She studies the causes and consequences of individual differences in learning, integrating theories and methods across the disciplines psychology, education, and behavioural genetics. Her research addresses how family background, early life experiences, and education opportunities inform children’s cognitive and social-emotional development. It builds on secondary data analyses from population cohort studies and on digital assessment technologies for collecting repeated, in-depth, naturalistic observations. 

 

One of Sophie’s current foci is to critically evaluate ‘personalised education’, an increasingly popular approach to responding to children’s differential learning needs that seeks to optimize the match between learner and instruction. However, ‘personalising’ education necessarily requires selecting children into some and out of other learning environments, which stands against the principle of equal learning opportunities for all. Achieving equity in education while preserving the equality of educational opportunity is a challenge for education systems around the world. 

 

Sophie is a CRISP Fellow for the Jacobs Foundation (2022-2027). From September 2023 to July 2024, she held a Fellowship from the Institute d’Etudes Advancees de Paris. Sophie’s research is also supported by the Nuffield Foundation.