Rate My Professor Kylie Fitzgerald

Kylie Fitzgerald is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Education at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. With more than 20 years of extensive professional experience in New South Wales primary schools, she has held positions as a classroom primary school teacher, Reading Recovery teacher, English as a Second Language/Dialect teacher, and Learning Support teacher. Transitioning to higher education, Kylie teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate primary education programs at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Her teaching portfolio encompasses key subjects such as Mathematics, English, History and Geography, Visual Arts, Diversity, Inclusive Education, and Foundational Principles of Teaching. Her practical background informs her approach to preparing future educators for primary school settings.

Currently, Kylie is completing a PhD supervised by Dr Gregory Hine and co-supervised by Dr Thuan Thai. Her doctoral research, titled 'Exploring primary teacher education students’ self-perceptions of readiness to teach primary mathematics,' aligns with her research interests in initial teacher education. She has actively contributed to academic discourse through presentations, notably 'Critical reflexivity and the role of yarning to support the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)' at the 2021 Educator Scholar Summit. This work formed part of a collaborative autoethnographic study involving four University of Notre Dame Australia academics, examining lived experiences of delivering online courses during the COVID-19 lockdown. The study utilized yarning—an Indigenous cultural form of conversation—and journaling to gather narratives, highlighting the importance of teaching teams, self-knowledge, regular communication, collaboration, distributed leadership, collegiality, shared goals, accountability, and enhanced well-being in trauma-informed educational contexts. Furthermore, Kylie played a key role in a partnership between the University of Notre Dame Australia and Ultimo Public School aimed at math education excellence. She described the initiative as providing a vital bridge for students to connect theory with real-life practice, enabling them to observe primary educators delivering engaging and practical Stage 1 mathematics lessons and acquire new teaching strategies—many experiencing primary classrooms for the first time since their own schooling.