Conference Papers (3)
Newspaper Article (1)
Thesis (1)
Research Reports (2)

Book Chapters

Creagh, Sue (2016). Understanding the politics of categories in reporting national test results. National testing in schools: an Australia assessment. (pp. 110-125) edited by Bob Lingard, Greg Thompson and Sam Sellar. Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315659312-9
Lingard, Bob, Creagh, Sue and Vass, Greg (2013). Education policy as numbers: data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition. Politics, policies and pedagogies in education: the selected works of Bob Lingard. (pp. 51-67) Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203765708

Journal Articles

Creagh, Sue, Kettle, Margaret, Alford, Jennifer, Comber, Barbara and Shield, Paul (2019). How long does it take to achieve academically in a second language? Comparing the trajectories of EAL students and first language peers in Queensland schools. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 42 (3), 145-155.
Creagh, Sue (2019). Reading pedagogy for refugee-background young people learning literacy for the first time in English as an additional language. The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL, 8 (1) 1, 3-20.
Graham, Anne, Truscott, Julia, O’Byrne, Catherine, Considine, Gillian, Hampshire, Anne, Creagh, Susan and Western, Mark (2019). Disadvantaged families’ experiences of home-school partnerships: navigating agency, expectations and stigma. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/13603116.2019.1607913
Creagh, Susan (2016). Multiple ways of speaking back to the monolingual mindset. Discourse, 38 (1), 1-11. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2016.1163861
Creagh, Sue (2015). A critical analysis of the Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) category in the Australian national testing system: a Foucauldian perspective. Journal of Education Policy, 31 (3), 275-289. doi: 10.1080/02680939.2015.1066870
Creagh, Sue (2014). NAPLaN test data, ESL Bandscales and the validity of EAL/D teacher judgement of student performance. TESOL in Context, 24 (2), 30-50.
Creagh, Sue (2014). A Foucauldian and quantitative analysis of NAPLaN, the category 'Language Background Other Than English', and English as a second language level. TESOL in Context, 24 (2), 7-9.
Creagh, Sue (2014). National standardised testing and the diluting of English as a second language (ESL) in Australia. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 13 (1), 24-38.
Creagh, Susan (2013). 'Language Background Other Than English': a problem NAPLaN test category for Australian students of refugee background. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 19 (2), 252-273. doi: 10.1080/13613324.2013.843521
Creagh, Sue (2013). A critical analysis of problems with the LBOTE category on the NAPLaN test. Australian Educational Researcher, 41 (1), 1-23. doi: 10.1007/s13384-013-0095-y
Lingard, Bob, Creagh, Sue and Vass, Greg (2012). Education policy as numbers: Data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition. Journal of Education Policy, 27 (3), 315-333. doi: 10.1080/02680939.2011.605476

Conference Papers

Tran, Nam, Western, Mark, Creagh, Susan, Clague, Denis and Baxter, Janeen (2019). How non-cognitive skill profiles associated with educational outcomes among disadvantaged students. The 2019 International Convention of Psychological Science, Paris, France, 7-9 March 2019.
Tran, Nam, Western, Mark, Creagh, Sue, Clague, Denise and Baxter, Janeen (2018). Non-cognitive skills profiles and academic outcomes among Australian disadvantaged students. The 14th Asia-Pacific Sociological Association Conference, Hakone, Japan, 5-7 October 2018.
Mackinlay, Elizabeth, Barney, Katelyn and Creagh, Susan (2014). Becoming, belonging and being in the profession: evaluating a mentoring program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initial teacher educators. ATEA 2014: Australian Teacher Education Association Conference 2014, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 6-9 July, 2014. Bathurst, NSW, Australia: Australian Teacher Education Association.

Newspaper Article

Creagh, Sue (2015, 01 28). Australia's most disadvantaged children invisible in official NAPLAN results EduResearch Matters

Thesis

Creagh, Sue (2013). A Foucauldian and quantitative analysis of NAPLaN, the category 'language background other than English', and English as a second language level.. PhD Thesis, School of Education, The University of Queensland.

Research Reports

Povey, J., Creagh, S., Bellotti, M., Gramotnev, A., Kennedy, E., Pedde, C. and Betros, G. (2017). Evidence-informed practices to improve student engagement. Final Report. Prepared for the New South Wales Centre for Education statistics and Evaluation. St Lucia QLD Australia: The University of Queensland Institute for Social Science Research.
Povey, J., Creagh, S., Bellotti, M., Gramotnev, A., Kennedy, E., Pedde, C. and Betros, G. (2017). Parent engagement in secondary schools. Discussion paper. Prepared for the New South Wales Centre for Education statistics and Evaluation. St Lucia QLD Australia: The University of Queensland, Institute for Social Science Research.

Areas of research

Curriculum, pedagogy and learning sciences