Teachers and Teaching Research Centre
Post-grad opportunities
Research undertaken by the TTRC has had large-scale positive effects on teaching and learning in Australia. The Centre’s research has positively impacted thousands of teachers and millions of students. Our significant impact covers student academic achievement, equity, and aspirations; teaching quality, teacher morale and wellbeing; school culture, leadership, and whole-school improvement; and national policy influence.
Courses
The following courses are available to students studying teaching at the University of Newcastle and are based on the research conducted at the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre. All Australian preservice teachers can also become members of the QT Academy for free.
Graduate research
Why a PhD with the TTRC?
The TTRC is an Australian leader in rigorous, large-scale, mixed methodology research that aims to address the most pressing challenges in education. We conduct research in the following areas:
- Quality teaching
- Initial teacher education
- Teacher development
- School change
- Leadership
- Student aspirations
- Equity
- STEM education
- Higher education.
Supervisors
Before you apply, contact a supervisor for discussion of possible research projects. This discussion will let you frame your proposal to align with established directions. It will also line up with areas in which supervisors have capacity.
Laureate Professor Jenny Gore AM
- Equity
- Pedagogical reform
- Social theory and education
- Teacher development
- Teacher education reform
- Teacher socialisation.
Dr Drew Miller
- Professional development
- Quality teaching
- National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS)
- Physical activity
- Physical education
- Elementary physical education
- Fundamental movement skills
- Game centred approach
- Primary physical education
- Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU).
Dr Elena Prieto-Rodriguez
- Computational thinking
- Engineering education
- Mathematics education.
Dr Leanne Fray
- Qualitative research methods
- Student aspirations
- Thematic analysis.
Dr Sally Patfield
- Equity and social justice
- Sociology of education
- Quality teaching
- Teacher professional development
- Higher education.
Apply for a PhD or Research Masters
When you complete a PhD with the TTRC, you will be contributing to an expansive program of research. You'll also have the opportunity to access to large qualitative and quantitative datasets. Plus, you'll be a part of a dynamic and collegial research team.
Our graduate research involves a range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives. It provides ample scope for specialising across such areas as:
- Impact on student achievement
- Scaling education innovation
- Implementation science
- Digital technologies
- School culture and leadership, and many more.
PhD profiles
Our PhD students investigate a range of topics related to TTRC research priorities. The following profiles highlight just some of the diverse and interesting work of our candidates.
On ‘being first’: Reconsidering Australian higher education equity policy through a comprehensive analysis of the aspirations of prospective first-in-family students
Higher education policy in Australia has long focused on six equity target groups. Sally’s thesis shifted attention to group of students who have received comparatively little attention within the widening participation agenda and the Australian context more broadly – students who would be ‘first in family’ to hold a university-level qualification.
Drawing on quantitative data in the form of annual online surveys completed by students still at school and interviews with a sub-sample of prospective first-in-family students, Sally’s analysis challenged existing policy by showing that first-in-family status constitutes a distinct equity category. She argued that school students who are ‘first’ in their families to pursue higher education may need extra support, which must not only occur once they have arrived at university, but also during the period of early aspiration formation over the course of primary and secondary schooling.
Since being published, Sally’s research has played an important role in recognition of the first-in-family equity category in Australia and she has since become a co-convenor of the national first-in-family network, a group of academics and professional staff interested in supporting the access, participation and success of first-in-family students in higher education.
Sally’s thesis was awarded the Ray Debus Award for Doctoral Research in Education by the Australian Association for Research in Education, which recognises the best education thesis in Australia for a given year. Throughout her candidature, Sally was also awarded the Higher Degree by Research Excellence Award by the Faculty of Education and Arts at The University of Newcastle in 2018 and the Australian Council of Deans of Education Postgraduate/Early Career Researcher Poster Award in 2016.
Demystifying subjects, troubling status: a pedagogical analysis of high school mathematics and drama in the Australian schooling context
Matt submitted his PhD at the end of 2023. His PhD explored common assumptions about educational experiences in different subjects by investigating mathematics and drama at a selective performing arts government school.
Matt says these subjects represent a host of issues in contemporary society and are at “the two ends of the status spectrum in school curriculum”.
Government policies, public media discourses and societal views on school routinely emphasise core subjects such as mathematics over and above subjects such as drama which “do not seem to offer as much”.
He maintains, however, that knowledge and experience in both mathematics and drama are essential to a quality education – and life – in today’s world, challenging the pervasive subject hierarchy.
Matt observed lessons in mathematics and drama across entire units of work, conducted interviews with teachers, reviewed their planning and assessment documents, and facilitated focus groups with students. He aims to discover more about the ways in which subjects are taught and experienced to better understand and improve school systems.
Understanding school improvement: Investigating the implementation and scaling of evidence-based practices across levels of advantage
Dr Anthony Ryan is interested in assisting schools, particularly disadvantaged ones, to improve student learning outcomes. Anthony was inspired to do his research because of the schools he attended, where many students were not able to realise their full learning potential.
“Any improvement in teaching and learning would benefit all students and in particular students attending disadvantaged schools,” Anthony says.
Anthony was awarded his PhD in March 2024. His longitudinal study investigated how schools implemented Quality Teaching Rounds, across a range of settings, to help their students improve. In particular, he worked closely with Cessnock High School, the most disadvantaged school in the Hunter Valley, on a whole-school approach to school improvement which achieved remarkable results for teachers and students.
He used frameworks recently developed in the field of implementation science to guide and study the implementation of evidence-based practices to achieve whole school improvement, providing a powerful model for other schools to use in the future.
Promoting Quality Teaching practice in Albanian schooling: Where political history and pedagogy meet
Julie has a background in international development and has lived and worked in South-Eastern Europe, most recently as a teacher in Albania.
She “has a passion for Albania”, the fourth poorest nation in Europe, a country that has spent over 30 years recovering from communist totalitarian rule.
Her aim is to work with Albanian teachers as they develop their pedagogical practice in line with the government’s aspirations to modernise teaching and address teaching quality, as many teachers in Albania still adopt a traditional textbook- based approach.
Julie spent the 2022-23 academic year in Albania working with Albanian pre-certified teachers to introduce them to the Quality Teaching (QT) Model and associated coding process. Despite distance and language barriers (Julie does speak a little Albanian, and has had the Classroom Practice Guide translated into Albanian), she hopes the QT professional development will continue to encourage Albanian teachers to critically engage with their own practice as a means of developing capacity to continually improve, which, in turn, will help Albanian students better engage in learning.
Learn more
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