Professor of Psychology of Education
Tim Jay is Professor of Psychology of Education in the Sheffield Institute of Education. He came to Sheffield Hallam in 2014, after six years as lecturer and then senior lecturer in psychology of education at the University of Bristol.
Tim has a background in psychology and in mathematics teaching. His main research interests are focused on individual differences in the ways that young children learn about number and mathematics.
Tim’s recent work has looked at children’s out-of-school mathematics learning. Part of this research, a 2-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, involved work with primary school children to document and then ‘find the maths’ in their out-of-school lives. This led to a second 2-year project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, working with parents to design and evaluation a series of workshops designed to empower parents to support their children’s mathematics learning through the sharing of mathematics in everyday life.
Tim has a particular interest in interdisciplinary theory and method in Education. He is currently leading a project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, developing video games to promote young children’s symbolic number sense. He is also interested in ways that social and cognitive factors interact in children’s learning.
Department of Teacher Education
Social Sciences and Arts
My research centres on children's mathematics learning. More specifically, I am interested in the ways that individual differences in cognitive and social factors affect children's experience of the mathematics classroom.
I have led projects funded by Sustrans, QCA, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Nuffield Foundation, and have been involved in a number of other research projects led by colleagues, with funding from the EEF and the Royal Society.
Lead on regulated funding strategy in SIOE
White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership pathway director for Education, Childhood and Youth
Convenor for the Research Methodology in Education SIG for the British Educational Research Association
RAIDING: Researching adaptivity to individual differences in number games. November 2016 -November 2018, £130,000, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Tim Jay (PI), Jake Habgood (Computer Science, SHU), Paul Howard-Jones (Education, Bristol).
The Everyday Maths Project. October 2013 – January 2016, £130,000, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Exploring the mathematics in children’s out-of-school economic activity. October 2011 – October 2013, £90,000, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
Xolocotzin, U., & Jay, T. (2020). Children's perspectives on their economic activity—Diversity, motivations and parental awareness. Children and Society, 34 (5), 424-442. http://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12377
A. Howard-Jones, P., Jay, T., & Galeano, L. (2020). Professional Development on the Science of Learning and teachers' Performative Thinking—A Pilot Study. Mind, Brain, and Education, 14 (3), 267-278. http://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12254
Rose, S., Habgood, J., & Jay, T. (2020). Designing a Programming Game to Improve Children’s Procedural Abstraction Skills in Scratch. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 073563312093287. http://doi.org/10.1177/0735633120932871
Jay, T., Habgood, J., Mees, M., & Howard-Jones, P. (2019). Game-based training to promote arithmetic fluency. Frontiers in Education, 4, 118. http://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00118
Di Nuovo, A., & Jay, T. (2019). The development of numerical cognition in children and artificial systems: a review of the current knowledge and proposals for multi-disciplinary research. Cognitive Computation and Systems. http://doi.org/10.1049/ccs.2018.0004
Boylan, M., Maxwell, B., Wolstenholme, C., Jay, T., & Demack, S. (2018). The mathematics teacher exchange and 'mastery' in England: The evidence for the efficacy of component practices. Education sciences, 8 (4), 202. http://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040202
Jay, T., Rose, J., & Simmons, B. (2018). Why is parental involvement in children's mathematics learning hard? Parental perspectives on their role supporting children's learning. Sage Open, 8 (2), 1-13. http://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018775466
Jay, T. (2018). Swearing, moral order, and online communication. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6 (1), 107-126. http://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00005.jay
Rose, S., Habgood, J., & Jay, T. (2017). An exploration of the role of visual programming tools in the development of young children’s computational thinking. Electronic journal of e-learning, 15 (4), 297-309. http://www.ejel.org/volume15/issue4/p297
Jay, T., & Betenson, J. (2017). Mathematics at your fingertips: Testing a finger-training intervention to improve quantitative skills. Frontiers in Education, 2, 22. http://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00022
Jay, T., Rose, J., & Milligan, L. (2017). Adoption, adaptation, and integration: renegotiating the identity of educational research through interdisciplinarity. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 40 (3), 223-230. http://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2017.1311478
Jay, T., Rose, J., & Simmons, B. (2017). Finding ‘mathematics’: parents questioning school-centred approaches to involvement in children’s mathematics learning. School Community Journal, 27 (1), 201-230. http://www.adi.org/journal/2017ss/JayRoseSimmonsSpring2017.pdf
Otsuka, K., & Jay, T. (2016). Understanding and supporting block play: video observation research on preschoolers’ block play to identify features associated with the development of abstract thinking. Early Child Development and Care, 187 (5-6), 990-1003. http://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2016.1234466
Howard-Jones, P., & Jay, T. (2016). Reward, learning and games. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 65-72. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2016.04.015
Howard-Jones, P., Jay, T., Mason, A., & Jones, H. (2016). Gamification of learning deactivates the Default Mode Network. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 (1891), 1-16. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01891
