our first ten years - a special edition 10 yearsour first ten years - a special edition i received...

Our first Ten Years -a special editionI received the invitation to write thispiece with great pleasure. I have been,from the outside, a witness to theexcellent work undertaken by andfacilitated through ESCalate for much ofthe last ten years. As a former SubjectCentre Director, I felt there was muchmy subject centre could learn from howESCalate operates. Over the last fouryears, in my oversight role of all theAcademy Subject Centres, I have beenimpressed by the breadth, or whatTony refers to in this publication as an“eclectic approach”, as well as the highquality and perceived value of its work.This publication bears witness to this.

I am aware that the pressures onESCalate are in a certain sense, unique,in that it, above any other subjectcentre, is expected to have a view onmany aspects of initial or continuingprofessional development in highereducation, whether it be HE in FE or asnow, Open Educational Resources

Articles from... our partnership agencies 38

In Conversation with... Rosemary Deem and Julie Anderson 42

Articles from... staff both past and present 4

Articles from... some of our award holders 16

ESCalate Events 44

Hot Topics 44

newsESC

ala

te

(OER). This is in addition to the naturalcommunities that ESCalate supportse.g. undergraduate education studies,masters and PhD programmes, ITE,teacher educators, lifelong learning,continuing education etc. Whilst thisuniqueness places ESCalate at thecentre of current debates in HE, it is alsoa heavy and expanding workload toaddress, which they continue to domagnificently.

I have been struck by the manyexamples of how ESCalate has providedsupport and seed-corn funding, orbrought out the full benefits of otherinvestments in teaching and learningthrough its brokerage and networks.There is ample evidence of activity andimpact in the pages that follow.

My concern here is to try toconceptualise what ESCalate is, both initself and as an exemplar of a subjectcentre. As we all know, the public sectoris facing a funding squeeze and the

The newsletter of the Education Subject Centre - advancing learning and teaching in education

Issue 17 - Summer 2010

SupportingLearning andTeaching for

Years10

�Editorial continued on page 3

Academy is not immune from this. Inour deliberation of how we must reactto this context, we should develop anunderstanding of the ways in whichchange occurs in HE; the affective linkacademics feel to their subjectcommunities; the means by whichknowledge is created within thesecommunities, as well as disseminatedbeyond them and how, through the

PHOTO REDACTED DUE TO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS OR OTHER LEGAL ISSUES

ESCalate @ BristolDr Tony BrownLiz HankinsonTeresa NurserJulietta SchoenmannDr Fiona HylandDee MilesGenna WestDr Jocelyn Wishart

ESCalate ConsultantsJulie HughesSteve RoseHenry Liebling

Editorial Team:Teresa NurserJulietta Schoenmann

Get involved withESCalate, It’s easy.

Please look at ourwebsite for opportunities.

www.escalate.ac.ukwww.esd.escalate.ac.uk

ESCalate news is a termly publication.

The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of theeditor nor of the partner organisations. The editors reserve the right toedit, amend or abbreviate copy without notice.

ESCalate (Education Subject Centre)Part of the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre NetworkUniversity of BristolGraduate School of Education35 Berkeley SquareBristolBS8 1JA

Tel: 0117 331 4291Fax: 0117 925 1537Email: [email protected]

An electronic version of this newsletter is available on theESCalate website.

This newsletter is available free of charge. If you do not currently receivea copy and wish to do so in the future please contact [email protected]. Your details will only be used for keeping youinformed of ESCalate activity and will not be made available to outsideorganisations.

If you have any ideas or copy that you would like to see included in afuture newsletter please get in touch.

We are especially interested in items which:• Show innovative practice in your Education Department;• Celebrate National Teaching Fellows and other awards for

teaching and learning;• Showcase student achievement.

The next copy deadline is 11th October 2010,please email: [email protected]

�

ESCalatenews 3

Editorial continued from front page

David SadlerDirector (Networks)Higher EducationAcademy

David Sadler took up the post of

Director (Networks) at the end of

August 2006. He is responsible for

the Academy's work with subject

and discipline networks (including

the Subject Centres) and

individuals.

Previously, David was the

Director of the Higher Education

Academy Subject Network for

Sociology, Anthropology, Politics

(C-SAP). David took up the post of

Director of C-SAP in September

2005, having previously been Chair

of C-SAP’s Advisory Committee.

He was awarded a National

Teaching Fellowship in 2005 and

was previously a Jean Monnet

Course Award holder.

Prior to joining the Academy

David was Dean of Social Sciences

at the University of Northampton

and his academic area of research

and teaching was international

security. David was previously

Head of Historical and International

Studies at De Montfort University

(1991-2004).

subject lens, subject centreshave worked to ensure a centraloverarching mission for the Academyto raise the status of teaching andlearning.

One of the writers here hasadopted the concept from Wenger(1998) of ESCalate as a “Communityof Practice”. This is a term that isperhaps over-used and not alwaysdefined. But can it illuminate whatrole ESCalate serves? Certainly,there are examples of the bondingthat communities require and this isbest summed up by Roger Murphy’spiece which notes ESCalate as a“collective endeavour” within anotherwise competitive HE culture.There are many examples of howESCalate has helped individualsdevelop their sense of identity anddraw on the support and expertiseof others, again a key idea in thecommunity of practice concept.There is also the key role thatESCalate plays in funding orotherwise supporting the productionof resources and other artefacts thatis the “practice” of this community,and these are in the specialisedareas (employability, studentengagement, teacher educatorsetc) that many of the writers in thispublication refer to. Whilst ESCalatemay feel it is stretched thinly, it isactually facilitating specialisedwork, or “domains” in Wenger’sterminology, through the networksof individuals that associate with it.Again and again, I was struck by theexperiential learning that is evidencedin these short pieces and by theways in which informal and tacitknowledge is more easily shared inthese communities that share thepassion for improving the student

learning experience. It seemsan exercise of merit to think ofESCalate as a “community ofpractice” or perhaps an umbrellacommunity that supports others.

Much is made of the challengingtimes we collectively face. Yetthere are opportunities too. Thestudent experience is now on thepolitical agenda with a force. Thepossible lifting of student fees inEngland will increase thesharpness of this focus still further.Yet institutions will also facefunding pressures. The work of theAcademy, especially through itsdiscipline focus, should be part ofthe solution for institutions as theyface this twin challenge.

I close with my personal thanksto all the ESCalate staff, past andpresent, that I have had thepleasure of working with. I shouldmention a number in particular.Firstly, Julie Anderson, who as apractical example of the relevanceof ESCalate’s work across thebroader field of professionaldevelopment, worked closely withme over a key time in supportingall the subject centres. I foundher approach symptomatic ofESCalate – warm, friendly,professional, committed butabove all knowing how to havefun. Secondly, my thanks go toTony Brown who has steeredESCalate so ably and also playeda major role across the wholeAcademy. He also embodies allthe virtues I noted about Julieand I wish him all the very best forthe future. Lastly to all who haveworked with or for ESCalate overthe first ten years – what asuccess!

ReferencesWenger, E (1998) Communities ofPractice: Learning, Meaning andIdentity. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

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4 ESCalatenews

The articles inthis section arefrom a range ofpeople who havebeen part of theESCalate team atsome point in thelast ten years.

Roger Murphy

In the beginning...

was ESCalate’s first Director and and has alwayskept a keen eye on developments both within theSubject Centre and in the wider Education community. �


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� It recognises that those of usworking in universities havemuch to learn. Clearly we allneed support to allow us tocontinue to develop as effectivereflective practitioners in relationto our own work as universityeducators.

Nevertheless I still don’t think thatenough is being invested inuniversity-based staff developmentand as we celebrate this ten yearmilestone, we are I am sure allaware of the cuts that will threatenthe continuation of the full breadthof the work of the HEA SubjectCentres. Teaching studentseffectively still isn’t acknowledgedas a major challenge in much of thehigher education sector. Mostacademics, for understandablereasons, are more focussed ontheir discipline-based researchpriorities. It is great that some alsomanage to be creative andinnovative, as they try to respond tothe challenges in a digital age whennew millennium learners enrol fortheir courses and arrive at universityexpecting learning to be engaging,culturally relevant, and modern in itsuse of new technologies and

Ten years on I can still vividlyremember the heady days when asmall group of us from theUniversities of Nottingham, Bristol,and Oxford Brookes put togetherthe proposals which led to the startof ESCalate. I am extremely pleasedthat this initiative has beensustained and that ESCalate hasgrown and developed in the waythat it has.

