Trixie James

Background

About Trixie James

As a lecturer in the STEPS enabling program, I believe it is important that students witness in me a passion and genuine love for the role I undertake. In my role, I work with adult learners who have very specific educational needs. Many have been out of the education environment for a number of years and may have had negative educational experiences which continue to haunt them as they strive to carve a new identity as a student. With this cohort of students, conventional teaching strategies are not enough. These students need to learn how to learn and require time to combat their fear, challenge their belief system and have faith in themselves as learners in order to persevere through setbacks.My role in STEPS posits me perfectly to support adult students and help them to achieve their goals. I am a lecturer and researcher within the STEPS program at CQUniversity. Having completed my PhD at the University of Tasmania, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitute that life has afforded me this opportunity. My research interests centre on the support and engagement of under-represented adults in the tertiary sector, with a special interest in student engagement, quality teaching practices, social innovation, Gen AI and positive psychology. I have led many research projects as lead investigator with all being fully completed with publications accepted in quality journals. In addition, I lead the Social Innovation working party and have been instrumental in leading the development of a positive psychology program aimed at helping students to re-frame deficit thinking towards viewing their study from a more optimistic mindset. This program is being developed into a micro-credential and will be further developed to disseminate in Australian schools. I value the Scholarship of learning and teaching and am constantly looking at opportunities to investigate teaching practices through the lens of research. I have presented my findings at a number of conferences nationally and internationally and have been the recipient of Tier 1, Tier 2 teaching awards and the National Tier 3 award for outstanding contributions to student learning as well as awarded Senior Fellow at Advance HE.