Stanton Fraser, D., Jay, T., O’Neill, E., & Penn, A. (2013). My neighbourhood: Studying perceptions of urban space and neighbourhood with moblogging. Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 9 (5), 722-737. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2012.07.002
Jay, T. (2012). The possibility and importance of postperspectival working. Educational Research Review, 9, 34-46. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2012.11.002
Jay, T. (2012). First- and second-order reactivity to verbal protocols: an example from a study on strategy variability. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 35 (2), 181-194. http://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2012.689976
O'Neill, E., Collomosse, J., Jay, T., Yousef, K., Rieser, M., & Jones, S. (2010). Older user experience: An evaluation with a location-based mobile multimedia service. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, 5 (1), 31-38. http://doi.org/10.1109/MVT.2009.935543
Jay, T. (2009). DO OFFENSIVE WORDS HARM PEOPLE? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 15 (2), 81-101. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0015646
Jay, T. (2009). The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4 (2), 153-161. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01115.x
Jay, T., Caldwell-Harris, C., & King, K. (2008). Recalling taboo and nontaboo words. American Journal of Psychology, 121 (1), 83-103. http://doi.org/10.2307/20445445
Jay, T., & Janschewitz, K. (2007). Filling the emotion gap in linguistic theory: Commentary on Potts' expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics, 33 (2), 215-221. http://doi.org/10.1515/TL.2007.014
Jay, T., King, K., & Duncan, T. (2006). Memories of punishment for cursing. Sex Roles, 55 (1-2), 123-133. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9064-5
Jay, T., & Brooks, P. (2004). Self-Censorship in Course Diaries. College Teaching, 52 (3), 82-86. http://doi.org/10.3200/CTCH.52.3.82-86
Rose, S., Habgood, J., & Jay, T. (2019). Using Pirate Plunder to develop children’s abstraction skills in Scratch. In CHI 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 4 May 2019 - 9 May 2019. ACM: http://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312871
Rose, S., Habgood, J., & Jay, T. (2018). Pirate plunder: game-based computational thinking using scratch blocks. In Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Games Based Learning, (pp. 556-564). Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited: https://www.academic-conferences.org/conferences/ecgbl/
Mees, M., Jay, T., & Habgood, J. (2018). Designing an adaptive learner model for a mathematics game. In Ciussi, M. (Ed.) Proceedings of the 12th European conference on games based learning, (pp. 800-807). Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited: http://www.academic-bookshop.com/ourshop/prod_6548565-ECGBL-2018-Proceedings-of-the-12th-European-Conference-on-GameBased-Learning-PRINT-VERSION.html
Mees, M., Jay, T., Habgood, J., & Howard-Jones, P. (2017). Researching adaptivity for individual differences in numeracy games. Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY '17 Extended Abstracts, 247-253. http://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3131315
Garzonis, S., Jones, S., Jay, T., & O'Neill, E. (2009). Auditory icon and earcon mobile service notifications: Intuitiveness, learnability, memorability and preference. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 1513-1522. http://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518932
Müller, J., Wilmsmann, D., Exeler, J., Buzeck, M., Schmidt, A., Jay, T., & Krüger, A. (2009). Display blindness: The effect of expectations on attention towards digital signage. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 5538 LNCS, 1-8. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01516-8_1
Kindberg, T., O'Neill, E., Bevan, C., Kostakos, V., Fraser, D.S., & Jay, T. (2008). Measuring Trust in Wi-Fi hotspots. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 173-182. http://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357084
Jay, T., & Fraser, D.S. (2008). The role of a cohort in the design and evaluation of pervasive systems. Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques, DIS, 31-39. http://doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394449
Kray, C., Larsen, L.B., Olivier, P., Biemans, M., Van Bunningen, A., Fetter, M., ... Lopez De Vallejo, I. (2008). Evaluating ubiquitous systems with users (Workshop summary). Communications in Computer and Information Science, 11, 63-74. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85379-4_8
Jay, T., & Xolocotzin, U. (2015). Breaking barriers between out-of-school and classroom mathematics with documenting. In Crompton, H., & Traxler, J. (Eds.) Mobile Learning and Mathematics. (pp. 86-95). New York: Routledge
Jay, T. (2005). American women: Their cursing habits and religiosity. In Gender and the Language of Religion. (pp. 63-84). http://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523494
Thomas, P., Jay, T., Willis, B., Taylor, R., Merchant, G., Moore, N., ... Stevens, A. (2019). Dialogic Teaching: Addendum Report. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_addendum_report%C2%AD_final_for_publication.pdf
Thomas, P., Jay, T., Willis, B., Taylor, R., Merchant, G., Moore, N., ... Stevens, A. (2019). Dialogic Teaching: Addendum Report. London, UK: Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_addendum_report%C2%AD_final_for_publication.pdf
Boylan, M., Wolstenholme, C., Maxwell, B., Demack, S., Jay, T., Reaney, S., & Adams, G. (2019). Longitudinal evaluation of the Mathematics Teacher Exchange: China-England - Final Report. Department for Education. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-maths-teacher-exchange-china-and-england
Jay, T., Willis, B., Thomas, P., Taylor, R., Moore, N., Burnett, C., ... Stevens, A. (2017). Dialogic Teaching : Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London, UK: Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/Dialogic_Teaching_Evaluation_Report.pdf
Panella-Peral, S. (2020). A Longitudinal Exploration of Infants’ Social Looks in Naturalistic Settings. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Beardon, L., & Jay, T. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00354
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