Rate My Professor Amy Farndale

Dr Amy Farndale is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Language and Literacy in the School of Education, College of Education, Behavioural and Social Sciences at Adelaide University. She earned her PhD in Education from the University of South Australia (2012–2018), a Master of Education specialising in Early Childhood Education (2008), and a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education with Honours (1998–2001) from the same institution. She holds a TESOL certificate (2008) from the Department for Education, Australia, and is proficient in English, French, and Indonesian. With over 20 years of experience in early childhood education across Australia, the UK, Kenya, and France, Farndale has worked with the University of South Australia and the Department for Education since 2001. Appointed Lecturer in 2019, she serves as a course coordinator, tutor, and supervisor for PhD and Masters students in literacy, English, and early childhood programs. She is a member of the Centre for Research in Education and Social Inclusion (CRESI), the Early Childhood de Lissa Research Group, and committees for the Australian Literacy Educators Association and Children's Week. Farndale offers research consultancy to TAFE, CESA, DfE, and independent schools, and volunteers reading to children at Ronald McDonald House Charity.

Her research focuses on child language acquisition, early childhood education, English and literacy curriculum, languages, linguistics, and engaging pedagogies for diverse 0-8-year-olds. She investigates multilingual and multimodal language and literacy development, sustaining bilingual preschoolers' skills, power dynamics in language use, emotions in learning, and children's communicative capital through projects like bilingual books, family multiliteracies, and the Sea and Vines Oral Language project. Key publications include Harris, P. et al. (2025), 'Dialogically constructing a culturally sustaining multilingual family literacies approach in early childhood settings', Social Sciences; McInnes, E. et al. (2024), 'Professional learning supporting multilingual children's social and emotional development in diverse Australian early childhood education and care settings', Early Childhood Education Journal; Farndale, A. & Reichelt, V. (2023), 'Children's communicative capital: promoting inclusive storying in a diverse preschool community through critical participatory action research', Journal of Early Childhood Literacy; Farndale, A. et al. (2016), 'Social, emotional, and linguistic experiences of developing bilingual preschoolers as they learn English as an Additional Language (EAL)', The International Journal of Learning; and Hill, S. & Farndale, A. (2021), 'English language learners', in Developing Early Literacy (3rd ed.). She received the deLissa Scholarship in 2018 for research with culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers alongside Professor Pauline Harris.