Dr Rebekah Sims

Lecturer

Strathclyde Institute of Education

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Personal statement

My central area of research is widening participation, in and beyond education. My current focus is in primarily two areas: (1) intercultural competence development and (2) integrating writing instruction into teacher education programmes. In both areas, I aim my work at widening access to education for underrepresented students while improving the quality of higher education student experience for all.

I lead an international research group that develops ways to teach and assess intercultural competence. Our most current article, "Capturing Nonlinear Intercultrual Development via Student Reflective Writing," advances new qualitative tools for measuring intercultural competence. These tools operationalise reflective writing to reveal dynamic IC development trajectories, displaying nonlinearity, nondiscrete phases, and unexpected developmental pathways -- facets of IC not observable in more traditional quantiative measures. 

Currently, I serve as PI for a Carnegie-funded research project on developing academic writing among teacher education students, with a particular focus on mature students. This work is the first of its kind in Scotland. 

Research ethics -- particularly developing an expansive understanding of ethics beyond the procedural -- is an area where I have built expertise. In Strathclyde Institute of Education, I co-lead the Institute Ethics Committee, and have initated a focus on strengthening ethical learning among HE researchers and teachers. I've worked with education-sector colleagues on a SUII-funded project to develop a shared understanding of research ethics among schools, local authorities, government, and universities to forward more collaborative research practices. Finally, I'm part of an interdisciplinary team with Dr Mark Haw and Dr Jordan Kistler that focuses on using science fiction to enhance ethical imagination among STEM students & professionals. 

My teaching similarly focuses on widening access. I've led initatives in the Institute to embed academic literacies into teacher education, master's programmes, and doctoral support with an eye toward ensuring that all students have the tools they need to create meaningful language (especially to write effectively) in a higher education setting. Over the last four years, I have taught across the PGDE, BA Primary Education, MSc Education Studies, Supporting Teacher Learning MEd pathway, BA Childhood Practice, and Joint Honours courses. As well, I supervise PhD, EdD, and MSc students.

I am an honorary chaplain for the University chaplaincy, with a partiuclar focuses on creating a welcoming environment for international students. More information can be found here: https://www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/ourcampus/whatsoncampus/faithspiritualitysupport/. Outside the University, I serve on the governing body of the Scottish Episcopal Institute (a theological HEI).

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Professional Activities

Kate Murphy
Host
2026

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Projects

Understanding the spiritual care needs of autistic people and their inclusion in faith communities in Scotland (USCAP) Project
McNeill, Leanne (Principal Investigator) Sims, Rebekah (Principal Investigator)
The aim of this research and development project is to understand the spirituality and spiritual care needs of autistic people. The objectives are: (1) to explore the experiences of autistic people accessing diverse faith-based groups and communities, and any barriers and facilitators of inclusion; and (2) to explore the experiences of diverse faith-group leaders, their challenges and successes in providing spiritual care to autistic people. We will establish what ‘best practices’ are already happening and where the points for growth lie.

The USCAP project will aim to understand how spirituality is experienced by autistic people and what their spiritual care needs are within faith-based and humanist contexts. Spirituality has been found to play a role in health, wellness, and illness (Bertelli, 2020;). Thus, there is a growing movement within healthcare (Pulchalski et al., 2014), and other sectors (Cook, 2016; Philips 2021) to adopt ‘whole-person-centred’ spiritual care practices for autistic people across the lifespan – not just at the end of life. Thus, spirituality and spiritual care practices support holistic wellbeing and the flourishing of autistic persons across the lifespan, with attention to intersectional dimensions of the autistic experience.

The spiritual dimension of care and wellbeing has been neglected in favour of ‘fixing’ perceived deficits among autistic people themselves (Bogdashina, 2013; Hills et al., 2019). When considering the barriers faced by autistic people, there is a rationale to improve spiritual care because spirituality, faith and religiosity are protective factors for coping, meaning making, and resilience, and mental health (Bayat, 2007; Pandya, 2016; Davis, 2020). However, faith communities have often been exclusionary, or hurtful, to autistic people (McDonald, 2023; Waldock and Sango, 2023), thus marginalising them from a vital source of ‘autistic flourishing.’ On the other hand, some faith groups have excellent neuro-inclusive practices but often fly under the radar: their contributions to neuro-inclusion are not yet recognised. Faith communities are used to “doing more with less” – their creativity in using few resources to achieve communal flourishing can offer insight for other sectors (including academia). Therefore, there is a strong rationale for exploring autistic-informed spiritual care provision across contexts such as faith-based groups, education, prisons, and hospitals. No previous work that looks at such spiritual provision on a national scale (vs. single community or single denomination) exists.

Seed funding for this project has been provided by the Centre for Autism Research & Education at Strathclyde (CARE@S).
01-Jan-2025 - 31-Jan-2026
Supporting Academic Literacies Development for Mature Students in Scottish Initial Teacher Education (Incentive grant)
Sims, Rebekah (Principal Investigator) Hunter, Sharon (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2025
Cultures of Collaborative Research in a Socially Progressive Technological University / R230557-216
Sims, Rebekah (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2024 - 28-Jan-2026
Analysing Data in Qualitative Inquiry: From Analysing to Writing Up your Research
Sims, Rebekah (Principal Investigator) Landi, Dillon (Co-investigator) Lamb, Cara (Post Grad Student)
This six-session, interactive seminar focusses on qualitative data analysis approaches. We take a hands-on approach to developing qualitative data analysis skills for doctoral students. Our seminar is funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Social Sciences and the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts & Humanities

Our learning objectives are:

1. To develop participants’ abilities to understand and discuss the goals, strengths and weaknesses of theoretical frameworks and research methods.
2. To increase participant familiarity with a variety of approaches, methods and analysis tools that are referred to as qualitative.
3. To learn how to write up a data analysis and results section to a qualitative research report.
17-Jan-2022 - 21-Jan-2022
Academic Literacy in Teacher Education
Sims, Rebekah (Principal Investigator) Hunter, Sharon (Principal Investigator)
Our research investigates:
- how higher education teaching professionals teach and/or support academic literacies
- what types of academic literacies students in teacher education need to develop for success in academic and professional settings
- what HE teachers and students think "good writing" looks like
- how teacher education programmes can integrate effective academic literacy instruction to enrich student learning and reduce inequalities experienced in academic settings
01-Jan-2021
Transculturation in introductory composition
Sims, Rebekah (Principal Investigator) Dilger, Bradley (Research Co-investigator) Banat, Hadi (Principal Investigator) Tran, Phuong (Researcher) Panahi, Parva (Researcher)
The Transculturation in Introductory Composition research team seeks to increase undergraduate students’ intercultural competence by designing and implementing first-year writing courses that encourage meaningful intercultural interaction among international and domestic students.

Our innovative model links mainstream and second-language-focused first-year writing sections to expose students to diverse texts, structured intercultural interactions, and sequenced writing assignments supported by team-taught pedagogical interventions.

More about the curricular model, its assessment, and our findings can be found at: writeic.org. Grant funding for the first phase of the project was $34250 USD.

Now, we are in the second phase of this project and have a new data set from implementing the revised curriculum at the University of Massachusetts -- Boston.
30-Jan-2016

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Contact

Dr Rebekah Sims
Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education

Email: rebekah.sims@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted