Dr Amanda Bourgeois

Dr Amanda Bourgeois is a postdoctoral researcher in the UQ Learning Lab: a group of multi-disciplinary researchers, educators, and industry partners who collaborate to transform learning, teaching, and training in diverse school and post-school contexts through the science of learning. In this role, Amanda is investigating the proposed adolescent ‘dip’ across a range of social, emotional and cognitive skills and dispositions, predominantly around the age of 15. This dip has appeared in research projects looking at diverse, but related phenomena such as academic wellbeing, learning regulation, emotion regulation, engagement, curiosity, creativity, and self-esteem. Amanda is developing a comprehensive literature review of the adolescent dip with the aim to better understand what is happening, when, and the potential causes, with the aim of working with education stakeholders to co-design possible interventions and resources to support positive growth and development through the adolescent period.

Amanda has experience as a teacher and counsellor working with disadvantaged adolescents in both the United States and Australia. Her research activities span the topics of adolescence, wellbeing, classroom emotions, student-teacher relationships, and student self-efficacy, particularly with a focus on those from a low socioeconomic background. Amanda is interested in incorporating innovative, real-time forms of measurement in classroom research and she recently developed the S2* emotion application, which captures real-time emotions and causes for emotions.