Associate ProfessorRuth Boyask

My academic work is driven by a commitment to the communal production and meaningful use of robust, socially critical educational research. Across my career, I have sought to connect scholarly inquiry with practice, policy, and community action in ways that contribute to more equitable and socially just education systems. My research is founded on the belief that educational change is most powerful when it is informed by diverse forms of knowledge and developed through reciprocal relationships among researchers, educators, communities, and policy actors.

I am particularly concerned with the systemic reform of education for children and young people. My work explores how schools interact with wider social, cultural, and community contexts, including the relationships between formal education, community-based learning, identity-based communities, and other social institutions. This has led me to investigate a range of issues connected with educational change, including policy, governance, leadership, professional learning, pedagogical practice, and the role of research in shaping educational futures.

In recent years, my research has focused on literacy education, particularly children's engagement with reading within and beyond school. Through this work, I have examined how affective, social, spatial, and material dimensions of reading influence literacy participation and wellbeing, and how whole-of-community approaches can support more equitable literacy outcomes. I lead the LitPlus research group at AUT, which brings together researchers, educators, libraries, literacy organisations, and community partners to promote collaborative, research-informed change in literacy education.

Collectively, this body of work contributes to educational policy, school and system reform, professional learning, research methodology, and research capacity building. Through research leadership, teaching, supervision, mentorship, and academic service, I aim to strengthen the connections between knowledge, community, and action in support of more democratic and socially just forms of public education.