ProfessorLina Markauskaite

Project Opportunities

Title: Learning Sciences

Summary of opportunity:

Lina Markauskaite is a Professor of Learning Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation, the University of Sydney, Australia. She received a PhD in informatics (computer sciences) from the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (Lithuania), in 2000. Before arriving to Australia in 2004, Lina managed ICT implementation and educational change projects; and was the national coordinator of large-scale national and international studies on ICT in schools in Lithuania (such as IEA's study SITES). She also worked in various expert groups for developing national strategies and programs for ICT implementation in Lithuanian education.

Lina's current research spans three related areas: 1) students and teachers’ ICT capabilities; 2) professional learning for complex professional knowledge work; and 3) ICT-enhanced interdisciplinary research methods. Her most recent projects have been mainly concerned with understanding the nature of knowledge work in the professions through analysing the capacities needed to solve novel, complex problems. Her formulated account of so called ‘epistemic fluency’ explains how university students and professionals become skilful at integrating different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing for working across disciplinary and professional boundaries and crossing traditional theory-practice divides.

Lina's research is integrative – it brings into a single framework research from psychology, neuroscience, design, organisational studies, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS). Her work pays close attention to how people’s cognitive ability (“thinking in the head”) is entwined with environment and action in the world. Her empirical studies focus on the tangible nature of complex knowledge work. They aim to provide curriculum leaders and teachers with direct insights into how to scaffold students’ learning for future workplaces. Her work is also very relevant for leaders of inter-disciplinary and inter-professional teams who need to co-design environments for complex teamwork and facilitate this work.

Opportunity synopsis:

Research interests

• Higher education
• Professional learning
• Epistemic fluency
• Learning through knowledge co-creation
• Knowledge work on disciplinary and professional boundaries - Socio-material aspects of knowledge work
• Grounded, extended, embodied, enacted cognition
• Teacher knowledge
• Design knowledge
• ICT in knowledge work and learning
• ICT-enhanced social research methods
• eResearch in education
• Social and epistemic shaping of eResearch

Supervision

Lina is available to supervise in areas matching her research expertise and interests above, including learning and knowledge co-construction in interdisciplinary and inter-professional teams, epistemic aspects of complex knowledge work and learning, the use of physical and digital infrastructures and artefacts in knowledge work, co-construction of epistemic environments in joint teamwork and learning, complex nature of professional knowledge and skilfulness, actionable knowledge and preparation of students for future changing workplaces. Projects that draw upon socio-material, grounded cognition and other ecological views of knowledge and learning are of particular interest.

----------Current Research Projects----------

2022-2026: Academic hospitality in interdisciplinary education, Research Council of Norway.

2022-2025: Creating design knowledge in educational innovation: Theory, methods and practice, Collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark.

2021-2024: Developing teachers' interdisciplinary expertise, Department of Education (NSW), Strategic Research Fund.

2020-2024: Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities, Australian Research Council (ARC), Discovery Project.