Congratulations to Dr Abbas Mehrabi Boshrabadi – CRADLE’s newest PhD graduate!
26 May 2022
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Dr Abbas Mehrabi Boshrabadi is CRADLE’s third graduate, completing his PhD in early 2022. Abbas received a CRADLE strategic PhD scholarship in Higher Education in 2017 and since then has successfully completed research into developing evaluative judgement skills with students through developing reflective practices, as well as undertaking many dissemination activities.
Abbas’s thesis ‘Developing First Year Students’ Evaluative Judgement of Academic Writing’ was supervised by Associate Professor Rola Ajjawi and CRADLE Director Alfred Deakin Professor David Boud. The thesis explored how assessment activities in the first-year academic writing context can be designed more effectively to set up situations for students to develop their own writing evaluation skills. The focus is on a paradigm shift away from how teachers should evaluate students’ work at the end of writing process towards how students can be actively engaged in reflective and social practices that develop their evaluative skills.
Abbas has a Higher Education background, with over seven years’ experience in teaching and research activities. Prior to commencing his PhD journey, he held positions as research fellow and EFL teacher in Isfahan University, Iran. He conducted a number of research projects at Isfahan and taught academic writing to senior undergraduates for four years. Motivated by learner-centred approaches in higher education, his current work focuses on sustainable pedagogical practices that assist undergraduates not only to adjust to their academic setting but to develop lifelong learning behaviours. He is currently a reviewer for the Q1 journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education and is a member of the editorial review board of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE).
During his PhD journey Abbas was awarded the Stuart D.B. Picken Memorial Grant & Full Scholarship to present his paper ‘Developing Evaluative Judgement Skills of Academic Writing: A Step towards Fostering Independent Writing Skills’ at the 2019 Asian Conference on Language Learning (ACLL2019) in Tokyo, Japan.
To find out more about Abbas’s research and publications please click here.
Abbas, along with CRADLE PhD student Juan Fischer, will be presenting CRADLE Seminar Series #5: Developing Student’s evaluative judgements on 7 June 2022. Be part of the event by registering now!
