Penny is a DPhil student whose research interests centre on classroom talk and international collaborations between secondary English classrooms.
Penny completed Oxford’s MSc in Learning and Teaching with distinction in 2019, focusing on methods for mitigating the impact of mind-wandering and misunderstanding as a means of enhancing student engagement in small-group and whole-class debates of interpretations of literature. She has since won SHINE research funding to explore the impact of her methodology on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Her DPhil continues her interest in student discussions of literature, exploring the impact on identity of online discussions between English classrooms in different countries.
Penny began her career as a secondary English Language Arts and journalism teacher in the USA but has taught secondary English predominantly in the UK in a career spanning 25 years. She has overseen development of the global dimension and international collaboration at her current school for 14 years.
Supervisors
Victoria Elliott and Steven Puttick
Rachel’s research focuses on exploring the experiences of ethnic minority trainee teachers with a view to better supporting their progress through teacher education and beyond.
Rachel received a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Birmingham. She later completed a PGCE in secondary science and an MSc in Teacher Education at the University of Oxford. She also has a MA in Photography.
Rachel taught physics for seven years in local Oxfordshire secondary schools, becoming a mentor to trainee science teachers and Head of Physics. She most recently worked on the second year Teach First science course at the Institute of Education at UCL and as a curriculum tutor on the Oxford science PGCE. She has taught the Teaching Physics in Schools option for second year physics undergraduates studying at Oxford for the past four years.
Joanna is a Doctoral Student, and ESRC Grand Union DTP Scholar, researching in-class support for multilingualism in UK schools. She is a Doctoral Teaching Fellow on the MSc Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching course.
She has over 12 years of experience as a teaching professional, having worked as a class teacher, EAL specialist and Teaching Assistant in the UK, China, Brazil and Italy. Her main area of interest is school-based education (3-18), specifically the support for multilingual pupils and their language practices, as well as the relationship between teaching assistants and both teachers and children in schools.
Joanna holds a BA in Jurisprudence and a MSc in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching, both from the University of Oxford. She also has a PGCE, and a PGDip in French.
Joining the Department of Education in 2020 after teaching English and foreign languages in secondary schools and early years settings for 15 years, Catherine completed the MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition in 2021. Her doctoral research investigates the effectiveness of using songs as pedagogical tools with young second language learners in formal educational settings.
Catherine is a Doctoral Teaching Fellow on the MSc Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition course, teaching statistical methods and critical reading/writing. She supports the LiFT project team as Knowledge Exchange Coordinator, creating the project website and stakeholder events to help increase the project’s impact. Additionally, Catherine hosts The Language Revolution podcast, exploring how linguistics and language awareness might inform/transform languages teaching with guests including Michael Rosen and David Crystal. She also chairs the annual conference for NALDIC, the national subject association for EAL, and is part of the department’s REAL research group.
Publications
Hamilton, C., Schulz, J., Chalmers, H., & Murphy, V.A. (under review). The effectiveness of using songs for teaching second or foreign languages to primary and secondary school learners: a systematic review.
Hamilton, C. & Murphy, V.A. (2023) Folk pedagogy? Investigating how and why UK early years and primary teachers use songs with young learners, Education 3-13. DOI: 10.1080/03004279.2023.2168132
Multilingual is Normal: An anthology of voices, talking about talking (2020)
Renyu completed her BA degree in Psychology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) and her MPhil degree in Education at University of Cambridge.
During her MPhil study, she worked with children aged 4 to 6 years to investigate the relationship between bilingualism, vocabulary size, and inhibitory control, and also to validate a novel app designed to assess early language development. For her Dphil study at Oxford, Renyu aims to explore the factors that might affect L2 pronunciation learning in young children and the interaction between children’s L1 and L2. She is particularly interested in the psychological factors that might influence a child’s L2 pronunciation.
Prior to studying at Oxford, Renyu worked as Research Assistant at the Assessment Research Group at British Council for one year and a half. She was involved in various projects, including gap analysis on reading demand and reading ability, participant feedback questionnaire design and analysis, design and recruitment for a new EAP task study, etc.
Steve is Associate Professor of Teacher Education. He is subject lead for the Geography PGCE and MSc Learning and Teaching.
Steve is a qualified geography teacher and was previously the head of department at a comprehensive secondary school in Oxfordshire, and Head of Programmes at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln. He leads the interdisciplinary Education and Training for the Climate (ETC) Hub at Oxford.
