Professor Sin-Wang Chong

Professor Sin-Wang Chong (Ph.D., PFHEA, FRSA) is Director of Impact and Innovation and Director of Research at the International Education and Lifelong Learning Institute, University of St Andrews. Sin-Wang founded the Centre for International, Language, and Teacher Education Research (CILTER) at the University of St Andrews and is the Inaugural Centre Director. In a visiting capacity, he is Professor in Education at King’s College London and the Education University of Hong Kong. Sin-Wang is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Sin-Wang’s work straddles Applied Linguistics and Education but often focuses on questions of metascience, the study of the production, evaluation, and use of research, and who gets to be part of that process, and on what terms. His work in evidence synthesis, research ethics, and academic publishing consistently reflects such a metascientific principle, that pedagogical and applied research is only as useful as the systems that allow people to find, participate in, and apply it.

Sin-Wang has over 100 publications and has been involved in research projects worth over £3 million. He is also the lead of a research contract with the UK Government’s Department for Education worth £2 million, conducting government-commissioned, high-impact evidence syntheses on teacher education. Sin-Wang is named a Top 2% Scientist in Education since 2023 (the “Elsevier-Stanford List”) and is the author of multiple top 1% research publications, according to Clarivate’s Essential Science Indicators.

Sin-Wang is Founding Editor-in-Chief of Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics (Taylor & Francis), Editor of Review of Education (Wiley/BERA), Associate Editor and Research Syntheses Editor of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (Taylor & Francis) (SSCI-indexed), and Section Editor of “Education and Language” in Elsevier’s Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd edition). Sin-Wang is Co-Editor of Web Case Studies of Research Ethics of the British Educational Research Association (BERA). Sin-Wang sits on the editorial review boards of a number of international refereed journals including as one of the seven International Editorial Board members of the prestigious journal, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (SSCI, IF:4.1). He is a regular reviewer for over 60 leading journals in higher education and language education. Sin Wang is a grant assessor of The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Sin-Wang is founder and co-director (with Masatoshi Sato) of the international knowledge exchange project, TESOLgraphics, creating open-access, one-page infographic summaries of secondary research in TESOL for English teachers. TESOLgraphics is also on Twitter. Sin-Wang is co-founder and co-director (with Shannon Mason) of Scholarly Peers, a platform to support doctoral students and early career researchers to navigate journal peer review. Scholarly Peers currently has a website, a Twitter account, and a podcast. He is coordinator (with Shannon Mason) of the Thesis by Publication website, a collection of resources for supporting doctoral researchers to publish during their candidature.

Sin-Wang is Immediate Past Chair of Scottish Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (SATEFL). He served on the governing councils of  British Educational Research Association (BERA) and British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) in the capacity of Council Member, Executive Committee Member, and Website Editor. Sin-Wang was Research Lead and a member of the BERA Ethical Guidelines Review Group, conducting desk-based research on current ethical guidelines in educational research and advising BERA on the 5th edition of their ethical guidelines. At BERA, Sin-Wang also co-convened the Early Career Researcher Network. At BAAL, Sin-Wang founded and convenes the Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics Special Interest Group. At International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Sin-Wang co-founded and co-convened the Open Scholarship in Applied Linguistics Research Network.  Sin-Wang is Founding Member of Centre for Language Education Research at Queen’s University Belfast.

Previously, he has held academic and teaching positions in Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, most recently as Associate Professor in Language Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh.