Gabriella Rodolico

Main profile

Lecturer in Science Education (Biology)

School of Education.

University of Glasgow

Glasgow

United Kingdom

Summary biography:

Gabriella is a lecturer in science education (Biology) at the School of Education, University of Glasgow. She is a PhD level biotechnologist and qualified as Biology with Science teacher at the University of Strathclyde. She taught in secondary schools and Higher Education with several projects based on Science and STEM education in collaboration with several international partners gaining a wide experience in this field.

Staff Profile

Gabriella Rodolico is a Lecturer in Science Education (Biology) in the School of Education.

She possesses a PhD in Biotechnology within which she specialised in the Pharmacological Science and Physiopathology of the Respiratory System at the Second University of Naples. In November 2007 she moved to Glasgow to complete her PhD at the Centre for Biophotonics, University of Strathclyde. Subsequently, she attended the PGDE “Biology with Science” course at University of Strathclyde and then taught Biology with Science in the Secondary school sector in Scotland for several years. From 2013 to 2016, she worked for Glasgow City Council and then from 2016-2019 at Glasgow Caledonian University teaching at the Advanced Higher HUB.

In 2016 she received funding from the ERASMUS + for the project “Enhancing employability and skills for life looking at and sharing good practice in teaching within different educational systems across the Europe” an exchange of good practice between two schools in Scotland and Sweden and was supported by the 2016-2017 ERASMUS + Key area 1 Staff mobility. This allowed her to learn about the Swedish Education System. As a result, she gained a broad overview of Education and developed the expertise to bridge the gap that often is too wide between schools and universities.

Since she joined University of Glasgow, her main research interests have focused on the implementation of innovative technology in Initial Teacher Education courses such as Virtual Reality and the impact that it has on student teachers. During time in the School of Education, she has had the chance to further develop her other interest in internationalisation by engaging in several scholarship projects which allowed her to develop several professional relationships creating a network in UK as well as abroad. In 2020 I have received two more sets of Erasmus+ staff mobility funding to consolidate collaborations abroad:

1) Virtual Reality supported lessons, analysing the impact on the learning experience of students at University Niccolo’ Cusano in Rome and University of Glasgow.

2) A demonstration of Virtual Reality pedagogy with implementation of interactive VR supported lesson to In-Service teachers attending the teacher training course at IISER Pune Institute.

She has recently been working within two projects

Remote healthcare system for diabetes management (2020-2021)

This project is supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund. In spring-summer 2021, I will lead its dissemination in collaboration with the School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. The project is based on an innovative non-invasive way to check daily blood sugar in patients with Diabetes. My role is to create interactive remotely delivered workshops in collaboration with one of my PGDE Biology student teachers who volunteered to cooperative teach on the topic of Diabetes. The audience are teachers in Pakistan ITE institutes and Pakistan high schools. Our cooperative teaching will be based on delivering the workshops in Urdu and English.

A reflection into the impact of an internationalisation experience via digital platform, based on views, opinions and experiences of students and lecturers (2020-2021)

The application of technology in Education, especially at the time of pandemic, has also been the focus of a further international project, I have started in October 2020 in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Glasgow and colleagues at the University Niccolo’ Cusano, Rome. The project aims to explore how remotely delivered cooperative teaching, based on the integration of compulsory courses tasks for both universities can support the active participations of both countries’ students. The results are under ongoing analysis and might open innovative ways to think internationalisation digital learning.