Research expertise in education

There is a great depth and range of research expertise in the School of Education at AUT. Below you will find a short synopsis of the research interests and expertise that exists within our school.

Professor Andrew Gibbons

Research expertise

• Philosophy
• Technology
• Education
• Politics

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Professor Eileen Piggot-Irvine

Research expertise

• Action research
• Evaluation research
• Leadership trust building
• Performance appraisal

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Professor Jane Gilbert

Research expertise

• Educational Futures
• Equity issues in education
• Science education
• Complexity thinking
• Knowledge/Network age and education
• Sociology of education
• Women in science
• Education in the anthropocene

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Professor Nesta Devine

Research expertise

• Philosophy of education: policy studies
• Pacific studies in education
• Foucault, Derrida
• Public choice (neo-liberal) theory
• Theory and practice in pedagogy

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Associate Professor Jennie Billot

Research expertise

• Higher education
• Educational leadership
• Academic identity
• Postgraduate education and supervision
• Researcher development
• Interdisciplinary research

Associate Professor Leon Benade

Head of School, Director of Postgraduate Programmes

Research expertise

• Philosophy and theory of education
• Policy studies and analysis (including curriculum policy and practice)
• Teacher’s work
• Flexible and innovative learning environments
• Knowledge economy
• Ethics
• Organisation and educational leadership
• Research theory

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Dr Adrian Schoone

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Social pedagogy
• Alternative education provision
• Education opportunities for disenfranchised students
• Methodological expertise: Poetic inquiry (arts-based educational research), phenomenology

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Dr Carol Neill

Senior Lecturer

• Aotearoa New Zealand social and political history
• Communities' engagement with history
• Economic and social development
• Global citizenship education

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Dr Carrie Swanson

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Primary science
• Dramatic inquiry (or drama-based learning)
• Mantle of the expert
• Integrated teaching approaches
• Action research

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Dr Chris Jenkin

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Early childhood
• Bicultural curriculum
• Equity culture and diversity
• Ethics
• Gender
• Appreciative inquiry
• Action research

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Dr Daniel Couch

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Education and higher education in conflict-affected contexts
• Globalisation and education
• Education and international development
• Global competence and global citizenship education
• PISA and supranational influences on education
• Critical realism; critical policy analysis
• Critical cultural political economy of education
• Strategic Relational Approach

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Dr Howard Youngs

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Post-heroic leadership (distributed, shared, collective)
• Process and practice perspectives of leadership
• Critical leadership studies
• School leadership
• Higher education leadership
• Organisational and team development
• Leadership development
• Mixed methods research design
• Case study research
• New Zealand and ASEAN contexts

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Dr John Milne

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Metacognition and self-regulation of reading
• Narrative representations of individual reading styles
• Reading for pleasure
• Verbal protocol analysis

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Dr Jyoti Jhagroo

Director of Initial Teacher Education Programmes, Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Phenomenological research of lived experiences
• Mathematics education
• Practice-based research
• Migrant experiences

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Dr Lisa Maurice-Takerei

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Adult education
• Post-compulsory education and training
• Tertiary teaching
• Technical and vocational education and training
• Teachers’ work
• Trade-based tutors
• Practitioner-based research
• Critical theory
• Ethnographies

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Dr Lyn Lewis

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Higher education
• Migration and settlement
• International education
• Internationalising the curriculum
• ePortfolios
• Rich picture methodology

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Dr Lynette Reid

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Career development and education
• Work integrated learning in higher education
• Indigenous and localised career development models and practices
• Career counselling theories and models
• The role and purpose of career for indigenous career professionals
• Challenging traditional career theories, and dominant narratives – thinking and doing career work differently

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Dr Megan Lourie

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Sociology of education
• Policy research and analysis
• Knowledge economy
• Bicultural education policy
• Maori language learning in mainstream school settings

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Dr Neil Boland

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Arts-based practices
• First-person research
• Embodied spirituality in child- and adulthood
• Steiner Waldorf education
• Creative inquiry (pathway 3)
• Autoethnography

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Dr Ross Bernay

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Mindfulness for teachers
• Stress reduction
• Partnerships between schools and universities

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Dr Ruth Boyask

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Changing nature of public education, its policy and practice
• Children’s reading as a public education issue
• Systems of schooling
• School governance
• Knowledge mobilisation and the utilisation of educational research
• Theoretical frameworks include public sphere theory, critical theory, policy sociology and pragmatism
• Methodologies include case study, global ethnography, policy analysis, survey and comparative methods

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Dr Stuart Deerness

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Sociology of education
• Social justice and critical approaches in education
• The cultural, political and discursive structures that shape teachers' work
• The social construction of school quality
• Teacher education
• Qualitative and ethnographic methods

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Dr Tafili Utumapu-McBride

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Pacific peoples’ education
• Early childhood education
• Pasifika pedagogy
• Studies of Pacific peoples’ societies
• Higher education
• Pasifika research methodologies
• Cross-cultural supervision

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Dr Toni Ingram

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Gender, sexualities and schooling
• Sexuality education
• Girlhood
• Femininities
• New materialisms
• Feminist post-structuralism
• Queer theory
• Posthumanist research practices

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Dr Yael Cameron

Senior Lecturer

Research expertise

• Interdisciplinary creative works research
• Poetic inquiry
• Critical theory (including feminist and queer theory)
• Continental philosophy
• Religious texts and religious education

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Dr Alastair Wells

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Education
• Technology
• Pedagogy
• Philosophy
• Design thinking
• Educational environments

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Dr Alison Smith

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Educational leadership
• Student voice and agency
• Appraisal
• Leadership development
• Coaching and mentoring

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Dr Anienie Veldsman

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Sensory processing
• Motor development
• Movement learning
• Participatory action research
• Teachers’ professional development
• Inclusive education
• Play-based learning
• Social Inclusion in classrooms

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Celeste Harrington

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Early childhood education
• Early literacy
• Reading aloud
• Reading for pleasure
• Initial teacher education
• Mentoring

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Dr Eunice Gaerlan Price

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Girlhood studies
• Gifted and talented education
• Gifted and talented girls
• Social media
• Feminism
• Critical media literacy
• Critical pedagogy
• Fiction-based research
• Collective story methodology

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Dr Jayne Jackson

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Participatory action research
• Qualitative survey
• Reading for pleasure
• Situated literacy
• Social inclusion in classrooms
• Quilt making and quilt makers

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Jo Pascoe

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Posthuman philosophy
• Education
• Theatre, film, literature
• Creative writing
• Arts-based research practice
• Walking methodology

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Martha McFaul

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Mathematics education
• Mathematical reasoning, curriculum and pedagogy
• Initial teacher education

Pamela Perger

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Mathematics education at early childhood, primary and ITE levels
• Mathematics and numeracy curriculum and pedagogy
• Self regulation in learning in primary school students
• Children’s literature in supporting learning across the curriculum

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Dr Parisa Tadi

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Early childhood education
• Parent participation
• Diversity in education
• Immigrants and refugee studies
• Initial teacher education
• Methodologies: mixed methods research design, survey and comparative study, practice-based research

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Dr Rebecca L. Hopkins

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Philosophy of education
• Early childhood education
• Childhood studies
• Visual research methods
• Lens-based practice
• Wellbeing

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Dr Meg Jacobs

Lecturer

Research expertise

• Early childhood literacies;
• Culturally sustaining pedagogies;
• Family pedagogies;
• Politics of early literacy;
• Research methods from qualitative traditions of ethnography,
• Narrative inquiry,
• Portraiture,
• Critical participatory action research

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