Dr Jessica Holloway

Senior Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Fellow
Research Centre for Digital Data and Assessment in Education

Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith

Areas of expertise: politics and policy of education; policy sociology; educational leadership and governance; teacher evaluation and accountability; teacher expertise, authority and professionalism; value-added models; digital data and assessment; democracy and democratic practice

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9267-3197

Phone: +61 7 36237421

Email: jessica.holloway@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Brisbane Campus

Dr Jessica Holloway holds an Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellowship entitled The Role of Teacher Expertise, Authority and Professionalism in Education. Jessica earned her Ph.D. in Education Policy and Evaluation, with a concentration in research methods, from the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University (USA) in 2014. Her first academic position was as an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Kansas State University (USA). In 2016, she relocated to Melbourne to pursue a research-intensive postdoctoral fellowship within the Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Centre at Deakin University, where she conducted work on the relationship between accountability and educational leadership.

In 2018, she was awarded a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) by the Australian Research Council, totalling $467,000 over three years. Her project investigates the role of education in modern democratic societies, with a particular focus on teachers and teacher expertise. Her research draws on political theory and policy sociology to investigate two major lines of inquiry: (1) how metrics, data and digital tools produce new conditions, practices and subjectivities, especially as this relates to teachers and schools, and (2) how teachers and schools are positioned to respond to the evolving and emerging needs of their communities. Jessica has spent the past nine years studying and writing extensively about teacher data, accountability and evaluation in Australia, the USA and UK. Her work is internationally recognised and has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Education PolicyCritical Studies in Education, and Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, as well as various public outlets, including The Conversation and ABC Radio. She recently published a book titled Metrics, Standards and Alignment in Teacher Policy: Critiquing Fundamentalism and Imagining Pluralism (Springer Nature, 2021).

Curriculum Vitae

Select publications

Authored monographs

  • Holloway, J. (2021). Metrics, Standards and Alignment in Teacher PolicyCritiquing Fundamentalism and Imagining Pluralism. Singapore: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4814-1_5
  • Selected articles
  • Anderson, K. & Holloway, J. (2020). Discourse analysis as theory, method, and epistemology in studies of education policy, 28(56), 1-12. Journal of Education Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2018.1552992
  • Holloway, J., & Keddie, A. (2020). Competing locals in an autonomous schooling system: The fracturing of the ‘social’ in social justice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 48(5), 786–801. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143219836681
  • Brass, J. & Holloway, J. (2019, Online ahead of print). Re-professionalizing the teacher: The new professionalism in the United States. Critical Studies in Education, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1579743
  • Holloway, J. (2019). Risky teachers: U.S. teacher accountability policy as risk management. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(3), 399-411. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2017.1322938
  • Lewis, S., & Holloway, J. (2019). Datafying the teaching ‘profession’: Remaking the professional teacher in the image of data. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(1), 35-51. doi:10.1080/0305764X.2018.1441373
  • Holloway, J. (2019). Teacher evaluation as an onto-epistemic framework. British Journal of Sociology of Education 40(2), 174-189. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2018.1514291
  • Holloway, J. & Brass, J. (2018). Making accountable teachers: The terrors and pleasures of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 33(3), 361-382. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1372636

Projects

Studies with ARC funding

  • 2019-2022, Australian Research Council, Discovery Early Career Researcher Award: Holloway, J. (lead CI), The role of teacher expertise, authority and professionalism in education $383,000.

Accolades and awards

  • Best paper award for Educational Managament, Administration and Leadership, 2020
  • Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, Australian Research Council, 2018
  • Faculty Development Award, Kansas State University – The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, 2016
  • Graduate Education 2014 Fall Completion Fellowship, Arizona State University, 2014
  • Graduate Fellowship Award, Arizona State University, 2014-2015
  • Graduate Fellowship Award, Arizona State University, 2013-2014
  • Graduate Fellowship Award, Arizona State University, 2012-2013

Appointments and affiliations

  • Senior Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Fellow, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, Australian Catholic University, February 2021 -
  • Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Research Fellow, Research for Educational Impact Centre, Deakin University, January 2019 - February 2021
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research for Educational Impact Centre, Deakin University, March 2017 - January 2019
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, College of Education, Kansas State University, August 2015 - May 2017

Editorial roles

  • Associate Editor, Critical Studies in Education, 2020 -
  • Special Interest Group (SIG) Co-convenor, AARE Policy and Politics in Education SIG, 2019 -
  • Editorial Advisory Board Member, Journal of Global Education and Research, 2017 -
  • Special Issue Editor, Education Policy Analysis Archives, ‘Teachers and Educational Policy: Professionalism, Expertise, and Choice in an Age of Populist Politics’, 2021
  • Special Issue Editor, Education Policy Analysis Archives, ‘Global Perspectives on High-Stakes Teacher Accountability Policies’, 2017

International journal review panel

  • Australian Educational Researcher
  • Cambridge Journal of Education
  • Critical Studies in Education
  • Curriculum Inquiry
  • Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
  • Educational Management, Administration and Leadership
  • Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice
  • Education Policy Analysis Archives
  • Educational Review
  • European Educational Research Journal
  • International Journal of Inclusive Education
  • International Journal of Leadership in Education
  • Journal of Curriculum Studies
  • Journal of Education Policy
  • Leadership and Policy in Schools
  • Policy Studies
  • Review of Education: An International Journal of Major Studies in Education
  • Teaching Education

Grant agency review panels

  • Australian Research Council, Detailed Assessor, 2020 -

Public engagement

 

ILSTE Final

Get in touch

Cathedral House
Level 4, 229 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane, Qld, 4000
(GPO Box 2587, Brisbane, Qld, 4001)

Connect with us

Chat to our team via social media.