There are three main things thatstand out for me as the mostimportant qualities of the work of aSubject Centre: � It is essentially a collaborative

endeavour involving all of usinvolved in the academicdiscipline of education withinhigher education. Within aculture of competition andleague tables, genuinecollaboration of this type ishugely important.

� The work is essentially focussedon improving the learningexperiences of our students.That too is so vitally important inan age when research prioritiesand diminishing resources cantogether have a potentiallydamaging effect.

Roger Murphy is Professor of

Education at the University of

Nottingham, where he has been

both Head of School and a Faculty

Dean. He was Director of ESCalate

for its first three years. He has also

been President of the British

Educational Research Association

and Director of the Visual Learning

Lab Centre for Excellence in

Teaching and Learning and several

research centres. He is a specialist

in the area of educational

assessment and evaluation.

information sharing approaches.The HEA Subject Centre andCETL initiatives have made asignificant impact in terms ofraising the profile of effectiveinnovations in teaching andlearning in higher education.There is however much, muchmore that needs to be done, and Ihope very much that ESCalateand many other similar centrescan be resourced effectively tocarry on this vital work.


6 ESCalatenews

Although from a wider Europeanperspective it cannot be deniedthat the whole ‘Bolognarization’ ofHE was a strong impetus for thesetting up of the LTSN, one shouldnot forget that the Subject Centreswere born between the QualityAssurance Agency (QAA) reviewsof teaching and learning and theResearch Selectivity Exercise (nowthe RAE). While the QAA reviewswere in force, one could visiblydiscern across all subjects inuniversities, a willingness among allstaff to at least talk the talk ofquality teaching and learning. Theopposite tension of the RAE couldmean that colleagues were muchmore engaged with completingand writing up research projects,or bids for funding, and the qualityof teaching was taken for granted.This is not to say that it wasirrelevant, just that it was part ofprofessional practice that onecould ‘do’ and the hard part wasgetting the publications ready forthe RAE. In most cases theEuropean implications were notseen to be highly relevant to therank and file at that time.

Escalate was founded by theUniversities of Bristol, Nottinghamand Oxford Brookes. ProfessorPatricia Broadfoot, then Head of theGraduate School of Education atBristol, was the initiator of theprocess of obtaining the funding toset up the Centre. The EducationFaculty at Nottingham Universitywas already a respected partnerwith Bristol’s Graduate School ofEducation in research and otheractivities related to teaching andlearning in HE. Oxford Brookesalready had a reputation forundergraduate teaching andlearning, and within the newEducation Faculty there was a richstore of expertise to draw on.

As with all projects that start fromscratch, the Learning and TeachingSubject Network (LTSN) was afascinating mixture of structures and(mis?) understandings. I wouldhesitate to say that many centresmuddled through, although somecertainly did, but there were manyinterpretations of process andstructure in the early 2000s, partlyoccasioned by the great variety ofsubject structures and their needs.

Memories of the earlyyears of ESCalate...

Some reminiscences...� Management meetings between

Roger Murphy (University ofNottingham), Sonia Blandford(Oxford Brookes University) andme took place at monthly intervals,planning what we were to do, andreviewing what had been done.Picture the scene: eight in themorning; a hum of busy discussionall round; groups of similarlyengaged people with laptops andpapers in front of them and coffeecups jostling for room on thenarrow tables; outside the drone ofthe motorway. We were in a LittleChef cafe more or less equidistantfrom all three institutions. Workdone by eleven or so, we could allbe back at base by lunchtime.

� Workshops for the wider grouptook place twice a year, usually ata conference centre, butsometimes at one of the threeuniversities. An overnighter, withlots of activities related to howstrategy could be translated intopractical work plans with namesattached. Great fun and veryexhilarating.

Arlene Gilpin the first ESCalatemanager, talks about a role she describes as encompassing‘associate directorship with executive manager, academicmanager and any other job that needed doing!’ �

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ESCalatenews 7

� Visits to institutions are some ofthe most interesting memories. I recall especially some of theproblems faced by colleges whowere embarking on two yeardegree programmes inconjunction with neighbouringuniversities. For them there weregreat issues of equality to conjurewith, from coping withimpoverished libraries, to jugglingwith contact hours contracts, andthe worry of how their studentswould be able to fit into thecontinuation from their initial twoyears. I met some fine people insuch colleges who were at thattime feeling rather deskilled by themoves being made in HE,contrary to what one might haveexpected.

� Conferences for general‘membership’ were a feature ofboth the LTSN and ESCalate.Those for the LTSN were for theSubject Centres, while ESCalate’swere for any colleagues inEducation departments whowished to attend – accessedthrough their ESCalate

representative. The two kinds ofevents had different flavours: LTSNwas the ‘in crowd’ talking aboutthe LTSN and HE agenda, whileESCalate was more focussed onour own subject concerns. In thelatter it was very good to meet thepeople around the country whowere supporting what the subjectcentres were trying to facilitate.

� Internal meetings with LizHankinson and the secretarial staffwere frequent - regular weeklymeetings to keep ourselves ontrack, and ad hoc ones to deal withthe many glitches that alwaysaccompany the establishment of anew enterprise. Many good laughshelped to ease the tensions inthose early months, thanks to allthe team.

Happy memories of the beginningsof something that has grownimpressively in the six and a half yearssince I left it! I do not think that we inBritain have fully appreciated howmuch the funding authorities investedin teaching and learning in HE.Certainly, more recent experience I

Arlene Gilpin was Manager of

ESCalate until 2003 when she retired.

Before assuming this role she had

been a teacher and researcher in the

Graduate School of Education, latterly

with the additional administrative

responsibility of Director of Teaching

Quality. Since retiring she has worked

on a number of European funded

projects aimed at improving standards

in higher education in many countries,

including Eastern Europe and Latin

America, and most recently in Africa.

She has also worked on United

Nations projects related to assessing

teaching and learning quality in Middle

Eastern universities. She now lives in

Andalucia, Spain.

have had in a wider EU contextsuggests that many countrieswould have envied the LTSN andthe varied guidance it provided,and colleagues across Europe andin many other countries keenlyfollow the useful inspirationprovided by the subject centres.

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8 ESCalatenews

�

A decade of work by ESCalatehas served the cause of educationwith creativity, insight andprofessionalism. The influence ofthis in universities and relatedschools and other places whereeducation takes place cannot beoverestimated. The work ofESCalate has given a status to thesubject and the practices ofeducation when it has beenneeded. It has been a personalprivilege to see this developmentyear on year.

ESCalate has given coherenceto the field of scholarly enquiryand professional practice. It has

Bart McGettrick outlines the support thatESCalate has provided to those involved in academic research and theway it has helped them to make their work known to a wider audience.

contributed significantly to theliterature and the disparateproducts of its reviews, reports andprojects. In particular it has givenopportunities to early writers andresearchers contributing to literaturewhich has a significant impact andhas achieved high standards. Theaccessibility of its publications hasbeen matched by their importanceas contributions to educationalthought.

A feature of this has been theexceptional range of academicenquiry which ESCalate hasfocused on. Not only has itsuccessfully covered the

educational systems of the fournations of the UK but the range ofeducational foci and interestswhich this illuminates.

It has given researchers andscholars a focus for both thecreation of educational knowledgeand its dissemination. As part ofthe Academy it has properly seenits role as the creator ofknowledge and not only itsdissemination. ESCalate hasknown where there is innovationand excitement in the field ofeducation, seeking these out andmaking the ideas and practicesmore widely available. That has

�

‘‘ ‘‘

ESCalate has createdcommunities of scholarshipthrough its workshopswhich have touched every partof the country and every level inthe education system

Touching hearts and minds

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ESCalatenews 9

Bart McGettrick is Dean of

Education at Liverpool Hope

University. He is Emeritus

Professor of Education and also

Dean Emeritus, of the Faculty of


Glasgow.

