Dr Mallihai Tambyah
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Teacher Education & Leadership
Biography
Mallihai Tambyah is a social science educator who lectures in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership in the Faculty of Education at QUT. She teaches and researches in the area of primary and secondary social education curriculum studies, particularly history education. Mallihai has a concurrent interest in teacher accreditation, professional experience and accelerated pre-service teacher education programs. She is currently Academic Lead (Professional Experience) overseeing school and prior to school-based professional experience programs at QUT. Previously Mallihai was Course Coordinator (Master of Teaching) from 2019 - 2022 and Program Coordinator of the Bachelor of Education (Primary) at QUT Caboolture campus from 2013 - 2015. Mallihai maintains a strong interest in higher degree research supervision and mentoring of doctoral and research masters students.Background: Mallihai completed her PhD in 2012 at Queensland University of Technology. She has a Master of Arts (History) from Duke University, USA, and has taught for several years as a secondary History/SOSE and English teacher in Queensland. Mallihai's PhD thesis titled, "Middle school social sciences: Exploring teachers' conceptions of essential knowledge" received a QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award in 2013. The thesis was a phenomenographic investigation of what Queensland middle-school teachers of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) consider to be essential knowledge for teaching an integrated social education curriculum. The study is significant in the context of the Australian national curriculum which is inspired by a return to discipline-based teaching in the social sciences. The research uses the research specialisation of phenomenography to study teachers' conceptions of knowledge.
Research interests: As a former secondary modern history teacher, and one committed to excellence in teaching practice, Mallihai is also interested in researching:
- Teacher self-efficacy and professional identity in accelerated and internship-based pre-service teacher education.
- the relationship between teachers' knowledge for teaching and their professional identity.
- pre-service teacher identities and professional knowledge in the social sciences.
- using phenomenography, case study and qualitative research approaches
- middle school history teachers' conceptions of history as a discipline.
Grants: Mallihai has held several Learning and Teaching grants. Significantly, in 2022 she received a grant for a comparative study of the Master of Teaching (Secondary) and the Queensland-based Turn to Teaching program. In 2011 Mallihai was awarded a QUT Women in Research Grant to investigate teachers' perceptions of history and pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. Mallihai was admitted as a Senior Fellow of The Higher Education Academy in recognition of attainment against the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education in July 2016.
HDR Supervision - current
- Sharon Leslie (Doctor of Education): You don't know what you don't know: Exploring the professional learning opportunities for academics teaching in university direct-entry programs and the role of teacher agency (Principal Supervisor)
- Margaret Buckle (Doctor of Philosophy):Re-examining the theory-practice divide using the refined consensus model for PCK. (Associate Supervisor)
- Hemanthi Hidellaarachchi (Doctor of Philosophy): Investigating the Alignment between an English Language Academic Support Course and Students’ Transition to English Medium Instruction at a Sri Lankan University (Associate Supervisor)
- Rebecca Gilroy (Master of Philosophy): Professional learning transformations: Developing beginning teachers' self-efficacy through a model of peer mentoring (Principal Supervisor)
- Hugh Atherton (Doctor of Philosophy): The Potential for Political Literacy in the Australian Curriculum (Associate Supervisor) September 2020
- Phillip Poulton (Master of Philosophy): Teachers' professional agency and school reform (Principal Supervisor) July 2019
- Hora Zabarjadisar (Master of Education – Research): Ethical Education for a Multicultural Society: A Sociological Study of the Potential of Purpose-Written Curricular Resource Materials. (Associate Supervisor) February 2016
- Ko Min Jeong (Master of Education – Research): A case study of intercultural communication in a multicultural classroom in the Brisbane metropolitan area. (Associate Supervisor) July 2008
Personal details
Positions
- Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Teacher Education & Leadership
Keywords
Initial teacher education, Teachers' work, Teacher Identity, Phenomenography, Australian National Curriculum, History teachers, Social Studies, Studies of Society And Environment (SOSE)
Research field
Specialist studies in education, Cultural studies, Literary studies
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- PhD (Queensland University of Technology)
Professional memberships and associations
- member - AARE (Australian Association for Research in Education)
- member - ATEA (Australian Teacher Education Association)
- member - QHTA (Queensland History Teachers' Association)
- member - QCT (Queensland College of Teachers)
- Vice President - SCEAQ (Social & Citizenship Educators' Association of Queensland)
Teaching
Mallihai is the lecturer and unit coordinator for a range of education units in the Bachelor of Education and Master of Teaching degrees in:
- Secondary History Curriculum Studies
- Primary Humanities and Social Sciences Curriculum Studies
In each of these units Mallihai promotes the importance of subject knowledge in the social sciences, supported by inquiry-based teaching approaches. It is essential that pre-service social education teachers are fully aware of the importance of having strong disciplinary knowledge as the basis of their knowledge for teaching Humanities and Social Sciences in primary and secondary school contexts. In her curriculum studies units, Mallihai is particularly interested in developing pre-service teachers' self-efficacy and emerging teacher identity as social science teachers. She promotes the development of these personal qualities by engaging pre-service teachers in researching and developing practical and innovative curriculum units for use in their teaching career, reflective writing on professional practice and in promoting online communities of practice to further teachers' knowledge.
