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...

Are BME students more likely to be excluded from University than White students?

It is the case that, within primary and secondary education, pupils from some BME backgrounds are more likely to be excluded from school than White pupils (EHRC 2010, 2015). Some groups of Black...

Is now the time to do away with ITE allocations?

When the initial teacher education (ITE) allocations for the 2017/18 were announced on 28 September, there was (if not joy) a measure of reassurance across the teacher education sector. The...

Vocationalism in Further and Higher Education

One of the most striking characteristics of the post-compulsory education sector in England is the teaching of programmes with a vocational route to work. There is a tenacious underlying...

Out of Step? Reflections on the changing role of universities in Initial Teacher Training since 2010

Having worked as a teacher educator since 2006, I’ve observed significant changes and developments from the perspective of my roles in a University and as director of a SCITT. As an evolving...

Techno-science products for Education. What is on the horizon?

Schools are bombarded with products and courses that claim to be informed by research in Neuroscience and/or Digital Technology. Despite warnings from the OECD, the Royal Society (UK), the...

Curriculum design of Physics master’s degrees and national pedagogic traditions: implications for degree comparability

In 1999 higher education ministers from 29 European countries signed the Bologna Declaration (currently 49 signatory countries) and committed themselves to the creation of the European Higher...