Ling is a third-year PhD student in the School of Chinese as a Second Language at Peking University in China and also a recognised student in the Department of Education at Oxford. My research focuses on teacher education and development, with a specific emphasis on teachers who teach Chinese language worldwide.
Supervisors
Laura Molway and Robert Woore
Thomas Procter-Legg is a DPhil Student in the Department of Education and is researching restorative practice within the context of special educational needs and disabilities.
His previous experience includes five years as the Head Teacher of a special academy in Oxfordshire UK, specialising in education for students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. He has also worked as a SEND Reviewer for Whole School SEND; a Teaching School Director; and as the Principal Designate on a successful Free School bid.
Thomas is passionate about restorative practice and is involved in many communities of practice, such as the Global Alliance for Restorative Justice and Social Justice, where he is a member of the research sub-group exploring the interactions between restorative justice and social justice.
Thomas is also a strong advocate for creativity in education; having previously gained a Fine Art degree from Chelsea College of Art. This heavily influenced his educational leadership and during his time as a Head Teacher, he became the co-founder of a co-constructed initiative between the academy and the University of Oxford Gardens Libraries and Museums. This work placed cultural learning opportunities and relationships at the heart of the curriculum and is the longest standing project between a special school and The University of Oxford. This sustainable partnership champions marginalised voices and has been highly celebrated e.g., inclusion in the Durham Commission for Creativity in Education; recent dissemination at the Museum Ideas Conference 2022; highly commended award at the Museum and Heritage Awards 2021; and awarded Platinum ArtsMark in 2021.
Whilst this creative work may seem to be separate from restorative practice, Thomas subscribes to the idea that there are significant overlaps, both within pedagogical practice and wider school culture, topics which his current research touch on within the context of special education.
Publications
Procter-Legg. (2022). A Discourse on Restorative Practice—Participants’ Views of a Divergent Ideology. Laws, 11(6), 86–. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11060086
Procter-Legg. (2022). Practitioner Perspectives on a Restorative Community: An Inductive Evaluative Study of Conceptual, Pedagogical, and Routine Practice. Laws, 11(1), 4–. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11010004
Supervisors
Ian Thompson and Jason Todd
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
Nadia was a primary school teacher and leader for 19 years prior to becoming a Higher Education practitioner. Nadia is currently a Senior Lecturer in Primary Initial Teacher Education and Professional Studies and Partnerships.
Nadia won an International Award for Best Paper at the Research in Education Knowledge Exchange Conference 2022 in Cairo for my paper entitled, ‘The world is not a stage – primary initial teacher training through the navigation of dissonance and the negotiation of faith identity’.
Supervisors
Nigel Fancourt and Aliya Khalid
Sarah has a background in Biodiversity and Natural Resources Management and Rural Community Development.
She has been working for the past 8 years in the sustainable development sector. Aware of the importance of educating students about biodiversity, natural resources, and environmental issues to promote the sustainability of the environment and our societies, Sarah is currently conducting her DPhil in environmental education. She will be assessing the integration of environmental education in the Lebanese curriculum, assessing the status of students’ environmental awareness, and identifying ways to enhance environmental education via the Threshold Concepts framework and via partnerships between the developmental and educational sectors.
Supervisors
Jenny Wynn and Steve Puttick
Publications
- Karam, S., Kreidy, C., Bechara, N., Bou Harb, C., Abu Nasr, Y., and Hamadeh, S. (2022) Promoting Innovative Alternatives – The Urban Oasis Case Study, The Blessed Tree Magazine November 2022
- Abi Said M., Bou Shroush J., Karam S., Shaib H. 2022. Intestinal parasites of Apodemus mystacinus along altitudinal stratification of Ibrahim River – Mount Lebanon. Annals of Parasitology, 68(2): 227-239.
- Karam, S., Martiniello, G., Chalak, A., Abi-Said, M., & Hamadeh, S. K. (2021). Biosphere Reserves in Lebanon: Rifts between Conservation Discourse and Practice. Sustainability, 13(22), 12411.
- Tawk, S. T., Chedid, M., Chalak, A., Karam, S., & Hamadeh, S. K. (2019). Challenges and Sustainability of Wheat Production in a Levantine Breadbasket. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 8(4), 1-17.
- Chedid, M., Tawk, S. T., Chalak, A., Karam, S., & Hamadeh, S. K. (2018). The Lebanese Kishk: A Traditional Dairy Product in a Changing Local Food System. Journal of Food Research, 7: 16.
