Paul Unsworth

Paul is appointed as a lecturer within the Education Futures Unit located on the University of South Australia's Magill Campus, Eastern Adelaide, Australia. His current teaching and course coordination responsibilities embrace Primary Science and Mathematics Education, and Digital Literacies in the Undergraduate Program, and Educational Leadership and Complexity Studies in the Master's of Educational Leadership Program. Paul has become involved with teaching and research activities based in the newly established Samsung SMART School exploring the the potential benefits that immersive technologies may provide when used in educational learning design. Paul has a strong background in Aboriginal education having worked extensively across rural and remote communities in South Australia and the Northern Territory. He was appointed as the Chair of the NT Indigenous Education Portfolio (2005-2006) and more recently appointed as a Chief Investigator & Project Manager of the $1.3 M National Excellence & Equity Indigenous Mathematics And STEM Education research project leading the completion of this project in 2018. His current research aims to explore how culturally responsive pedagogy can be positioned within a learning design framework that incorporates application of immersive technologies. With qualified backgrounds in science, sociology, leadership & complexity studies Paul has accumulated considerable expertise in the fields of project management, applied research, policy development, education and teacher training. He has been formally recognised by Chief Executive Officers as giving outstanding service in education to rural and remote communities. His entrepreneurial interests include the applied use of STEM-XE education and immersive digital technologies to develop projects that enhance regional engagement, community sustainability and productivity. Paul's research is shaped by: (a) a work history charaterised by innovative and inclusive practice in schools and higher education and,(b) the rapidly emerging digital technologies field, particularly immersive technologies that show potential for harnessing greater learner engagement and educational output. To this effect, his research broadly lies at the nexus of what constutites 'excellence' and 'equity' in STEM and Aboriginal education. In 2018, as a Chief Invesigator, Paul led the completion of the National Excellence & Equity in Indigenous Mathematics & STEM Education [XE] research project and has continued to to explore how immersive technologies can be used as a design and inquiry tool to increase learner's engagement and qualitative output. Work arising from this project focus attention on what constutites, and is socially constitutive of 'excellence' and 'equity' in Maths & STEM education, Australia. A key output of this work is contributing knowledge to promote the cause for culturally responsive teaching and learning. On another front, [XE] research is being transitioned to explore how immersive technologies may enhance cognitive function through extending spatial, visual and semiotic architectures, and how this may be applied in culturally responsive practice. Additionally, teaching-based research underatken across 2018 investigated the affordance that video annotation and video analytics software provide to pre-service teachers. This work forged international collaboration with the University of Bologna. A joint paper was published in 2018. Other publications that will attune a more reflective dispostion on this topicare in progress for dissemeniation in local journals. Across 2020-2021, Paul and close collegues intend push teaching and learning boundaries in a concerted effort to disrupt discourses of deficit in Aboriginal education. Driven by research funded by the Reseach Themes Investment Scheme (RTIS), this work positions application of a new creator immmersive technology tool in culturally responsive learning design. In this project, the research team working alongside teachers, students and community consultants, will aim to produce interactive virtual products that richly showcase stories significant to local communties. In doing so the team will seek to collectively produce new and important insights on teacher's professional learning, students' learning and community engagement.

[2026] Anlimachie, M. A., McInnes, E., Unsworth, P., & Teise, K. (2026). Scaffolding rural children’s learning with home cultural capital; a strategy to decolonise curriculum in Africa through culturally responsive pedagogy. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 1-27. [2024] Leonard, S. N., Devis, D., MacGill, B., Unsworth, P., Colton, J., & Fowler, S. (2024). Enhancing Empathy for Justice: A Methodology for Expansive Teacher Professional Development through Creative Body-Based Learning. Sustainability Switzerland, 16(1), 16 pages. [2023] Cutting, C., Unsworth, P., & Trewartha, B. (2023). Unpacking a framework for activating and assessing student's prior knowledge. Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 28(2), 3-7. [2025] Zagami, J., See, Z. S., Unsworth, P., Maher, D., Blannin, J., & Bonsu, N