PhD Students, Thesis Topics & Supervisors
To contact Faculty PhD students please use the University Email Search facility or the University Lookup Service.
| Name | Topic | Supervisor |
| Manzoorul Abedin | Malfeasance, absence, silence: exploring English education in Bangladesh from a critical policy sociology perspective | Darleen Opfer and Nidhi Singal |
| Hei Jean Ahn | 'Able underachievement': an exploratory study into the causal factors, academic motivation, and suggested strategies for improvement | Mike Younger and Ruth Kershner |
| Asma Alfadala | How do school leaders' perceptions of Education for a New Era affect the implementation of the reform in primary schools in Qatar? | Darleen Opfer and John Gray |
| Clementine Beauvais | Politically transformative children's literature: a multidisciplinary perspective. | Maria Nikolajeva |
| James Biddulph | Creative learning in multicultural home and school contexts: consulting pupils, parents and teachers. | Pam Burnard and Mandy Swann |
| Sue Bingham | The expression and regulation of emotion by young children in classrooms | David Whitebread |
| Fatin Aliah Phang Binti Abdullah | Patterns of physics problem-solving among KS4 students from the perspecitve of metacognition | Keith S. Taber |
| Simon Breakspear | An international standard for schooling performance? The use of PISA in national schooling policy and practice | Peter Gronn |
| Madeleine Brens | Engagement through art: a phenomenological case study | Richard Hickman |
| Ros Brown (formerly Frost) | Enabling Year 2 pupils to pursue social research for school improvement: an action research study. | David Frost |
| Hang Chan | Exploring the effectiveness of teaching methods incorporating formulaic sequences for L2 oral fluency development. | Michael Evans |
| Yan Chan | Private education in China: a multiple-case study of stratification and social change. | Jo-Anne Dillabough |
| Maia Chankseliani | Mixed-methods study of higher education access in Georgia: does location matter? | Chris Colclough |
| Christina Chinas | Mediation of teachers' learning through talk within a professional learning community: a case study in Cyprus. | Christine Counsell |
| Filio Constantinou | School-based writing in bidialectal settings and the challenges posed to immigrant pupils: the case of Cyprus. | Dominic Wyse and Edith Esch |
| Rush Cosgrove | Critical thinking across the curriculum: a portfolio of institutional change. | Neil Mercer |
| Ivana Cosic | Selfish schools and virtuous institutions: a capabilities-inspired exploratory study of schools' reactions to secondary school exit exams in Croatia. | Darleen Opfer |
| Eleni Demosthenous | Teaching algebra-related topics: a multiple case study in Cypriot elementary school classrooms. | Paul Andrews and Andreas Stylianides |
| Rose Dolan | Each step is a step away from where you used to be: learning to be and professional development of pre-service secondary teacher education in an Irish university | Mike Younger |
| Nitu Duggal | Investigating effectiveness of approaches to teaching reading comprehension | Dominic Wyse |
| Olena Fimyar | Educational policy-making in post-Communist Ukraine: discources, balance of power and ownership of the assessment policy reform | Diane Reay |
| Chun-Lok Dennis Fung | Group work and the learning of critical thinking in Hong Kong secondary school | Christine Howe |
| Jennifer Green | Synaesthesia and number cognition: behavioural and electrophysiologial investigations. | Usha Goswami |
| Rebecca Greeves | The case for libertarianism in education | Ian Frowe |
| Veronica Hanke | Guided reading: teacher and pupil perspectives on classroom practice. | Neil Mercer |
| Rachel Hawkes | Dialogic teaching in the secondary foreign languages classroom: how can teacher talk and behaviour facilitate more learner L2 interaction and what is the nature of this language output? | Michael Evans |
| Roxana Herescu | The role of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) in content and language integrated learning (CLIL): a case study of learners of English at two schools in Romania. | Michael Evans |
| Anna-Marie Higgins | Towards a musique concrete pedagogy in a technology-enhanced learning environment | Pam Burnard |
| Sonia Ilie | Educational leadership effects on student academic achievement: evidence from Romanian upper-secondary schools. | John Gray and Darleen Opfer |
| Fiona Jackson | Intervention programmes for students underachieving in primary school mathematics: a process analysis of Catch Up Numeracy. | Kenneth Ruthven |
