Rate My Professor Jane Tilson

Dr. Jane Tilson serves as a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Otago, a position she has held since joining the university as a lecturer in 2000. Prior to academia, she taught as a primary school teacher for twenty years across Dunedin, Auckland, London, and Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Tilson's academic qualifications include an EdD from the University of Otago awarded with Distinction in 2015. Her doctoral thesis, titled "Teaching Teachers: The Influences on the Primary Science Pedagogy of First Year Pre-Service Teachers at Two New Zealand Universities," was recognized among the exceptional doctoral theses in the Division of Humanities in 2014. She also possesses a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts, Bachelor of Education, and Diploma of Teaching, all obtained from Otago.

In teaching, Tilson delivers professional practice papers within the undergraduate primary teacher education programme and the Master of Teaching and Learning Programme (primary strand), alongside literacy education in Bachelor of Arts papers. She coordinates courses such as EDUC473 Professional Experience (Primary), EDUC308 Future-Focused Literacies, and contributes to EDUC579 Evidence-based Inquiry. Her research specializations are critical literacy, critical multiliteracies, reflective practice in teacher education, and teacher education broadly. Tilson co-supervises postgraduate theses focused on literacy topics. Her scholarly contributions include co-authoring the book *Integrating Critical Multiliteracies Using the Four Resources Model: A New Zealand Guide* (with Susan Sandretto, 2016, NZCER); the TLRI report *Reconceptualising Literacy: Critical Multiliteracies for "New Times"* (with Sandretto, 2013); peer-reviewed articles like "More like a manifesto than a curriculum": A collaborative, critical discussion on English curriculum-making (Sandretto et al., 2026, *New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies*); *Exploring beginning teachers’ experiences in a liminal phase* (Kriewaldt et al., 2025, *Cambridge Journal of Education*); *Bridging the theory-practice divide in teacher education* (Wells et al., 2023, *Teaching and Teacher Education*); *Developing holistic empathy with process drama* (Wells et al., 2023, *Pedagogy, Culture & Society*); *Connecting theory to practice* (Tilson et al., 2017, *Teaching and Teacher Education*); and a chapter "Critical Literacy Praxis in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Sandretto, Tilson & Shafer, 2021, *The Handbook of Critical Literacies*). She has presented department seminars, including "Juggling the hybrid thesis in the humanities" (2024).