PhD opportunities

These are project ideas we would be interested in supporting for doctoral research work, but we are happy to hear your ideas too. If you would like to discuss further, please contact us.

Mathematics education

• The use of digital storybooks in early mathematics learning
• Parent-child mathematical talk during spatial reasoning games
• Studies exploring transitions between secondary and university mathematics education
• Exploring learning and teaching with interactive theorem provers
• How effective are online learning platforms for secondary mathematics education?
• How do teaching approaches and curricula in secondary mathematics education differ between countries? 
• Novel assessment in university mathematics?
• The role and potential of Interactive online mathematics textbooks
• Mathematical communication, argumentation and transitions to ‘proof-based mathematics’

Science and Environmental Education in formal and informal settings

• Teachers’ conceptualisations of complexity within socioscientific-issues based education 
• The use of mapping controversies as a methodological and pedagogical tool in socioscientific-issues based education 
• Socioscientific inquiry-based learning as a means towards environmental citizenship in primary and secondary education: teacher and student approaches
• Realistic approaches to understanding and improving biodiversity in the school grounds
• Approaches to developing environmental knowledge, values and actions among young people from different cultural backgrounds 
• Developing outdoor escape rooms to cognitively and emotionally engage young people with nature
• Understanding how sustainability and climate change education is being embedded in the school curriculum 
• Education about environmental, climate-related and human-made disasters in schools
• Culturally responsive and justice-oriented approaches to science (physical sciences) education
• Investigating experiences in informal learning environments (science and non-science)
• Using video-based research to explore interactions in informal learning environments.
• Analysing emotions using observations in science centres.
• Exploring science learning opportunities within the family, especially cognitive, emotional and social experiences.
• Studies exploring the mentoring of new and early career teachers
• Curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher professional development and collaboration in cross-disciplinary settings

Writing and learning

• Effects of different drafting strategies on writing and learning – in both schools and Higher Education settings.
• Neurocognition of writing to learn, currently explored using response time measurements, with potential collaborations with colleagues in neuroscience.
• Using text analysis to understand linguistic features associated with writing to learn and text quality.