Dr Alison Wrench

Dr Alison Wrench is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and the Program Director for the Doctor of Education Program at the University of South Australia Education Futures. She is a full member of the Center for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion Concentration (CRESI). Dr Wrench has research expertise in critical and relational pedagogies, teacher’s work, and inclusion and justice effects of schooling. She draws on over two decades of practical experience as a health and physical education teacher in schools, and is a strong advocate for pedagogical practices that involve an interplay of social, emotional, intellectual and physical dimensions.  

Dr Wrench’s research program has been supported by external funding as well as internal funding from the University of South Australia. She has been a Chief Investigator on numerous projects, making significant contributions to research design, development, conduct and reporting.  In 2020, she was a Chief Investigator on the project ‘Role of refugee parents’ educational aspirations on their children’s academic outcomes’, sponsored by the Channel 7 Children's Research Foundation.  A year earlier, Dr Wrench was a Lead Chief Investigator on the project ‘Connecting Health and Physical Education to Student Life Worlds’.

In 2016, Dr Wrench was awarded the prestigious Hawke Research Fellowship at UniSA for her research contribution to advancing critical and relational pedagogies. In the same year, she received an Australian Association for Research in Education Strategic Initiatives Grant for the project ‘Researching and resisting educational inequality: Reframing policy and practice’. Dr Wrench worked collaboratively in this space to convene a national workshop, specifically focused on research design for critical practitioner inquiry.

Dr Wrench’s substantial publication outputs have included 32 peer reviewed journals and five book chapters. She is the sole author of the chapter ‘Hope, spaces, and possible selves: Processes of becoming socially critical teachers’ in the book “Resisting Educational Inequality” published in 2018 . She is also first author of the chapter ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ in the Routledge Handbook of Primary Physical Education, 2018.

Dr Wrench is a highly valued supervisor and mentor for PhD and Professional Doctorate candidates in a number of areas including critical pedagogies for fundamental movement skill development; and sport and technology for engaging girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in schooling. She is currently co-supervising three PhD and four Professional Doctorate candidates. She has supervised to completion three honours candidates and five Masters of Education students.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master of Teaching (Coursework) Flinders University

• Graduate Certificate in Education, Professional Practice University of South Australia

• Bachelor of Education WA College of Advanced Education

• Diploma of Teaching (Primary) State College of Victoria