Sara Baker : Faculty of Education

Positions

Professor of Developmental Psychology and Education, Faculty of Education
Fellow, Darwin College (Vice Master 2021-2024)
Senior Fellow in the Science of Learning UNESCO-IBE/ IBRO (2022)

E-mail

stb32@cam.ac.uk

Profile

Sara specialises in the science of learning. Her academic research aims to improve children’s lives by identifying factors at home and school that can support their agency over their own learning, in particular by developing their executive functions and self-regulation. Sara uses lab-based experiments and works with educators to translate research from cognitive science into educational contexts. Sara was a 2022 Senior Fellow in the Science of Learning with UNESCO-IBE/ IBRO. She consults on the science of learning and early years education for external organisations. Her projects have been funded by the Newton Trust, a Cambridge Humanities Research Grant, the Economic and Social Research Council, the LEGO Foundation, the Nuffield Foundation and the Office for Students/ Research England.

Alongside her academic research and teaching, Sara holds various leadership roles in the University. In addition to leading the doctoral program in the Faculty of Education and acting as an Academic Project Director in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, she is the Cambridge academic lead on the Close the Gap partnership between Cambridge and Oxford.

Networks and Projects

Early Years Library: A Curated collection of evidence-based practices for early years educators (collaboration with the Early Intervention Foundation for the previous grant; collaboration with the Centre for Evidence and Implementation for the current grant)
Research centre for Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL): co-PI and founding member
Connections: International professional learning network on self-regulation
Global Executive Functions Initiative: Founding member
Close the Gap: Oxford-Cambridge postgraduate widening participation project; Cambridge academic project lead
The Educated Brain: ESRC seminar series in the learning sciences

Topics and collaborators

Contextual influences on young children's executive functions and self-regulation
Programs to improve executive functions and self-regulation in young children
Communities of practice, working with educators as co-researchers to develop and test evidence-based pedagogy
Collaborators, consulting and student projects based in UK, USA, Mexico, Denmark, Slovakia, South Korea, Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa

Prospective Masters and PhD Applications

Sara is looking for 1 or 2 highly motivated, creative and independent doctoral students to start their studies in October 2026. Topics should be in one of the areas listed above. Research proposals that do not fit closely into these areas are very unlikely to be taken forward to interview. Sara will not give input on project proposals before a formal application is received.

Please note that spaces are now full for October 2025 entry. The admissions portal for new applications opens in September 2025, for entry in October 2026. The deadline to apply for a PhD place with funding is in December 2025. Interviews will most likely be scheduled to take place online in early January 2026. The majority of offers for doctoral study will be made by the middle of January 2026. If you wait until 2026 to submit your application, there may no longer be any spaces available.

For Masters applications, it is not necessary to identify a supervisor before applying and no contact prior to application is expected.

Selected Publications

Eberhart, J., Mazzei, C., Fajardo-Tovar, D., Rao, Z., Haack, A., & Baker, S. (2025) A Scoping Review of Teacher Training Programs to Promote Learning Through Play in Pre- and Primary Schools. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education.

Ezeugwu, C., & Baker, S. (2025). Developing a Culturally Relevant Executive Function Observation Scale Based on Interviews With Nigerian Preschool Teachers. Infant and Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.70042

Inouye, K., Robson, J., Rodriguez Anaiz, P., Baker, S., & Ilie, S. (2025). Assessing the person or the project? How disciplinary ontological and epistemological assumptions shape doctoral admissions in elite UK institutions. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-025-01438-8

Durning, A., Baker, S., & Ramchandani, P. (Eds.). (2024). Empowering Play in Primary Education. Taylor & Francis. https://tinyurl.com/4z6vsa8c

Le Courtois, S., Ezeugwu, C., Fajardo-Tovar, D., Nowack, S., Okullo, D., Bayley, S., Baker, S. & Ramchandani, P. (2024). Learning through play in Global Majority countries: reflections from the PEDAL centre on understanding and adapting the concept in four different contexts. International Journal of Play. https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2024.2388952

Eberhart, S., Bryce, D., & Baker, S. (2024). Staying self-regulated in the classroom: The role of children’s executive functions and situational factors. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (3), 995-1010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12700

Jukes, M. C., Ahmed, I., Baker, S., Draper, C. E., Howard, S. J., McCoy, D. C., ... & Wolf, S. (2024). Principles for Adapting Assessments of Executive Function across Cultural Contexts. Brain Sciences, 14(4), 318. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14040318

