Emeritus Professor Peter Renshaw
Researcher biography
The School of Education is one of the most productive and high profile schools of education in Australia.
Professor Peter Renshaw's research has focussed on learning and teaching processes both at school and tertiary level. With a team of colleagues in the School of Education at UQ, he is currently investigating the quality of teaching and assessment practices in schools across Queensland. In two current ARC projects, with his co-researchers (Dr Ray Brown and Dr Elizabeth Hirst) he is investigating how teachers group and label students, and the effects of these practices on learning outcomes. These projects are framed by a sociocultural theory of education that foregrounds the social and cultural construction of knowledge and identity, and the responsibility of educators to create challenging, inclusive and supportive learning contexts for diverse groups of students. Professor Renshaw was President and Secretary of Australian Association for Research in Education and a member of the Executive for over a decade (1991-2002). He currently is on the International Advisory Board of CICERO Learning, an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has active collaborations with European researchers in the Netherlands and Sweden, studying how teachers deal with student diversity and how they provide inclusive contexts for learning in multicultural classrooms.