Shuyan is a doctoral student in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She has strong research interests in the sociocultural perspective of learning, teacher education and teaching English as a second language.
Her doctoral research explores the processes of professional learning and identity development with the aim of strengthening the quality and agency of teachers. She focuses on offering empirical evidence to understand how language teacher identity is embedded in discursive practices and how the societal, cultural and institutional issues are played out in teacher education.
Prior to her doctoral study, she has taught English as a foreign language in China and received her M.A. degree in English Education with distinction at the Institute of Education, University College London (UCL).
Cindy works at the intersection of learning, design, and technology, with a keen interest in the orchestration of future-ready tech-enabled learning.
She is curious how the deployment of adaptive learning systems to schools will impact classroom learning and hopes to learn more about the human-machine partnership in education. Specifically, her research is concerned with the implications that the use of such systems has on teacher-student interactions, as teachers grapple with balancing personalised learning and learning in community, as well as curriculum demands and student interests. These are some tensions which could potentially be exacerbated by affordances of adaptive learning systems.
Prior to embarking on the DPhil in Education at Oxford, Cindy worked as the Lead Specialist in Technologies for Learning at the Educational Technology Division of Ministry of Education, Singapore. She had previously completed graduate studies at the National University of Singapore and Stanford University where she was awarded Master of Arts in English Studies and Master of Arts in Education.
Alexa Muse is a DPhil student in the Education Department. With eight years of English teaching experience (ages 11-17) both in the United States and abroad (Turkey and Russia), Alexa is interested in the intersection of equity-oriented education, teacher agency, and subversive curricular techniques. Other interests of hers include Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Figured Worlds, and narratology. Her undergraduate degree (BS Middle/Secondary English Education) is from Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana (USA). Her Master’s degree (MSc Learning and Teaching) is from Oxford University; her dissertation has since been abridged and published in the English in Education journal.
Publications
Alexa Muse (2019): “Whilst I learn and live”: a comparative case study analysing the identity formation of seventh grade Turkish and International students via self-narratives in an English class, English in Education, DOI: 10.1080/04250494.2019.1621160
Abdul Karim has completed a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering and Computational Medicine (Imperial College London), a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (Queen Mary University of London), and Master of Science in the Philosophy of Science and Economics (The London School of Economics).
He has delivered lectures on the Philosophy of Human Nature and the History of Metaethics at the University of Cambridge and for Health Education East Midlands. This, in addition to the current positions he holds as a Hospital Doctor and Health Policy and Management Advisor at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.
Abdul Karim’s current areas of interest include the biological definition of psychological states relevant to the learning environment, and the influence of language on the variable interpretation of a particular social context. For the latter of which he has published primary research.
Another is the appraisal and deployment of physiological measurement devices in learning environments as a means of quantitatively evaluating psychological states. Such research areas hold promise in enhancing the questionnaire-based evidences of contemporary theories in education, such as those regarding motivation, self-determination and engagement. This will to contribute to the evidence-based public policy optimisation in education and social care.
Publications
Ismail, A.K. 2017. A Cross Sectional Study to Explore the Effect of the Linguistic Origin and Evolution of a Language on Patient Interpretation of Haematological Cancers. Advances in Biological Research. 11 (4): 225-232.
Ismail, A.K. 2017. The Origin of the Arabic Medical Term for Cancer. Advances in Biological Research. 11 (4): 198-201.
Ismail, A.K. 2018. The Impact of da Vinci’s Anatomical Drawings and Calculations on Foundation of Orthopaedics. Advances in Biological Research. 12 (1): 26-30.
Yushan Xie is a Doctoral student in education and a Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford. Her research is fully funded by the Clarendon Fund and Brasenose College.
Her research focuses on the self-formation of students of rural backgrounds in universities in China, against the backdrop of higher education massification, urbanisation and digitalisation.
Prior to Oxford, Yushan worked as a social entrepreneur in rural Hunan Province and educational policy researcher which enabled her to conduct health and education intervention research in the rural west of China, including Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces. She also gained professional experience in working as a youth culture researcher in a leading Chinese consulting firm.
Yushan completed her MPhil in Education from Cambridge University where she was awarded a ‘Best Dissertation Award’ from the Faculty and the ‘Special Commendation Award’ from the British Council ELT Master’s Dissertation Competition. She holds a BA in Translation from Nankai University in China during which she was awarded the National Scholarship from the Ministry of Education.
Publications
Xie, Y. & Liu. Y. (2021). Who do you hand out with? How Chinese students’ social networks relate to perceived oral proficiency gains during study abroad experiences. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 6(1), 59-90.
Bhabesh’s research Inquire into the systemic practices in a school to understand the implications of already existing classification of roles, and regulations based on power and control dynamics within the school. Also, focusing on the systemic apparatuses existing in a schooling system, wherein there is a categorical divide between the students
that are the academically poor and the administrative personnel who pose authority.
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.
Abbey is a Probationary Research Student in the Department of Education, in collaboration with the Department of Engineering.
Before joining the DPhil program, Abbey obtained a B.A. in Applied Linguistics with minors in Russian and Chinese from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship through U.S. Department of State for study in Russia and was awarded two Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships for study in both Russia and China. She holds both TESOL and TEFL certificates and has taught English as a Second Language in various contexts to a wide variety of learner populations.
Abbey’s main research interests lie in the use of technology to facilitate language learning. Her DPhil research focuses on the development of a virtual reality program to bridge the gaps that students face when learning languages through distance learning.