2001 Outstanding ELA Educator Award Winner

Brian Cambourne is the seventh recipient of the NCTE Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Award. The Outstanding ELA Award recognizes a distinguished national or international educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education.

Brian is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia.  He argues for a view of learning and an approach to teaching  literacy which uncomplicates the process of learning in order to make literacy more accessible to learners, especially non-mainstream students.  He believes in a theory of learning that leads to the development of highly literate, critically aware readers and writers.  Brian views literacy as a cultural resource, which enables less privileged members of any culture to challenge elitist and dominant groups who seek to keep economic and political power for themselves.  He has been at the forefront of Whole Language in Australia and the South Pacific since the late 1960s.

Read "A Day in the Life of Brian Cambourne: Teacher, Activist, Scholar" by Denny Taylor which appeared in Language Arts, Volume 79, Number 2 in November, 2001.  (PDF) 

His works include:

Coping with Chaos.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (1991)

Whole Story: Natural Learning and the Acquisition of Literacy and Responsive Evaluation.  Scholastic Press. (1990).

Responsive Evaluation: Making Valid Judgments About Student Literacy.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (1994).