Associate Professor Anita Campbell

Anita Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Academic Support Programme for Engineering at the University of Cape Town, where she teaches first-year engineering mathematics. She is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education at UCT and a co-founder of the Centre for Wellbeing and Flourishing at UCT. Her research sits at the intersection of mathematics education, coaching, engineering education, and positive psychology. She is particularly interested in how students rebuild academic momentum after early setbacks, and how teaching practices, learning environments, and coaching-informed approaches support meaningful progress.

Her doctoral work on growth mindsets showed that efforts to shift students’ beliefs about learning are most effective when embedded in classroom practices and institutional cultures, rather than treated as purely individual traits.

More recently, her work has expanded to include coaching-informed pedagogy and positive psychology interventions that support student well-being, agency, and persistence in mathematically demanding programmes. She also explores the role of educational technologies and AI tools in enabling active, engaged learning.