PhD Studentship: Improving School Children's Metacomprehension

3 Year, full-time PhD studentship

Eligibility: Home UK/EU applicants who must be permanently resident in UK (settled or pre-settled status)

Bursary p.a: Bursary equivalent to UKRI national minimum stipend plus fees (current 2022/23 bursary rate is £17,668)

University fees and bench fees: University fees and bench fees will be met by the University for the 3 years of the funded Studentship.

Interviews: tbc 

Start date: September 2023

Director of Studies: Dr Kate Wilmut

Other Supervisors: Dr. Sunae Kim (Oxford Brookes University), Dr. Joëlle Proust (CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)

Requirements:

Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. EU Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre.

Project Description:

As learners it is important to judge what we have and what we have not understood when either reading or listening. This is referred to as metacomprehension. A typical finding in this field is that our accuracy in monitoring our understanding of a given material (text or oral presentation) is actually quite poor (Dunlosky & Lipko, 2007). From primary school to University students, a poor metacomprehension considerably hampers academic learning, making it hard to regulate their study time, attention level, and cognitive efforts (Thiede & Anderson, 2003). Research has shown that a cue utilisation framework provides an explanation for the source of poor monitoring (Koriat, 1997). Students have a tendency to use invalid "superficial" cues, such as easy lexical recognition or syntactical processing, - because they provide an illusion of comprehension (Glenberg et al., 1982).

The present project aims to investigate new methods allowing students to reliably assess their own understanding based on diagnostic cues such as feelings of conceptual consistency or explanatory power. We propose to test both school-aged and University students. We will test an idea that inviting students to focus on conceptual consistency rather than other superficial consistency between texts will enhance their metacomprehension, and they will accordingly allocate their study time/choice.

There is an additional requirement to undertake up to 6 hours undergraduate teaching/week during semesters and to participate in a teaching skills course without further remuneration.

Entry requirements: Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. EU Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre.

Application process: Please download and follow the instructions available on this page.

Contact hls-applications@brookes.ac.uk with any queries.

Please contact Dr. Sunae Kim with any questions about the project: s.kim@brookes.ac.uk

This project is advertised on a competitive basis alongside other current Nigel Groome PhD studentship advertisements for Psychology, Health and Professional Development projects.

How to apply:

Applicants should visit the project webpage to download instructions on how to submit an online application. Complete applications should include a project proposal (max 1000 words) including background, aims and an outline of how those aims will be addressed. Applicants can liaise with Dr Sunae Kim (s.kim@brookes.ac.uk) when developing their proposal'. For application enquiries contact hls-applications@brookes.ac.uk.

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