- Abi-Said, M.R. and S. Karam. 2017. Morphological, cranial study and habitat preference of Mus macedonicus (Petrov & Ruzic, 1983) (Mammalia: Rodentia) in Lebanon. Jordan Journal of Biological Sciences 10(4): 235-237.
- Karam, S. & Issa, D. (2015). Évaluation de la biodiversité sur deux sections du LMT. The Magazine of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association, 4.
Trained as a medical doctor following a degree in medicine at the university of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. Now a qualified consultant in major trauma and emergency medicine and fellow of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM). Also a military reservist having successfully completed officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. Has a special interest in medical education (both undergraduate and postgraduate) and completed a Master of Studies in medical education at the University of Cambridge, where he explored the feasibility of a fully virtual medical school. Currently an honorary senior lecturer at King’s College London working with undergraduate medical students.
My DPhil studies explores the perceived barriers and individual challenges of black minority doctors and their representation at senior management level in the UK national health service (NHS), and the wider societal implications.
Supervisors
Ann Childs and Debbie Aitken
Rosie’s key research interests lie at the intersection between Cognitive Psychology and Education, with a particular focus on understanding how the Early Years educational environment can impact upon the development of key skills prior to the onset of formal schooling.
Her DPhil is focused on understanding the mathematical environment at preschool and its impact upon the development of mathematical and executive function skills in 3- to 4-year-olds, with a particular focus on children from lower income backgrounds.
Rosie holds an MSc in Developmental Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh and an undergraduate degree in Psychology and French from the University of Liverpool. Her previous experience spans research and education. She was involved in developing and later collecting data on the feasibility of an Early Years mathematics and executive function programme, the ‘ONE’ programme. Prior to this, she worked as a research assistant on projects related to language and executive function development in young children. She has also worked in a number of educational roles with both typically and non-typically developing children.
Publications
- Scerif, G., Blakey, E., Gattas, S., Hawes, Z., Howard, S., Merkley, R., O’Connor, R., & Simms, V. (2023). Making the executive ‘function’ for the foundations of mathematics: the need for explicit theories of change for early interventions. Educational Psychology Review, 25, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09824-3
- Scerif, G., Gattas, S., Godfrey, A., Hawes, Z., Howard, S., Merkley, R., O’Connor, R., & Sučević, J. (2023). Orchestrating numeracy and the executive – ‘the ONE’ programme. The Nuffield Foundation. https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Scerif-Final-report-Fostering-resilience-by-injecting-executive-challenge-into-early-maths.pdf
- Skarabela, B., Ota, M., O’Connor, R., & Arnon, I. (2021). ‘Clap your hands’ or ‘take your hands’? One-year-olds distinguish between frequent and infrequent multiword phrases. Cognition, 2111,104612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104612
Supervisors
Gaia Scerif and Iram Siraj
Robin’s research is broadly concerned with the lived, experiences and identities of genderqueer+ youth in the Czech Republic. In his research, he aims not only to understand genderqueer+ youth’s experiences, but he strives to feed into ongoing Czech trans and genderqueer+ activism and advocacy through collaboration with local youth activist collectives.
As the queerness of Robin’s research reflects his own queerness, he also seeks to queer academia and research by challenging conventional means of doing research and hegemonic forms of knowledge.
Supervisors
David Mills and Velda Elliott
Nilesh is primarily interested in researching caste learning in schools, caste in school curriculums and anti-caste pedagogies through a sociological approach.
My research project aims to study ‘ Teaching caste’ in Indian schools and try to work on the theorization of the caste curriculum based on Willam Pinar’s curriculum theory. The broad aim of the study is to understand how the concept of caste is taught in Indian schools. In particular, I will assess how the understanding of caste among young students is influenced by (1) the descriptions of caste, as mentioned in NCF 2005/ NEP 2020-compliant textbooks, (2) the pedagogy employed by teachers to impart learning on the topic, (3) and the teachers’ understanding and reflections on the subject of caste. I will also explore the experience of caste among students from all castes, emphasizing how young adults learn the caste since childhood, through education as well as social life. My topic of research is aimed towards enhancing the pragmatic understanding of caste (and the inequalities) for curriculum as well as a larger framework of caste-inclusive policy making.
Before Joining the DPhil programme, Nilesh completed postgraduate degrees from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (MA, MPhil in Social work) and the University of Edinburgh (MScR in Sociology). He has also worked to promote education among girls from marginalised backgrounds (oppressed castes, class) in Maharashtra with various organisations in the last six years.
Supervisors
Liam Gearon and Aliya Khalid