Biography
Dr Yvonne Masters is currently an adjunct senior lecturer with the University of New England, NSW, Australia. She was a senior lecturer in Professional Classroom Practice in the School of Education, UNE, a position that she accepted after five years as Director of Professional Experience in the same School. Prior to taking up her position at UNE, Yvonne had 30 years' experience in secondary schools, including in the roles of Curriculum Coordinator, Deputy Principal and Principal, roles that developed her skills in leadership, project management, curriculum and assessment. Her teaching experience spans three Australian states. Yvonne's research interests centre on teacher education and policy, professional experience and virtual worlds, with a particular focus on distance education students. Yvonne was awarded her PhD in October 2010 and she has gained, in collaboration with other researchers, four Internal School of Education Research grants, been a partner in a $200,000 ALTC (OLT) grant, "VirtualPREX: Innovative Assessment Using a 3D Virtual World with Pre-service Teachers", in 2014 achieved a UNE Seed Grant for a one year project to explore teacher quality, and in 2015 gained a $50,000 OLT seed grant to develop resources to assist pre-service teachers to gain online teaching skills to assist them in teaching wholly online into virtual schools. She is still an active researcher and presents on both teacher education policy and online teaching at a range of events.