1340572
Dr Leanne Crosswell
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Education
Biography
Dr Leanne Crosswell is a Senior Lecturer in Education whose research focuses on the professional lives of teachers. Her work examines the reflexive practices educators use to shape their professional identity, foster resilience and wellbeing, and critically evaluate their impact in educational settings.Dr Crosswell specialises in postgraduate education, working with both pre-service and practising teachers. She introduces pre-service teachers to dynamic, interactive, and evidence-informed teaching strategies, while supporting practising teachers in exploring and developing their leadership identity.
Her teaching approach integrates synchronous and asynchronous learning design, grounded in adult learning principles. She prioritises flexibility and engagement, offering multiple avenues for student interaction to support diverse learning needs and contexts.
Additional QUT highlights include:
- Exploring the experiences of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher (HALT) certified educators as they navigated the certification process, shared their stories of professional impact, and reflected on the influence of their certification on their practice and leadership. Including the following:
- Representing the impact of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers (HALT) – in partnership with Independent Schools Queensland (ISQ).
- Telling Your Story of Impact - HALT certification requires teachers to present evidence-based narratives that demonstrate their professional impact. Writing in this way is new to many experienced educators, this website was created to guide them in developing and refining their own stories of impact.
- Supporting experienced teachers throughout Queensland develop their mentoring skills and practices and construct their own identity as a mentor. In projects such as:
- Mentoring Beginning Teachers (MBT) program - trained 4427 mentors for Queensland beginning teachers.
- Beginning Well - investigated the experiences of beginning teachers in Lutheran schools, alongside the perspectives of their mentors and school leaders.
- Investigating ways that teachers activate individual and group resilience and how this can be supported school leaders and education systems. This includes the following work:
- Staying Brite. This project explored ways initial teacher education could embed resilience building practices into their programs. Leanne co-authored the QUT case study that explored curriculum options. Link to Staying BRiTE website.
Personal details
Positions
- Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Education
Research field
Education systems, Specialist studies in education
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- Doctor of Education (Queensland University of Technology)
- Master of Education (Queensland University of Technology)
Publications
Research outputs by year
- Willis, J., Churchward, P., Crosswell, L., Spooner-Lane, R., Wise, J. & Jessen, S. (2022). Recognising the impact of highly accomplished and lead teachers. Australian Educational Researcher, 49(4), 691–709. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/209110
- Willis, J., Gibson, A., Spina, N., Kelly, N., Azordegan, J. & Crosswell, L. (2021). Towards faster feedback in higher education through digitally mediated dialogic loops. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 37(3), 22–37. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/203506
- Willis, J., Spooner-Lane, R., Crosswell, L., Gibson, A., Churchward, P. & Bray, E. (2021). Representing the impact of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers: Final report for Independent Schools Queensland. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/213692
- Willis, J., Churchward, P., Beutel, D., Spooner-Lane, R., Crosswell, L. & Curtis, E. (2019). Mentors for beginning teachers as middle leaders: the messy work of recontextualising. School Leadership and Management, 39(3-4), 334–351. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/124101
- Beutel, D., Crosswell, L. & Broadley, T. (2019). Teaching as a 'take-home' job: understanding resilience strategies and resources for career change preservice teachers. Australian Educational Researcher, 46(4), 607–620. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/129528
- Crosswell, L. & Beutel, D. (2017). 21st century teachers: how non-traditional pre-service teachers navigate their initial experiences of contemporary classrooms. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(4), 416–431. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/108077
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Leanne, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Filter publications:
A complete list of publications is available at: https://www.qut.edu.au/about/our-people/academic-profiles/l2.crosswell
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Cultivating Emotional Intelligence: A pathway to Enhance Teacher Wellbeing
EdD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Deborah Munro - How can Teacher Graduates be supported to effectively transition throughout their first year in the profession?
EdD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Sarah James - Investigating the Existence of Career Development Policy in Australian Secondary Schools
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Deborah Munro - Migrant teacher professional identity for Indigenous education
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Jill Willis, Associate Professor Francis Bobongie-Harris - Supporting transition into university: Exploring how educators nurture students sense of belonging
EdD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Keri Billingham, Professor Jill Willis - The effectiveness of social clustering models in facilitating a cohesive career narrative
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Deborah Munro
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- Making Middle Leadership Visible: Representations of Identity and Influence in Australian Independent Secondary Schools (2026)
- Early Career Teachers' Experiences in the Pursuit of Quality (2020)
- Gifted Adolescent Wellbeing: An Australian Case Study (2018)
- Teachers' Ways of Seeing their Approaches with Student Behaviour in the Preparatory Year (2018)
Completed supervisions (Masters by Research)
- Understanding Complex Change in a Federal Policing Environment Through a Post-Conventional Lens (2022)
- Brains, Beneficial Beliefs, and Science Achievement (2021)
- Determining Leadership Practices that Impact on Primary School, Mid-Career Teachers' Commitment to the Profession: Mid-Career Teachers' Perspectives (2018)
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.