Fajardo-Tovar, D.D., Graber, K.M., Alwani, S.E., Kirby, N., Oxley, L., Baker, S. & Ramchandani, P. (2023). Playing with change: insights and lessons from researching play during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Play. DOI: 10.1080/21594937.2023.2209237

Bailey, J., Parsons, O. E., Baron-Cohen, S., & Baker, S. T. (2022). A pilot study of autistic and non-autistic adults’ systemizing in a learning task using observational measures of attention, misunderstanding, and reasoning. Cambridge Education Research Journal, 9, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.90555

Eberhart, J., Koepp, A. E., Howard, S. J., Kok, R., McCoy, D. C., & Baker, S. T. (2022). Advancing Educational Research on Children’s Self-Regulation With Observational Measures. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, https://doi.org/10.1177/07342829221143208

Avornyo, E., & Baker, S. (2022). ‘He will play because it is play’. Exploring Ghanaian early years parents’ ethno-theories about play and learning. Early Years. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2022.2087053

Baker, S., & Perry, N. (2022). Multiple influences on parental scaffolding for young children’s self-regulation. In (Eds). In M. McCaslin and T. Good (Eds). Encyclopedia of Education. Routledge.

Baker, S., & Le Courtois, S. (2022). Agency, children's voice and adults' responsibility. Special issue editorial: Developing children's agency in theory and practice. Education 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2022.2052234

Baker, S., Le Courtois, S., & Eberhart, J. (2021). Making space for children’s agency with playful learning. International Journal of Early Years Education, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2021.1997726

Bellaera, L., Weinstein-Jones, Y., Ilie, S., & Baker, S. (2021). Critical thinking in practice: The priorities and practices of instructors teaching in higher education. Thinking skills and creativity, 41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100856

Kazanina, N., Baker, S., & Seddon, H. (2020). Actuality bias in verb learning: The case of sublexically modal transfer verbs. Linguistics. , 000010151520200183. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0183

Bailey, J., & Baker, S. (2020). A synthesis of the quantitative literature on autistic pupils' experience of barriers to inclusion in mainstream schools. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 20 (4), 291-307. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12490

Baker, S. (2019). Adult-child interactions in playful early science learning. In M. Peters and R. Heraud (Eds). Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2262-4_13-1

Marulis, L., Baker, S., & Whitebread, D. (2019). Integrating metacognition and executive function to enhance children's perception of and agency in their learning. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Special Issue.

T. Krude and S. Baker (Eds.) Development: Mechanisms of Change. (2018). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ellefson, M., Baker, S., & Gibson, J. (2018). Lessons for successful cognitive developmental science in educational settings: The Case of executive functions. Journal of Cognition and Development, 1-25.

Cotton, J., & Baker, S. (2018). A Data mining and item response mixture modelling method to retrospectively measure DSM-5 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in the 1970 British Cohort Study. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 28(1).

Baker, S. (May, 2018). Cognitive skills for active learning in the early years. Impact: The Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching. online here

Avornyo, E. A., & Baker, S. (2018). The role of play in children’s learning: The Perspective of Ghanaian early years stakeholders. Early Years, 1-16.

Lee, M. K., Baker, S., & Whitebread, D. (2018). Culture‐specific links between maternal executive function, parenting, and preschool children's executive function in South Korea. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(2), 216-235.

Burra, N., Baker, S., & George, N. (2017). Processing of gaze direction within the N170/M170 time window: A combined EEG/MEG study. Neuropsychologia, 100, 207-219.

Baker, S.T., Leslie, A.M., Gallistel, C.R., & Hood, B. (2016). Bayesian Change-Point Analysis Reveals Developmental Change in a Classic Theory of Mind Task. Cognitive Psychology, 91, 124-149.

Cotton, J., Baker, S.T., & Wilson, J. (2015). An Exploratory case study of three children with ADHD and social difficulties: Child and parent responses to an educational intervention designed to facilitate self-regulation and deep learning. The Psychology and Education Review, 39, 3-8.

Baker, S.T., Gjersoe, N.L., Sibielska-Woch, K., Leslie, A.M., & Hood, B. (2011). Inhibitory control interacts with core knowledge in toddlers’ manual search for an occluded object. Developmental Science, 14, 270-279.

Baker, S.T., Friedman, O., & Leslie, A.M. (2010). The Opposites task: Using general rules to test cognitive flexibility in preschoolers. Journal of Cognition and Development, 11, 240-254.