Baker named 2025 Reading Australia Fellow
The Copyright Agency has awarded ACT teacher librarian Libby Baker the 2025 Reading Australia Fellowship.
The annual Reading Australia Fellowship is open to English and literacy teachers and teacher librarians with at least five years’ teaching experience in a primary or secondary school.
As the 2025 recipient, Baker receives $15,000 to complete a research project that will be of benefit to her career and to the broader education sector.
Based in Hughes Primary School, Baker has proposed a project focused on diversity in Australian picture books. The project is titled ‘Everybody’s Story: Investigating Character Diversity in Reading Australia and Award-winning Picture Books Using a Functional Grammar Analysis’.
She was announced as the 2025 fellow during the national conference for the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) and the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE).
In her project, Baker will focus on award-winning and nominated picture books from the CBCA Book of the Year Awards, the Kids Own Australian Literature Awards (KOALA), the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Picture Book Illustrator Award, the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) and the Young Australian Best Book Awards (YABBA).
Baker will also include new books that showcase diversity from a variety of Australian publishing houses ‘to broaden her research and include a variety of voices in the texts’, added the Copyright Agency.
‘As a classroom teacher and teacher librarian, I know how vital it is that the children in our classrooms, schools, and communities see their worlds reflected in the books shared in their classrooms and libraries. Reading Australia is a valuable resource of quality Australian texts and linked units that teachers are using to plan classroom experiences. By investigating the diversity of current Reading Australia unit texts and identifying new texts that could be used by Reading Australia, my project aims to ensure that every child in every school is represented and reflected in the books used in their classrooms,’ said Baker.
Copyright Agency CEO Josephine Johnston said, ‘Libby’s research will inform future selection panels for Reading Australia resources and assist teachers and teacher librarians to select appropriate texts for classrooms.’
Maya Mulhall was awarded the 2024 fellowship for research developing a respectful, culturally appropriate, and responsive approach to First Nations literature and investigating how the education system can accurately, respectfully and thoroughly analyse First Nations literature without imposing set colonial frameworks of comprehension.
Reading Australia was created by the Copyright Agency in 2013, and it has since ‘become an invaluable asset for teachers looking to introduce homegrown titles into the classroom’. There are now more than 300 curriculum-mapped resources on Reading Australia across primary and secondary school year levels, according to the Copyright Agency.
Copyright Agency said that Baker will share her research and findings with colleagues next year
Category: Awards Local news
