24/04/2023
Shelley MacDonald was born and raised in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, and has connections to Ngati Raukawa through her husband and children. She now lives on Yugambeh country on the lands of the Kombumerri peoples on the Gold Coast. Shelley has a doctoral degree in developmental psychology from Otago University and worked for many years at Auckland University on projects in South Auckland. Here she worked with schools, the Ministry of Education and Maori and Pasifika families to examine ways of incorporating cultural and family processes into explanations of teaching, learning and development, and, how to put these knowledges into practice in the classroom. Shelley works at a number of universities across Brisbane and the Gold Coast as a senior researcher and as a casual academic working with pre-service teachers. Shelley joined SSI on the Teachers of STEM Initiative (TOSI) in 2020 where she enjoys working with the inspirational ToSI women on their STEM teaching journey.