Suhailah Hussien graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Human Sciences, majoring in Philosophy from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) in 1996, then completed her Diploma in Education majoring in English Language and Islamic Studies at the same university in the following year. She won the Best Student Award for English Language specialization. She secured a teaching position at the Department of Education, IIUM in 1998, and pursued her Master of Education in the area of Social Foundations at IIUM. She completed her Master’s in 2000 and wrote her thesis on the Teaching of Thinking in the Malaysian context.
Part of her thesis was later published in a book, which was co authored with Prof. Dr. Rosnani Hashim, and became a reference for the Teaching of Thinking in Malaysia. After teaching for two years in the Department of Education, she pursued her Ph.D (Education) in the area of Philosophy of Education, specializing in Critical Pedagogy, in 2002, at the University of Sheffield, UK. She graduated in 2006 and came back to Malaysia to serve the Department of Education.
She is a registered and active member of the Philosophy of Education Society, Great Britain (PESGB), the International Network of Philosophers of Education (INPE), and the Qualitative Research Methods Association of Malaysia (QRAM).
Currently, Dr. Suhailah Hussien is an Associate Professor and the Director, Centre for Teaching Thinking (CTT) at the Kulliyyah of Education, IIUM since 2013. CTT was formerly known as the Centre for Philosophical Inquiry in Education (CPIE), and is responsible for the training of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and inquiry skills among teachers, professionals and students at various levels. She is also acknowledged for her expertise in Thinking and HOTS, and is one of the team members involved in the development of teaching HOTS for the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Malaysia.