Dr Sandy Houen’s research focusses on early childhood education quality and its impact on children’s lifelong trajectories. Sandy’s expertise is in qualitative research approaches, such as conversation analysis, with a key focus on data collection methods that include interviews with children and video recording everyday classroom interactions and practices. She has a special interest in the translation of research findings to inform and guide educators’ practice. As a Research Fellow, Sandy will seek to understand how social interactions are accomplished in the context of digital technologies. She hopes to influence how adults engage with young children as they use digital technologies in home and classroom settings, and aims to provide pragmatic interactional advice of how digital technology contexts can enhance high-quality adult-child interactions.

Earliest digital memory
Unwrapping an Atari 365 at Christmas and playing Galaga with my sister. I learnt that persistence pays off! After a few weeks I was able to ‘clock’ the game.