| Daniela Jadue Roa | Young children's transition experiences between pre-school and primary school in Chile and its relationship with their self-regulation development. | David Whitebread |
| Linli Jin | Bees to honey? Understanding Chinese students' decision-making process for studying abroad. | Dave Pedder |
| Dilrabo Jonbekova | Skills not just diplomas: the relationship between university credentials and labour market skills in post-Soviet Tajikistan. | Peter Gronn |
| Kathryn Jourdan | Encountering the Other through music education: a case-study of music-making in the lives of a class of S2 pupils at an Edinburgh high school. | John Finney |
| Ailbhe Kenny | An examination into Irish 'communities of musical practice' and how they develop in both policy and practice. | Pam Burnard |
| Chun Hong Kim | Growing unities and continuous differences in national testing policy: the introduction of the programme of the new national testing in Korea. | John Gray |
| Philip Kirkman | Secondary students' compositional development with computer-mediated environments in a musical classroom community | Paul Andrews |
| Chrysovalentini Konstantinou | Technology use in Cypriot primary music education: examining teacher thinking and practice. | Pam Burnard and Linda Hargreaves |
| Hsu-Chan Kuo | The investigation of the perceived impact of the programme of creativity and imagining the future. | Pam Burnard and Ros McLellan |
| Martina Kuvalja | Self-directed language and the development of self-regulation in children with Specific Language Impairment. | David Whitebread |
| Wei Shin Leong | Teachers' conceptions and practices of assessment: multiple case-studies of teachers in Singaporean schools | Pam Burnard and Sue Swaffield |
| Rachael Levy | Becoming a reader; girls' and boys' self-perceptions as they start school | Linda Hargreaves and Eve Bearne |
| Hui-Chuan Li | The development of Taiwanese students' fraction sense: a design experiment analysis of different didactic approaches | Paul Andrews |
| Ling Li | Investigating the impact of academic culture on teachers' engaged and innovative use of ICT: an ethnographic case study in three departments in a University Faculty in China | Sue Brindley |
| Sihua Liang | An ethnographic study of language attitudes in Guangzhou, China | Andrie Yiakoumetti and Edith Esch |
| Berglind Magnusdottir | Cultural politics of middle-class parental choice and school quality in neoliberal times: a critical American case study | Diane Reay |
| Rabea Malik | A mixed methods study of parental participation and school choice in Pakistan | Christopher Colclough and Shailaja Fennell |
| Luz Moreno | Critical ethnography of indigenous immigrant children in urban schools in Mexico | Diane Reay |
| Thabo Msibi | Identity, sexuality and the politics of teaching: a life history study of black South African male teachers | Jo-Anne Dillabough |
| Siza Mtimbiri | A case study: exploring the relationship between HIV/AIDS and schooling with a focus on rural primary school children's perspectives. | Colleen McLaughlin and Darleen Opfer |
| Alanna O'Beirne | A complex adaptive systems approach to exploring the development of a health promoting school network in the mid-west region of Ireland. | John Gray |
| Aileen O'Connor | Can executive function and self-regulatory abilities of high-functioning children with autism be improved via a self-directed speech intervention? | David Whitebread |
| Shirley Ong | Investigating the effect of incorporating explicit contrasts between educational mother tongue and foreign language into English-language classes in Brunei | Michael Evans and Andrie Yiakoumetti |
| Moses Onyango | Exploring educators' preparation to teach about HIV/AIDS effectively: a case of a teacher preparation college in Kenya | Colleen McLaughlin |
| Manasi Pande | The impact of poverty on the lives and education of adolescent carers. | Madeleine Arnot and Shailaja Fennell |
| Deborah Pullinger | Towards a theory of children's poetry: investigating the aesthetics of poetry for children and its relationship to the field of children's literature. | Morag Styles and Maria Nikolajeva |
| Tal-Chen Rabinowitch (Faculty of Music) | Musical interaction and the development of empathy in children. | Ian Cross (Faculty of Music) and Pam Burnard |
| Fran Riga | Students' Ideas in astronomy : science or fiction? | Keith Taber |
| Charlotte Rochez | Interpreting meanings of home-based education: a cross-cultural historical investigation. | Philip Gardner |
