Dr Yvonne Skipper
- Senior Lecturer in Psychology (People, Place & Social Change)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7011-3439Biography
I am currently employed as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Education. My research primarily focusses on social influences on learning. For example, I am interested in exploring views of intelligence, the impact of feedback on learning, how we deal with failure and mental wellbeing. I am particularly interested in applied research, working with partner organisations to co-create interventions to improve educational outcomes.
I am a member of the People, Place and Social Change research and teaching group in the School of Education. I joined Glasgow University in 2019. Before this I worked as a Lecturer at Keele University and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Royal Holloway University of London. I completed my ESRC funded PhD at the University of Kent in 2011.
I am passionate about knowledge exchange, engagement and outreach and deliver a variety of workshops and presentations for children and adults, including the ‘Psychology of Superheroes’.
I also run a project called ‘White Water Writers’ which gives groups of people the chance to collaboratively write and publish a full-length novel in a week. The writers plan, write, proofread and publish their novel in one week. It is then placed for sale online with profits going to authors and a book signing event is held where family and friends can celebrate their achievement. More than 2000 people have now participated in the project. This includes primary and secondary school pupils, looked after children and young and adult offenders. The project has demonstrable educational, social and psychological benefits for young people. You can find more information here: www.whitewaterwriters.com
(Image credit Stoke Sentinel)
Research interests
My research focusses on the social influences on learning. I am interested in how learners view intelligence and how this impacts their learning, subject choice, academic performance and response to failure. I am interested in understanding how students respond to feedback and how teachers choose to deliver it.
Another strand of my research focuses on how university students’ sense of belonging can impact their mental health and wellbeing. I have recently been working with collaborators at Student Minds and Keele University to explore this.
I am also interested in literacy. I have worked with Stoke on Trent City Council to explore barriers which parents perceive in reading with children and how these can be overcome and together we created a video to help them to overcome these barriers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RrVzktX1B4
I have also worked with a team to co-create a toolkit to encourage children to believe that they can improve their literacy in their first year at school https://www.keele.ac.uk/media/keeleuniversity/facnatsci/schpsych/cyptemp/Stoke%20Reads%20Mindset%20Kit%20-%20Web%20Version.pdf.
I also run and research the White Water Writers project, which gives groups of young people the chance to collaboratively write and publish a novel in a week. The project has demonstrable educational, social and psychological benefits for young people. Novels produced by our previous authors can be found here and some of the cover art can be seen below https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-T-M-Cooks/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AT.M.+Cooks
Grants
|
Year |
Total amount |
Funder and Title |
|
| 2020 | £40,000 |
|
|
|
2020 |
£2,500 |
Higher Horizons: How do contextual admissions impact student experience of university? |
|
|
2020 |
£1,700 |
University of Glasgow Chancellor’s Fund: White Water Writers with University of Glasgow students |
|
|
2020 |
£1,400 |
ESRC Impact Acceleration Covid 19: Creative Writing in Prisons. |
|
|
2019 |
£1,000 |
ESRC Festival of Social Science: Psychology in Action. Funding to run outreach activity giving young people the chance to use psychology to solve real problems in their community. |
|
|
2018 |
£9,500 |
British Academy: Development and validation of a conspiracy theory belief questionnaire for adolescents |
|
|
2017 |
£66, 547 |
Higher Horizons and NCOP: White Water Writers. Funding to run the project in 35 local schools and evaluate its’ impact. |
|
|
2017 |
£4,869 |
Society for Research in Higher Education: “Why not me?” – The Extent to which Students’ Academic Identity impacts their sense of community and mental health. |
|
|
2017 |
£7,715 |
Higher Horizons and NCOP: Are you App4it?: Funding to develop and run a project giving school students the chance to develop their own apps. |
|
|
2015 |
£49,000 |
SHINE: White Water Writers for Disadvantaged Young People. Funding to run the project in a number of local schools and evaluate the longer term impact on literacy. |
|
|
2015 |
£6,600 |
Earnest Cook: White Water Writers |
|
|
2015 |
£22,000 |
HEFCE and UnLTD: White Water Writers |
|
|
2014 |
£32,000 |
Higher Education Innovation Fund: White Water Writers |
Supervision
Current students
Hana Butrova: Exploring character-focused mentoring as a means of facilitating character growth and Positive Youth Development (PYD) in middle and late childhood
Gemma Haywood: Self-efficacy and mindsets in children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children
Previous students
Dr Nicola Ralph: Risk and protective factors for bullying and peer victimisation of children with and without Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND)
Nick Garnett: Enabling teachers to promote incremental theories of intelligence in young children: an intervention and an instrument
Charlotte Bagnall: How can we improve children’s emotional wellbeing over the secondary school transition period?
- Bartley, Erin Elisa
Once upon a teenage time; How do storytelling techniques within career guidance impact developing adolescents in terms of executive functions, identity formation and wellbeing? - WEN, Zhipeng
Examining the impact of “Hungry Rabbit” on reading motivation, reading comprehension, and learning anxiety of beginning Mandarin learners with basic knowledge of pinyin in the UK
Teaching
I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and in 2019 was a Finalist in the UK Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year Award.
I am the Programme Lead for MSc Psychological Studies. I also lead in the delivery of the dissertation module, and teach developmental psychology, individual differences, educational psychology, psychology of adult learning and approaches to inclusive learning.
Additional information
Awards
2019: Finalist ‘UK Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year’. This national level award recognises excellence in teaching and learning in psychology.
2017: Keele University. Teaching Excellence Award.
2016: Keele University. Innovative Session of the Year
2015: Keele University. Outstanding Outreach Session Deliverer
2014: Keele University. New outreach academic of the year
