Rate My Professor Mary Ryan

Professor Mary Ryan is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, commencing her role on 25 August 2025. With over 30 years of experience in the education sector, she began her career as a classroom teacher from 1990 to 2000. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Education from Griffith University (2007) and completed the Cambridge Senior Management Program in 2025. Prior to joining Monash, Professor Ryan served as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University since 2022, and concurrently as Founding Director of the Learning and Leadership Enterprise since 2023. In these roles, she advanced education quality and equity through transdisciplinary teaching and research programs, partnerships with the Commonwealth and NSW State Governments, Microsoft, and multiple school systems, focusing on impact, external engagement, and revenue diversification.

Internationally acknowledged for her research in teacher education, reflexive learning, and writing pedagogy, Professor Ryan's work spans education across the lifespan, examining texts, literacies, learning, and teaching in classrooms, schools, higher education institutions, and workplaces. Current projects include a reflexive approach to teaching writing in the era of generative AI, developing pre-service teachers’ epistemic reflexivity to teach diversity, and analyzing enabling and constraining conditions of pathway programs into teaching. She has secured more than $16 million in external funding, including Australian Research Council grants for teaching diversity in teacher education and improving classroom writing. Her publication record includes over 110 chapters and journal papers, with recent works such as “Examining authorial agency in elementary children’s narratives” (Ryan & Khosronejad, 2025, Classroom Discourse), “Learners as implied citizens: the early emergence of curricular discourses on citizenship in lessons about writing” (Khosronejad & Ryan, 2025), and “Effective policy enactment in Australia: enabling and constraining conditions for policy actors in an era of impact in education” (Ryan, Bourke & Mills, 2025, BERA-Sage Handbook). Awards include placement in the SCOPUS and Stanford University global top two per cent of researchers in education, Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, and a national award for outstanding contributions to student learning. She has advised state governments on education and teacher education, served as President of the New South Wales Council of Deans of Education, Chair of the Education Research Council for Australian Independent Schools New South Wales, member of the ACT Ministerial Inquiry into Literacy and Numeracy, and board member of the NSW Education Standards Authority. Professor Ryan co-designed the innovative APTT program in Queensland and New South Wales to attract and retain teachers in hard-to-staff schools.