He holds an MA in Educational Leadership and Innovation from Warwick University, an MSc in Educational Research Methodology and a DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford which were funded by an ESRC Studentship. He is a qualified Mountain Leader and rock climbing instructor, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
He researches at the intersection between the academic discipline and school subject of geography, work that is developing through three progress reports on Geographical Education: (I) fields, interactions and relationships; (II) anti-racist, decolonial futures; (III) climate change education (forthcoming). His research has been funded by the GCRF, ESRC, AHRC, ICHR, Nuffield Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Newton Fund, British Council, and PESGB. Recent collaborations include: Climate Change Education Futures in India (GCRF) in collaboration with colleagues at IISER, Pune; the role of cultural heritage in curriculum making in Kolkata (GCRF); and the Smart Cities Network for Sustainable Urban Future project (ESRC / Newton Fund) which was shortlisted for the Newton Prize (India).
Collaborations with colleagues in the School of Geography and the Environment are contributing to anti-racist curriculum futures, including in the school subject, and in postgraduate teaching through the TDEP-funded Oxford-UNISA course ‘Decolonising Research Methods’ which was shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellor’s teaching awards. These ideas are taken further in the context of school geography through his (2024) book: The Geography Teaching Adventure: reclaiming exploration to inspire curriculum and pedagogy.
His research on teacher education focuses on the contribution that geography education research offers to the conceptualisation and practice of teaching. This work includes ethnographic research on teachers’ curriculum making exploring the journeys through which information travels into school classrooms, beginning teachers’ experiences of school subject departments, the role of written lesson observation feedback in constructing ‘good teaching’, and knowledge in teacher education.
Steve serves on the editorial board of the journal Geography and is Chair of the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo/IGU-CGE).
Helen’s academic interest in higher education policy developed from more than 20 years of professional experience of university administration – in public relations and admissions.
She gained her doctorate from Oxford in 2010 (a study of the market created by the introduction of £3000 fees for Home/EU undergraduates at English universities in 2006); since then, she has conducted research into the impacts of student fees and funding on institutions, students, graduates and applicants within the higher education sector in England. She also works as a consultant to higher education institutions and fills senior interim roles in marketing, communications and student recruitment.
Helen was Pathway Convenor for the MSc Education (HE) for two years and continues to supervise Masters students researching her areas of interest within higher education. She is also an Associate of the SKOPE, the department’s research centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, and a member of the Higher Education Research Group.
In Helen’s recent publication, as editor of UK higher education – policy, practice and debate during HEPI’s first 20 years (HEPI Report 161, 2023) for the Oxford-based higher education think-tank HEPI (the Higher Education Policy Unit), she draws on her academic and professional backgrounds to provide an overview of policy-making and its impacts across the UK higher education, in the context of the four increasingly diverse sectors that are emerging following devolution of responsibility to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Jo-Anne is Director of the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment. She completed a six-year term as Head of the Department of Education, has been Standing Adviser to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, a member of Ofqual’s Standing Advisory Group on Standards, Chair of the National Reference Test Expert Group, and a member of the Welsh Government’s Curriculum and Assessment Group.
Before coming to Oxford, Jo-Anne held academic posts at the Institute of Education, University of London and the University of Bristol. Her first degree and doctorate were in psychology and she has an MBA. Her research projects include Setting and Maintaining Standards in national examinations, Examination reform: the impact of modular and linear examinations at GCSE, Assessment for Learning in Africa (AFLA), intelligent accountability and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study England national centre.
Her research interests are in educational assessment, including system-wide structures and processes, examination standards, marking and assessment design. Jo-Anne conducts a lot of work in collaboration with government and industry partners. She is a Co-Lead Editor of the Oxford Review of Education journal. She has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Bergen and Queen’s (Belfast) and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bergen in 2019. From 2013 to 2015 she was President of the Association for Educational Assessment – Europe.
Victoria Murphy is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Department of Education, University of Oxford.
Victoria’s research focuses on understanding the inter-relationships between child L2/FL learning, vocabulary and literacy development. Her work examines cross-linguistic relationships across linguistic systems in the emergent bilingual child and how foreign language learning in primary school can influence developing first language literacy. Her work has been funded by ESRC, The Leverhulme Trust, The Nuffield Foundation and the Educational Endowment Foundation, among others, and she has published two books on the topic of young language learners, as well as numerous refereed journal articles and book chapters. Victoria was Chair of NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) between 2018-2021 and has worked closely with teachers across the UK and internationally in support of Language in Education programmes.
Qualifications
- B.A.H. Linguistics/Psychology – Queen’s University, Kingston On, Canada
- M.A. Educational Psychology – McGill University, Canada
- Ph.D. – Second Language Education – McGill University Canada
Current Funded Research Projects
- Learning for Families through Technology with Rebecca Eynon and Sandra Mathers
- Supporting the development of Indian primary school children’s reading comprehension skills: A scaffolding-based intervention”. CI with I. Tsimpli (PI) & L. Mukhapoadhyay. British Academy – Humanities and Social Sciences Tackling Global Challenges
- “Improving the oral language skills of children with English as an Additional Language through a drama-based intervention” CI with Faidra Faitaki. CreATE Research Group