Rate My Professor Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai

Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education in the Institute of Education at the University of Reading, where he has been employed since 2013. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge on primary teachers' beliefs about mathematics, its teaching and learning; an MSc in International and Comparative Education from the University of Oxford; an MSc in International Public Policy from University College London; and a BA in primary teacher training with a Mathematics specialism and Qualified Teacher Status from Brunel University London. Before joining the University of Reading, he worked on the €2 million EU-funded Creative Little Scientists project at the UCL Institute of Education. In his current roles, he serves as Director of Research Communications, Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research Studies, and Deputy Director of the EdD programme. Between 2023 and 2025, he is on secondment as an Economic and Social Research Council-funded Policy Fellow at the Education Endowment Foundation.

His research interests centre on enhancing the effectiveness and enjoyment of mathematics learning through storytelling and implementing pedagogical interventions at scale to support evidence-informed policymaking, with a combined grant portfolio exceeding £600,000. He founded the non-profit MathsThroughStories.org in 2017, offering free online resources viewed over two million times by more than half a million users from 220 countries, and launched the Young Mathematical Story Authors competition in 2019, attracting over 5,000 entries from more than 30 countries. He has delivered Maths Through Stories training to over 5,000 pre-service and in-service teachers across the UK and internationally, including in the USA, Norway, Ghana, Maldives, and South East Asia, and collaborates with policymakers for national implementations. Notable fellowships and grants include the University of Reading Research Fellowship, British Academy Leverhulme Small Research Grant, and Leverhulme Trust funding. Key publications comprise 'Visualisation to support children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder learning to solve mathematical word problems: a randomised controlled trial' (2023, British Journal of Special Education), 'Taiwanese primary school teachers’ perceived enablers for and barriers to the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning' (2022, Educational Studies in Mathematics), 'Mathematical epistemic beliefs: through the gender lens' (2022, Frontiers in Education), and 'Australian primary school teachers’ perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning' (2021, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education).