Dr Charalampia Karagianni

Dr Charalampia Karagianni is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Course Leader for the PGCE in Further Education and Skills Sector. She is also the Lead of the Research Group 'Re-imagining Learning Communities'. She teaches across a range of programmes, including the Level 7 PGCE in Further Education and Skills, the BA in Education Studies, the Level 7 Academic Professional Apprenticeship, the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and the Educational Professional Doctorate. She currently supervises doctoral researchers on the Doctor of Education (EdD) programme.

Dr Karagianni gained her PhD in Education and Professional Practice from King’s College London. She holds a Master’s degree in Education and a BA in Greek Language and Literacy from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Dr Charalampia Karagianni’s research explores teacher education, teacher cognition, and additional language pedagogy, with a particular focus on teaching, learning, and assessment in the post‑compulsory education and training sector. Her work is concerned with how teachers develop professional knowledge to support inclusive and equitable learning in linguistically, culturally, and socially diverse educational contexts.

Her doctoral research examined the pedagogical principles and practices employed by mainstream teachers in Greek lower secondary schools when teaching Greek as a curriculum subject to pupils from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Using a qualitative case study approach, she investigated both teachers’ classroom practices and the reasoning that underpinned them. Alongside this, she analysed the national curriculum to examine the political and ideological assumptions shaping expectations of mainstream teaching in multicultural and multilingual classrooms. This work led to the articulation of key principles to inform national curriculum design and teacher education programmes in order to better prepare teachers for classroom realities.

Her research is grounded in qualitative and practice‑based methodologies, with a particular interest in action research and practitioner inquiry as meaningful ways of generating professional knowledge. Drawing on her experience in further education, she values research approaches that foreground teachers’ lived experiences, professional judgement, and reflective engagement with practice. More recently, she has begun to employ creative research methodologies to explore the professional identities of teacher educators, including work undertaken as part of the STEM‑POWER and MGEMS projects.

Over the past five years, she has led and collaborated on a range of action research projects supporting teacher educators and students in the development of pedagogical knowledge and skills. Recent work includes participation in a project informed by the Japanese ‘Lesson Study’ approach, with a focus on creative teaching practices, as well as projects exploring effective support for ESOL learners’ language development and the use of flipped learning approaches in adult education contexts.

More broadly, her research engages with questions of professional knowledge, inclusion, and the role of teacher education in supporting critical, reflective, and research‑informed practice. She was also involved in the British‑funded STEM‑POWER and MGEMS projects, which investigate issues of gender equality in education in Indonesia and Vietnam.

 

Charalampia teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Education and plays a leading role in Initial Teacher Education for the Further Education and Skills sector. Her teaching is closely aligned with her work as Course Leader for the PGCE in Further Education and Skills and reflects a strong engagement with the professional preparation and development of FE practitioners. Her teaching includes:

• Initial teacher education for the Further Education and Skills sector, with a focus on pedagogy, curriculum development, inclusive practice, assessment, professional practice, and action research
• BA in Education modules exploring the pedagogical use of digital technologies
• Research‑focused modules addressing qualitative research methods, thematic data analysis, reflexivity, and practitioner‑led inquiry

 

She also supervises doctoral researchers on LSBU’s Doctor of Education (EdD) programme.

 

Her approach to teaching is informed by a commitment to education as a socially situated and relational practice. She is particularly interested in supporting teachers to develop critical, reflective, and research‑engaged professional identities, and in valuing practitioner knowledge as a central resource for educational improvement within further and post‑compulsory education.