Prospective Students

If you want to find out more abou the ethos of the INSTRUCT lab, you can download a recent version our INSTRUCT handbook here: https://osf.io/5brch. In addition - check out this summary of our Expectations for INSTRUCT Doctoral Students at https://osf.io/yejmv/.  

Dr Vanessa Loaiza (University of Sheffield) created this excellent summary of her mentorship style (https://osf.io/dk9wv). We agree with her points and follow many of these principles in the INSTRUCT Lab. We are working on our own version of this, but do look at Dr Loaiza's slides to give you a sense of the mentoring you could expect when working with us. 

Please note - we have completed offers for 2024 entry and are no longer able to consider applications until the next application cycle (2025 entry).

The INSTRUCT group includes the following Cambridge student groups

• Education Tripos students

• Psychology & Behavioural Sciences Tripos students

• Psychology & Education masters students

• Psychology, Education & Learning Studies doctoral students

• Research staff working on grants

Please contact our PI, Prof Michelle Ellefson, if you are interested in joining INSTRUCT

Are you considering the submission of a masters or doctoral application?

Embarking on masters or doctoral work is a big decision and you have lots of choices. You are already reading a lot of information on websites and contacting potential supervisors. The search can be overwhelming. There are lots of excellent websites and blogs out there to help you as you consider your application and the possibility of joining various research labs / programmes. 

General Advice

It’s important to chose a masters or doctoral course that matches your interests, but it’s also incredibly important to consider who the person is who will be your supervisor. The supervisor and graduate student will embark on a professional relationship that could last for years. And, like any type of relationship, not all personalities of supervisors and students are well suited for each other. So, once you start to narrow down potential programmes, start to think seriously about the personality of potential supervisors and whether they are a good fit to your personality.

General questions you should ask any potential supervisor

• Will you be working in a physical lab space or will you spend most of your time working independently? 

• How often can you expect to meet up with your supervisor for one-to-one meetings? For group/lab meetings? 

• How often does your supervisor expect to see you physically present in the department?

• What is your supervisors' mentoring style? Is that a good match with the way you plan to work?   

• What is the specific schedule of the courses that will be offered and/or required? Are there specific courses that your supervisor expects you to take? 

• What is the balance between taught courses and independent learning?

• Is it okay if you pursue smaller research projects with other academics at your university?

• How often will you be submitting written work? How long does it take to get feedback on that work? What sort of feedback does the supervisor give to your written work? How much will the supervisor edit your written work?

• What are the formal assessments in the programme?

• How does the supervisor handle ideological or theoretical differences?

• How do current or recent masters/doctorate students describe your supervisor? What do they think of as their strengths? Their weaknesses? 

• Is your supervisor in the department regularly? Do they travel a lot? Do they work from home a lot? 

• What is your supervisor’s track record for publishing with students? Do students routinely have first authorship? 

• Does your supervisor have a publication policy for allocating authorship? 

• Does your supervisor expect to be a co-author on any manuscripts published based on your masters/doctorate research? 

• How much does your supervisor expect that your research project will change from what you propose in your masters/doctoral application? 

• Is there any financial support for research costs or attending conferences? 

• How many external speakers present in the department or in relevant departments across the university?

• What is your supervisor’s track record for graduating students? Where do their students go after graduation?

• Can the university offer you another supervisor, if your supervisor is not able to continue working with you (for any reason)? 

Questions to ask any potential supervisor at Cambridge

• Ask about how the roles of supervisor, advisor and assessor - how will those roles impact your studies?

• The general ethos in Cambridge is that students learn best by doing - so there is a lot of learning that happens by doing things that are relevant in your field. Does the supervisor provide feedback that is more questions than answers or the other way around?

• The main model at Cambridge is one that promotes inquiry learning. does the supervisor follow this model? What does that mean in practice for students?

• How does the Cambridge Collegiate system work?

How do things work for INSTRUCT graduate researchers?

The best way to learn about INSTRUCT is to ask Prof Ellefson and current INSTRUCT members questions. To get you started in terms of our usual practices, there is a pdf file of various supervision policies and guidelines (see links at the top of this page).

INSTRUCT members interests/skills

As with any group, we only have a finite number of spaces. As such, there are some factors that we view as necessary when reviewing graduate applications.

1. Applicant expects to conduct research grounded in cognitive psychology theories and practices.

2. There is a close match with the applicant's proposal and Prof Ellefson's expertise.

   1. • Prof Ellefson has a lot of expertise in quantitative methods and no expertise with qualitative methods. As such, only those doctoral students planning to use solely quantitative methods in their research are a good fit. 

      • Doctoral applicants do not need to be expert in statistical methods, but they should expect to use R (https://www.rstudio.com/) for all data analyses, including advanced statistical techniques. 

      • There is some training at the university, but doctoral applicants not already knowing R or having good statistical knowledge/skills should expect to spend a good amount of time in independent study learning R coding and data analysis skills. 

      • Not only is the INSTRUCT research grounded in quantitative methods, but there are a much larger number of jobs available to those with doctorates and strong statistical skills both inside and outside of academic research compared to those who don't have these skills. As such, developing quantitative skills is an excellent preparation for a wide variety of post-doctoral jobs.

3. Applicant expects to be an active member of the Psychology, Education & Learning Studies group in the Faculty of Education.

4. For masters applicants: Priority is given to those applying to the Psychology & Education MPhil/MEd.

5. For doctoral applicants:  Priority is given to those intending to pursue full-time PhD study.

6. For doctoral applicants: Priority is given to those who contact Prof Ellefson to discuss their research proposal at least two months before they submit their application (i.e., you should plan to contact Prof Ellefson by October for entry the following year).

   1. • This is so that we can have time to meet each other and discussion our various expectations for your doctoral work. 

      • Prof Ellefson will give you some feedback on your application so that it is a good match with her expertise and can be competitive for funding.

7. For doctoral applicants: Priority is given to those who apply early in the application cycle (i.e., in December) - once we have made our number of offers we can't make more.

Open Science

We are committed to transparency in our research practices. As such, 

• All new projects conducted by  INSTRUCT members are submitted as registered reports (see https://cos.io/rr/ ) or pre-registered (see https://osf.io/prereg/) . 

• New secondary data analyses conducted on existing databases are pre-registered (see https://osf.io/prereg/).  

• Data files, materials, and data analysis scripts (mostly using R) are uploaded to OSF (https://osf.io/) by the end of the project. Initially, these data files are restricted access amongst the INSTRUCT team, but once ready for wider dissemination, then those files are shared more widely.  Exceptions are made when sharing information violates ethical principles or intellectual property rights.

• We are uploading preprints to the Psych-Archive (https://psyarxiv.com/discover).

• New posters and conference talks are being uploaded to OSF as well (e.g., https://osf.io/74n5r/ and https://osf.io/9b3th/).

• We are sharing thesis/dissertations and new manuscripts through Cambridge Apollo (although with some embargoes)

Diversity and Inclusion

Our world, university, and research field are a long way from being perfect examples of diversity and inclusion. There is a real need to mentor early career researchers from all backgrounds. Prof Ellefson is committed to improving that diversity and sees it a strength that  INSTRUCT includes researchers from diverse backgrounds that represent a variety of socioeconomic, national, linguistic, ethnic, religious, gender identities, sexualities and more.