I have worked as an English Language Intensive Course for Overseas Students (ELICOS) teacher in both Europe and Australia since 2006. I have taught English as a second language to students at all levels of proficiency, but I now specialise in developing higher-level English and academic skills in order to prepare non-English speaking pupils for university study in Australia.
My research is concerned with both the promise and the problems of using new media in educational contexts. New technology has great potential to extend classroom practice and to better engage students in a course of study, thereby deepening and enriching learning. Nevertheless, educational use of new media often fails to meet this promise. Reasons for why this happens is an area of interest for me as a social researcher. The potential affordances of web-based technologies cannot be divorced from the social/cultural contexts within which such tools are used. As an instructional designer, I am interested in intervening in classroom practice in order to improve educational practice. The broader aims of my work are to inform educational theory by determining best-practice design principles that are of interest to others using new media in education.
Research interests:
– Second-language (L2) teaching and its history
– Flexible Learning Environments or Instructional Design Systems
– Neoliberalism and its impacts upon education
– Cultural-historical learning theory
– Educational Design Research
Supervision:
I am currently being supervised by Dr Nicola Johnson, and Dr Jill Brown.