Associate Professor Nerida Spina

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Associate Professor, Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice

Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)

Dr Nerida Spina is a senior lecturer in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education. Her research interests concern teachers’ and school leaders' work in an era of accountability and quantification.  She examines these issues through a lens of social justice and equity.  She is currently researching how pre-service teachers are assessed and prepared to work in schools given contemporary education policy contexts. She was awarded the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) Research in Educational Leadership and Management Award in 2017. In 2020 she was awarded the QUT Vice Chancellor's Excellence Award for her Leadership, for her work in the Quality Teaching Performance Assessment.  In 2016 she was also awarded a Vice Chancellor's Excellence Award; in 2017 she received a Faculty of Education Real World Teaching award.  In 2014, she received Master of Education Research Outstanding Thesis Award, Faculty of Education (QUT). She teaches the sociology of education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Nerida has also worked on a number of major research projects including the Stronger Smarter Research Evaluation Team, and the Australian Research Council Linkage grant, “Ethical leadership: How educators address learning, equity and accountability”. Nerida hopes to continue to explore how assessment and the “datafication of education” impacts on practice, policy, and the everyday lives of children, families, teachers, school administrators and staff. Nerida has applied the work of Canadian sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Alison Griffith (Institutional Ethnography) to education as she explores the impact of data-informed/driven policy on the everyday work of educators. Recently, she has also investigated the experiences of non-tenured academics working in universities.

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