Sandie Wong (Doctor of Philosophy in Early Childhood Macquarie University, 2006; Bachelor of Education [Early Childhood Education] [Hons 1] [Macquarie University, 2000]) is a Professor in Early Childhood, Co-Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood at the Macquarie School of Education, and Excutive Member of the Lifepsan Health & Wellbeing Research Centre at Macquarie University. Sandie has worked as an academic, manager, researcher, evaluator, educator, consultant and nurse, within a range of early childhood, academic and health organisations. She held a Research Fellowship with Goodstart Early Learning from 2016-2023.

Sandie’s research is driven by a concern with the role early childhood education has in ameliorating disadvantage and reducing marginalisation both contemporaneously and historically. She is committed to working in collaborative, strengths-based ways, with academics from a range of disciplines, early childhood organisations and practitioners, and governments, to lead and support high quality research, evaluation and practitioner enquiry, that contributes to best practice in early childhood. Since 2010, Sandie has been awarded over A$6 million in competitive research income grants, to conduct extensive research and evaluations related to early childhood workforce issues (including educator well-being and educator time-use), practices (including inter-professional practice), and the history of early childhood internationally. This work includes the completed Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Exemplary early childhood educators at work: A multi-level investigation (LP160100532), and her current ARC Linkage Project Observe, Reflect, Improve: a tool to enrich Children’s Learning ARC (LP 210301171) and ARC Discovery Project Attracting, Sustaining and Preparing Quality Teachers in Early Childhood (DP 240100249)

Sandie’s work has been published widely in 75 scholarly publications (57 journal articles; 3 books; 15 book chapters), 55 research reports and knowledge translation documents, and 18 professional publications; and she has presented her work at 27 keynotes / invited presentations, and over 90 peer-reviewed conferences.

Sandie is Vice-President for OMEP Asia Pacific Region (Organisation Mondiale pour l’Education Prescolaire [OMEP] or the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education), and Board Member of Northside Community Services, ACT, and SPLAT Maths, ACT. She was on the Editorial Committee of the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood (2016-2023) and is a Member of the New South Wales Department of Education Early Childhood Advisory Group (2019 – present).

Sandie has been an international expert reviewer for research proposals for the Croatian Science Foundation (2019), the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT), Chile (2018), and the Millennium Science Initiative of the National Agency for Research and Development, Chile (2021 & 2022); and for ARC Future Fellowship, Linkage and Discovery Projects. Sandie is invited to provide expert witness testimony in Australia, including to the South Australian Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and care, high court matters in New South Wales and other reviews and submissions.

Sandie has supervised four PhD and three masters’ students to completion and is currently supervising three PhD students; she has examined seven PhD and eight Masters’ theses. She has taught extensively at post-graduate and undergraduate levels at Macquarie University and Charles Sturt University, across multiple early childhood subjects.