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Profile

Dr. Son Truong, CTRS is an Associate Professor in Therapeutic Recreation, in the School of Health and Human Performance at AV¾ãÀÖ²¿. He is also an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Education at Western Sydney University, Australia. He has extensive experience working in diverse community settings, including in mental health, early childhood education and schools, outdoor centres, and NGOs, in both minority and majority world contexts.

Son is an experienced educator and has been recognised for his commitment to internationalisation of the curriculum and international service-learning. He has over 15 years of experience leading international service-learning projects, and has been successful with obtaining a number of competitive government grants to support student mobility in higher education. His interdisciplinary research has been funded by competitive internal and external research grants, and focuses on play, recreation, and leisure to enhance wellbeing in underserved and vulnerable communities.

Examples of Graduate Student Supervision:

Son is currently accepting graduate students in his areas of research interest. Examples of past graduate supervision includes the following:

• Place-based outdoor learning in the primary school curriculum (A. Lloyd, PhD)
• Motivation and outdoor leadership (T. Grill, MPhil)
• International students’ autonomous learning (P. Lamichane, MRes)
• Intergenerational play and community play spaces (C. Williams, MRes)

Current Co-Supervision, Cross-appointment

• Impact of outdoor education on the body image of adolescent females  (J. Breault-Hood, PhD)
• High school students’ engagement and motivation (J. Mann, PhD)
• Inclusive leadership in outdoor education (R. Charles, MPhil)
• Integration of nonformal and formal education into youth conservation programs (C. Biela, MPhil)

Research Projects:

Examples of recent individual and collaborative research projects:

• Children’s views and experiences of outdoor active play in school settings
• Child-friendly research and participation in inform play space design
• Impact of a children’s wild play garden / playground
• Impact of community greening / community gardening on wellbeing in social housing communities
• Fostering the wellbeing of students at-risk through Acceptance Commitment Therapy and adventure therapy

Theories and Methodologies:

• Sociocultural-ecological theories, social constructivism, posthumanism, new materialism
• Qualitative research, mixed methods, visual methods, community-based, participatory, action-oriented, child-friendly methods