Dr Ashley Li
Lecturer
Dr. Li (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.) is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Education with expertise in language education. She contributes to the development, coordination, and teaching of units, including Indigenous Australian Perspectives in Early Childhood Education.
Through her doctoral studies at Western Sydney University, Dr. Li investigated the relationship between collaborative curriculum decision-making, content and language-integrated learning, and anti-bias, learner-centred pedagogies. Her study foregrounds practices that support the meaningful use of pre-service early childhood teachers’ experiential knowledge and upholds their divergent intellectual cultures and languages through knowledge co-construction.
Committed to research-informed practices for early childhood educators, Dr. Li conducts collaborative research that informs curriculum decision-making, language education, and inquiry-based professional learning in early childhood settings. Her research into critical thinking methods provides insights into how early childhood educators can engage in reflective practice by posing questions that foster deeper evaluation of their pedagogical approaches.
Dr. Li’s work on maximising early childhood educators’ capabilities by drawing on their diverse intellectual cultures and languages has been peer-reviewed and published in high-quality academic sources, including The BERA/SAGE International Handbook of Research-Informed Education Policy and Practice (2025), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Bourdieu and Educational Research (2024), and the Routledge book series, Bourdieu and Education of Asia Pacific (2024).