Yvonne's research focusses on social influences on learning, and crosses a number of sectors in education including higher education and prison education. She is interested in how learners view intelligence and how this impacts their learning, subject choice, academic performance and response to failure.  She is interested in understanding how students respond to feedback and how teachers choose to deliver it.

Another strand of her research focuses on how university students’ sense of belonging can impact their mental health and wellbeing.  She has recently been working with collaborators at Student Minds and Keele University to explore this.

She is also interested in literacy.  She as worked with Stoke on Trent City Council to explore barriers which parents perceive in reading with children and how these can be overcome and together we created a video to help them to overcome these barriers. 

She has also worked with a team to co-create a toolkit to encourage children to believe that they can improve their literacy in their first year at school 

Yvonne is passionate about knowledge exchange, engagement and outreach and deliver a variety of workshops and presentations for children and adults, including the ‘Psychology of Superheroes’.   

She runs a project called ‘White Water Writers’ which gives groups of people the chance to collaboratively write and publish a full-length novel in a week.  The writers plan, write, proofread and publish their novel in one week. It is then placed for sale online with profits going to authors and a book signing event is held where family and friends can celebrate their achievement.  More than 2000 people have now participated in the project.  This includes primary and secondary school pupils, looked after children, and young and adult offenders. The project has demonstrable educational, social and psychological benefits for young people. You can find more information here.

Some Recent Publications

Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., Skipper, Y. , Thomas, E. and Cookson, D. (2021)Measuring adolescents’ beliefs in conspiracy theories: development and validation of the Adolescent Conspiracy Beliefs Questionnaire (ACBQ). British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 39(3), pp. 499-520. (doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12368) (PMID:33556990)

Bagnall, C. L., Fox, C. L. and Skipper, Y.(2021) When is the ‘optimal’ time for school transition? An insight into provision in the US. Pastoral Care in Education, (doi: 10.1080/02643944.2020.1855669) (Early Online Publication)

Rowley, M. and Skipper, Y. (2020) Student and staff expectations and experiences of a UK–China Transnational Education collaboration.Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, (doi: 10.1108/JARHE-01-2020-0021) (Early Online Publication)

Skipper, Y. and Pepler, D. J. (2020) Knowledge mobilization: stepping into interdependent and relational space using co-creation. Action Research, (doi: 10.1177/1476750320960810) (Early Online Publication)

Bagnall, C. L., Skipper, Y. and Fox, C. L.(2020) ‘You're in this world now’: students’, teachers’, and parents’ experiences of school transition and how they feel it can be improved. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(1), pp. 206-226. (doi: 10.1111/bjep.12273)

Kent, A., Berry, D. M., Budds, K., Skipper, Y. and Williams, H. L. (2017) Promoting writing amongst peers: establishing a community of writing practice for early career academics. Higher Education Research and Development, 36(6), pp. 1194-1207. (doi: 10.1080/07294360.2017.1300141)

Skipper, Y. and Leman, P. J. (2017) The role of feedback in young people’s academic choices. International Journal of Science Education, 39(4), pp. 453-467.(doi: 10.1080/09500693.2017.1294783)