Profile

My Interview

• What topics do you work on?

  I work on a range of topics, at the moment I am interested in energy literacy and understanding how displaying information in different ways can impact how we understand and interpret this. Alongside this I also work in research relating to expertise.

  What methods do you use?

  I use a range of methods (quantitative and qualitative) dependent upon the context. I run lab based experiments to explore the fundamental aspects of my research while I also conduct interviews and focus groups to understand the real world implications. A lot of my PhD work was conducted within the school environment, working closely with teachers and technicians to design real world experiments.

  Who was your favourite teacher?

  My favourite teacher was my chemistry teacher, Mr Harrison. He now works as the outreach director for Bristol Chem Labs so I often get to see him at public engagement events!

  Me and my work

  I am a member of the CREATE Lab in the psychology department at the University of Bath. As a lab we explore research relating to the cross over between technology and our everyday life.
  (http://www.bath.ac.uk/psychology/research/castl/create-lab/).

  In particular my research has focussed on how hand held technologies can help secondary science students learn. By providing tools to collect their own data students are able to understand the context around their data and use this to inform their evaluation of the evidence. My research showed that working with dataloggers increased the motivation of students towards science and had a positive impact on their test scores.

  Typical day

  It is hard to describe a typical day as it can vary a lot, but during my average week I will attend project and departmental meetings, design/run/analyse experiments, read academic/industry papers, contribute to workshops and public engagement events.