Lecturer in Education Policy and Contexts of Education. Laura's main teaching and research areas are education policy, comparative/international education, and sociology of education. Her research includes both empirical and conceptual/theoretical work. Her research interests are school composition, school choice, education inequality, and democractic dimensions of education policy. She is currently conducting with colleague Andrew McConney secondary analyses of the OECD's PISA dataset on the effects of school composition on student performance. She is also examining the contradictions and tensions of education policy in democratic societies, using the key concepts of eqality, diversity, participation, choice and cohesion. At the foundation of all her work is an interest in the ways in which education policies and school structures influence student outcomes. Laura has extensive international experience, having trained and taught in the USA and the Czech Republic before coming to Murdoch. She has been active in the North American, European, and Australian/New Zealand comparative education societies, and supervises a large number of international post-graduate students.

Further information about teaching, research and professional activities of staff is available in the School of Education Annual Reports.

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