We are offering two fully-funded PhD studentships in computing education, starting October 2025, as part of the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre. These are open to students based in the UK only.
The Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre (RPCERC) is based in the Department of Computer Science and Technology (CST) at the University of Cambridge and seeks to achieve long-term impact by conducting original research as well as working with its partners to turn new research results into practice. We aim to increase our understanding of teaching and learning computing, computer science and AI, with a particular focus on young people who are from backgrounds that are traditionally under-represented in the field of computing or who experience educational disadvantage.
The deadline is 3rd December 2024. Please note these are full-time PhD studentships and students will need to be resident in Cambridge.
The PhD studentships are available for students to work on a topic relating to pedagogy and curriculum issues in AI, data science or computing at the school level (for young people aged 5-18). Example topics might be:
To be accepted for a PhD in computer science at the University of Cambridge you need to have demonstrated both your academic ability and a keen interest in the subject you want to study. In terms of academic qualifications, we’d expect a first class honours at Bachelor level, together with a Masters degree, probably with distinction. For a PhD in RPCERC, this could be in computer science or education, but if your qualifications are primarily in education, we’d expect you to be able to demonstrate some study of computer science and a good understanding of the domain. If you are not sure whether you’d qualify, contact us.
In terms of demonstrating interest in computing education, normally a successful PhD applicant might have volunteered to work in school, undertaken a dissertation with a focus on education, read widely about computing education or have other evidence of both practical and academic engagement with education.
These PhD studentships are being offered on a full-time basis only and there is a requirement to be resident in Cambridge to enable you to take a full role in university activities.
Computing education is an exciting interdisciplinary branch of computer science and education. PhD students in RPCERC take a full part in the work of the Centre and become part of our national and international networks.
RPCERC is a joint team working across both the University of Cambridge and Raspberry Pi Foundation. We work closely with the Ada Computer Science/ Isaac Physics technical team at the University, and collaboration with that team is encouraged.
While many research groups in computing education at the school level exist around the world, we do not have many such groups in the UK, and opportunities for UK students to study a PhD in this area are rare. This studentship is therefore restricted to applicants from the UK in order that we can provide such an opportunity for the right candidate.
As part of the RPCERC, within the Department of Computer Science and Technology, you will have the opportunity to work with researchers from both the university and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, thus benefiting from discussion, insights, and feedback from both academia and the non-profit sector. PhD students play a full role in the team, including giving seminars, teaching, and may visit schools to help with their research.
More information about studying in CST can be found here: https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/admissions/phd. If you are interested in applying, write a draft proposal and send it with your CV to Dr Sue Sentance (ss2600@cam.ac.uk). If you meet the eligibility criteria outlined above, the next steps would be to hold an online meeting to discuss your application. After that, follow the procedure outlined on the University website https://www.graduate.study.cam.ac.uk/how-do-i-apply, selecting the course PhD in Computer Science and making sure to mention Dr Sue Sentance.
If you’d like to know more about computing education, you can look at the projects we’re involved with at RPCERC, Amy Ko’s guide to being a computing education researcher, or try reading the book ‘Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School’ [5], which covers different researchers’ perspectives.
If you’re non-UK, you can still apply for a PhD in the Department, with me or somebody else, but these studentships would not apply. See the funding section of our admissions page to find out what funding might be available for international students.
References
[1] Sentance, S., Waite, J., & Kallia, M. (2019). Teaching computer programming with PRIMM: a sociocultural perspective. Computer Science Education, 29(2-3), 136-176.
[2] Tedre, M., Denning, P., & Toivonen, T. (2021, November). CT 2.0. In Proceedings of the 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (pp. 1-8).
[3] Magenheim, J., & Schulte, C. (2006). Social, ethical and technical issues in informatics—An integrated approach. Education and Information Technologies, 11, 319-339.
[4] Hodges, S., Sentance, S., Finney, J. and Ball, T., (2020). Physical computing: A key element of modern computer science education. Computer, 53(4), pp.20-30.
[5] Sentance, S., Barendsen, E., Howard, N.R. & Schulte, C. (Eds.) (2023). Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and learning in school. Bloomsbury Academic. 2nd Edition