Researcher biography

Major research interests include at-risk behaviours of children and adolescents, self-regulatory intervention and prevention programs for young people, self-regulation and goal setting, reputation enhancement, Attentional disorders.

Dr Annemaree Carroll is Professor in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. Her research activities focus on the motivational determinants underpinning children and adolescents’ educational, social and emotional outcomes and how to enhance their academic and emotional self-regulatory capacities. She is known nationally and internationally for the construction of psychometrically sound instruments for the study of self-regulatory processes and for the development of innovative and unique self-regulatory interventions for children and youth to bring about positive change in their lives. She has conceptualised and coordinated the development of the Mindfields Suite of Programs (www.mindfields.com.au), which encompass a strengths-based approach to student wellbeing that targets school-wide practices, teacher and student education and to help young people take control of their lives. She has also led a team of researchers to develop the KooLKIDS Resources (www.kool-kids.com.au), an emotion resilience program aimed to empower children to live well with themselves and others by learning social, emotional and cognitive skills that promote self-regulation and wellbeing.

Professor Carroll is a Chief Investigator and Co-ordinator of Translational Outcomes within the ARC Special Research Initiative Science of Learning Research Centre at The University of Queensland where her research is particularly focussed on understanding the impact of emotions, attention, and behaviour on learning throughout child and adolescent development, and to develop and implement strategies that can be translated into educational outcomes. Dr Carroll and her research team are collecting empirical, physiological data and developing new technologies to investigate topics including: real-time emotional states of students; regulating emotions through intervention approaches; identifying neural markers of attention readiness; and teaching foundation skills of attention control in young children. In addition to better understanding the process of learning, it is hoped that these new technologies will provide translational outcomes for classroom practice and for training the next generation of teachers.

Dr Carroll has had extensive experience in managing large-scale, school-based projects across classroom settings as well as clinic-based research in which she has excellent skills in test administration with children and adolescents. She has also been concerned with children with neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., ADHD, Tourette Syndrome) to examine information processing tasks that may demand intact executive functioning and that require dual task performance and control of impulsive reactions.

Dr Carroll is a registered teacher and psychologist. She has experience teaching in primary and special education in Queensland and has engaged in research and higher education teaching at The University of Queensland and The University of Western Australia where she was granted a Master of Education (1991) and PhD in Educational Psychology (1995).

Research Interests

  • Self-regulatory prevention and intervention approaches
  • Attention and emotion regulation of children and adolescents
  • Reputation enhancement and social and self-identity
  • Attentional and related disorders
  • At-risk behaviours of children and adolescents

Research Impacts

Professor Carroll's current ARC Linkage funded research (2015-2017) continues the partnership with three Queensland State High Schools to examine how embedding social and emotional wellbeing into school-wide policies, classroom practices, and self and social strategies of students enhances learning, behavioural, and social outcomes. This research project has emanated from a previous three year research partnership with the same schools which focused on the implementation of a model of social connectedness to improve the social well being and the emotional self-regulatory capacities of high schools students. A new social and emotional learning program for junior secondary students (Mindfields Junior High school Program) was developed as part of this project.

The recently completed ARC Discovery research (2011-2014) was concerned with the development of a new multidimensional scale (The Perth A-Loneness Scale) and the development of the KooLKIDS Whole of Class social and emotional learning program which will be implemented across primary schools in Queensland in 2015. Other Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) funded research (2011-2014) has concentrated on promoting positive mental health through the development of i-Connect (www.i-connect.uwa.edu.au), an interactive multimedia program for early adolescents designed to alleviate aloneness and develop self-awareness and empathy.

Future research directions with the Science of Learning Research Centre (2013-2016) will examine the nature of attention and self-regulation in the classroom and the role of feedback in the learning of children and adolescents with typical and atypical developmental trajectories. New technologies in the form of real time emotion apps for teachers and students will be developed to gather data on emotional states of teachers and students in classrooms.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Western Australia
  • Bachelor of Science (Honours1), University of Southern Queensland
  • Master of Education, The University of Western Australia
  • Bachelor of Education, Queensland University of Technology
  • Graduate Dip. Special Education, Griffith University
  • Diploma of Teaching, Griffith University