He has widespread

international experience and is a

Regent of Bethlehem University,

Palestine and is heavily involved

in Christian Education in The Holy

Land. He undertakes work with

the First Nations of Canada, and

works on projects in India,

Lithuania and other challenging

settings overseas.

He is a member of the Scottish

Social Services Council, dealing

with aspects of Social Work and

Social Care. He is also

esponsible for setting up the

Scottish Forum for Professional

Ethics in Scotland, in addition to

he Hope Forum for Professional

Ethics in Liverpool. He chairs a

number of Boards of Governors

of schools and other

organisations.

been a most valuable service toFaculties and Departments ofEducation.

Ultimately education isembodied and alive, living in thehearts and minds of people.ESCalate has been one of the feworganisations which has touchedthose hearts and minds, ESCalatehas brought together academicsand practitioners in interesting andcreative ways. It has beenunstinting in its efforts to supportlearning. In doing so it has helpedin the creation of new thought.Not the simplicity of concepts of“delivering the curriculum” or“knowledge transfer” but themore challenging concepts offorming people in their values andideals. ESCalate has been led by

a deep understanding of themeaning and power of educationalthought, and has offeredopportunities for debate anddiscussion of these ideas.

As part of the Advisory Board itwould be appropriate to recogniseand congratulate both theacademic leadership andadministrative team which haveserved ESCalate so well over theyears. Nothing of the above couldhave been achieved without them.With them more has been achievedthan anyone would have had a rightto expect.

More than anything ESCalate hasseen Education thrive as adiscipline and as professionalpractise. In a decade of challengethat has been no mean feat!

Bart McGettrickDean of Education,Liverpool HopeUniversity

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10 ESCalatenews

Jean Murray

The words of Bart McGettrick in thisissue aptly sum up the contributionwhich ESCalate has made toeducation as a discipline over the lastten years. My intention here is toreflect on ESCalate’s support forteacher education in particular.

Since its inception ESCalate hasmade strong contributions todeveloping provision in the inductionand research development of teachereducators. This commitment reflectsthe principle that, since teachereducators have central roles in theeducation of intending and servingteachers, the quality of the provisionmade for their development aslearners and as HE practitioners is animportant issue for organisations,such as ESCalate, to address.

I have been privileged to be involvedin a number of ESCalate projects inthe areas of academic/professionaldevelopment for teacher educators,including a survey on inductionprovision in England. The survey,published in the European Journal ofTeacher Education, showed thatprovision for those moving fromprofessional backgrounds into teacher

�

Developinglearningopportunitiesfor teachereducators

highlights the importance of supporting teachereducators in the development of their researchcapacities and access to professional learning.

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ESCalatenews 11

education work in HE wasinconsistent and often inadequate, sorelevant findings on what created an‘expansive learning environment’during induction were used to inform aseries of ESCalate workshops acrossthe UK (this is an on-going project, ledby Pete Boyd of Cumbria Universityand myself). The survey, together withresearch by Pete and his colleagueKim Harris, has also led to the writingof a set of induction guidelinespublished by ESCalate1. FurtherEscalate support for research hascome through the funding of a project,with Pat Mahony (RoehamptonUniversity), looking at teachereducators’ research trajectories. Thisproject too will result in bothconventional publications andsuggestions for improving provisionfor doctoral students and Early CareerResearchers in teacher education.

In terms of research capacitybuilding in teacher education, since2006 ESCalate has co-funded (withthe TLRP, BERA and UCET) thedevelopment of the work of theTeacher Education Group (TEG), ledby Ian Menter (University of Glasgow)and Pat Mahony. Of particular notehere is the mapping of UK teachereducation research between 2000and 20082). In 2008/09 ESCalate alsofunded the provision of a short seriesof colloquia set within the ESRCTeacher Education Research Network(TERN), a research capacity buildingnetwork in the North West ofEngland. These colloquia enabled theTERN project team (Marion Jones and

Jean Murray is Professor of

Education in the Cass School of

Education at the University of East

London, where she is the Research

Leader. She also leads the Teacher

Education research group in the

School and teaches on doctoral

courses.

Building on her background in

schooling and teacher education,

Jean’s research interests focus on

exploring the academic and

professional identities of teacher

educators and their induction and

career development within the

higher education sector. She is

currently leading an ESRC funded

research capacity building project,

the Teacher Education Research

Network (TEAN) in the North West

of England. Jean is an Associate

Director of ESCalate, and the co-

leader of the ESCalate provision for

academic induction.

ReferencesMurray, J. (2008) TeacherEducators' Induction into HigherEducation: work-based learning inthe micro communities of teachereducation. European Journal ofTeacher Education 31.2 pp.117 - 133.

Grant Stanley, Liverpool John MooresUniversity, Olwen McNamara,Manchester University, and myself) toenrich the research developmentprogramme within the project and tooffer Early Career Researchersadditional chances to learn fromsenior researchers in teachereducation.

Cumulatively, these projects haveundoubtedly contributed todeveloping the provision for teachereducators’ academic/professionallearning. This in turn has contributedto the strengthening of the academicbase of teacher education in the UK. Ithas been my privilege to be involved inthe development, implementation andevaluation of these collaborativeESCalate projects, which have beenimportant parts of my own academic/professional development. A keyfactor in this learning has been the richacademic network I have been able toform with colleagues in UK universitiesand beyond. ESCalate’s role inproviding research grants andsupporting the dissemination ofknowledge across the sector is wellknown, but in my view one of the mostpowerful, and sometimes hidden,contributions of ESCalate to thediscipline of education over the lastten years has been in the stimulationof such academic networks and thedevelopment of extensive learningopportunities within them.

1 http://escalate.ac.uk/36622 http://escalate.ac.uk/6698

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12 ESCalatenews

As ESCalate’s Director for thelast few years, I’ve seenESCalate manage the changingdynamics in the HE sector andin education. There are anumber of principles whichhave guided us over the lastfew years.

First the maintenance of anindependent voice that seeksto speak up for academics ineducation departments. Sincethis is difficult given the widerange of activities that areincluded in education, it hasbeen imperative that we retainpractising academics as

members of ESCalate staff. Ofthose academic staff based inBristol, all have contributed toteaching in the Graduate School ofEducation, all have published inacademic peer reviewed journalsand all have continued to supervisestudents. This has been part of thecontribution made in return for thevery effective and supportive‘hosting’ that the University ofBristol has carried out over theyears. In addition, we have twoAssociate Directors based inUniversity of East London and theUniversity of Plymouth – both activeteachers and researchers. To

Tony Brown

Those who havecriticised ESCalatefor trying to covertoo much ground...must neverthelessacknowledge thata subject centrefocusing oneducation is goingto have an eclecticapproach.

explains the scope ofESCalate’s work and the diversity of its reach while anticipatingpossible changes to come. �

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ESCalatenews 13

broaden what is heard from the‘voice of the community’ wehave produced a number ofpublications where individualsand teams of academics havepresented their views and theirwork. Hopefully, what ESCalatehas achieved is a diversity ofacademic views that reflect BartMcGettrick’s definition of aprofessional as someone who isentrusted to manage dangerousmodalities.. In a society whereviewpoints have becomeincreasingly subject toregulation, the role of the highereducation professional mustinclude taking up unpopular,risky positions and viewpoints. Ifthis is not possible, then thehigher education project is likelyto be suffocated.

ESCalate has always soughtto provide seed corn funding fornew researchers, workshopsand induction guides foracademics new to HE,publications by outstandingacademics in the field ofeducation, and a space for newwriters and new ideas. We havetried to maintain a breadth thatacknowledges undergraduateeducation studies, postgraduateand now Masters-level coursesin Initial Teacher Education, theneeds of teacher educators,lifelong learning and continuingeducation, and part time anddistance learning programmes

Tony Brown taught extensively in

primary and secondary schools

before becoming an LEA

curriculum adviser and working in

teacher education. He taught at

the College of St Mark & St John in

Plymouth for ten years and then

moved on to the University of Hull

as Head of Centre for Learning

Development.

He began working at ESCalate six

years ago as Manager and is

currently the Centre Director. Tony

will be stepping down from this

role in July and wishes every

success to the new Director and

the ESCalate team

as well as full time campus-basedstudies. This diversity is set toincrease rather than decrease.Those who have criticisedESCalate for trying to cover toomuch ground, perhaps a justifiablecriticism, must neverthelessacknowledge that a subject centrefocusing on education is going tohave an eclectic approach.