| Jose-Miguel Rodriguez-Reyes | Differential effects of implicit vs explicit instruction in L2 acquisition of English by Spanish speakers: the case for learnability constraints. | Michael Evans |
| Dieuwerke Rutgers | Multilingualism and metalinguistic development in context: a comparative analysis of metalinguistic mediation in the learning of German as a foreign language by pupils following a Dutch-English bilingual education programme and pupils following a regular programme in the Netherlands. | Michael Evans |
| Jennifer Saari | Student persistence in STEM fields: school structures and student choices in Finland, Sweden and the United States. | Darleen Opfer |
| Deborah Sabric | Education reforms of the post World War II era | Philip Gardner |
| Edel Sanders | Investigating the relationship between musical training and mathematical thinking in children: a school-based experiment. | Linda Hargreaves |
| Niki Sol | Outside looking in: case studies of study abroad's effects on African American university students' self-concept. | Hilary Cremin |
| Moritz Sowada | School inspection judgements: an Anglo-German comparison. | Peter Gronn and John Gray |
| Erin Spring | Answering 'who am I?' by questioning 'where am I from?' A qualitative multiple case study, designed to inform research into young adult fiction and the construction of place-based identity | Gabrielle Cliff-Hodges |
| Garth Stahl | An intersectional analysis of gender and class negotiations of white working-class boys and their educational experience. | Diane Reay |
| Wenna Tang | An inquiry into transnational higher education with evidence from China. | Nigel Kettley |
| Emel Thomas | Race, migration and education: examining the perceptions of British born 'minority ethnic' and Eastern European 'immigrant' youth in Buckinghamshire. | Jo-Anne Dillabough |
| Natthapoj Trakulphadetkrai | Mathematics education-related beliefs as espoused by teachers in two socio-economic settings in Thailand: a single-country comparative mixed-methods study. | Paul Andrews |
| Danae Tsapikidou | The effect of sequential and integrated focus-on-form instruction on the learning of English as a foreign language in Greece. | Neil Mercer and Andrie Yiakoumetti |
| Mohini Verma | Temporal patterns of co-occurrence between children's self-regulatory behaviour and their private and social speech in play contexts. | David Whitebread |
| John Verney | 'Bongo phonics': an investigation into how the structure of simple songs and nursery rhymes could best increase 'large grain' phonological awareness skills (rhyme and syllable awareness) in 4 to 5 year old children as part of a classroom based pre-literacy strategy. | Usha Goswami |
| Laura Vuillier | Emotion regulation and inhibitory control: behavioural analysis and neural components. | David Whitebread and Denes Szucs |
| Darryl J.E. Walters | Re-conceptualizing professional learning in teacher development: a study of graduate secondary teachers in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. | Ciaran Sugrue |
| Hsaio-Lan Wang | Developmental dyslexia, phonological skills and auditory processing in Chinese | Usha Goswami |
| Sophie Wee | Educational achievement despite adversity: Counter-narratives of socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils in inner London. | Diane Reay |
| Oakleigh Welply | Identities in culturally diverse classrooms: a cross-national study of immigrant-background children in French and English primary schools. | Edith Esch |
| Anna Wong | A multiple case study exploring Hong Kong adolescents' engagement with school music and their perceived well-being through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. | Pam Burnard and Ros McLellan |
| Chalermchai Wongrak | Language teachers' use of local languages and its social meanings: a study of EFL lectures in North-East Thailand. | Edith Esch |
| Winona Wu | The role of digital social networking in young Taiwanese students' intercultural adjustment on transition to schools in England | Linda Hargreaves |
| Surgeon Xolo | Mathematics teachers' 'knowledgeability' and opportunities offered for learning: post-Apartheid South Africa | Paul Andrews |
| Yang Yang | Cultural capital, identity and reflexivity: a case study of rural students in Chinese higher education | Rob Moore |
| Mujadad Zaman | Whither knowledge?: Locating the 21st century university in the knowledge society. | Rob Moore |
| Jiaran Betty Zheng | New feminism in China: a multiple-case study of 15 female students at an elite university in Shanghai | Rob Moore |