Nerida Spina
Biographic Data
| ID | 769667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nerida Spina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nerida |
| FAMILY NAME | Spina |
| SIGNATURE | SPINA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queensland University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2923-0104 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Parent engagement in the achievement society: The intensification of parenting for the datafied student subject
Parent engagement is promoted in educational policy and literature as being an effective mechanism for raising student achievement. Schools collect and report on vast amounts of student data for the purposes of school improvement and parents are increasingly privy to this data. Yet, surpringly little is known about the implications for parents when data is entwined with parent engagement. This institutional ethnographic inquiry explored the every…
“Calling all responsible, aware teachers!” engaging teachers in transformative learning about gender and sexuality diversity in a master of education program
Globally, schooling continues to be a precarious space for gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) youth, where students are more likely to experience transphobic and homophobic violence at school than at home or in the general community. While there have been moves to provide learning about GSD in preservice teacher education, limited attention has been given to how postgraduate programs might better equip inservice teachers to support GSD students. …
A scoping review of classroom readiness: What is it? Can it (and should it) be assessed
This scoping review explores how the term “classroom readiness” is understood in relation to assessing the performance of graduating teachers. This review is timely because the assessment of classroom readiness has been touted in education policy to be the solution to enhancing public confidence that teachers entering the profession are ready to teach from day one in the classroom. This scoping review maps how classroom readiness is conceptualise…
Just because you are staying does not mean you are 'stuck: Conceptualisations of Academic Mobility for Precarious Academics
Discourses of the ‘wandering scholar’ privilege the notion of academic mobility, with career benefits for those who are mobile. Universities employ ever-increasing numbers of people on short term contracts, and it is important to consider how precarity influences an individual’s im/mobility. Drawing on interviews with precariously employed academics, we highlight how the concept of mobility privileges those without the ‘stickiness’ of affective t…
Mediating teachers’ assessment work
Why do schools continue to use between-class ability grouping
Teachers’ representations of genders and sexualities in primary school: The power of curriculum and an institutional ideological code
Texts such as curriculum and policy documents work in complex ways to coordinate teachers’ work and approaches to diverse genders and sexualities. Although it might be assumed that official, mandated curricula determine teachers’ curriculum choices, little is known about the extent of textual influences on how teachers represent genders and sexualities in primary schooling. This institutional ethnographic study investigated how the Australian nat…
Assessors’ perspectives of an oral assessment within a teaching performance assessment
Australia has recently implemented Teaching Performance Assessments (TPAs) as a national accreditation requirement to assess final year preservice teachers’ classroom readiness. In 2019, an Australian university developed a TPA to meet this requirement, comprising three written components and one oral component. This exploratory study investigated 18 TPA assessors’ perceptions of the oral component. Focus group data revealed that both explicit an…
Working every weekend: The paradox of time for insecurely employed academics
Wage theft claims against Australian universities have raised awareness of the substantial proportion of academics who are precariously employed and underpaid. The COVID-19 global pandemic has further highlighted the extent of precarity for many working in higher education. It is in this context that we situate this paper, reflecting on how time is experienced for academics in a period of growing uncertainty, and what this means for individuals w…
Disrupting dominant discourses of the Other: Examining Experiences of Contract Researchers in the Academy
Internationally, changes to university funding arrangements have put pressure on the workloads of tenured academic staff and increased the reliance on casual academics to backfill teaching and research positions. Limited research has focused on the effects of casualisation on research academics and the institutions in which they work. This paper draws on interviews with 26 contract researchers, who have worked in the US, UK, and Australia. Drawin…
How school leaders navigate the priority school support review process: An Australian case study
In Australia, policy makers demand school leaders focus on raising student achievement levels when planning and implementing a school improvement (SI) plan. This paper explores the SI process for two Australian primary schools deemed to be underperforming and underwent a priority school support review (PSSR). In this study, 2 principals and members of their leadership team and 10 teachers across 2 schools were interviewed to explore how they expe…
Leadership attributes that support school improvement: A realist approach
School improvement reforms aimed at achieving improved student learning remain high on the agenda for leaders across the globe. The purpose of this paper is to understand the leadership attributes that enable school leaders to bring about positive change. This qualitative study is based on interviews with school leaders (school principals and their deputy principals) and focus groups of six teachers in two case study schools. A realist approach i…
Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia amongst ‘older’ early career researchers, a life-course approach
Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employed casually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at different life and career stages. Using Foucauldian understandings of power and discourse alongside a life…
Towards faster feedback in higher education through digitally mediated dialogic loops
How feedback is understood and enacted has shifted from the traditional practice of providing individual feedback on summative tasks at key points to a more ongoing series of dialogues between the teacher and students during the teaching period. This paper reports on the experiences of designing faster feedback through weekly dialogic feedback loops to enhance students’ personal connection to their learning while providing teachers with faster, a…
Ethical responsibilities of tenured academics supervising non-tenured researchers in times of neoliberalism and precarity
Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and manage non-tenured researchers. The work involved in hiring and managing a contract researcher is rarely acknowl…
‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher: A Pragmatic Look at Precarious Work
‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher examines the contemporary experience of research employment in universities from the perspective of a significant yet often invisible group: temporary or contract researchers, who make up a substantial, and ever-growing, proportion of the academic research workforce. A critical, pragmatic and international account of the contemporary research career, this book explores the question of what it means to ‘make it…
Teacher education for inclusive education in Bhutan: Perspectives of pre-service and beginning teachers
Bhutan is in the preliminary stages of training teachers to support inclusive education. This study investigated teachers’ views on preparation for inclusive teaching using a case study that was conducted with twelve pre-service and twenty beginning teachers in six schools. Data were drawn from focus-group interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The application of Vygotsky’s social cultural theory and Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was appropri…
Disrupting the 'boys don't read' discourse: Primary school boys who love reading fiction
This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society today. Drawing on interviews ( n = 30) with Year 4 (8 to 9‐year‐old) boys at six schools, we consider t…
Caught in the frontline: Examining the introduction of a new national data collection system for students with disability in Australia
In Australia, a new system of collecting data on school-aged students with disability is in the early phases of implementation. The nationally consistent collection of data on school-age students with disability (NCCD) establishes a mandatory data collection process in which teachers categorise and report on individual students’ level of additional educational needs. This data is used to determine funding allocations for students with disability.…
Language, literacy, and pedagogy in postindustrial societies: The case of black academic underachievement
Mocombe and Tomlin’s Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement is part of the Routledge Research in Education series. The purpose of
Working every weekend: The paradox of time for insecurely employed academics
Wage theft claims against Australian universities have raised awareness of the substantial proportion of academics who are precariously employed and underpaid. The COVID-19 global pandemic has further highlighted the extent of precarity for many working in higher education. It is in this context that we situate this paper, reflecting on how time is experienced for academics in a period of growing uncertainty, and what this means for individuals w…
Disrupting the 'boys don't read' discourse: Primary school boys who love reading fiction
This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society today. Drawing on interviews ( n = 30) with Year 4 (8 to 9‐year‐old) boys at six schools, we consider t…
Ethical responsibilities of tenured academics supervising non-tenured researchers in times of neoliberalism and precarity
Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and manage non-tenured researchers. The work involved in hiring and managing a contract researcher is rarely acknowl…
Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia amongst ‘older’ early career researchers, a life-course approach
Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employed casually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at different life and career stages. Using Foucauldian understandings of power and discourse alongside a life…
Disrupting dominant discourses of the Other: Examining Experiences of Contract Researchers in the Academy
Internationally, changes to university funding arrangements have put pressure on the workloads of tenured academic staff and increased the reliance on casual academics to backfill teaching and research positions. Limited research has focused on the effects of casualisation on research academics and the institutions in which they work. This paper draws on interviews with 26 contract researchers, who have worked in the US, UK, and Australia. Drawin…
Just because you are staying does not mean you are 'stuck: Conceptualisations of Academic Mobility for Precarious Academics
Discourses of the ‘wandering scholar’ privilege the notion of academic mobility, with career benefits for those who are mobile. Universities employ ever-increasing numbers of people on short term contracts, and it is important to consider how precarity influences an individual’s im/mobility. Drawing on interviews with precariously employed academics, we highlight how the concept of mobility privileges those without the ‘stickiness’ of affective t…
Language, literacy, and pedagogy in postindustrial societies: The case of black academic underachievement
Mocombe and Tomlin’s Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement is part of the Routledge Research in Education series. The purpose of
Caught in the frontline: Examining the introduction of a new national data collection system for students with disability in Australia
In Australia, a new system of collecting data on school-aged students with disability is in the early phases of implementation. The nationally consistent collection of data on school-age students with disability (NCCD) establishes a mandatory data collection process in which teachers categorise and report on individual students’ level of additional educational needs. This data is used to determine funding allocations for students with disability.…
‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher: A Pragmatic Look at Precarious Work
‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher examines the contemporary experience of research employment in universities from the perspective of a significant yet often invisible group: temporary or contract researchers, who make up a substantial, and ever-growing, proportion of the academic research workforce. A critical, pragmatic and international account of the contemporary research career, this book explores the question of what it means to ‘make it…
Teacher education for inclusive education in Bhutan: Perspectives of pre-service and beginning teachers
Bhutan is in the preliminary stages of training teachers to support inclusive education. This study investigated teachers’ views on preparation for inclusive teaching using a case study that was conducted with twelve pre-service and twenty beginning teachers in six schools. Data were drawn from focus-group interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The application of Vygotsky’s social cultural theory and Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was appropri…
Disrupting the 'boys don't read' discourse: Primary school boys who love reading fiction
