May 16, 2014

Social Sciences conducts symposium for early career researchers

UOW Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Wellings was a guest at the recent Faculty of Social Sciences’ Early Career Researchers’ (ECR) Symposium.

The symposium featured three main speakers – Dr Leonie Miller, Dr Jennifer Todd and Dr Wendy Nielsen.

Dr Miller’s main area of research is in cognitive experimental psychology, specifically short-term memory and language processes. Her PhD thesis and subsequent research has examined how word frequency (an index of word usage) affects performance in serial recall, a well-used paradigm for the interrogation of short-term memory processes.

Her research has uncovered previously unidentified complexity in serially-order recall that cannot be explained by current theoretical approaches.

Dr Todd completed a Doctor of Public Health degree focusing on maternal and child health and has been an advocate for the health of women and children for more than 20 years. She focused on health policy case studies in her presentation as well as addressing investigations into corporate social responsibility, food, and children.

Dr Nielsen’s presentation gave an overview of an international study currently under way to examine Supervising Teachers/motivators/challenges through the use of an instrument designed at the University of British Columbia by the research group with whom Dr Nielsen was associated during her own doctoral studies and post-doctoral research.

The research is currently drawing some cross-country comparisons on the scales of the Mentoring Profile Inventory from teachers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain and China.

Supervising teachers’ practice is based on three commitments: to children, to profession and to self – these are important motivators/challenges that shape supervising teachers’ practice but people’s understanding of them is very general.