Dr Carol Brown

DPhil (Oxon), MSc Social Studies (Oxon), BSc (Hons) Psychology (Lond), CPsychol, AFBPsS, DipSw, QTS

Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Education; Faculty Ethics Officer; Subject Co-ordinator EdD programme

School of Education, Humanities and Languages

Role

Carol's roles include:

  • Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Education
  • HSS Faculty Research Ethics Officer
  • Subject Co-ordinator - EdD programme
  • Research Group Lead - Inclusion and Wellbeing group (SoE)
  • Steering Committee – Children and Young People Network (OBU)

Carol is a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS). She sits on the BPS Psychology of Education Section committee.

Her academic background is in psychology. She holds a DPhil (Oxford), MSc (Oxford), BSc (Lond) and professionally is both a qualified teacher (QTS) and social worker (DipSw).

Areas of Expertise

  • Psychology of Education - including Achievement Motivation and Identity
  • Educational Inequalities and Outcomes
  • Student Wellbeing
  • Educational Assessment
  • Ethics in Educational Research

She welcomes applications from students who wish to pursue research in these areas.

Teaching and supervision

Courses

Supervision

  • Kate Dew - Teacher-Pupil Relationships and Teacher Talk: Introducing Emotion Coaching as a Socio-Emotional Learning Strategy into a Primary School Setting.
  • Ben Margetts - An investigation into Yr 7 perspectives on positive classroom culture.

Research

Carol’s research focuses on the psychology of education; principally achievement motivation, outcomes and identity in A-level students.

She publishes research involving mixed methods, qualitative and quantitative analyses but her principle focus is quantitative analyses, especially involving large datasets.

Projects include investigating the role of socio-economic status and gender in A-level achievement; the role of expectations and task values in A-level achievement; examining the links between A-levels and identity; the predictability of examinations; the impact of modular and linear assessments.

She also has an interest in the application of ethics to educational research and has explored the role of ethics committees and ethical dilemmas in the field.

She is also a member of Oxford Brookes's Children and Young People Research Network.

Research grants and awards

  • Oxford Brookes Research Excellence Award (2020-22): £10,333
  • BPS Psychology of Education Section - Early Career Researcher Award (2017)
  • Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment - DPhil Studentship (2012-2017) ​

Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution

  • Inequality in access to higher learning: the EPQ as a tool for levelling up (01/09/2023 - 31/08/2025), funded by: Nuffield Foundation, funding amount received by Brookes: £142,614

Publications

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Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

  • BPS Committee Member - Psychology of Education Section.
  • Expert advisor to Ofqual.

Outside of academia Carol has had a varied career working in community mental health and with young people; both as a social worker and as a teacher.

She has held a number of voluntary roles including safeguarding officer for a youthwork trust, ethics advisor to a counselling charity, Kintsugi Hope leader, school governor and Chair of a pre-school.