Rate My Professor Linda Bellen

Dr. Linda Bellen serves as Senior Lecturer and Early Childhood Coordinator in the School of Education at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. Her academic qualifications include a PhD from the University of Notre Dame Australia awarded in 2017, a Bachelor of Teaching (Early Childhood) with Distinction from Western Sydney University, a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales, a Montessori Diploma for children aged 3-7 years, an Associate Diploma in Social Science, and a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. Before entering academia, she worked for over 15 years as an early years educator in Australia and the United States, teaching toddlers and preschool-aged children and overseeing out-of-school care programs. Since 2004, she has held various positions in the tertiary education sector.

Bellen's research interests encompass transitions to formal schooling and pedagogic continuity with a focus on play-based pedagogy, phenomenographic research on professional experiences and mentoring of early childhood pre-service teachers, and the self-perception and readiness of primary teacher education students to teach mathematics. Notable publications include her doctoral thesis, "Play - lost in transition? Teacher beliefs about pedagogic continuity across the transition to formal schooling" (2016), co-authored paper with Marguerite Maher, "Smoothing children's transition into formal schooling: Lessons learned from an early literacy initiative in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Australia" (Early Childhood Education Journal, 2015), and "Shifts in children's mathematical identities during the first year of school" with Rachelle Davey, Thuan Thai, and Sean Kearney (Mathematics Education Research Journal, 2025). She received the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Prize for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Paper in 2020 alongside Liz McKenna and Lauren Stephenson. Currently, she supervises five PhD candidates on topics in early childhood and teacher education. Bellen has secured two SEED grants from the UNDA Learning and Teaching Office in 2019 and has presented at the Early Childhood Australia National Conference and NSW Institute for Educational Research conferences. Her teaching portfolio includes courses on early childhood pedagogy, learning environments, curriculum planning, science and mathematics education, and professional experiences.