PhD Studentship: Characterising, Validating and Predicting Developmental Trajectories of Reading and Maths Achievement from Longitudinal Data.

ESRC DTP Strategic Joint Studentship

Aston University and Loughborough University

The Midlands Graduate School is an accredited Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). One of 15 such partnerships in the UK, the Midlands Graduate School is a collaboration between the Universities of Warwick, Birmingham, Nottingham, Aston Leicester, Loughborough, De Montfort and Nottingham Trent.

We are now inviting applications for an ESRC Strategic Joint PhD Studentship between Aston University (where the studentship will be registered) and Loughborough University to commence in October 2024.

Project outline

Significant numbers of children in the UK struggle to attain the standard expected from the primary curriculum for reading and mathematics achievement.This data-driven project provides a novel opportunity to comparatively evaluate the developmental timecourse of individual achievement in these core educational outcomes and the systemic and environmental variables that best predict these trajectories that emerge over time.The project will harness the potential of secondary analyses of large-scale longitudinal data to develop and test models of developmental trajectories, with an aim to better characterise, validate and predict individual differences in children’s reading and mathematics achievement.

The project is a part of a joint research programme between the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment at Aston and the Centre of Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough and will be co-supervised by Prof Joel Talcott (Aston) and Dr Kinga Morsanyi (Loughborough). Research and training opportunities at both institutions and across the Midlands Graduate School provide a unique opportunity to explore the sampling and analytic context of Big Data within education, including data handling skills, for identifying and cataloguing meta-data and for developing advanced analytical techniques for harmonising and collating distributed data appropriate for secondary statistical analyses, including data imputation methods.

Application Process

To be considered for this PhD, please complete the strategic Joint Studentship application form available online here . Please upload an anonymised CV and cover letter as part of the online application process. Shortlisted applicants will also be required to provide transcripts and two references.

Application deadline:  26 February 2024.

Shortlisted applicants will be contacted by 1 March for interview during the week commencing 11 March.

Midlands Graduate School ESRC DTP

Our ESRC studentships cover fees at the home rate, a maintenance stipend, and extensive support for research training, as well as research activity support grants. Support is available to both home and international applicants. For further details, visit: www.mgsdtp.ac.uk/studentships/eligibility/ .

Informal enquiries, prior to application can be directed to Prof Joel Talcott [[email protected] ]

Further Information

Centre for Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough:  https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/cmc/

Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment at Aston:  https://www.aston.ac.uk/research/hls/ihn

College of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University:  https://www.aston.ac.uk/hls