Victoria Cook
- SEC - Room 15 Location
- vac36@cam.ac.uk Email
- +44 (0)1223 Telephone
Qualifications
- PhD University of Leeds
- MA University of Leeds
- PGCE Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
- BA University of Oxford
Memberships/Professional Bodies
- British Educational Research Association (BERA)
Personal profile
Victoria joined the Faculty of Education in 2026 having previously worked as Lead Researcher at the Chartered College of Teaching.
Victoria's research interests include school-based research around decolonial curricula, teacher agency, teacher professional development and educational dialogue, including technology-mediated dialogue.
Victoria previously worked at the Faculty of Education from 2016-2021 as a Research Associate for Digitalised Dialogues Across the Curriculum (DiDiAC) and DIalogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS).
Victoria started her career as a geography teacher, working as a secondary school geography teacher in the East of England.
Research Topics
- Decolonial STEM and Geography Education
- Teacher agency
- Teacher professional development
- Teacher professionalism
- Dialogic teaching and learning
- Technology-mediated dialogue
Current Research Projects
- Decolonial STEM and Geography Education [https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/cppl/dstemg/]
- DIalogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS) [https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/programmes/dialls/]
- Digitalised Dialogues Across the Curriculum (DiDiAC) [https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/programmes/didiac/]
Cook, V., Müller, LM., Taylor, B. & Burn, H. (2026). Flexible working and professional relationships in schools: An ecological approach. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.70207
Cook, V., Taylor, B., Müller, LM., Burn, H., Anders, J. & Rubens, I. (2025). Offsite Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA): Summary for school leaders. London: Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/school-choices-ppa
Cook, V. & Müller, LM. (2025). Teacher professionalism: the importance of professional identity and autonomy for retention and career progression. In Chartered College of Teaching (Eds) Teacher Recruitment, Retention and Career Progression: A Guide for School Leaders. London: Sage, pp.23-34.
Müller, LM. & Cook, V. (2024). Setting research priorities for applied cognitive sciences: What do teachers want from research? British Educational Research Journal, 50, 1471–1494. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3983
Cook, V., Maine, F., Fozzard, L. & McCaughran, B. (2022). Building cultural literacy through dialogue: democracy at the heart of learning. In J. Biddulph and J. Flutter (Eds) Unleashing Children’s Voices in New Democratic Primary Education. London: Routledge, pp.145-159. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003179429
Cook, V., Maine, F., & Čermáková, A. (2022). Enacting cultural literacy as a dialogic social practice: the role of provisional language in classroom talk. London Review of Education 20(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/lre.20.1.02
Major, L., Rasmussen, I., Smørdol, O., Cook, V. & Vrikki, M. (2022). Investigating digital technology’s role in supporting classroom dialogue: integrating ‘enacted affordance’ into analysis across a complex dataset. International Journal of Research & Method in Education 46(1), 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2022.2032632
Cook, V. & Warwick, P. (2021). Realising student voice through dialogic engagement with a microblogging tool. Education 3-13, https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2021.1955947
Rødnes, K. A., Rasmussen, I., Omland, M. & Cook, V. (2021). Who has power? An investigation of how one teacher led her class towards understanding an academic concept through talking and microblogging. Teaching and Teacher Education, 98, Article 103229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103229
Cook, V., Major, L., Warwick, P. & Vrikki, M. (2020). Developing collaborative creativity through microblogging: a material-dialogic approach. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 37, 100685. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100685
Warwick, P., Cook, V., Vrikki, M., Major, L. & Rasmussen, I. (2020). Realising 'dialogic intentions' when working with a microblogging tool in secondary school classrooms. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 24, 100376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.100376
Warwick, P. & Cook, V. (2019). Introduction to classroom dialogue. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif & L. Major (Eds) The Routledge international handbook of research on dialogic education. London: Routledge, pp.120-123.
Maine, F., Cook, V. & Lähdesmäki, T. (2019). Reconceptualizing cultural literacy as a dialogic practice. London Review of Education, 17(3), 382-391. https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.17.3.12
Cook, V., Warwick, P., Vrikki, M., Major, L. & Wegerif, R. (2019). Developing material-dialogic space in geography learning and teaching: Combining a dialogic pedagogy with a microblogging tool. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 31, 217-231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.12.005
Major, L., Warwick, P., Rasmussen, I., Ludvigsen, S. & Cook, V. (2018). Classroom dialogue and digital technologies: A scoping review. Journal of Education and Information Technologies, 23(5), 1995-2028. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9701-y