Dr. Phillip A. Towndrow is a Senior Research Scientist in the Office of Education Research at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Phillip began his career as an English language teacher. He previously worked in Britain, Spain and the United Arab Emirates before moving to Singapore to work in language and communication, and teacher education. Phillip’s main research and writing interests establish practicable links between educational and literacy theories to general pedagogy and classroom practices. These include: multimodal communication, critical pedagogy, and teachers’ education and professionalism. His academic writing has appeared in several books and journals including the Journal of Curriculum Studies and the Journal of Literacy Research.