About

I am an author, university teacher and researcher. I have authored several books relating to the psychology of education, as well as school and university textbooks. I work on a range of research and SOTL (scholarship of teaching and learning) projects, listed below.

Research Projects

My research focuses on educational applications of memory, metacognition, and cognitive skills. In the past, I have written extensively about memory, creativity, and pedagogical strategies such as interleaving, as well as exploring issues of teacher and student research engagement. Currently, areas that I am actively working on include:

  • Study Strategies and Beliefs About Learning. I am working to explore student readiness for beginning university. This involves quantiative and qualitative research into students’ beliefs about learning and their choices of strategy for independent study times. As part of this, I am exploring school-university transitions. I want to know more about how schools prepare students for university study, and about how expectations and skills from school exams transfer positively or negatively to university life. Finding out more about these areas could help both schools and universities to better support their students, and is likely to be particularly important for vulnerable and first-generation university students.

  • Active Breaks During Study. Exercise and activity levels are closely connected to cognition, especially to working memory, attention, and executive functions. This makes movement and activity potentially relevant to self-regulated study at university. With colleague Dr Farid Bardid, I am exploring the potential of active breaks to form part of a student’s repertoire of self-regulated study strategies.

  • Writing-to-Learn as a pedagogical strategy in HE. There is a consensus among theorists of writing that it is not merely an ‘output’ process that happens after thinking, but can influence and develop how we think, remember and understand. This makes writing an important pedagogical strategy, sometimes known as ‘writing to learn’. I am exploring its potential for consolidating academic reading and as a classroom strategy.

  • Theorising metacognition. Metacognition is increasingly recognised as an important strategy for classrooms and a key element of self-regulated study, but it remains misunderstood. I am exploring perceptions of this concept, including how it connects to reflective practice, and how it can best be communicated to learners and educators.

  • Difficulty in education. Education often involves decisions and practices that simplify experiences for learners, such as scaffolding, examples, clear explanations, reduction of demand, and gradual practice. However, cognitive psychology has identified several key situations where difficult practice is more effective. I am exploring this apparent contradiction on a theoretical level.

  • Education in popular culture. For many people, education is synonymous with school or college, but a vast range of other experiences also impact on education and on learning. I am researching the impact particularly of popular culture (e.g. games, fiction) on the development of academic skills such as creativity and critical thinking.