Adjunct Associate Professor Kate Williams

Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)

Kate Williams is an Associate Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, QUT. She leads the Centre for Child & Family Studies (www.research.qut.edu.au/childandfamily), and is Academic Lead (Engagement) for her school. Kate is also a member of the Centre for Child Health & Wellbeing. Kate's research aims to address inequities in health, wellbeing, and educational outcomes that often arise due to early childhood adversity. She is an expert on children’s development of self-regulation and the parenting, educational, and intervention contexts that support such, along with the developmental outcomes associated with children’s self-regulatory functioning. This includes children’s regulation of attention, emotion, executive function, and their sleep behaviours. She is also involved in program evaluation and interested in the measurement of children’s development and wellbeing. Kate is also a Registered Music Therapist and so is interested in the ways that music can be used to support children’s development. Kate's evidence-based intervention, Rhythm & Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR), is delivered by over 1000 adults internationally: www.research.qut.edu.au/ramsr.

Kate's research strengths include:

• Intervention design and program evaluation including randomised controlled trials
• Modern approaches to analyses including quantitative and qualitative techniques with a particular specialty in structural equation modeling (SEM)
• Approaches to translating research and theory into practice for the early years community including co-development of practice resources and training materials
• Management and analysis of large longitudinal datasets
• Measurement development and statistical testing
• Strong and ongoing industry partnerships and a track record in gaining research funding.

Kate has been published in international early childhood, education, and medical journals and has won awards for her PhD and Masters theses and conference presentations. In 2018 she was awarded a prestigious Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) by the Australian Research Council.

Projects (Chief investigator)

• Academic Resilience: Child, Family, and Schooling Factors that Support ‘Closing the Gap’ Over the Early School Years
• Limited hours childcare centre evaluation
• Rhythm and Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR) in Early Childhood
• Translating neuroscience to early childhood education: A roadmap for Queensland

Projects

• All children need heroes!
• Social-emotional learning in middle childhood: An Australian child population cohort study

Additional information