Rate My Professor Elena Prieto-Rodriguez

Professor Elena Prieto-Rodriguez is a Professor in the School of Education (Mathematics) at the University of Newcastle, within the College of Human and Social Futures. She earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Newcastle in 2005 and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Her career in academia bridges theoretical computer science and mathematics education. She began teaching mathematics at high schools in Spain, El Salvador, and England. From 1998 to 1999, she served as on-site coordinator for a Masters program in Mathematics Education at the National University of El Salvador. In 2000, she started postgraduate studies in Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, before transferring to the University of Newcastle for her PhD. Post-PhD, she held postdoctoral fellowships in bioinformatics at the School of Engineering and Built Environments and as a research fellow in the Australian Research Council Linkage project Engineering Choices, Engineering Futures. In 2011, she managed the Priority Research Centre for Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery and Information-Based Medicine. Appointed Lecturer in the School of Education in 2012, she progressed to Professor, becoming Deputy Head of School for Teaching and Learning. She convenes the Bachelor of Teaching Secondary Mathematics and Master of Education programs, co-leads the Mathematics Education Group in the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, and co-founded HunterWiSE to promote and support girls and women in STEM.

Her research focuses on STEM education, including factors influencing school-aged STEM awareness, quality teaching in online and blended higher education, mathematical relevance in secondary education, computational thinking for mathematics learning, engineering education, mathematics curriculum and pedagogy, and teacher professional development. Notable publications include the book chapter 'Shaping our Collective Identity as Mathematics Teacher Educators' by Osborn, Prieto-Rodriguez, and Butler (2021); 'Using Large Language Models to Complement Humans for the Coding of Science Teachers' Social Media Interactions' by Burgess et al. (2025); 'Technology-enhanced Mathematics Retraining for Quality Teaching' by Prieto-Rodriguez and Syed (2024); and 'Quality Teaching Rounds: Impactful Professional Development' by Gore, Miller, Prieto-Rodriguez, and Harris (2020). She has taught courses on theory of computation, advanced algorithms, and formal languages at universities in Australia and Canada.