Research Assistants
MeiMei Xu
MeiMei is a Chinese Australian educator and artist who currently lives and works on Bunurong Country in Werribee, Victoria. In the last 5 years, she has been working as a Clinical Teaching Specialist at Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE). Her Master's thesis focused on Visual Arts teaching and learning in Early Childhood Education. Prior to entering academia, MeiMei spent two years working with children aged 3-5 as an Early Childhood Teacher.
Andrew Madjar
Andrew was a primary school teacher in New Zealand for 10 years and is currently a PhD candidate and research assistant at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is secretary of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia and is Editorial Administrator for ACCESS: Contemporary Issues in Education. His current research explores moral uncertainty in the lives of teachers. His research uses hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophy to develop understandings of pedagogy and practice that are grounded in lived experience.
"As I read about all the experiences that other people have had in their educational contexts and looked at their pictures, I became more aware of the idea that my ideas and assumptions of what early childhood education looks like is just one way of approaching education. There are many ways to teach young children effectively and what I may personally feel is the best for my children in my class, might not be at all how a teacher in New Zealand supports their children."
-COLAB Student