Rebecca Andrews

Rebecca Andrews (SFHEA) is the Director of Initial Teacher Education in the School of Education. She has extensive experience in early childhood.  

Research:
Rebecca’s two primary areas of research examine (1) early childhood educator mentoring - for both preservice and newly inservice teachers and educator-child reminiscing which incorporates social interactions, emotion knowledge and memory in early childhood. 

Her mentoring research focuses on:

• preservice teacher mentoring within the context of university study and Professional Experience
• student experience in Professional Experience placements 
• supervising teacher experience as a mentor
• new early childhood teacher experience of mentoring
• experienced early childhood teachers experience as mentors 

Her reminiscing research focuses on:

• development of autobiographical memory through educator-child reminiscing and future talk
• what elaborative reminiscing looks like in teacher-child, educator-child and parent-child interactions
• differences and similarities between parent and teacher reminiscing and future talk
• how educator-child conversations can enhance children’s understanding and use of temporal and mental state language
• whether quality educator conversations offer an ameliorating benefit for children not engaged in high quality conversations in other contexts
• who with, when and why early childhood teachers reminisce with children
• investigating the benefits of implementing a professional development program focussing on emotive and elaborative reminiscing for early childhood educators and teachers 
• learning within early childhood centres.

Rebecca is recruiting Higher Degree Research students whose projects lie within her areas of research specialisation. Please email Rebecca ([email protected]) to discuss potential topics.

Teaching:
Rebecca has been awarded a Senior Fellowship of Advance HE. This Senior Fellowship award reflects the international benchmarking of her leadership in terms of influencing colleagues’ practices, in particular her commitment to mentoring others through reflexive practice in teaching and learning for enhanced student experience.

Currently Rebecca teaches in the undergraduate and postgraduate early childhood education programs. Professional Experience (practicum) is an integral component to becoming an early childhood teacher. Rebecca has over a decade of experience convening and teaching Professional Experience units. She is interested in early childhood teacher education including early childhood philosophy and pedagogy as part of the student experience in practicums. Rebecca engages final year students in their last professional experience via the Teaching Performance Assessment and encourages students to activley engage with the School of Education's' transition to the profession sessions.

Awards:

• 2022 Winner: Faculty of Arts Educational Leader Learning and Teaching Award
• 2022 Highly Commended: Vice Chancellor’s Educational Leader Award in 2023
• 2020 Highly Commended: Vice Chancellor’s Learning and Teaching Award for Learning Innovation

Rebecca is a professionally accredited Early Childhood teacher by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority.