Prof. Allyson Holbrook

Biography

Allyson Holbrook is Foundation Director of SORTI, the Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact.

The primary focus of her work is in the area of Doctoral Education but extends more broadly to several key themes in higher education and the professions. They are

• Doctoral supervision, learning outcomes, expectations

• Assessment at doctoral level specifically, and feedback more generally

• University management, administration and leadership (particularly in relation to research)

• Research culture and environment

• Higher order thinking, adaptivity and innovation in research and the professions

• Adult Learning

• Professional learning and adaptive knowledge production

• Choice of profession and work transition

• Translation of research into policy and research impact (especially in Education)

• Research Quality

Most of her research outputs and supervision are in these areas and in the past ten years she has been successful in obtaining several Australian Research Council Discovery Grants in the fields of Doctoral Education, Engineering Education and Child Development.

Allyson is currently Chair of the University of Newcastle Human Research Ethics Committee. She presented some 70 invited workshops, keynotes and seminars on her areas of research expertise and a number of consultancies in fields within and outside education. Currently she is engaged in the evaluation of the NSW Volunteering Strategy with colleagues from the University of Wollongong. Most of her projects are team-based and draw on mixed methods designs. Her main area of teaching is research methods, with particular reference to qualitative methods.

SORTI, the Centre of which she is Director, was established out of the concern evident at national and international levels about the quality and impact of research and research training. The continued development of the Centre has also responded to the escalating interest in higher and professional education; the acquisition, use, settings; and the acceleration of the use of information technologies in related contexts.

SORTI activities are directed toward the understanding and development of research and higher order problem solving skills; the impact of research training and knowledge use; professional development and pathways to professions; and e-learning in a wide variety of contexts.

Qualifications

• PhD, La Trobe University, 1988
• Bachelor of Economics, La Trobe University
• Master of Tertiary Education Management, University of Melbourne, 2011

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Research

Research keywords

• Doctoral education and assessment
• Higher education
• Higher order learning
• History of education
• Professional education
• Research impact and quality
• Researcher development
• University administration

Research expertise

Professor Holbrook is a leading researcher in the area of doctoral assessment and doctoral quality and has won three national competitive research grants in these fields since 2002. Other recent competitive grant success has been in areas of doctoral learning, specifically metacognition, and adaptive knowledge production aligned with higher order learning and professional development. Her broad interest is higher education, specifically the study of university education, including undergraduate research, research administration and universities as learning organisations including communities of practice. She has undertaken a number of commissioned projects in areas of educational impact and research quality, as well as the effectiveness of peer review. She has an interest in research and innovation cultures, information use and choice of profession. This latter interest in the discipline of Engineering also gained competitive grant success. Professor Holbrook is currently director of the University centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact (SORTI). Her disciplinary expertise ranges across history, economics and tertiary management as well as higher education and she specialises in cross disciplinary, mixed methods projects.

Collaboration

Current research collaboration includes:

ARC Discovery Project, A cross-national study of the relative impact of an oral component on PhD examination quality, language and practice, with researchers from UNSW, Sydney University, ANU and Oxford University.

ARC Linkage Project, NSW Child Development Study, with UNSW

NSW Department of Education and Communities project, The Evaluation of the Flagships Projects for the NSW Volunteering Strategy, with the University of Wollongong

Fields of Research

Code	Description	Percentage
130300	Specialist Studies In Education	70
130299	Curriculum And Pedagogy Not Elsewhere Classified	15
130100	Education Systems	15

Centres and Groups

Centre

• Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact (SORTI)
• Educational Research Institute Newcastle (ERIN)

Memberships

Editorial Board.

• Member - History of Education Quarterly (USA)

Appointments

Council/Board Member Australian Council for Educational Research (Australia)	01/01/2001 - 01/12/2003
OzReader ARC (Australia)	01/01/2001
Consultant for Carrick grant on standards for Dance doctorates Carrick Institute (Australia)	01/01/2005

Invitations

History of research in Australia Australian Teacher Education Association, Australia (Commission to write books)	2006
History of research in Australia Australian Teacher Education Association, Australia (Commission to write books)	2006
Longitudinal RHD student profiling Australasian Research Managers Society , Australia (Invited presentation)	2004
Banding Study of Education Journals AARE/DEST, Australia (To assist DEST in ranking quality of Education journals)	2005

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Administrative

Administrative expertise

research ethics, research & research training, research management, centre management, course co-ordination

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Teaching

Teaching keywords

• Doctoral learning
• Qualitative research methods

Teaching expertise

Professor Holbrook has taught in most facets of teacher education, but in recent years her teaching is generally in methods areas, particularly qualitative methods. Most of her recent research has employed mixed methods. In addition to doctoral supervision she provides workshops and seminars on research skills, examination and supervision.