The professional developmental needs of higher education-based teacher educators

The International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (InFo-TED) (https://www.ntnu.edu/info-ted) is an international forum with representatives from Belgium, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands,...

“Proving others wrong”: how working class students defied the odds to attend an elite university

The proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds going to ‘elite’ universities in England has remained worryingly flat in the past decade, despite millions of pounds being invested...

Teacher Development 3.0: Universities and Profession-led Teacher Education

Teacher Education Exchange, a collective of university-based teacher educators, researchers and leaders, has recently published a pamphlet, Teacher Development 3.0: How we can transform the...

How does Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Feel?

For years, I had been running workshops in which I asked university teachers to reflect on their most powerful learning experiences, drawing out key principles of learning.  We then compared...

Should we always welcome being cited?

Oscar Wilde is often quoted as suggesting that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Perhaps a corollary is that the worse...

Educational research in Welsh HEIs: a ‘state of the nation’ survey

Since devolution in 1999, the Welsh Government has developed a distinctive programme of education reform which needs to be underpinned by a strong evidence base. However, while the need for...

Bringing Neuroscience Towards Alternative Education?

On March 10th 2017, at Newman University, UK, an event attempting to better understand the interface of neuroscience and alternative education occurs. What happens? Well as we write this the event...

Validating curriculum development using text mining

Developing a new subject from the ground up is often demanding. Developing a new program is even more of a challenge. However developing a new program for an emergent discipline in its own right...

Democracy through Pedagogy: the Mantle of the Expert in Initial Teacher Education

In his powerful speech at the Cambridge Primary Review Trust’s (CPRT) conference in November last year, Robin Alexander suggested, in relation to recent electoral outcomes in the UK and the US,...

Teaching a job or a profession?

“ Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions” According to Nelson Mandela “Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world” and Popik...

Remaking Tertiary Education

Transformational Further Education: Empowering People & Communities

The same policy options face Tertiary F&HE as face Primary and Secondary schools. They were recently presented in two lectures by Baroness Tessa Blackstone, former-Labour Higher Education...

Tweeting to connect: support students’ development as professionals with social media

Social media in higher education, and specifically learning and teaching, is a relatively new area for pedagogical consideration. In my research over the past few years I have focused on the...