Aspa Baroutsis

Biography

Aspa Baroutsis is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Education. Her background is in secondary school education and teacher professional learning with digital technologies, holding positions at Brisbane State High School in Queensland. After being awarded her doctorate from The University of Queensland in 2014, she has held research, teaching, and leadership positions in Australian universities, having worked at The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University, and Southern Cross University. In 2018, she was awarded a three-year post-doctoral research fellowship at the Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University. Aspa currently holds an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, investigating ways to support teachers and teaching in flexible and non-traditional schools.

Research

Aspa's research interests and publications are underpinned by social justice and educational equity, with an underlying link to media and/or digital technology. She undertakes explanatory research, aiming to find solutions to existing problems. Her research program is focused on identities and identity politics, broadly focused on people, places, and policies. She investigates the identities ascribed to groups such as teachers and students (such as portrayals in media), and within broader social, economic, and political contexts and spaces, gaining understandings of how others see teachers, students, and schools, and how this affects how these groups see themselves, as they perform their respective educative roles.

Her current program of research addresses the sociology of education and media, focused on portrayals of teachers, teaching, and schools across traditional print and social media; learning engagement and student voice across mainstream and alternative school settings; and digital pedagogies and school learning spaces that support student belonging and participation. Her research has cross disciplinary reach within social and cultural studies, social geography, school architecture, and digital and media sociology.

Aspa has published widely in the field, having authored over 35 research publications in scholarly journals and with notable book publishers, co-authoring a number of these publications with other leading scholars in the field. Her most recent book is Exploring education policy through newspapers and social media: The politics of mediatisation, published by Routledge. In addition to her scholarly research publications, she continues to publish in professional teacher journals, often with teachers, thereby making her research relevant and accessible to a wider public audience. 

Teaching

Aspa's teaching philosophy is based on social justice and the transformational potential of education. Aspa adopts a relational approach to her teaching. She aims to create authentic, relational, and meaningful learning environments to develop capable, and passionate educators who can change the lives of those they teach. 

Aspa believes that change is constant and provides the impetus for life-long learning. Her approach to teaching encourages students to think critically and reflectively about issues, to make informed choices, to speak up, to be kind and inclusive, to have respect for life and the environment. Through her teaching, Aspa encourages her students to become part of a positive change process, instigated by and through knowledge gained from their education. &nbs