Associate Professor (AUH)

Bio

Anna started working at ZU in August 2015. She is currently the Chair of the Department of Education Studies, having previously served as the Director of the Early Childhood Learning Center (on-campus laboratory school). Prior to that, she worked in Al Ain as Head of Faculty in a kindergarten with Abu Dhabi Education Council. In Ireland, she worked as a teacher in dual language settings, as a school principal, and as a teacher educator in Mary Immaculate College at the University of Limerick. She also worked with Hibernia College. Her research interests include bilingual education, plurilingual learners, play-based learning in early childhood, co-teaching, communities of practice and intercultural education. She currently hold two funded research grants from Zayed University as Principal Investigator: Dual Language Education in the Early Years Research Cluster, and Research Incentive Funding for the development of the Emirati Arabic Child Language Corpus.

Office

Abu Dhabi - Khalifa City, FF2-2-059

Phone:

02-5993232

Email:

Research and Professional Activities

Hojeij, Z., Dillon, A., Grey, I., Perkins, A. and Malkawi, R. (2019). Selecting high quality English/Arabic dual language texts for young children in multicultural contexts - A UAE Case. Issues in Educational Research 29(4).

Dillon, A. & Gallagher, K. (2019). Cross-cultural teaching for emergent Arabic-English biliteracy in Kindergarten. Paper 1439097. American Educational Research Association Conference (AERA) Proceedings.

Dillon, A. and Gallagher, K. (2019). The experience of co-teaching for emergent Arabic-English literacy. The Qualitative Report 24(7).

Dillon, A. (2019). Innovation and Transformation in Early Childhood Education in the UAE. In Gallagher, K. (ed) Education in the United Arab Emirates. Springer: Singapore.

Dillon, A. and Ali, T. (2019). Global nomads, cultural chameleons, strange ones or immigrants? An exploration of TCK terminology with reference to the United Arab Emirates, Journal of Research in International Education 18(1) 77–89.

Dillon, A., Aguleh, H, Al Seyabi, N. (2019). Our collaborative action research project: Integration of music to improve literacy in a kindergarten classroom. TESOL Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.400

Dillon, A., Hojeij, Z., Perkins, A., Malkawi, R. (2018). Examining the text quality of English/ Arabic dual language children’s picture books. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2017.1415867

Hathorn, C. & Dillon, A. (2018). Teacher Inquiry: Implications for Teacher Professional Development in the United Arab Emirates. Issues in Educational Research 28(1), 99-119. http://www.iier.org.au/iier28/hathorn.pdf

Dillon, A. (2018). Finding Innovation and Imagination in a Bag of Loose Parts. Childhood Education 94(1), 62-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2018.1420369

Al-Obeidat, F., Tubaishat, A., Dillon, A. and Shah, B. (2017). Analyzing Students’ Performance Using Multi-Criteria Classification. Cluster Computing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-017-0967-4

Dillon, A. and Pinedo-Burns, H. (2017). Intercultural Reflective Conversations: Fulfilling the mission of laboratory schools in the UAE and US. International Association of Laboratory Schools Journal, Spring 2017.

Dillon, A. (2016). An exploration of linguistic neo-colonialism through educational language policy – an Irish perspective. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 14(3).

Dillon, A., McCullagh, L., Asafo, J., Al Neyadi, Amal S., Al Neyadi, Amal M., (2016). The Effect of “Talking Partners” on UAE KG Students. TESOL Arabia Perspectives, Vol. 24, No. 2.

Dillon, A., Salazar, D. & Al Otaibi, R. (2015). Leading Learning; Co-teaching to enhance Arabic/ English biliteracy at kindergarten level. Middle East and Africa Journal of Educational Research. Volume 16.

Dillon, A. (2015). Formulaic language as a model for learners of English and Irish as additional languages in early childhood. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research. Vol. 2 No. 4, 84-97.

Dillon, A. (2012). Supporting Home Language Maintenance among Children with English as an Additional Language in Irish Primary Schools. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics (WPEL), Vol. 27, No. 2.

Dillon, A. (2012). Supporting L1 maintenance among speakers of additional languages. In Haugh, D. (Ed.) Current Issues in Education - Conference Journal. Ennis: Clare Education Centre.

Dillon, A. (2009). The CLIL Approach in Irish Primary Schools; A Multilingual Perspective. In Marsh, D., Mehisto, P. with Aliaga, R., Asikainen, T, Frigols, M., Hughes, S., Lange, G, (eds) CLIL Practice: Perspectives from the Field. CCN: University of Jyväskylä.

Dillon, A. (2009). Metalinguistic awareness and evidence of cross-linguistic influence among bilingual learners in Irish primary schools. Language Awareness, Volume 18, Issue 2, 182 – 197.