Nick Huxley

Research interests

Nick Huxley is a PhD researcher in Education within the University of Brighton’s Doctoral College and the School of Education, Sports and Health Sciences. His doctoral project, “The Future of Learning: Exploring the extent to which AI Tutors can enhance engagement in Primary STEM Education”, investigates how large language model (LLM)-mediated tutor systems can influence engagement, learning outcomes, and equity in mathematics among disadvantaged primary learners.

His research combines educational technology, learning sciences, and social justice perspectives to evaluate how AI tutors can be pedagogically designed to promote active, equitable learning rather than passive task completion. Using a mixed-methods design inspired by recent empirical work (e.g. Kestin et al., 2024; Sharples, 2025), the project analyses engagement metrics, learning progress, and implementation conditions across socioeconomically diverse schools.

More broadly, Nick’s interests include:

• Human–AI collaboration in teaching and learning

• Digital equity and the educational implications of the AI divide

• Pedagogical design for hybrid and adaptive learning systems

• Evidence-based integration of AI in primary education policy and practice

Nick aims to build knowledge flows between schools, researchers, and the EdTech/policy community. Working with primary schools, he will co-design AI/LLM-mediated tutoring that focuses on dialogic pedagogy, engagement, and equity.

Insights from his MA mixed-methods study, especially around digital communication with families and access barriers, inform how implementation questions and evaluation measures have been framed.

Nick's prior 12-year telecommunications and technology career (IP/ Internet networking solutions and architecture, Product Development, VoiceOverIP, real-time systems, Internet security) will help focus attention on infrastructure readiness, data protection, reliability, robustness, and safeguarding design.

He intends to work with teacher networks/ local authorities and digital-inclusion groups to align with access and inclusion goals, and with product teams to embed pedagogical guardrails rather than task automation.

The goal is to prove how LLM-mediated tutoring can power a hybrid, teacher-centred pedagogy that sustains engagement and narrows inequities at scale.