As we wait for the newWestminster coalition governmentto begin its work and possibly toproduce an emergency budget inthe next few weeks, we know thathigher education can become asite for further cuts and challenges.There is a real political edge todecisions that seek to reduce theresource base, whilst over-stimulating student expectation ofeven greater quality. What iswithout doubt, I believe, is that thestudent voice will not diminish. Myconcern is that it can be heard aspart of a principled dialoguebetween higher educationprofessionals and those engagedin study. My fear is that those whowish to manipulate highereducation for non-educationalpurposes may seek advantage.Academics in educationdepartments, and educationstudents, wherever they arestudying higher education, mustguard against distractions andfocus on the quality of theeducation experience. That will behard to achieve. It will be made

much harder if student fees areincreased. It may be madeimpossible if variable fees areused as a mechanism forsetting universities against eachother. There certainly aredangerous modalities to bemanaged and we need a newsense of academic freedomand responsibility to beexercised across the piece if weare to maintain what is best inhigher education in the UK.

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I joined St Martin’s College in 2005after responding to an advertisementwhich asked for a lecturer tocontribute to ESCalate’s work insupport and advice on pedagogy,curriculum enhancement and staffdevelopment in relation to teachereducation. In those days, ESCalatewas not as easily found on Googleas it is now and I well remember theother candidates at the interviewasking me if I knew what ESCalatewas all about; I certainly found outover the next four years! St Martin’s,I learned, had been responsible forthe initial teacher education elementof ESCalate’s work plan since 2003.Its work programmes each yearresponded to the needs of theteacher education community andthe priorities of the Higher EducationAcademy. Newly arrived fromteaching in school, and clutching myhigher degrees in education in myhand, I set about deciphering themeanings of lists of acronyms andlearning the delights of BirminghamNew Street station, as I waited forthe train for Bristol en route formeetings with the ESCalate team.

Between 2005 and 2009 a teamdedicated to Initial Teacher

14 ESCalatenews

Alison Jackson offers a personal perspectiveon how her role contributed to ESCalate's work in the areas of pedagogy,curriculum improvement and staff development for teacher educators. Shethen tells us about how she has developed this role in her work with TEAN.

Education – myself, Sue Bloxham,Sam Twiselton and a team ofadministrative support – ensuredthat ESCalate at St Martin’s ,andthen ESCalate at the University ofCumbria when the college gaineduniversity status in 2007, flourished.The ITE conference held every Maybecame well established as a keyforum for teacher educators to gettogether to discuss and sharethoughts and inspirations concerningtheir research and practice. A rangeof seminars and workshops onvaried topics – extended from theoriginal brief to include such thingsas Problem-Based Learning,assessment, teaching as a Masterslevel profession, reflection, creativity,Every Child Matters – all contributedto the growing reputation ofESCalate at Cumbria. Our philosophyof being there for teacher educatorsas they fulfil their demanding role isbased on the desire to fostercollaborative working in a supportive,non-threatening way and to promotehigh quality research and scholarlyopportunities to raise the profile ofteacher education. Colleaguesfrom across the four nations of theUK, as well the University of Cumbria

Responding to the needsof the teaching community

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ESCalatenews 15

Alison Jackson is Director of the

Teacher Education Advancement

Network based at the University of

Cumbria. Her background is in

secondary education and her

research interests are: Initial Teacher

Education, school leadership, school

culture, teacher identity, teacher

professionalism, teaching as a

Masters level profession.

‘‘ ‘‘The ESCalate ITEconference heldevery May becamewell established as akey forum for teachereducators to gettogether to discussand share thoughtsand inspirationsconcerning theirresearch andpractice.

itself, have benefited from thiswork.

Since September 2009 weare no longer ESCalateCumbria but have formed anew identity with TEAN, theTeacher EducationAdvancement Network, whichis founded on the rigorousprinciples (outlined above) thatwe established with ESCalate.The conference continuesunder our new name and weare delighted to be sponsoredby ESCalate for this. We havealso run a series of workshopsfor New Teacher Educators.

Congratulations to ESCalateon its first 10 years and TEANlooks forward to furthercollaboration with the subjectcentre as it embarks upon itsnew decade.

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to write or do research as I wasapparently a ‘non-academic’!ESCalate gave me a grant tosupport work on the learning ofstudents from non-traditionalbackgrounds and this gave me asense of value, and given that I hada grant, no-one was going to stopme. More or less since that time, Ihave been asked to evaluate grant

16 ESCalatenews

Jenny Moonexplains how she was able to develop her research skillsand publish her findings through ESCalate support andencouragement.

I would say that my professional lifehas been better because ESCalatewas there with its friendly staff,support, wide networks and thepotential for the initiation of excitingprojects.

The first contact was aroundeight years ago when I was in avery unsatisfactory educationaldevelopment post, being told not

The followingarticles are frompeople who havereceived awardfunding from us todevelop a researchproject or area ofscholarly activity.

They range fromearly academicsreceiving a studentaward, to thosewho have receivedmore substantialamounts tosupport largerscale projects.

The power ofthe written word

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ESCalatenews 17

proposals for others, hoping thatothers can benefit from ESCalatefunding in the manner that I did.

ESCalate then commissioned meto do some writing for them. I wrotea Discussion Series booklet oncritical thinking (‘We Seek itHere…..’) and various smallerarticles on topics such as the role ofwriting in higher education learning– in my opinion a seriouslyneglected issue. All the writing I dois research. It involves seekinginformation, and then relating that tothe way things actually are, or couldbe. Writing an idea down enables

Jenny Moon works part time as

Associate Professor in the Centre

for Excellence in Media Practice at

Bournemouth University. She also

works freelance in higher education

at home and abroad. She has

written ten books on reflective

learning, critical thinking,

programme and module structure,

academic assertiveness and the

role of story in higher education.

me to see if I agree with myself, orcould hone the thinking better.

Then I was asked to write asecond commissioned piece ofwork, again a Discussion Seriesbooklet, on using academicassertiveness to enhancegroupwork (‘Making GroupsWork’). The contents of this camefrom making generic some work Ihad been doing with mediastudents and extending some ideasfrom a book that I had just written.

In 2007, in collaboration withESCalate I ran a series ofworkshops around the theme ofreflective learning. They gave rise tomuch discussion and exchange ofpractice on the day and a wealth ofresources for use by thecommunity via the ESCalatewebsite.

I have been in touch withESCalate again recently aboutwriting a pack to support tutors inrunning sessions on oral storytellingfor students; this is a source ofstrong personal interest for me andonce placed, it is available forreading/downloading from theESCalate web site1.

So ESCalate has meant a lot tome – friendly support, an avenuefor publication, a stimulant forthinking, opportunities and thechance to communicate withothers from different disciplines.I am sure that there are manyothers who benefit in similar waysfrom ESCalate and other suchsubject centres.

‘‘‘‘ESCalate gave me agrant to support work onthe learning of studentsfrom non-traditionalbackgrounds and thisgave me a sense ofvalue...

1 http://escalate.ac.uk/7121

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18 ESCalatenews

Fiona Campbellargues passionately for the inclusion of the student voicein all aspects of Higher Education and provides anoverview of the two projects that ESCalate supported asa way of mainstreaming this once marginal area. �O

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� Sharing experiences: staff andstudents working as peers in ajoint residential workshop

� Using the student voice in staffdevelopment to progress apilot PDP module

To further disseminate ourwork, three day-long seminarswere held in London, Leeds andGlasgow with participantsrepresenting more than 60institutions. Encouragingly, andappropriately, there was alsostrong involvement from studentswho engaged with usenthusiastically and providedmany rich and insightfulperspectives. These eventscontributed to our project’s aim ofdeveloping a community ofpractice of staff equipped to usethe student voice withinprofessional development whichwas further supported withguidance for staff as to how tocapture and use the studentvoice, templates of our developedforms for the process andopportunities to engage with like-minded others.

