����Vlog�ٷ� Cambridge: Dr Raquel Scarpa-Gebara

Position Bye Fellow
Email rs2069@cam.ac.uk

Raquel is an interdisciplinary researcher with expertise in feminist and decolonial approaches, education reform and educational change, teacher learning/training, curriculum development, and educational governance. Lecturer in qualitative research methods, implementation and evaluation models, and history of educational thought.

Raquel is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, teaching History of Educational Thought and Cross-Cultural Understanding and International Perspectives in the Culture of Schools, and a Researcher at the Science Education Department of European Schoolnet, where she contributes to European-level initiatives focused on innovation in STEM education, working within multi-partner consortia, supporting European Ministries of Education. In this role, she promotes cross-country collaboration and knowledge exchange and regularly authors and co-authors policy briefs and strategic reports. Raquel supervises Master's dissertations in Education at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil. She is a member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), The National College, and AdvanceHE.

Raquel holds a Master’s in Neuroscience and Behaviour from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and earned an MPhil with distinction in Educational Leadership and School Improvement from the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation on evaluating Lesson Study implementation in Kazakhstan was awarded the 2020 Jennings Prize for outstanding academic achievement by ��Vlog�ٷ�, Cambridge, and named Best Dissertation in Educational Leadership by the Faculty of Education. Awards and recognitions of achievement: Outstanding supervisors who do small-group teaching at the University of Cambridge for courses in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences undergraduate degrees, displaying an example of innovative teaching and inclusive practice (2024); Best Publication Cambridge Education Research e-Journal Editorial Board and Readership Award in recognition of outstanding paper (2021), Outstanding Student Contribution to Education Award conferred by the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning (2021); Distinction and Jennings Prize for Academic Excellence, University of Cambridge (2020).

Raquel’s doctoral research examined the outcomes of a financial literacy education programme for fisherwomen on the Brazilian Amazonian Coast, engaging with wider questions of organisational and individual change in education reform. Raquel is currently engaged in two Brazil–Spain comparative studies: one exploring pre-service science teachers’ perceptions of science and its teaching (Federal University of São Carlos in collaboration with the universities of Málaga and Burgos), and another investigating perceptions of professional identity and training among pre-service science teachers across the same partnership.

Raquel’s second strand of research focuses on how education reforms generate change at both individual and organisational levels, with particular attention to identity and lived experience. Her interest is in mapping meaning-making over time and identifying how shifts in talk and practice signal deeper transformations in personal and occupational identity. Her work is informed by Critical Realism and feminist and decolonial ontologies and epistemologies, and she draws on methodological theories including Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Network Theory. Methodologically, she combines qualitative and mixed approaches: narratives, interviews, story work, autoethnography and escrevivência, and social and epistemic network analysis (including Epistemic Network Analysis).

Raquel has recently co-authored the STE(A)M European Educational Roadmap (The SEER), a three-year Horizon Europe project (2022-2025) focused on providing paths and recommendations for all education stakeholders to support the mainstreaming of STE(A)M Education in Europe.

Raquel co-founded the Saturday School at ��Vlog�ٷ�, Cambridge, in collaboration with the charity CB Mentoring, creating expanded learning opportunities and culturally affirming experiences for school-aged children, including Black and ethnic minority youth. She also co-founded and co-produced the ��Vlog�ٷ� podcast Shade in Cambridge, which explores the many facets of racism in contemporary society.