PhD Supervision - Areas of Interest

Ashwin, Paul

I am interested in recieving PhD proposals in most areas related to students' and academics' experiences of higher education. The research of my current and past doctoral students includes work on:

• Academics' conceptions of creativity in teaching and learning in higher education;
• The relations between art and design tutors' conceptions of their professional practice and their teaching practice;
• The pedagogic discourse of nursing;
• Threshold concepts in prosthetics and orthotics;
• Midwives use of a personal learning system to support their continuing professional development after graduation;
• How the practices of nurse educators structure the curriculum;
• Students' and tutors' experiences of learning support in higher education;
• Student identities in higher education;
• The research student experience in higher education;
• How academics experience the relations between their academic work and parenting
• Chinese students' experiences of UK higher education
• The student experience of postgraduate marketing education
• The assessment of competence
• Conceptions of mathematics of primary initial teacher training students
• Academics' conceptions of the first year experience in higher education
• Students' experiences of time in on-line learning environments
• Dyslexic students' experience of supportive technologies in higher education

Cuban, Sondra

Adult literacy, new literacies, ICT, education and basic skills, women's studies/gender studies, migration studies, qualitative research, ethnographic studies.

Fritz, Catherine

• Learning and remembering, especially with respect to the role of practice and repetition and/or interest and motivation;
• Issues related to effective learning of statistics, maths and/or science;
• Constructive nature of perception, memory and reasoning, including investigation of biases;
• Memory improvement strategies;
• Remembering names.

Hamilton, Mary

• Adult language, literacy and numeracy education (ALLN) and the new literacy studies;
• Informal adult learning and everyday practices across the lifespan;
• Use of Literacies and Technologies among older people
• Policy issues in ALLN, global and comparative perspectives;
• Media representations of educational issues;
• Participatory research methodologies;
• Institutional ethnography
• Use of visual data in research and computer assisted qualitative analysis.

Houghton, Ann-Marie

On areas associated with my research interests but in particular in the next few years on widening participation and the academic and learning experiences of disabled learners, or Black and Minority Ethnic students, from a multi-agency perspective the policy agenda of Schools that will encompass family and intergenerational learning from the perspective of the Extended Schools or Faith Schools agenda and finally the transitions issues into education and the workplace, especially for disabled graduates.

Jackson, Carolyn

All aspects of gender and education. For example, single-sex and co-educational learning environments (see videos on this page), girls' in- and out-of-school lives, concerns about boys' 'underachievement', constructions of gendered learner identities, gender and teacher identities, gender and the curriculum, gendered identities in Higher Education.

Social psychology and sociology of teaching and learning, especially motives for learning or not learning, fear of failure, how classroom environments and peers shape approaches to learning and learner identities. Intergroup relations.

Fear in education - the effects of fear on all aspectsof school and university life.

Lewis, Bob

I am happy to work on-line with doctoral students in the general area of knowledge sharing and in particular e-learning. My focus is on learning in groups.

Parchoma, Gale

I am especially interested in proposals from potential doctoral students in the areas of networked learning, technological affordances, social negotiation and social capital in online learning environments, identities in online learning environments, formal and informal online learning communities.

Passey, Don

Uses and impacts of technologies and technology-based resources in formal educational environments

Uses and impacts of technologies and technology-based resources across informal and formal learning environments

Specific aspects of learning and how these are impacted by technologies

How technologies are used by and impact young people who find it hard to learn or who are vulnerable

Uses of data management and data handling in school-based and lifelong learning contexts

Rogers, Colin

• Motivational processes in education
• Aspects of group based learning
• Problem based learning
• Teacher expectations

Saunders, Murray

• Educational policy implementation and change;
• Work and the curriculum;
• National and international policy evaluation, evaluation theory and method, evaluation of complex change processes e.g. e-learning.
• Informal learning in communities,

Sime, Julie-Ann

• The development of competence and expertise in professional learning
• Cognitive approaches to the design of learning technology;
• Games and simulations in teaching and learning;
• The use of multiple representations in thinking, teaching and learning with technology;
• Use of qualitative simulations in learning environments
• Adoption of new technologies in teaching and learning, e.g. Second Life and other virtual environments.

Thompson, Leanne

Perception and information processing in "normal" or SEN / disabled groups. This could involve a focus on information presentation in a variety of modalities (vision, touch, audition etc.) or a focus on perceptual processes themselves(e.g. during reading). Alternatively the focus could be on perceptual processes resulting from various types of impairment (e.g. blindness, autism etc.). I'm particularly keen on exploring the educational implications (i.e. impact on learning & memory) of different types of information (visual, tactual, auditory etc.), whether this is due to a particular SEN or just preference.

Tight, Malcolm

• Changing patterns of academic work;
• The nature of the academic experience;
• The history and meaning of higher education;
• Alternative modes of study;
• The postgraduate and research student experience;
• Mature and 'non-traditional' students;
• Comparative studies;
• Patterns of participation;
• The role of learning in adult life

Trowler, Paul

• Higher education policy-making and policy implementation;
• The analysis of organisational and professional cultures in universitities, particularly as they relate to change-management processes;
• The reception and impact in differing social contexts of learning, teaching and assessment policies and practices;
• Discourse and identities in higher education; ethnographic research methodologies.

Warin, Jo

I would be interested in receiving proposals on:

• The development of identity through the school years
• Parenting (especially with a focus on gender)
• The home-school relationship
• Gender issues in education (particularly those concerned with issues about male staff in early years education)
• Early childhood

Watch Video of Jo Warin talking about her research interests