Staff profile

Dr Xiaofei Qi is an Associate Professor at the School of Education, Durham University. Her current work focuses on early childhood education and development, digital learning and assessment in education and includes studies of longitudinal and experimental designs. She teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate modules related to education generally and Early Years Education and Child Development as well as assessment in education in particular. She contributes to a wide range of academic, professional programmes and also supervises higher degree students. 

Xiaofei joined the School of Education in 2019 from the University of Cambridge where she worked at the Education Reform and Innovation team within Faculty of Education. Prior to that, she worked at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre heading up the centre’s project to develop a computerised adaptive entrance test for Eton College. Xiaofei obtained a PhD in Psychology from Birkbeck, University of London in 2015, with a thesis entitled "Does preschool experience matter?" Since then, Dr Qi's work has focussed on exploring the effects of preschool and home learning environment, particularly during the early years, on children's intellectual, emotional and behaviour development as well as well-being more generally.

In the 2022-2023 round of EEF-DfE Stronger Practice Hubs collaboration initiative, Dr Qi and colleagues from School of Education have been funded on two new evaluation trials-the Early Years Conversation Project (EYCP) Efficacy trial (2022-2026; principal investigator), and the Talk with Tales for Children (TWiTCH) pilot study (2022-2024; co-investigator; PI: Vic Menzies), to explore the impacts of two language and literacy professional development programmes in early years settings in England. Latest completed research include an EEF-funded RCT trial (2020-2023; co-investigator; PIs: Lyn Robinson-Smith & Hannah Ainsworth from York Trials Unit) evaluating Maths Champions-a promising PD programme designed to develop maths teaching and children’s maths skills in nurseries (report publisehd in July 2023, see full Maths Champion Evaluation report here).

Featured Research News:

Maths Champions-A Winning programme

Over 700 early years settings, including childminders, to take part in new EEF-funded projects

Information for prospective doctoral research student supervisions

Xiaofei would welcome postgraduate research proposals broadly in areas of assessment and evaluation in education, early childhood education and child development, parenting and family studies, and digital technologies for EFL (English as a Foreign language) acquisition. 

2023/2024 PhD entry: no places are avaliable. 

For 2024/25 academic year postgraduate research enquiry, Xiaofei would welcome applicants who are specifically interested in the following research areas: 'play, formative assessment and learning in early years' and 'digital parenting and home learning environment in early childhood', and 'digitial creativity in early years'. 

Teaching and supervisions

2024/25 Academic Year:

Undergraduate: Learning and Development in Childhood; Assessing Education; Postgraduate: Measurement in Education Research; Undergraduate and Postgraduate programme dissertation supervisions: Not avaliable for the 2024/25 academic year

• Early childhood education and care (ECEC)
• Parenting
• Child ability assessment: verbal and non-verbal
• Digital Home Learning Environment (HLE)
• Educational assessment
• Entrance test development
• Computational modelling in second language acquisition (SLA)

• 2020: Editor of Review of Education (BERA):

Conference Paper

• (2018, December). Attention allocation and transferring pattern mining in Chinese students invoking English. Presented at XIXth International CALL Research Conference, Bruges

Doctoral Thesis

• Qi, X. Does preschool experience matter? : the relevance of preschool education and home activities for children's cognitive and social development at school entry in rural China. (Thesis). [Awarding Organisation: Unknown]. https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1618486

Journal Article

• Yang, J., Qi, X., Liu, R., Wang, L., & Sun, B. (2022). A computational model of TE-dominant noticing, repetition, prior knowledge and grammatical knowledge acquisition. Reading and Writing, 35(8), 1953-1974. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10275-5
• Yang, J., Qi, X., Wang, L., Sun, B., & Zheng, M. (2022). A reading model of young EFL learners regarding attention, cognitive-load and auditory-assistance. The Journal of Educational Research, 115(1), 51-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2022.2027327
• Qi, X. (2019). Exploring early childhood in China: background, development and current issues
• Yang, J., Thomas, M., Qi, X., & Liu, X. (2019). Using an ANN-based computational model to simulate and evaluate Chinese students’ individualized cognitive abilities important in their English acquisition. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 32(4), 366-397. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1517125
• Qi, X., & Melhuish, E. C. (2017). Early childhood education and care in China: history, current trends and challenges. Early Years, 37(3), 268-284. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2016.1236780

Report

• Qi, X., & Stillwell, D. New Eton List Test Psychometric Analyses. Working report on the Eton Project
• Brownhill, S., Qi, X., McLaughlin, C., Warwick, J., & Yardeni, A. Kindergartens in China: a scoping study. Working report on the China Peking Early years Project. [No known commissioning body]
• Bramley, R., Rowsell, J., Mushtaq, F., Shaw, J., Wood, M. L., & et al. (2024). A country that works for all children and young people: An evidence-based plan for upskilling our children and young people for digital futures. N8 Research Partnership
• Robinson-Smith, L., Whiteside, K., Torgerson, C., Fairhurst, C., Podmore, D., Davill, T., Bell, K., Qi, X., Leggett, H., Elliott, L., Hewitt, C., Baird, K., Menzies, V., Torgerson, D., & Ainsworth, H. (2024). Independent evaluation of Maths Champions in nursery to develop children’s early numeracy: A two-armed cluster randomised controlled trial. Evaluation Report. Education Endowment Foundation
• Todd, L., Pini, S., Mathai, M., Wood, M., & et al. (2024). A country that works for all children and young people: An evidence-based plan for building the foundations of a new "Sure Start" in and around education settings. Child of the North and Centre for Young Lives
• Qi, X., Menzies, V., Siddiqui, N., Ismail, N., & Oughton, R. (2023). Independent evaluation of the Early Years Conversation Project (EYCP): A two-armed cluster randomised waitlist-controlled trial. Education Endowment Foundation
• Robinson-Smith, L., Whiteside, K., Torgerson, C., Fairhurst, C., Podmore, D., Davill, T., Bell, K., Qi, X., Leggett, H., Elliott, L., Hewitt, C., Baird, K., Menzies, V., Torgerson, D., & Ainsworth, H. (2023). Independent evaluation of Maths Champions in nursery to develop children's early numeracy: A two-armed cluster randomised controlled trial. [No known commissioning body]
• Evaluation Protocol. [No known commissioning body]
• Tracey, L., Torgerson, C., Welch, C., Fairhurst, C., Gridley, N., & Qi, X. (2019). Efficacy of the ParentChild+ programme: trial evaluation protocol. [No known commissioning body]