Mike Phillips is Professor of Digital Transformation in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His work explores how digital technologies can enhance teaching and learning by helping educators develop critical and creative understandings of what technology can and cannot do. He is committed to empowering teachers to design richer, more inclusive, and more meaningful educational experiences for all learners.

As Co-Director of the Monash Virtual School, Mike leads research that is reshaping conceptualisations of teacher education in technologically rich contexts. The Monash Virtual School provides pre-service teachers with authentic opportunities to design and deliver high-quality online learning experiences while supporting young people facing disadvantage and displacement, including students across Australia and in regions affected by conflict such as Ukraine and Myanmar.

The Monash Virtual School has also become a leading site for research and innovation in teacher education. Its data-informed coaching model uses digital trace data to guide reflective conversations between pre-service teachers and Monash mentors, helping teachers connect practice and theory in real time. Mike’s research also examines how these experiences shape teachers’ professional growth by tracking changes in their pedagogical decision making and emerging professional identities through the use of epistemic network analysis.

Mike’s research and development projects have attracted more than $9 million in funding from organisations including UNESCO, the British Academy, the Australian Research Council, the Australian Office for Learning and Teaching, and the Victorian Department of Education. He has written more than 100 books, book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers, collaborating with over 90 colleagues worldwide.

His contributions have been recognised nationally and internationally. Mike has received a Highly Commended Paper Award from the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) and Best Paper Awards at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conferences in 2016 and 2019. His excellence in teaching and research has been acknowledged through multiple Monash awards, including the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2015), the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Programs that Enhance Learning (2016), the Monash Postgraduate Association Lecturer of the Year Award (2016), the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research by an Early Career Researcher (2017), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Industry and Community Education Programs (2022). In 2023, Mike was named the Outstanding Global Educator of the Year by the Association for the Advancement of Computing and Education for his work co-directing the Monash Virtual School.

Before joining Monash in 2013, Mike spent 15 years as a senior teacher in secondary schools, an experience that continues to inform his research and connect his work to the realities of classroom practice.

• Shaping digital futures
• Transforming teaching and learning
• Pre- and in-service teachers decision-making in technology rich contexts
• Epistemic Network Analysis
• Quantitative Ethnography
• Virtual schooling