Experience
Reviewer for the following journals: Curriculum Perspectives, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE); Australian Education Review (AER). Humanities Learning Area Reference Committee (LARC), Queensland Studies Authority (2012 - 2014) The Queensland Studies Authority (now Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority) authorizes curriculum for the state of Queensland, Australia. The committee provides information to the Authority on a variety of curriculum issues and reform initiatives.
Publications
- Tambyah, M., (2017). Teaching for 'historical understanding': What knowledge(s) do teachers need to teach history? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(5), 35–50. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/107503
- Tait, G. & Tambyah, M. (2016). Rights without a remedy? Children's privacy, social governance and the UNCRC. In V. Coppock & J. Gillett-Swan (Eds.), Children's rights, educational research and the UNCRC: past, present and future (pp. 121–139). Symposium Books Ltd. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/95972
- Tambyah, M., (2015). What does the review of the Australian curriculum mean for history in the primary years? Curriculum Perspectives, 35(1), 55–57. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/91311
- Tambyah, M., (2012). 'More tick-the-box': the challenge of promoting interdisciplinary learning in the middle years through the Australian history curriculum. In C. Marsh (Ed.), The Australian curriculum: Observations of a journey: a critique of phase 1 learning areas and general capabilities (pp. 84–89). Australian Curriculum Studies Association. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/56653
- Tambyah, M., (2012). Teachers' knowledge for social education: Perspectives from the middle years of schooling. Curriculum Perspectives, 32(1), 22–33. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/53049
- Heirdsfield, A., Walker, S., Tambyah, M. & Beutel, D. (2011). Blackboard as an online learning environment: What do teacher education students and staff think? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(7), 1–16. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/41770
- Tambyah, M., (2009). ''I am a secondary teacher and I teach history and SOSE'': negotiating pre-service teacher identities in times of curriculum change. The Social Educator, 27(2), 13–20. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/27982
- Ireland, J., Tambyah, M., Neofa, Z. & Harding, T. (2009). The tale of four researchers: trials and triumphs from the phenomenographic research specialization. Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) 2008 International Research Conference. Changing Climates: Education for Sustainable Futures, 1–15. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/20457
- Tambyah, M., (2008). Will they know enough? Pre-service primary teachers' knowledge base for teaching integrated social sciences. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 33(6), 44–60. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/30870
- Tambyah, M., (2008). Teacher identity: some issues raised by the problematic nature of SOSE. Curriculum Perspectives, 28(1), 69–74. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/14988
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Mallihai, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Awards
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2014
- Details
- Teaching & Learning Award: Teaching Excellence. Full-time Academic Award (2010)
- Type
- Appointment to State/National/International Reference Group or Government Committees
- Reference year
- 2010
- Details
- Humanities and social sciences Learning Area Reference Committee
Supervision
Completed supervisions (Masters by Research)
Supervision topics
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.