An outcome of the first projectwas the value students couldbring if enabled to participate incurriculum design anddevelopment and when a furtherround of ESCalate funding

Thank you, ESCalate! Yourrecognition of the worth of ourideas and the funding you providedenabled the Hearing the StudentVoice team to undertake twofascinating projects which we hopehave contributed to theprominence which the studentvoice is now given in highereducation.

Our interest in this areadeveloped from my ownexperience at Edinburgh NapierUniversity where our use of thestudent voice in academicprofessional development hadshown it to have a significantimpact. The project team receivedan ESCalate grant in early 2006 toinvestigate how student voices canbe employed to enhanceacademic practice. Of course,people were already using thestudent voice but perhaps what wedid was different – different then,anyway:

� We valued the physicality of theactual voice and how hearing itenabled staff to engage withthe student perspective notonly by hearing what was saidbut also how it was said.

� We asked students tocontribute their views on theirexperiences of learning,

teaching and assessment –rather than their programmes ofstudy – and then we broughtthese views directly into theprofessional development arena.

As Asmar, following a similarintervention in her own institution,noted:

Bringing together of faculty andstudents for discussion of theprocess of teaching and learning inwhich they are jointly involved(rather than the usual focus on thecontent of the curriculum) is as rareas it is valuable. (Asmar, 1999)

The funding for the first projectenabled the team and ourcollaborators to be involved indeveloping and evaluating eightcase studies whose work focussedon different purposes and usingdifferent approaches, media andmechanisms.

Examples include: � How we like to be taught:

recording student views onlearning and teaching to create aDVD used to support staffdevelopment

� My first year experience:constructing student videodiaries �

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when they see a direct benefit oftheir contribution, there is evidencethat there is increased engagementwith their programmes of study(QAA, 2005). It may have taken usyears to find this out but a studentidentified this early in our work:

There should be more listening tothe students. More listening would create more participationwith students, more involvement, more interest from students.(student project participant)

In the four years since weoriginally received our initial grantthere have been many changes inthe roles of the project team (whoare drawn from Birmingham City,Edinburgh Napier, Leeds

became available in 2008 wesuccessfully bid for a project toinvestigate this further. Theoutcomes of the second projectincluded 11 case studies ofpractice from different institutionsthat focussed on studentassessment, feedback and thedesign of induction materials forinternational students,.

We aimed to engage the sectorand held a national conference atLeeds Metropolitan University inMay 2009 which was attended byover 60 staff representing 25institutions. Again, the studentcontributions added a fresh andthought-provoking element to theday.

A significant conclusion fromour work is that hearing the depth

and clarity of the student voicesurprises, engages and motivatesstaff. Hearing the spoken word itselfmoves staff as it builds an emotionalconnection between speaker andlistener. When the student voice isemployed within appropriateprofessional development contextsstaff often find this a positiveexperience and identify – andcommit to – changes in academicpractice as a result: the two criteriaidentified as measures of the impactof professional developmentinterventions by Rust (1998).

We also noticed that the veryprocess of asking students theirviews and responding to them isbeneficial for them. When studentsperceive that their views are valuedby their institution and, particularly,

20 ESCalatenews

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Coming full circle, my owninstitution employs the studentvoice in many ways – inworkshops, focus groups,conferences, DVDs, podcasts,evaluations and onlinediscussions among others – andwe seek to demonstrate throughits use that enhancing theexperience of our students is theaim in all we seek to do.

Our project took place at a timewhen there was a widergroundswell of activity ineducation around studentengagement and we are pleasedto have been part of that and tohave contributed to it. Thank youESCalate for giving us thatopportunity and best wishes foryour next 10 years!

Metropolitan and Westminsteruniversities). Two of our originalteam members emigrated(separately!) to America, two newmembers have come on board andall have different roles

A key outcome for the projectteam from participating in theprojects has been the valuable timeand opportunity it has provided uswith for the exchange of ideas, forreflection and for our ownprofessional development. We allretain an enthusiasm for the studentvoice and facilitate sessions withinour own institutions or – by invitation– at external events to encouragecolleagues to develop approachesand mechanisms to enable them tohear – and to heed – studentvoices.

ESCalatenews 21

As Head of Professional Development at

Edinburgh Napier University, her role

involves facilitating the enhancement of

academic practice across the University

through the provision of learning

opportunities for staff (including

workshops, online sessions, academic

induction and staff conferences) and

enabling staff to create more flexible and

effective provision for students through

technology-enhanced learning.

She is a Fellow of the Higher

Education Academy and co-chair of the

Conference Committee of Staff and

Educational Development Association.

ReferencesAsmar, C (1999) ‘Scholarship,experience or both? A developer’sapproach to cross-cultural teaching’International Journal for AcademicDevelopment 4 (1)

QAA (2005) Outcomes frominstitutional audit. Studentrepresentation and feedbackarrangements QAA, Gloucester

Rust, C (1998) ‘The impact ofeducational development workshopson teachers’ practice’ InternationalJournal for Academic Development3 (1)

Further information including the finalreports and full case studies isavailable on the project websites:

Hearing the student voice: promotingand encouraging the effective use ofthe student voice to enhance inlearning, teaching and assessment inhigher education:www2.napier.ac.uk/studentvoiceshttp://escalate.ac.uk/2222

Hearing the student voice: involvingstudents in curriculum design anddelivery:www2.napier.ac.uk/studentvoices/curriculumhttp://escalate.ac.uk/4314

‘‘‘‘A significantconclusion fromour work is thathearing the depthand clarity of thestudent voicesurprises, engagesand motivatesstaff.

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needs felt by individuals and teams,and the substantial interest frompractitioners in undertaking research ofvarying sorts.

We made two decisions as a result ofthis discussion – we needed to seekfunding to support a research networkfor practitioners in the LLS and weneeded to learn more about the workof ESCalate.

For us the importance of the networkwas to engage practitioners inresearching their own workingcontexts, and to increase researchcapacity within the sector. We knew ofthe wealth of research on FE byexternal researchers, and were acutelyaware of the need for more research

22 ESCalatenews

Diane Thurston

If we are serious about making themost of learning opportunities,including the idea of improving them,then we need very good informationabout what people currently do, whythey do it, and why they keep doing it.(James and Diment, 2003: 407)

In summer of 2008, I had a familiarand typically heated discussion with acolleague about the need to supportresearch in the lifelong learning sector(LLS). Both of us were in the role oflecturer and student (I was completingmy MA in Education and my colleaguewas and is working on her PHD) andboth of us were keenly aware ofresearch activity in our sector, support

We were not expecting thepersonal approach that theESCalate team members adopted,nor the developmental approach tothe funding process or the accessto members of the ESCalate team.

The origins of the CETTnetpractitioner network

wanted to enable practitioners in thelifelong learning sector to research more into their own working contexts - sheaccessed ESCalate funding in order to do this and explains here how the CETTnetResearch Network came about

generated within the sector bypractitioners. We viewed practitionerresearch as more than a “stepping offpoint”, and more descriptiveapproaches to data collection andreporting as part of an interpretivistresearch tradition (Bartlett andBarton, 2006: 396). We strongly feltthat teachers need to “reflect criticallyon the wider institutional, policy, socialand cultural issues that enable orconstrain their practice” (Morton et al.,2006: 5) which we felt keenly in thepost-compulsory setting.

Our practitioner research network,the CETTnet research network, waslaunched in Nov 2008, with fundingfrom a grant from ESCalate, and isgaining in strength and continuing todevelop.

So how did it all happen? We hadnoted the negative impact ofpressures within the sector on thedevelopment of research capacity.We were familiar with a discourse ofdeficit in reference to the LLS whichpermeated this period1. However, ourexperience of applying for a grantfrom ESCalate in 2008 was arewarding professional experience,running counter to our expectations.

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ESCalatenews 23

Diane started teaching in Egypt in 1989

and has worked as an EFL, ESOL and

literacy tutor and teacher educator in

the UK, abroad and online. She started

work at the Teaching Development

Centre at Newcastle College in 2007

and manage Success North Centre of

Excellence in Teacher Training.

She established the CETTnet

practitioner network with her colleague,

Christine Byrne, with the aim of

supporting practitioner research and

with a membership from all settings in

the lifelong learning sector. As she

embarks on her doctorate studies, she

is more than ever aware of the need to

support researchers in the sector!

