About

The last ten years has been working specifically in educational reform and in international contexts as well as the UK. My role as Director of Education Reform and Specialist Advisor to the Vice Chancellor at Cambridge University have involved me in assisting in the development of education in many countries and organisations : Kazakhstan for a decade, Central Asia, Africa and the UK. 

The themes of my professional concerns are constant – building environments that facilitate quality learning and teaching and the wider development of young people; using research to facilitate innovation and change; working with teachers, students and policy makers to understand and implement development.

I began work as a teacher in a secondary school teaching English and working with children who expressed distress and difficulty. I needed to understand more so took a Master’s in Counselling and Care and thence to work in an advisory role in a local educational authority. Working in schools with teachers and systems began a major focus in my professional life – trying to understand how to develop systems and work well with staff and other professionals. It was a natural step to go to the Cambridge Institute of Education as a tutor who focused upon counselling and teacher development. 

In the Universities of Cambridge (Faculty of Education) and Sussex (Dept of Education) I held leadership roles – Deputy Head of Faculty, Head of Department and became a professor. How to create healthy environments for good work is still a concern both in working with quality education and nurturing environments for young people and adults to thrive. The relational approach I had developed in my counselling work became a keystone. I also became heavily involved in establishing a school-university partnerships for educational research – the SUPER project at the Faculty of Education. This was a major area of work which led me to value collaboration and the key role of research in all development.