Research

Connected questions.
Across changing contexts.

My research examines how educational institutions establish authority and value, how global and national priorities shape their identities, and how educators negotiate change. My current programme develops these questions through AI in Abu Dhabi education.

01

Legitimacy &
educational value

How heritage, prestige, institutional position and symbolic power shape what counts as valuable education—and whose practices receive recognition.

02

Globalisation &
institutional identity

How educational institutions negotiate national commitments, global aspirations and transnational hierarchies through policy, discourse and representation.

03

AI &
professional judgment

How institutions define legitimate AI use, and how leaders and teachers interpret those expectations and translate them into educational practice.

Current research

Research in progress.

These projects bring together questions about AI and institutional inequality with a methods project on how researchers can study public digital communication.

Public AI futures

How do Abu Dhabi’s public, charter and private schools describe what AI is for, who it should serve, and how it relates to Emirati identity and national and global futures? I am seeing applied and reflexive AI discourse across the sectors, rather than a simple divide between using AI and reflecting on it. The current corpus also contains substantial material published by public schools. I am analyzing what these different forms of discourse say about education and imagined futures, without treating public communication as proof of classroom practice.

Stratified AI

I am taking a closer look across Abu Dhabi private schools to understand the preliminary patterns of applied and reflexive AI discourse. Could fee level, curriculum or other institutional factors help explain the variation? A stratified design across five fee bands will help test those possibilities. The analysis is still developing, so I am not treating any factor as an explanation yet.

Studying public digital evidence

This methods project grew out of my stratification study. I see social media as a major space where schools communicate and make meaning, yet researchers do not have equal access to platform data. When large datasets and platform access are concentrated in well-resourced institutions, a privileged research loop can form, shaping who can study and publish from that material. I am testing a transparent, reproducible workflow for collecting and validating public web and social-media evidence, with the aim of widening access.

Current programme / UAE & AI

AI in Abu Dhabi education.

A connected research programme asking how AI becomes educationally legitimate across differently positioned institutions—and how institutional orientations are translated through leadership and teacher judgment into classroom practice.

Ongoing and planned studies. The programme’s questions guide inquiry; they are not statements of established findings.

  • Institutional futuresHow schools articulate AI’s educational purposes and connect it to national and global futures.
  • Stratification & legitimacyHow institutional position shapes the construction and valuation of appropriate AI use.
  • Leadership & teacher judgmentHow educators interpret institutional expectations and negotiate professional decisions.
  • Enactment & educational valueHow orientations toward AI become classroom practice, and what makes that practice educationally valuable.