Robyn M. Gillies is a Professor of Education at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on the social and cognitive aspects of learning through social interaction. She has spent over twenty years researching how students can be encouraged to engage in class and learn. Her research spans both primary and secondary schools and has focused on inquiry learning in science and mathematics, teacher and peer-mediated learning, student-centered learning including cooperative learning, and classroom discourses and processes related to learning outcomes. Her recommendations on how teachers can translate research into practice have been widely profiled in the international literature and on the website of the Smithsonian Science Education Center in Washington, DC. In 2006, she was the recipient of an Outstanding Contribution Award from the American Educational Research Association, and in 2010, she received an Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research from the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education, USA. She is regularly invited to present keynote addresses and workshops and participate in symposia to disseminate the outcomes of her research.