ReferencesBartlett, S. and Barton, D. (2006)‘Practitioner Research orDescriptions of ClassroomPractice? A discussion of teachersinvestigating their practice’,Educational Action Research,14:3, 395 – 405.

Department for Education andSkills (2002) ‘Success for All:reforming further education andtraining’, London, DfES.

Department for Education andSkills (2003) ‘The initial training offurther education teachers’,OFSTED, November 2003, HMI1762

Department for Education andSkills (2004) ‘Equipping ourTeachers for the Future: reforminginitial teacher training for thelearning and skills sector’, London,

Department for Education andSkills (2006) ‘Raising Skills,Improving Life Chances’, London,DfES

Department for Innovation,Universities and Skills, 2007 ‘TheFurther Education Teachers’Continuing ProfessionalDevelopment and Registration(England) Regulations 2007’,London, DIUS

James, D. and Diment, K. (2003)‘Going Underground? Learningand Assessment in an AmbiguousSpace’ Journal of VocationalEducation and Training Vol.55No.4

Morton, T. et al, (2006) ‘A literaturereview of research on teachereducation in adult literacy,numeracy and ESOL’, London:National research andDevelopment Centre for adultliteracy and numeracy.

O’Leary, M. (2006) ‘CanInspectors really improve thequality of teaching in the PCEsector? Classroom observationsunder the microscope’. Researchin Post-Compulsory Education,11:2, 191-198

Diane ThurstonNewcastle College

1 DfES, 2002; DfES, 2003; DfES, 2004; DfES, 2006

We were not expecting the personalapproach that the ESCalate teammembers adopted, nor thedevelopmental approach to thefunding process or the access tomembers of the ESCalate team. Anoutline proposal was invited andconstructive and encouragingfeedback was given, we hadproductive phone conversations withthe ESCalate projects team whichhelped us to shape our approach tothe CETTnet project but also made usconsider how the potentialcontribution of CETTnet members tothe research debate was valued, andimportantly helped us to extend ourresearch horizons.

ESCalate has gone on to contributeto our research network and the workof Success North CETT more widely,contributing to meetings of theCETTnet practitioner group, providingkeynote speakers and workshopfacilitators from the ESCalate team atfive subsequent CETT conferences.Tony Brown and Julie Hughes arenow working with the course leaderfor BA and MA in Lifelong Learningand Professional Development tosupport research and scholarlyactivity among students andmembers of the CETTnet group, whocome from a range of educationsettings. Contact with both Julie andTony has been described as“inspiring” by them, and the groupshave been motivated to engage intheir own collaborative research.

“We are still concerned aboutpressures on the sector and thedanger of resulting conformity whichcan run counter to genuine enquiry,and note that processes ostensibly putin place to support teacher learningmay be subverted within a culture ofcontrol” (Avis, 2002; O’Leary, 2006).

As our practitioner research networkdevelops and our research activitygrows, we are more aware of the needfor confidence-building to supportcapacity in our sector, and view in theESCalate approach key lessons fororganisations aiming to provide thissupport.

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24 ESCalatenews

Effect of a Real World EnterpriseProject on Graduate EmployabilitySkills, and co-opted me as her writingmentor. ESCalate was fantastic. Afteronly a couple of weeks Amanda hadbeen informed she was successful andhad been awarded £2,000 to fund theresearch. This was only the start of aseries of successes for Amanda. InJuly she graduated at Liverpool HopeUniversity with a first class Degree andwas offered a series of lectureships,finally accepting the post of Early YearsLecturer at Halton College and startinga PhD at Manchester University.Amanda is now finishing her paper buthas put some of her career successdown to presenting at the ESCalateStudent Conference last year andbeing able to show she can attractfunding for research and academicwriting.

This year Amanda completed herown poster presentation on her paperat ESCalate’s Second StudentConference at Glamorgan University inApril of this year but the support didn’tend there. They have also offered

My involvement with ESCalatestarted when I submitted a casestudy to Escalate on a Dragons’Den project our EnterpriseEducation students were doing inprimary schools and I offered tohelp with the first ESCalate studentconference, something I reallyenjoyed.

I attended the first ever EscalateStudent Conference in 2009 atAston University not really knowingwhat to expect. To be on the safeside I took two reliable students,Amanda and Javed, and a set ofdance mats to help our session onStudent Research and Enterprise.Both Amanda and Javed hadproved reliable students on theirEducation Studies Course atLiverpool Hope University and wereexcellent presenters, but none of usimagined just what a greatconference it would turn out to be.

Our presentation went wellenough but that was just the start ofthings. During the Conference wehad a friendly chat with the

Conference leader Tony Brown aboutwriting up some of the things we haddiscussed in our presentation. Oneof our themes that particularlyinterested him was the effect ofenterprise on graduate employability.At Liverpool Hope I had worked for anumber of years to put a programmetogether using a real world situationwith a problem based learning focus.This became the Dragons’ DenProject for the Enterprise Educationcourse where students had to runafter schools clubs in primary schoolsand Amanda and Javed had bothtaken part. Tony felt we should writethis up as a paper, but I wasstruggling for time and he suggestedeither Amanda or Javed might like toapply for a student grant fromESCalate to fund the paper with meacting as the mentor.

As Javed had been accepted for aPost Graduate Certificate inEducation, Amanda took up Tony’schallenge. By summer last year shehad completed the application forfunding her paper, Assessing the

Shooting Stars researchwith ESCalate

writes from alecturer’s point of view about the support ESCalate hasgiven to one of his students.

Joe Gazdula

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ESCalatenews 25

and Society at Liverpool Hope

University, a job he combines with

his role as the Education Deanery

Enterprise Fellow. A dynamic

individual, Joe is also Managing

Director of his own company,

UBERWEB, a digital innovation

company which offers

digital/enterprise consultancy and

owns the rights to a number of

digital products including M.A.T.S. a

multiple activity system for children

and SHARK, a digital protection

system. Joe is always on the

lookout for innovative projects and

lists enterprise education,

consultancy, enterprise research

and completing his Doctorate as

critical interests.

Enterprise education usingproblem based learning:An analysis of ‘real world’enterprise projects onundergraduate employability.http://escalate.ac.uk/6287

Amanda...has put some of her careersuccess down to presenting at the ESCalateStudent Conference last year and being ableto show she can attract funding for researchand academic writing.

Amanda support in helping with thefollow up paperwork and even tofind a peer reviewed journal toensure it gets published.

Amanda is highly delighted withthe approach taken by ESCalate tohelping students and said “Escalategive highly skilled and professionalhelp to students which

complements their funding approachreally well. They are friendly andapproachable and you never feelyou’re researching on your own. I would recommend any studentinterested in researching to contactthem.”

As for myself, I can’t wait for nextyear’s conference!

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26 ESCalatenews

Schooltoons, an animation resourcepack for schools, is the end result ofa three year research project,exploring ways to make animation avital part of the secondary schoolcurriculum.

The ESCalate research grantallowed us to undertake a series ofaction research-based casestudies, which observed GCSE andBTEC Media students engaged in arange of animation projects. Thesecase studies identified the extremely

‘‘‘‘believes strongly in the power of animation

projects to support the development of literacy, numeracy and social skills in secondaryschool pupils. Here she details an ESCalate-funded project that enabled her to researchinto the role that animation can play in the curriculum.

Britta Pollmuller

Schooltoons -animation andcreativity ineducation

Animationwork is aproven wayto build selfconfidence inthe learner’screativeabilities.

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ESCalatenews 27

Britta PollmullerMedia Projects East/Norwich UniversityCollege of the Arts

Britta Pollmuller is a

contemporary new media artist,

teacher-as-artist and researcher

working within Norwich University

College of the Arts. She lectures

in Games Art and Design,

Animation, Photography,

Machinima and Film. As company

co-director (Media Projects East:

www.mediaprojectseast.co.uk)

Britta works with community

groups and schools around the

themes of media arts, creativity

and social issues. For example

‘Home Truths’ whereby young

people from Norfolk have worked

together to write a book for

schools about the issues which

can lead to becoming homeless.

excitement of doing animationnext year!! He has never beenexcited about anything he doesin school.

