Ana Maria Ducasse

I am an English/Spanish Bilingual/Bicultural Applied Linguist.As a fluent speaker of Spanish, French and Italian, in addition to English,  I have been deeply immersed in multilingual community activities in Melbourne. My challenge is for people to have the chance to enjoy learning and using a language. I carry out research on discourse, primarily on classroom based language assessment and feedback with interdisciplinary mixed methods. The aim is  to enhance opportunitites in language teaching and learning for teachers and students.

 

I completed my PhD  (2009) at the University of Melbourne under Tim McNamara and Annie Brown: Spanish additional language teachers collaborated in co-designing the first rating scale of spoken intereaction between students in a paired Spanish Oral assessment task . My papers are  published and cited in leading applied linguistics journals.

 

As a reflective practitioner, I adapt and learn from teaching for extended periods across the education sector: in primary Italian; Spanish Yr 11 at Victorian School of Languages; Adult Education Italian  and Spanish; adult ESL/Literacy; ELICOS; IELTS exam preparation (and examination) and 25 years in Higher Education Language and Culture Education.

 

I coordinate the Spanish Program  in Global and Language Studies, in RMIT's School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. I design ,teach and coordinate Spanish language and culture at all proficiency levels taught in Spanish, in addition to two sociolinguistics courses taught in English.

 

My main research focus is on Higher Education Classroom Based Language Assessment and Feedback. I also research and supervise in the areas of educational research, language pedagogy and English for Academic Purposes.

 

Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

Since  being part of the HERDSA Vic Chapter on the organising committee for its Melbourne Conference in 2014, I have maintained  contact with a suppportive  TATAL network, from five institutions. In over a decade of group reflection and peer mentoring we have received a HERDSA grant, published papers and presented at conferences while becoming Fellows.

 

In 2022 I was made Fellow of  the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia HERDSA  the first one awarded to a staff member while teaching at RMIT. Commencing 2002,  a HERDSA Fellowship provides recognition of teaching, based on a portfolio designed to support promotion appliactions.HERDSA site quote''Most people completing the Fellowship agree that it is difficult and required a lot of persistence to finish it. They also express the value of the process that teaches the value of deeply reflecting on the work that they do''. 

 

I have twice been awarded European academic mobility funding  EU Erasmus +  Mobility Projects  (2017, 2024) for teaching and research at RMIT partner universities in Spain. This initiative supports the exchange of knowledge, teaching methods, and cultural experiences between institutions in different countries by funding teaching staff  to spend time teaching at higher education institutions abroad. 

 

As an advocate for HDR and  ECR publishing I have served as Editorial Board member and reviewer since 2010 for Studies in Language Assessment (SiLA -formerly PLTA), an online, open-access publication. It is s the peer-reviewed research journal of  of the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand (ALTAANZ) . It is the only"Diamond Open Access" journal (with no charges for authors or for readers) in Language Testing.

 

Director Spanish Resource Centre 

I  have promoted Spanish language learning as the Director of The Spanish Resource Centre of Melbourne (2015-2017 & 2021-2023) at RMIT, a collaboration between the Spanish Ministry of Education and RMIT University. I organize and present at annual Teacher Professional Development seminars and workshops in Victoria, and am on the Spanish Teacher National Conference committee- which was celebrated at RMIT in 2024. I also coordinated and examined Spanish DELE Proficiency exams. In this role I curated Spanish film nights, and continue to collaborate with the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish Embassy and the Spanish Consulate General Melbourne. 

 

Teaching awards La Trobe University:

Vice Chancelor's Award for teaching excellence awarded to the Spanish Program,

Citation for Outstanding contribution to Student learning: for developing innovative assessment and curriculum practices

Citation for Outstanding contribution to Student learning: developing effective communication skills and engage learning with content in a bilingual subject

 

Other professional memberships: - AILASA (Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia) - ALTAANZ (Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand)
- ALAA (The Applied Linguistics Association of Australia)
- HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia) - ILTA  (International Language Testing Association)
- LCNAU (Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities)
- SERC (Social Equity Research Centre) RMIT - SRAP (Spanish Researchers in Spanish Pacific)