Research Interests
Open to PhD applications in:
- Cooperative learning
- Peer tutoring
- Randomised controlled trials (both development and exploratory trials)
Public outreach & key achievements
Schools e.g. 1) All 38 Irish medium schools in Northern Ireland have been given professional development based on the Thurston’s work on peer learning initiative during 2015 and 2016 in partnership with CCEA 2) A professional development day was held on using peer learning in reading for all schools in the Teesside partnership.
The event at Sedgefield Racecourse attracted 125 school as participants in November 2016). Professional development was provided as part of a Greater London Borough Council conference on teaching to over 500 teachers in June 2017. The Learning Together in Mathematics publication was viewed over 8000 times (as of May 2019) by teachers through the Times Educational Supplement website between 2013-20. This represents about one in six teachers in the UK in KS2. In 2017/18 all 1080 schools in NI have had access to Thurston’s work on peer learning in reading via the CCEA teacher portal. This included video/interview footage from Thurston and updated resources for teachers. A MOOC has been developed on peer learning and hosted by Future Learn. This has been widely available to school and so far over 2500 teachers have signed up for this and over 40% of those have completed it. To complete the course then the technique must be used in the teacher’s classroom. This means an impact on 28000 pupils (based on an average class size of 28 students). Learner comments from the first run of the course have been very positive. Thurston has given invited research presentations on peer learning at Zhengzhou University China, Paderborn University Germany, Columbus State University USA, to the Department of Education Chile and to the AERA SIG on New Development s in Cooperative Learning USA. Thurston and Cockerill were used as external advisors to a project involving Britanica University in Santiago, Chile and University of Barcelona on peer learning. They provided feedback on existing work and helped staff from University Britanica, University de Chile and University of the Andes develop new research funding bids to the Chilean Government.
Research students
| PhD area | A randomised controlled trial of mind maps and peer learning in statistics education |
| Name | Mehmet Filiz |
| Years of study | 2015-2019 |
| Country | Turkey |
Alumni: Where are they now
| PhD area | A randomised controlled trial of peer tutoring in elementary school mathematics |
| Name | Prof Mohammed Aleid |
| Years of study | 2010-2014 |
| Country | Saudi Arabia |
| Current Position | Professor of Mathematics education King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia |
| PhD area | A randomised controlled trial of peer tutoring in primary schools |
| Name | Prof David Miller |
| Years of study | 2004-2007 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Current Position | Professor of Education, University of Dundee |
| PhD area | A randomised controlled trial of the Good behaviour Game |
| Name | Dr Joanne O’Keeffe |
| Years of study | 2015-19 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| Current Position | Research Assistant Queen’s University Belfast |
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- Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work