And this, from a Head of Art andDesign at a secondary school inNorfolk:

In line with national averages, ofthe 17 students involved four havesome kind of learning difficulty. Theanimation project enabled thesestudents to achieve in a way that Ihad not witnessed before. Theybecame confident and articulate, inpart due to working within a safeenvironment for a concentratedamount of time, but also due to thehigh expectations placed uponthem and their loyalty to ‘thegroup’.I can see that it is a very expressivemedium and that the language ofmovement itself is powerful andindividual, akin to dance perhaps,but sharing the language offraming and composition withphotography and painting. The project created opportunitiesfor pupils to explore the value ofanimation as part of the creativeindustry.

We have now found a publisherand hopefully The Teachers’Animation Toolkit will be availableto schools and teachers across theUK and internationally.

valuable part animation can play inenhancing literacy, numeracy andsocial skills, and visual creativityamongst pupils of all ages. Theyalso highlighted the types ofpractical and theoretical supportteachers urgently need to teachanimation effectively, and offerpractical, classroom-friendlysolutions.

The pack includes lesson plans,worksheets, technical advice, andschemes of work. Theory is intercutwith practical activities throughoutthe pack, covering a wide range ofstyles, from model animation todrawn. A series of schemes of worktake the reader from initial idea tofinished project, with useful advicealong the way.

Animation work is a proven way tobuild self confidence in the learner'screative abilities. The hands on,personal engagement which theprocess demands, allows eachindividual to take immediateownership of his/her work. Pupilstruly care about the outcomes, andstrive to reach ever moredemanding goals. The multifacednature of the process provideslearners with many different pointsof engagement and an open endedpath into discovery. This quote froma school teacher about an oftenexcluded student says it all:

Even Liam stood in front of mejumping up and down with the

Schooltoons is a NorwichUniversity College of the Artsproject, in partnership withMedia Projects East Ltd andsupported by ESCalate,NESTA and CreativePartnerships.

Example of animations:http://schooltoons.ning.com/video/animatedmusicvideoswmv-1

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28 ESCalatenews

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My introduction to ESCalate wasin the spring of 2003. I wasinvited to be part of a discussionwith a number of colleaguesfrom other universities who werealready involved in subjectcentre working, and wasfascinated by the differentprojects being undertaken. Theopportunity to work withESCalate came shortly after that.The HEA was funding a numberof projects on developingemployability for undergraduatestudents, and ESCalate was torun one of these. I had becomeincreasingly interested in studentemployability since becomingcourse leader for a new EarlyChildhood Studies Degree. Mostprogrammes in a school ofEducation lead to QualifiedTeacher Status, so have avocational outcome. With anEarly Childhood Studies degreestudents wanted to know what

their career options were ongraduating; a question that is evenmore pertinent now. Through myinvolvement in the project withESCalate, and ESECT (EnhancingStudent Employability Co-ordinationTeam) I discovered, of course, thatemployability is far more than afocus on career options, or indeedon transferable skills, but involves afar deeper interrogation ofknowledge, understanding andvalues.

Working with Dr Julie Anderson,who was leading the project forESCalate, was a great opportunity.We set up a small research project,trawled a range of sources to gatherliterature about approaches toemployability, then gathered dataabout student views onemployability and career options.We collected data from colleaguesat other institutions. What didemployability mean to them? Howshould HEIs engage with

‘‘ ‘‘employability? The range ofanswers were on a continuum fromvery positive to very negative!Analysis of the data threw up variedand interesting results which wepresented in different contexts. Oneof the benefits was attendingemployability-focused conferencesand discovering many new contactsin the field. Some of the workundertaken by colleagues in othersubject associations was revealingand helped the development of ourproject, deepening ourunderstanding of how thecurriculum needs to foster studentself knowledge, reflection, and aconfident engagement with life longlearning.

StudentEmployability -what are theissues?

...it was also theopportunity thatESCalate offered togo beyond subjectboundaries, and towork with academicin differentdisciplines whichprovided a valuableresource.

Helena Mitchellbecame increasingly interested in issues of student employability as part of herwork and with the help of an ESCalate grant has been able to conduct furtherresearch into this crucial area. �


ESCalatenews 29

elena Mitchellestminster

nstitute ofducation, Oxfordrookes University

Helena Mitchell is Head of

Department for Early Childhood

and Primary Education at

Westminster Institute of Education,

Oxford Brookes University.The

Department includes both primary

teacher education,and also non

QTS degrees in Early Childhood

and Education Studies. Her

research work has included a

focus on early literacy, professional

development of teachers and

practitioners, and also

employability issues for students

on non QTS programmes.

For our project, Julie assembledthe data into two ESCalatepublications on employability, onefor students1 and one for staff 2.We also presented papers at anumber of conferences includingUCET and BERA.

Involvement with ESCalate wasa clear benefit. But it was also theopportunity that ESCalate offeredto go beyond subject boundaries,and to work with academics indifferent disciplines whichprovided a valuable resource.Because education is oftenpractice based it feels as though itis in a half way position betweenpractice and academic theory.Working with academics from

different disciplines dispelled thatview, both providing access tonetworks and resources from othersubject areas, and deeperperspectives on approaches toemployability and the content andstructure of degree programmes.

Since its completion, theemployability project has continuedto inform our planning for studentprogrammes. It has enabledengagement in relevant researchand fostered new networks. Notonly are the published resourcesvery useful, but the positive andenergetic support of the ESCalateteam at Bristol has been invaluable.

1 http://escalate.ac.uk/7197 2 http://escalate.ac.uk/2988

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Gordon Joyes

I was delighted to be asked towrite a short piece on howESCalate has supported my workand I would like to focus on theway the ESCalate small grantscheme supported the realisationof an important innovation that isnow helping thousands ofresearch students and academics

worldwide to develop theirunderstanding of educationalresearch.

The story began for me in 1996when I began supervising researchstudents within the School ofEducation at the University ofNottingham. These beginningresearch students were so

‘‘ ‘‘obviously inspired by others talkingabout their research - this acted asa bridge to the initially fairlyincomprehensible methodologytexts they needed to engage with. Itherefore decided to video recordmy successful students talkingthrough their research at the time oftheir viva and used these as a

30 ESCalatenews

was instrumental in supporting hiseducation students’ use of video to help them and their peers reflect on theresearch process.

I therefore decidedto video record mysuccessfulstudents talkingthrough theirresearch at thetime of their vivaand used these as aresource for otherstudents

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The value of usingVideo Narrativesfor research

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Gordon JoyesUniversity ofNottingham

Gordon Joyes is Associate

Professor in e-learning at the School

of Education, University of

Nottingham, UK where he is course

leader for the Masters in Educational

Research Methods, and a research

student supervisor. He is an

experienced developer/tutor on

online postgraduate courses as

well as a researcher into online tools

to support learning. He was the

Project Director for the HEFCE

funded V-ResORT project 2004-8.

ESCalatenews 31

ReferencesJoyes, G. (2002a). On-linelearning and research methods:An ESCalate funded project.Paper presented at the ESCalateResearch Methods for ResearchStudents Conference, LondonJune 7, 2002 . Retrieved May 7,2010, fromhttp://escalate.ac.uk/resources/researchmethodsonlinesupport/20020607_workshop.rtf

Joyes, G. (2002b). ESCalateResearch methods teaching andlearning: Effective on-linesupport conference reportRetrieved May 7, 2010, fromhttp://escalate.ac.uk/resources/researchmethodsonlinesupport/conference.html

Joyes , G. and Banks, S. (2010)Achieving sustainability throughproject-based research [online],HEA. Retrieved May 7, 2010,fromhttp://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ourwork/fdtls/fdtl_research_and_sustainability.

Useful linkswww.v-resort.ac.uk

resource for other students. When Ibegan to develop online materialsfor use on our new onlineprofessional doctorate in educationin 2000 I also captured videoresearch narratives fromexperienced researchers whovisited the School of Education andused the new online videostreaming technologies available tomake them more accessible.

