At the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change, School of Education at the University of Glasgow, we are delighted Dr Cheng Yong Tan has accepted our invitation to join us as an International Associate. Cheng Yong Tan is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. His concerns with the uneven quality and often inequality of student educational outcomes in many parts of the world provide a powerful impetus to his research endeavours investigating the roles of families and schools in student learning. More specifically, first he is interested to unravel how and why family background variables such as socioeconomic status and family capital contribute to student learning. To this end, he employs the conceptual lenses from Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory, digital divides theory, and social stratification and reproduction more generally, to interpret family dynamics and educational phenomena. However, he also takes cognizance of the inextricable link between family and school processes, and has similarly investigated the contribution of school organization variables such as school leadership, ability grouping, and student-centred teaching to student learning. Weaving these two strands, he endeavours to find a research niche interrogating how families and schools interact to either reinforce or compromise student learning. The multilevel modeling of student achievement, both in terms of educational quality and equality, using data from large-scale international assessments best characterizes his current research emphasis and trajectory.
Welcome Dr Cheng Yong Tan we, in the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change, look forward to working with you in the future.