Bec Neill

Teaching Strengths

Digital Technologies and Pedagogies
Integrated Teaching and Personalised Learning
Child Protection Curriculum and Educator Practice
Culturally Responsive Pedagogies
ICT & Education Capstone Project Mentoring

Dr Bec Neill

Program Director: Early Childhood Programs

School of Education

College of Education, Behavioural and Social Science

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.


Dr Bec Neill is the Deputy Chair of the UniSA Human Research Ethics Committee and Program Director for Early Childhood Education in UniSA's Education Futures unit. 
She is an expert in systems thinking, problem solving, and the design and implementation of Digital Technology solutions in organisational settings. She holds a degree in Information Systems and a PhD in Communications, with extensive experience working as an ICT professional in private industry and public administration contexts. Her current work across a diverse range of educational settings as an education researcher, pre-service and in-service teacher educator, and education program director builds organisational capacity to deliver culturally responsive, digitally inclusive, and high value education and care systems.
Bec's teaching expertise encompasses digital technologies and pedagogies, integrated and personalised learning approaches, post-graduate ICT-industry and education-research project supervision, and child protection curricula and teaching practice. Her research investigates the human-technology relations of Australian families and their children. It uses visual critical systems methods to integrate population level data with families' and children's’ lived-experience, and maps the digital amplification of inequitable and violent geographical and gendered terrains of education in post-colonial Australian society.
Inquiry into child-family-community-technology relations is a cohesive theme across Bec’s diverse post-doctoral education research. As critical systems thinker and maternal feminist, her research engagement develops holistic views of:

integrating digital technologies curriculum in classroom and community settings;
Supporting young people's and their families' well-being in now-digital learning settings;
Critically and culturally responsive pedagogies and literacies in early childhood, primary, secondary and higher education.

Year Citation
2024 MacGill, B. M., Jattan, S., Lal, D., Narain, B., Neill, B., Nayaca, T., . . . Camaitoga, U. (2024). Ethics of care: pedagogical encounters from Oceania. Qualitative Research Journal, 24(1), 39-48.
DOI
2024 McInnes, E., Whitington, V., Neill, B., & Farndale, A. (2024). Professional learning supporting multilingual children's social and emotional development in diverse Australian early childhood education and care settings. Early Childhood Education Journal, 53(3), 779-790.
DOI
2023 Brass, T., Kennedy, J. P., Gabriel, F., Neill, B., Devis, D., & Leonard, S. N. (2023). Learning analytics for lifelong career development: a framework to support sustainable formative assessment and self-reflection in programs developing career self-efficacy. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 6(1173099), 10 pages.
DOI Scopus6 WoS5 Europe PMC1
2022 Jarldorn, M., Neill, B., & Fisk, L. (2022). The complexities of accessing and keeping housing for formerly incarcerated women in South Australia. Parity, 35(1), 40-41.
2022 Wrench, A., Neill, B., & Diamond, A. (2022). International service-learning: possibilities for developing intercultural competence and culturally responsive pedagogies. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 50(2), 215-228.
DOI
2022 Harris, P., Camaitoga, U., Brock, C., Diamond, A., McInnes, E., & Neill, B. (2022). Co-creating multilingual books with children to foster their literacies. The Reading Teacher, 75(5), 555-565.
DOI
2021 McInnes, E., Harris, P., Neill, B., Diamond, A., Brock, C., & Camaitoga, U. (2021). Supporting preschool age children's wellbeing through home-based literacy development in three Fijian communities. New Zealand International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 23(2), 36-51.
2020 Harris, P., Brock, C. H., McInnes, E., Diamond, A., Neill, B., Carter, J., & Giannakis, E. (2020). Co-constructing culturally sustaining practices for fostering young children's literacy in Fiji. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 34(1), 127-152.
DOI

