My main research interest centres on educational and life transitions. A number of my projects have looked specifically at the transition from early childhood education to school. I have also explored children’s thinking, especially the development of ‘working theories’ (a key outcome of the New Zealand early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki), and children’s mathematical thinking. More recently I have been exploring children’s wellbeing, through an evaluation of the KidsCan ECE pilot project.

I co-led New Zealand’s involvement in a five-country International Research Staff Exchange Scheme project on Pedagogies of Educational Transition [POET], gaining Marie Curie counterpart funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand for the project. Over four years Vanessa Paki and I led University of Waikato researchers in work packages in Iceland, Sweden, Scotland and Australia and ensured a strong indigenous research focus in the two work packages hosted at University of Waikato. From there I co-edited, with Professor Aline-Wendy Dunlop and Professor Lynn Kagan, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Early Childhood Transitions Research (2024), whih built on the work of POET.

I have led as PI or contributed to 16 externally funded research projects, including PI on a three-year Teaching and Learning Research Initiative [TLRI] project on 'Learning journeys from ECE to school' and a KidsCan evaluation project. I have been a researcher on four other TLRI projects and two TLIF projects.  In 2026 I am co-leading two research projects, one a TLRI project exploring transitions to education for refugee and migrant children and their families and the other investigating how professional development for early childhood educators can contribute to 3-6-year-olds’ oral language, literacy and maths development.

I enjoy PhD and Masters supervision across a range of topics related to these research interests.