Penny McKay (1948 – 2009)

The Penny McKay Memorial Award honours the contribution to research and development in second/additional language education of Dr Penny McKay (1948-2009).

As a teacher, consultant, researcher, keynote speaker and professional activist, Penny McKay was a leader in language education in Australia and internationally. Working collaboratively with educators and researchers in schools, she pioneered an approach to assessing learners' development in English as an additional language.

Penny was committed to four fundamental principles.

First, assessment frameworks should be tied to empirical, classroom-based observations of English language learners of different ages and backgrounds.

Second, those frameworks should respect and respond to classroom teachers' understandings of and insights into their learners.

Third, assessment frameworks must be informed by theory as it continually develops.

Finally, assessment frameworks must be designed to support learners' language development and to inform teachers in their teaching.

Penny died prematurely in 2009 from ovarian cancer. She is greatly mourned by Australian and overseas language educators.

Penny's Words

"All of us approach teaching in different ways. For me, teaching has been, from the beginning, an iterative activity – working with students, teachers and researchers to search for, try out and disseminate effective teaching practices. I’ve always sought to observe, ask questions, and find patterns in how English and other languages are learned and taught. My life as a language consultant and researcher has been a stimulating journey of workshops, drafts and feedback seminars with students and colleagues. My colleagues’ questions about what is happening and being trialled in their classrooms has been an invaluable contribution to my work. We have become successful as language educators by working collaboratively and sharing our knowledge and skills like this."     

Tributes

In an interview on 30 January 1997, co-researcher Helen Moore described Dr Penny McKay's approach to classroom research.

Penny was wonderful. ... We’d get into the classroom and we’d say, ‘And then this should happen and this should happen’. But she’d keep asking us, ‘What does happen?’ ‘What is happening there?’ ‘What is development?’

To read more about Penny McKay:

Dooley, Karen and Moore, Helen. 'Penny Mckay 1948-2009: A Leader in English Language Education', TESOL in Context, Vol. 19 Issue 2 (Dec 2009) 50-66.

The Penny McKay Memorial Award honours Penny’s contribution to research and development in second/additional language education. As a teacher, consultant, researcher, keynote speaker and professional activist, Penny McKay was a leader in language education in Australia and internationally. Working collaboratively with educators and researchers in schools, she pioneered an approach to assessing learners' development in English as an additional language.

The Award is jointly offered by the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) and the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand (ALTAANZ). Finances related to the Award are administered by ALAA.

The Award is for an outstanding doctoral thesis which benefits the teaching and learning of second/additional languages in Australian schools and pre-schools, including Indigenous languages, community languages, foreign languages, Standard Australian English as an additional language or variety, and/or English as a foreign language.

The Award consists of $500, a certificate and free conference registration at an upcoming conference of one of the sponsoring organizations.  The winner will be offered a slot to present a paper on an aspect of their research at that conference.

The winner will be formally announced at the AGM of each Association and be presented at their preferred conference of one of the sponsoring organizations. The winner’s name and a 300 word summary of their thesis will be published in each Association’s journal (ALAA – The Australian Review of Applied Linguistics; ACTA - TESOL in Context; ALTAANZ - Language Assessment Matters). 

Donating to the Penny McKay Memorial Award

The Award was established and is maintained from donations from individuals, professional associations and other institutions in Australia and overseas. Your help is needed to maintain this award, which carries forth Penny's life long commitment to language education that is grounded in both research and the insights of practising teachers. 

To donate to the maintenance of this Award, or to request further details, please email Prof Chris Davison,

2024

Susanne Stanyer (University of New South Wales), Teacher assessment literacy: The relationship between language awareness and writing assessment behaviour

2023

Leonard Freeman (University of Melbourne), Fair vs. useful: Evaluating the fairness and validity of interpretations and uses of remote Aboriginal students’ national reading test performances

2022

Denise Angelo (Australian National University), Countering misrecognition of Indigenous contact languages and their ecologies.

2021

Bonita Cabiles (University of Melbourne), Participation and cultural and linguistic diversity: An in-depth qualitative inquiry of an Australian primary classroom.

2020

Kathryn MacFarlane (Monash University), Transformational change for primary years' foreign language programs: Developing oral language skills for spoken interaction in the classroom.

2018

Amanda Hiorth (University of Melbourne), “I want to grow my country”: Refugee background
Karen students in transitions: Experiences in the move from language school to
mainstream schooling."

2015

Jennifer Alford (Queensland University of Technology) “Conceptualisations and enactment of Critical Literacy for senior high school EAL learners in Queensland, Australia: commitments, constraints and contradictions” .

2014

Susan Creagh (University of Queensland) for her thesis "A Foucauldian and Quantitative Analysis of NAPLaN, the category 'Language Background Other Than English' and English as a Second Language Level".

Julia Rothwell (Queensland University of Technology) for her thesis "Let's eat the captain! Thinking, feeling, doing: Intercultural language learning through process drama".

The recipients received their awards at the 2014 ACTA International TESOL Conference in Melbourne on 1 October 2014, at the beginning of the Penny McKay Memorial Plenary Lecture, given by Professor Chris Davison.

Eligibility for the Award

The Award is awarded annually for a doctoral thesis submitted at an Australian university in the preceding year, and subsequently deemed to be outstanding. To be eligible for consideration, the thesis should be focused directly on aspects of Australian pre-school or school-based second/additional language education, such as language development, curriculum, teaching or assessment. The applicant must be a verified member of ALAA or their State/Territory ACTA affiliate or ALTAANZ in the year of their application.

Applying for the Award

Closing Date for 2025 Award

11.59pm October 31st 

All the documents you will need to apply for the 2025 award are below-applications accepted anytime up to the closing date above.

1. Penny Mckay Award General Information
2. Attachment 1: Penny Mckay Award Application Form
3. Attachment 2: Penny Mckay Award Evaluation Criteria for Review Panel Members

Further enquiries about the Award may be directed to the Panel Chair,