Professor Andrew Tolmie

  • Qualifications and position:
    • BSc (Hons), PhD CPsychol
    • Professor of Psychology and Human Development
  • Faculty:
  • Department:
  • Centre:
  • Summary:
    • I am a developmental psychologist with long-standing interests in dialogue and its uses within formal and informal educational settings to promote changes in skills and cognitive representations, and in the quantitative modelling of these effects.
  • Teaching:
    • Joint Course Leader, MA/MSc Psychology of Education and MA Education (Psychology)
      Module Leader, Methodology and Statistics
      Module leader, Personality and Social Psychology in Education
      Input to Masters modules on Cognitive Development and Learning, Developmental Psychology and Psychobiology, Social Development
      Graduate Certificate module on Psychology for Education
      Doctorate in Professional Educational Child and Adolescent Psychology sessions on methodology and quantitative analysis
  • Research Projects:
  • Postgraduate Research:
    • My primary research interests are: dialogue in group work and classroom interaction and its effects on mental representation; social and affective processes in group work; conceptual development and generalization, especially in science; parent-child interaction in informal problem-solving contexts; the development of conversational skills and theory of mind (including atypical development); child pedestrian skills and injury prevention; use of ICT for promoting learning
      Current postgraduate researchers are:
      (1) Alice Peng-Fei Chen - The Analects of Confucius and the development of critical thinking in middle childhood in Taiwanese schools
      (2) Georgia Dissou - The role of trait EI in the workplace
      (3) Yvonne Reynolds - Children's concepts of measurement
      (4) Ken Smyth - Children's understanding of relevancy violations and theory of mind acquisition
  • Professional Activities:
    • Chair, Planning Board, IOE/UCL/Birkbeck Centre for Educational Neuroscience
      Editor, British Journal of Educational Psychology
      Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
      Co-convenor, Cross-London Psychology of Classroom Interactions Research Group
  • Conferences/presentations:
    • Generalization in children's science explanations. Tolmie, A., Tenenbaum, H., & Pino-Pasternak, D. European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction Biennial Conference, Amsterdam, August 2009

      Groupwork in science across varying social contexts: the ScotSPRinG project. Association for Science Education Annual Conference, University of Reading, January 2009

      Effect of cooperative learning on cognitive/affective factors during transition from elementary to high school. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York, March 2008
  • Languages Spoken:
    • French, intermediate
  • Languages Written:
    • French, intermediate
Professor Andrew Tolmie

Contact details

Contact details

Publications

  • Christie, D., Tolmie, A., Thurston, A., Howe, C., & Topping, K. (2009) 'Supporting group work in Scottish primary classrooms: improving the quality of collaborative dialogue', Cambridge Journal of Education 39(1), 141-156.
  • Thurston, A., Topping, K.J., Tolmie, A.K., Christie, D., Karagiannidou, E. & Murray, P. (2009) 'Cooperative learning in science: Follow-up from primary to high school', International Journal of Science Education 31(9), 1-22.
  • Tolmie, A., Topping, K., Christie, D., Donaldson, C., Howe, C., Jessiman, E., Livingston, K. & Thurston, A. (2009) 'Social effects of collaborative learning in primary schools', Learning and Instruction, (online DOI at http://dx.doi.org/), DOI name: [10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.01.005].
  • Rattray, C. and Tolmie, A. (2008) ''Young children's detection and decoding of ironic intonation'', Psychology of Language and Communication 12(1), 29-54.
  • Philips, S. and Tolmie, A. (2007) ''Children's performance on and understanding of the Balance Scale problem: the effects of parental support', Infant and Child Development 16, 95-117.
  • Howe, C., Tolmie, A., Thurston, A., Topping, K., Christie, D., Livingston, K., Jessiman, E. and Donaldson, C. (2007) ''Group work in elementary science: towards organisational principles for supporting pupil learning', Learning and Instruction 17, 549-563.
  • Tolmie, A., Thomson, J.A., O'Connor, R., Foot, H.C. Karagiannidou, E., Banks, M., O'Donnell, C. and Sarvary, P. (2006) The Role Of Skills, Attitudes And Perceived Behavioural Control In The Pedestrian Decision-Making Of Adolescents Aged 11-15 Years. Department for Transport Road Safety Research Report No. 68. . London: DfT..
  • Thomson, J.A., Tolmie, A.K., Foot, H.C., Sarvary, P., Whelan, K.M. and Morrison, S. (2005) ''Influence of virtual reality training on the roadside crossing judgments of child pedestrians'', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 11, 175-186.
  • Tolmie, A., Thomson, J.A., Foot, H.C., Whelan, K., Morrison, S. and McLaren, B. (2005) ' The effects of adult guidance and peer discussion on the development of children's representations: evidence from the training of pedestrian skills', British Journal of Psychology 96, 181-204.
  • Howe, C.J. and Tolmie, A. (2003) ''Group work in primary school science: discussion, consensus and guidance from experts', International Journal of Educational Research 39, 51-72.