Year Citation
2023 Neill, B. (2023). Pre-enchanting young people in learning and employment: building safe-relations for diverse students. In D. Price, B. MacGill, & J. Cater (Eds.), Source details - Title: Arts-based Practices with Young People at the Edge (pp. 193-224). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI
2023 Neill, B. (2023). Pacific digital learners and culturally responsive digital education: a critical systems synthesis of Pacific practice. In L. -I. Rigney (Ed.), Source details - Title: Global Perspectives and New Challenges in Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Super-diversity and Teaching Practice (pp. 176-196). UK: Routledge.
DOI
2023 Harris, P., Camaitoga, U., Krishna, M., Brock, C., McInnes, E., Diamond, A., & Neill, B. (2023). Co-constructing opportunities for shared, collective literacies learning in communities in Fiji. In C. Brock, B. Exley, & L. -I. Rigney (Eds.), Source details - Title: International Perspectives on Literacies, Diversities, and Opportunities for Learning: Critical Conversations (pp. 212-227). UK: Routledge.
DOI
2021 Harris, P., Diamond, A., Neill, B., McInnes, E., Brock, C., & Camaitoga, U. (2021). Fostering young children's literacy in home and community settings: a dialogic approach to developing culturally relevant and sustaining practices. In L. A. Henry, & N. A. Stahl (Eds.), Source details - Title: Literacy Across the Community: Research: Research, Praxis, and Trends (pp. 73-88). UK: Routledge.
DOI
2020 McInnes, E., Whitington, V., Diamond, A., & Neill, B. (2020). Embedding wellbeing and creating community in classrooms - 2nd edition. In K. Brettig (Ed.), Source details - Title: Building Stronger Communities with Children and Families (2nd ed. ed., pp. 123-149). UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
2018 Harris, P., Brock, C., Diamond, A., McInnes, E., Neill, B., Camaitoga, U., & Krishna, M. (2018). "You, us and a bus": exploring analysis as cross-cultural collaboration in Fiji. In S. Akpovo, M. J. Moran, & R. Brookshire (Eds.), Source details - Title: Collaborative cross-cultural research methodologies in early care and education contexts (pp. 169-186). US: Routledge.
DOI

Year Citation
2024 Quane, K., & Neill, B. (2024). Opportunities for hyper-diverse students to communicate their mathematical thinking in multi-year classes. In Surfing the waves of mathematics education. Proceedings of the 46th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (pp. 62-65). Australia: The Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia.
2019 McInnes, E., Whitington, V., & Neill, B. (2019). A 'classroom as community' approach to supporting student well-being and reducing bullying in primary schools. In 9th International Conference The Future of Education proceedings (pp. 1-5). Italy: Filodiritto.
2005 Neill, B., & Thorne, K. (2005). Rediscovering dependency and discovering technological contempt : mothering with disembodied information and communication technologies. In Critical Management Studies Proceedings 2005: 4th International Critical Management Studies Conference. New Zealand: Waikato Management School, University of Waikato.
2001 Metcalfe, M. A., Neill, B., & Marriott, P. J. (2001). Appropriate technology for oral knowledge sharing. In Knowledge Management for Information Communities (pp. 95-109). Australia: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
2001 Neill, B. (2001). Metaphor analysis for improved information systems design. In J. Gross (Ed.), ICIS 2001 Proceedings. wysiwyg://41/http:aisel.isworld.org/proceedings/ICIS/2001/: Association for Information Systems.
2001 Grant, S. L., & Neill, B. (2001). Indigenous community information preferences: an interpretive research study. In G. Finnie, D. Cecez-Kecmanovic, & B. Lo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Australasian Conference on Information Systems. http://infotech.scu.edu.au/ACIS2001/Proceedings: Southern Cross University.
2000 Neill, B. (2000). Picturing the Metaphors of an Information System. In 11th ACIS Doctoral Consortium - Conference on Information Systems (pp. 17-25). Australia: ACIS.

Year Citation
- McInnes, E., Whitington, V., & Neill, B. (n.d.). The Wellbeing Classroom as a Whole School Approach.
DOI
  • North-West Adelaide Communities for Children Evaluation of Emergency Housing Services for Families with Children Under 12 Years of Age, Uniting SA, 29/04/2025 - 30/06/2026

  • Assessing the Impacts of a Wellbeing Approach on Young Children's Transitions from Preschool to Junior Primary School, Salvation Army (SA) Property Trust, 30/01/2023 - 06/01/2025

  • Developing mathematical thinking in the early years: Challenges of multi-age classrooms in inner regional South Australian Schools, Early Childhood Australia South Australian Branch Incorporated, 01/09/2022 - 31/08/2023

  • Wellbeing in Early Childhood Settings, Salvation Army (SA) Property Trust, 24/02/2021 - 31/07/2022

  • Addressing the gap between policy and implementation: Strategies for improving educational outcomes of Indigenous students, OLT-Grants - Innovation & Development, 10/02/2016 - 24/08/2018

Courses I teach

  • EDUC 5175 Integrated Teaching and Mentoring in Schools, Communities and Workplaces (2024)

Programs I'm associated with

  • LHEC - Bachelor of Early Childhood Education (Honours)
  • LHPE - Bachelor of Primary Education (Honours)
  • MMET - Master of Teaching
  • MMEL - Master of Education

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2025 Co-Supervisor - - Master Full Time Mrs Amy Louise Lloyd
2025 Co-Supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Alessandra Perna
2022 Co-Supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Tamishka Brass
2021 Co-Supervisor - - Doctorate Full Time Ms Katie Sue Bell