Emeritus Professor Gunstone was previously Professor of Science and Technology Education in the Faculty of Education. He has extensive research, development and consultancy experience in learning, teaching, curriculum, assessment, and teacher development, in school and undergraduate sciences (and to a lesser extent engineering) contexts.

Professor Gunstone has published widely in these areas, including 17 books (authored or edited; 5 as text books or resource books and the remainder research; one translated into both Japanese and Chinese, one in Japanese only and one in Portuguese only; currently 2 more books in preparation), He has also authored or co-authored about 60 book chapters and 220 research papers (journal and conference). He has frequently given keynote addresses to international research conferences.

He developed and edited the first encyclopedia of science education research and development (Encyclopedia of Science Education, Springer, 2015; see http://refworks.springer.com/ScienceEducation).

He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Life Member of the Science Teachers' Association of Victoria. In 2014 he was presented with the Distinguished Contributions to Science Education through Research Award of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST, USA).

He was Extraordinary Professor, North West University (South Africa) 2016-2019. He has been a Visiting Professor for shorter periods at a number of universities in Asia, Europe and North America.

He has given research and policy advice to, and undertaken evaluations for, universities in many countries, national and international research bodies, national and international education systems and other stake holders. Recent examples include:

2006-2020: variously external assessor/examiner for University of Macau, University fo Malaya, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Malaysia), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Dept of Mathematics and Science Education University of Brunei Darussalam

2013: Member as Critical Friend of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (joint body of the Academy of Science, Academy of Social Sciences, Academy of Humanities, Academy of the Technological Sciences) 'Project STEM: Country Comparisons' for the Securing Australia's Future program of the Australian Chief Scientist

2010-2012: Member Physics Advisory Committee for the development of the senior high school Physics Curriculum, Australian National Curriculum

2006 Participant in invited National Science Foundation/National Research Council (USA) project to develop a science education research agenda for the next decade (only participant from outside North America

He has extensive experience in evaluation of researchers, and research and development project applications, and consequent funding allocations, in Australia (Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council), Europe (European Commission for each of FP5, FP6, FP7, onsite in Brussels), USA (National Science Foundation), South Africa (National Research Foundation), Israel (Israel Science Foundation), Canada (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, National Research Council) and UK (Wellcome Trust).

Learning, teaching and teacher development, metacognition, all within a constructivist framework, and particularly in science education (and including tertiary level science and engineering); laboratory work in science education; conceptual change, particularly in physics education; values and science education; the nature of the intended science curriculum and the ways in which the compexity and contexts of 'real-world' applications of science can be validly incorporated; assessment and its interactions with curriculum and learning (particularly in science and in considerations of 'relevance' in science).