Dr. Louise Taylor

PhD, University of Melbourne | 20 Years Research & Evaluation | Action Research Specialist | Adult Education & Professional Learning | Educational Equity Researcher

Louise Taylor has spent 20 years using Action Research to pursue a goal that sounds simple but proves demanding in practice: socially just outcomes through genuine collaboration, sustained action, and honest reflection on what is working and what is not. Her PhD from the University of Melbourne examined equity in education through a post-structuralist feminist lens, building the analytical framework she has been refining and applying ever since.

As one of Aotearoa's most experienced research and evaluation advisors, she works with educators and leaders to help them understand the systems of advantage and disadvantage that quietly shape every learning environment, often in ways that are invisible to those operating within them. The work requires both methodological rigour and the kind of relational trust that allows people to examine uncomfortable questions honestly.

The framework she built in 2007, she says, she is still using. That longevity reflects both the depth of the original work and the enduring relevance of the questions it addressed. At academyEX, she brings 20 years of that depth to the MCE programme and the educators navigating it.