Allan Luke

Allan Luke is an educator, researcher, and theorist studying multiliteracies, linguistics, family literacy, and educational policy. Dr. Luke has written or edited over 14 books and more than 140 articles and book chapters. Luke, with Peter Freebody, originated the Four Resources Model of literacy education. He is currently a Research Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Education

Luke received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1972. Luke received his teaching certificate in 1976 and his M.A. in 1980, from Simon Fraser University in Canada. He taught primary and secondary school in British Columbia and lectured at Simon Fraser and British Columbia Institute of Technology before taking a position at James Cook University, Australia in 1984. He received his Ph. D. from Simon Fraser University in 1985.

Career

Luke continued to teach at James Cook University until 1995. From 1996 to 2003, he served as Dean of Education at the University of Queensland, and Deputy Director General for Education for Queensland from 1999 to 2000. Until 2003, Luke was the Chief Educational Advisor to the Queensland Minister of Education. From 2003 to 2005, Luke was the Foundation Dean of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore. Since 2005, Luke has returned to Australia and currently works as a research professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Four Resources Model

In the early 1990s, Luke and Peter Freebody of Griffith University introduced the Four Resources Model in literacy education. This model seeks to reconcile the debates between Whole Language, Phonics, critical literacy and others. This model postulates that in order to be a fully literate citizen, a person needs:

1. coding competence (the ability to decode text, i.e. phonics)
2. semantic competence (the ability to make meaning, i.e. comprehension)
3. pragmatic competence (every day, functional literacy, i.e. writing a check, reading the newspaper, filling out a job application, etc.)
4. critical competence (the ability to critically select and analyze texts, i.e. avoiding scams, determining reliable sources of information, etc.)

Luke and Freebody assert that no one of these resources is sufficient by itself but that each is essential. Further, the resources are not meant to indicate a sequence of instruction. Different resources should be present in instruction in varying amounts, depending upon the needs of the students. Luke has also stated that critical competence, far from being an upper level topic, can begin to be developed in year one of education and before.

Personal History

Allan Luke is a first-generation Chinese-American who grew up in L.A.'s Chinatown. In 1973, he moved to Canada to attend Simon Fraser University. He later married Canadian-born Carmen Luke and they had a daughter. When his daughter was in primary school, he worked as a substitute teacher in the primary schools of Fraser Valley. He studied primary education with Kieran Egan and Selma Wasserman. In 1975, Jonathan Kozol, who had just published The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home, came to SFU as a guest lecturer. He introduced Luke to the works of Paulo Freire, including Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Luke describes this as a life-changing event.

Luke initially had difficulty finding a job as a primary teacher, which he believes was due to prejudice against Asian people still prevalent in Canada at the time. In Armstrong, British Columbia, he was hired at a rural secondary school teaching English, drama, and Spanish. When the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants arrived in Canada in 1976, he was asked to teach ESL, although he had no training or background in ESL at the time.

Luke worked toward his Ph.D. in Sociology of Literacy, which was a new field. At the time, literacy was thought to be a cognitive and psycholinguistic process that had little to do with class, race, or identity. "A couple of guys quit my PhD committee because they were so disgusted that I wanted to talk about a political economy of literacy, and who became literate and how, and the social interaction patterns of classrooms." As he reached the end of his Ph.D., he received a job offer from James Cook University in Australia. Australia had recently ended its White Australia policy, restricting Asian immigration. He moved there with his wife and daughter in 1984 and became the first non-white on faculty. Luke was assigned to the Aboriginal teacher education program. Indigenous Australians had only recently acquired voting and property rights and were entering higher education for the first time (see History of Indigenous Australians). Luke taught the first generation of Aboriginal Ph.D.s.

From Canada and Simon Fraser University, Luke brought a strong commitment to social justice and the education of English language learners and children of poverty. In keeping with Paulo Freire, he believed in the empowerment of teaching kids to "read the world", beyond the mechanics of reading.

Awards and Honors

• 2000 Honorary Doctorate for contributions to Thai education from Rajabhat University
• 2002 Inducted into the International Reading Association Hall of Fame
• 2002 Honorary Doctorate from Beijing Normal University
• 2002 Gold Medal of Australian College of Education for lifetime achievement
• 2003 IBM/Bulletin Australian Educator of the Year
• 2003 Medal of the Australian College of Education for Contributions to Educational Reform
• 2005 Honorary Doctorate from Simon Fraser University for contributions to international education

Collaborators and Co-Authors

• Carmen Luke
• Peter Freebody
• Robert T. Jiménez
• Charles Berg
• Elizabeth Bernhardt
• Jill Fitzgerald
• William Labov

Suggested Further Reading

Carrington, V. & Luke, A. (1997). Literacy and Bourdieu's sociological theory: A reframing. Language and Education, 11(2), 96-112.

Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), 7-16.

Freebody, P. (1992). A socio-cultural approach: Resourcing four roles as a literacy learner. In A. Watson & A. Badenhop (Eds.), Prevention of reading failure (pp. 48-60). Sydney: Ashton-Scholastic.

Luke, A. (2004). Two takes on the critical. In B. Norton & K. Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogy and language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Luke, A. (2003). Literacy and the other: A sociological approach to literacy research and policy in multilingual societies. Reading Research Quarterly, 38(1), 132-141.

Luke, A. (2003). After the marketplace: Evidence, social science and educational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 30(2), 87-107.

Luke, A. (2000). Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43 (5), 448-461.

Luke, A. (1997). Genres of power: Literacy education and the production of capital. In R. Hasan & G. Williams (Eds.), Literacy in society (pp. 308-338). London: Longman.

Luke, A. (1992). Reading and Critical Literacy: Redefining the "Great Debate". Paper of the 18th New Zealand Conference on Reading. Wellington. May 10-13, 1992. Full text available from ERIC.

Luke, A., O'Brien, J., & Comber, B. (1994). Making community texts objects of study. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 17(2), 139-149.

Muspratt, S., Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1997). Constructing critical literacies. Sydney: Allen & Unwin; and Cresskills, NJ: Hampton.

Trinity College: 4 Resources Readings