Shirley O'Neill is Professor of Language and Literacies in the School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education, and the Coordinator of the Applied Linguistics Discipline at the University of Southern Queensland. As an educator in pre-service teacher education she has a special interest in reading and writing, classroom dialogue, building students' literacy and numeracy capacity and knowledge building. Her research and teaching includes learning and assessment, school improvement, GAMMA pedagogy, ESL/EFL learners, and service learning. She has extensive experience in research and evaluation, assessment and teaching/teacher professional development and has worked in schools in Australia and the UK, and in school review, curriculum and policy development, and student assessment state-wide. Dr O'Neill is founder and co-president of the International Society for Leadership in Pedagogies and Learning , and founder and Editor-in-Chief of the peer reviewed cross-disciplinary International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. The aim of the journal is to publish high quality research that focuses on the essence of pedagogy and related issues and trends. The society seeks to bring researchers and teachers together to improve pedagogy across sectors and disciplines within an ecological and sustainable development framework.