What we do
Learning is a broad field, and we reflect that in our members and research interests. The Psychology of Learning research group encompasses learning in children, young people, students in higher education, and people in the workplace. We investigate a vast range of topics that affect learning such as motivation, well-being, community, resilience, expectations, experience, work preparedness, teamworking, communication, assessment and feedback practices, environment, developmental dyslexia, creativity, problem-solving, STEM in the classroom, web-based teaching applications, visual and auditory information processing, and multi-sensory perception.
The learner voice is important in our research, without it we could not gain insight into how the learner experiences learning and what its impact on them might be.
We use evidence from psychological and pedagogical research to continually reflect on and improve our own teaching practices. This is a large part of who we are, and this links to the professional bodies we are affiliated with, including the Advance HE who “focus on teaching and learning, governance, leadership development and equality, diversity and inclusion” https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/ and the British Psychological Society https://www.bps.org.uk/ who accredits our teaching programmes.
Current Projects
- Verbal vs Written Feedback; do we use it; do we like it; do we find it useful? (Fisher & Shapiro)
- The Effectiveness of Verbal vs Written Feedback; a quantitative study (Fisher & Carruthers)
- Environmental Influences on Learning and Working (Fisher & Shapiro)
- What Students Want: Student Engagement and Community Building in SAS (Garden, Skelton, and Calabrese): Intern 1 Fatima Azam; Intern 2 Lauren Hunter; Intern 3 TBC
- PhD Project: Optimising Creativity and STEM Pedagogy by Felicity Gregory (Supervisors Carruthers and MacLean)
- PhD Project: Developmental Dyslexia in primary school children - an investigation of the effectiveness of teachers' risk judgments by Fiona Thomson (Supervisors Piotrowska, Carruthers, and Wimmer)
- Avoiding cognitive dissonance: does students’ experience at ENU match their expectations of university? (Gkekas, Fisher & Carruthers)
- PiTCH - Players in Training Coaching & Health (English, McIntyre, Pitkethly & Powers)
- School of Applied Science – Personal Development Tutor Evaluation (Mcintyre, Haddow, McGill, Dias-Scoon, & Meldrum)
Who we are
Dr Duncan Carmichael: Multisensory perception and how it could influence learning and the classroom, the development of synaesthesia in children.
Dr Lindsey Carruthers: Psychology of creativity and problem solving, relationship between attention/ADHD and creativity, effectiveness of incubation periods for solution finding, decision construction (in decision-making), assessment and feedback practices, teacher’s decision making when identifying dyslexia, creativity and STEM in the classroom.
Dr Barbara Piotrowska: Learning to read, understanding of causes and key predictors of developmental dyslexia, investigations of how stereotypes about dyslexia can impact perception of one’s abilities and performance, how teachers make judgements of dyslexia risk in primary school children.
Sergio Cruz Cantueso: Enhancing student motivation by focusing on promoting academic engagement and student wellbeing. General learning from a cognitive and behaviourist approach.
Dr Eleanor Drake: Environmental influences on learning (both physical and social aspects); visual and audio processing in learning and teaching.
Dr Nina Fisher: Assessment and feedback practices, Environmental influences on learning (noise; music; lighting).
Dr Nikos Gkekas: Students’ expectations of university and academic learning, eye-movements in reading, visual information processing in learning and teaching.
Dr Bridget Hanna: The effect of assessment on professional identity, Location independent working (LOCi), social models of selection, work and organisations.
Dr Alex McIntyre: Personal Development Tutoring and building community within student cohorts to enhance student engagement and retention. Building personal resilience in student cohorts. PiTCH – players in training, coaching and health is in development as a web-based teaching application for use in developing countries.
Dr Barbara Piotrowska: Learning to read, understanding of causes and key predictors of developmental dyslexia, investigations of how stereotypes about dyslexia can impact perception of one’s abilities and performance, how teachers make judgements of dyslexia risk in primary school children.
Dr Ethan Shapiro: Work preparedness – exploring how students working towards a clinical qualification feel prepared for the work and how their professional identities are shaped, interdisciplinary teamworking and communication among healthcare workers.
Dr Faye Skelton: Student experience and Student Voice; assessment and feedback.
Current postgraduate student projects
Fiona Thomson (DoS: Barbara, Supervisors: Lindsey and Marina) - PhD Developmental Dyslexia in primary school children - an investigation of the effectiveness of teachers' risk judgments
Felicity Gregory (DoS: Lindsey, Supervisor: Rory) - PhD on Optimising Creativity and STEM Pedagogy
Sergio Cruz Cantueso (DoS: Diane Dixon, Supervisor: Alex) - PhD on studying motivation and wellbeing