This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society today. Drawing on interviews ( n = 30) with Year 4 (8 to 9‐year‐old) boys at six schools, we consider t…
Towards faster feedback in higher education through digitally mediated dialogic loops
How feedback is understood and enacted has shifted from the traditional practice of providing individual feedback on summative tasks at key points to a more ongoing series of dialogues between the teacher and students during the teaching period. This paper reports on the experiences of designing faster feedback through weekly dialogic feedback loops to enhance students’ personal connection to their learning while providing teachers with faster, a…
Ethical responsibilities of tenured academics supervising non-tenured researchers in times of neoliberalism and precarity
Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and manage non-tenured researchers. The work involved in hiring and managing a contract researcher is rarely acknowl…
How school leaders navigate the priority school support review process: An Australian case study
In Australia, policy makers demand school leaders focus on raising student achievement levels when planning and implementing a school improvement (SI) plan. This paper explores the SI process for two Australian primary schools deemed to be underperforming and underwent a priority school support review (PSSR). In this study, 2 principals and members of their leadership team and 10 teachers across 2 schools were interviewed to explore how they expe…
Leadership attributes that support school improvement: A realist approach
School improvement reforms aimed at achieving improved student learning remain high on the agenda for leaders across the globe. The purpose of this paper is to understand the leadership attributes that enable school leaders to bring about positive change. This qualitative study is based on interviews with school leaders (school principals and their deputy principals) and focus groups of six teachers in two case study schools. A realist approach i…
Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia amongst ‘older’ early career researchers, a life-course approach
Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employed casually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at different life and career stages. Using Foucauldian understandings of power and discourse alongside a life…
Teachers’ representations of genders and sexualities in primary school: The power of curriculum and an institutional ideological code
Texts such as curriculum and policy documents work in complex ways to coordinate teachers’ work and approaches to diverse genders and sexualities. Although it might be assumed that official, mandated curricula determine teachers’ curriculum choices, little is known about the extent of textual influences on how teachers represent genders and sexualities in primary schooling. This institutional ethnographic study investigated how the Australian nat…
Assessors’ perspectives of an oral assessment within a teaching performance assessment
Australia has recently implemented Teaching Performance Assessments (TPAs) as a national accreditation requirement to assess final year preservice teachers’ classroom readiness. In 2019, an Australian university developed a TPA to meet this requirement, comprising three written components and one oral component. This exploratory study investigated 18 TPA assessors’ perceptions of the oral component. Focus group data revealed that both explicit an…
Working every weekend: The paradox of time for insecurely employed academics
Wage theft claims against Australian universities have raised awareness of the substantial proportion of academics who are precariously employed and underpaid. The COVID-19 global pandemic has further highlighted the extent of precarity for many working in higher education. It is in this context that we situate this paper, reflecting on how time is experienced for academics in a period of growing uncertainty, and what this means for individuals w…
Disrupting dominant discourses of the Other: Examining Experiences of Contract Researchers in the Academy
Internationally, changes to university funding arrangements have put pressure on the workloads of tenured academic staff and increased the reliance on casual academics to backfill teaching and research positions. Limited research has focused on the effects of casualisation on research academics and the institutions in which they work. This paper draws on interviews with 26 contract researchers, who have worked in the US, UK, and Australia. Drawin…
Mediating teachers’ assessment work
Why do schools continue to use between-class ability grouping
“Calling all responsible, aware teachers!” engaging teachers in transformative learning about gender and sexuality diversity in a master of education program
Globally, schooling continues to be a precarious space for gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) youth, where students are more likely to experience transphobic and homophobic violence at school than at home or in the general community. While there have been moves to provide learning about GSD in preservice teacher education, limited attention has been given to how postgraduate programs might better equip inservice teachers to support GSD students. …
A scoping review of classroom readiness: What is it? Can it (and should it) be assessed
This scoping review explores how the term “classroom readiness” is understood in relation to assessing the performance of graduating teachers. This review is timely because the assessment of classroom readiness has been touted in education policy to be the solution to enhancing public confidence that teachers entering the profession are ready to teach from day one in the classroom. This scoping review maps how classroom readiness is conceptualise…
Just because you are staying does not mean you are 'stuck: Conceptualisations of Academic Mobility for Precarious Academics
Discourses of the ‘wandering scholar’ privilege the notion of academic mobility, with career benefits for those who are mobile. Universities employ ever-increasing numbers of people on short term contracts, and it is important to consider how precarity influences an individual’s im/mobility. Drawing on interviews with precariously employed academics, we highlight how the concept of mobility privileges those without the ‘stickiness’ of affective t…
Parent engagement in the achievement society: The intensification of parenting for the datafied student subject
Parent engagement is promoted in educational policy and literature as being an effective mechanism for raising student achievement. Schools collect and report on vast amounts of student data for the purposes of school improvement and parents are increasingly privy to this data. Yet, surpringly little is known about the implications for parents when data is entwined with parent engagement. This institutional ethnographic inquiry explored the every…
Sociology (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Pedagogy (11 works) · Mathematics education (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (5 works)