During this time I became awareof the work by colleagues in otherinstitutions around the use of videofor research and for researchteaching and decided to organise aone- day conference to share whatwe were doing and produce asummary report to inform practice. Iapplied for an ESCalate small grantin 2002 on the use of learningtechnologies in the teaching ofresearch methods. This supported aworkshop at the ESCalate ResearchMethods for Research Studentsconference at the Institute ofEducation in London in June 2002(Joyes 2002a) as well as theESCalate conference: ResearchMethods, Teaching and Learning:Effective Online Support at BirkbeckCollege, University of London,September 2002 (Joyes 2002b).Twenty two higher educationinstitutions were represented andthe result was an identified need forInternet-based materials to supportresearch students in training andonline video narratives as somethingthat would add value to existing

pedagogies used in teacher-led aswell as student-centred settings.This process also identified keypartners, the Universities ofNottingham, Sheffield, Bath andCanterbury Christ Church whodeveloped a successful bid underthe HEFCE Fund for theDevelopment of Teaching andLearning (FDTL5) for the VirtualResources for Online ResearchTraining project (V-ResORT).

The project ran from 2004-8 andwas a great opportunity to workwith colleagues from a largenumber of HEIs to develop,through an action researchframework, a freely availableflexible online resource basedaround searchable videonarratives that subsequentevaluation has shown to be ofenormous value to researchstudents as well as academicsbeginning educational research.Important outcomes arepublications that inform the HEcommunity about design forlearning, sustainability and the roleof research in education, forexample Joyes & Banks (2010).This has all been made possible bya great idea that was nurturedthrough some initial startupfunding, the support of ESCalatefor the bid to HEFCE and ongoingsupport through ESCalatemembership on the steering groupand wider contacts through theESCalate networks.

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Sheena Banks

My involvement with ESCalategoes back to 2003 when I was aawarded an ESCalate small grant.This was the e-Research: usingmultimedia methods for researchmethods teaching and learningproject completed in 20041.Although this was only a relativelysmall amount of funding a longtime ago, the implementation anddissemination of that projectproved to be a very importantcatalyst for much of what hashappened to me professionally inthe six years since then. Out ofthis small but significant‘seedcorn’ funding came muchbigger professional and research

opportunities. These enabled me tomeet and work with new partners,leverage other externally fundedprojects and publish. I have beenable to extend my professionalpractice by taking what I learnt fromthe ESCalate project into otherprojects.

Following the completion of the e-Research project in 2004, Sheffieldwas able to join up withNottingham, Bath and CanterburyChrist Church University toparticipate in the HEFCE fundedFDTL V-ReSORT project2 (VirtualResources for Online ResearchTraining) from 2004-8. In parallelwith this, I was able to become a

member of the eChina UK teamfrom 2004-8 which gave me theopportunity to cross-fertiliseknowledge from e-Research and V-ResORT into an internationalcontext.

During this time, with mycolleague Dr Gordon Joyes fromNottingham University (whocollaborated with me on V-ResORT)I have been able to make good useof ESCalate networks and events todisseminate our project and to builda user base of our online resourcesthat are still available through ourwebsite – at the last count 80,000worldwide. More recently, we havecontributed chapters about our

32 ESCalatenews

ESCalate - an important com

praises the way in which ESCalateallows education professionals to share effective practice, new ideas, knowledgeand resources. �

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Sheena Banks has been a

researcher in the School of


Sheffield since 2001. Her research

interests are technology enhanced

learning, online communities of

practice and intercultural e-learning.

She is currently leading the

development of a Virtual Graduate

School at the University of Sheffield

and is also a member of the Inter-

disciplinary Research in Socio-

Digital Worlds (IRiS) programme at

Sheffield.

‘‘

ESCalatenews 33

experience of project research anddevelopment to a HEApublication3.

At the same time as carrying outthis professional work, I have beencompleting my doctorate part-time. Not only have I been able tomake use of online researchresources available throughESCalate, I have been able tomeet up and make contact withother researchers throughESCalate networks who not onlyhave helped me with my researchideas but have often ended up aspersonal friends. This wasespecially important to me when Ilost my partner in 2006.

Another reason I am grateful toESCalate is because of itschampioning of new ideas and supportfor innovation. Nine years agotechnology enhanced learning was stillsomething that was new and itsmeaning for educational practice andresearch somewhat uncertain. Therewas very much a need for criticaldebate and development of research-informed practice. Because ofESCalate, I was able to make a smallcontribution to those debates andpractice and it is to ESCalate’s creditthat it fosters criticality as well asconsensus.

Reflecting on all of the above, I cansee that ESCalate operates as acommunity of practice in the sensethat it promotes and facilitates mutualengagement in education from whichknowledge about research andpractice flows, and which in turnfosters the building of multiple identitiesand shared discourses around thetheory and practice of education. Thisis something that is not always easy tounderstand from the ‘public’ face ofESCalate as it is something that has tobe experienced but it would be true tosay that ESCalate has enhanced myprofessional understanding of thatworld and its many complexities.

1 http://escalate.ac.uk/11322 http://escalate.ac.uk/17003 www.heacademy.ac.uk/

assets/York/documents/ourwork/fdtl/FDTLVoices.pdf

mmunity of practice

‘‘Not only have I beenable to make use ofonline researchresources availablethrough ESCalate, Ihave been able tomeet up and makecontact with otherresearchers throughESCalate networks.



34 ESCalatenews34 ESCalatenews

In September 2004 I returned tothe PGCE programme at theUniversity of Bristol after havingspent three years as Head ofFaculty and an Advanced SkillsTeacher (AST) in a local school tokeep myself updated andgrounded in the rapidly changingsecondary school developments.One of the first events at theGraduate School of Education atBristol University was a ‘show-and-tell’ session looking at potentials ofnew technologies for teaching andlearning. My colleague FedericaOlivero was demonstrating a newpiece of software called‘Videopapers Builder’ she wasusing for creating videopapers fordisseminating research by teachers(see Olivero et al., 2004). Watchingher I was really struck by thepotential videopapers could havefor my field of initial teachereducation.

Videopapers are multimediadocuments that integrate andsynchronise video, images and textin one non-linear cohesivedocument. They can easily becreated via the free software VideoPaper Builder 31 and weredeveloped as part of the ‘BridgingResearch and Practice’ project atTERC in Boston, MA to create an

Elisabeth Lazarusexplains how an ESCalate grant was the catalyst for her researchinto the potential use of videopapers with PGCE students. �

Videopapers and Teacher

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ESCalatenews 35ESCalatenews 35

Elisabeth joined the University of

Bristol in 1992 after having worked

as a modern languages teacher and

Head of Faculty in a range of urban

and rural secondary schools. From

2004-2008 Elisabeth was the

Course Director for the Graduate

School of Education's PGCE

Programme .She now teaches on

the MEd, EdD, Postgraduate

Certificate in Education (PGCE)

Modern Foreign Language (MFL)

programme and has led this since

1994. Her many research interests

and publications have been shaped

by her professional background and

international experience.

ReferencesLazarus, E. and Olivero, F. (2009)Videopapers as a tool for reflectionon practice in initial teachereducation, Technology, Pedagogyand Education, 18, 3, 255-267.

Olivero, F., John, P. andSutherland, R. (2004) Seeing isbelieving: using videopapers totransform teachers’ professionalknowledge and practice,Cambridge Journal of Education,34, 2, 179-191.

Olivero, F. and Lazarus, E. (2007)Using videopapers for professionallearning and assessment in initialteacher education, paper presentedat 12 Biennial Conference of theEuropean Association for Researchon Learning and Instruction,Budapest, Hungary.

Olivero, F. and Lazarus, E. (2009)Using videopapers to communicateand represent practice inpostgraduate educationprogrammes, In R. Krumsvik (Ed.)Learning in the network society anddigitized school, New: York: NovaScience Publishers.

1 http://vpb.concord.org

alternative genre for the production,use and dissemination ofeducational research.

The idea of trialling videopapersand researching their potential forITE took hold but it was only a SmallGrant from ESCalate in spring 2005which meant that we could start theproject in earnest. We beganpiloting by working with small trialgroups of Modern ForeignLanguage (MFL) PGCE studentswho replaced one of theirassignments with a videopaper. Intheir videopaper they were able toselect sequences and moments intheir lessons (video clips), link theseto children’s work (slides), personalanalysis and reflection (text),underpinned by research (text) andhyperlinked to resources and lessonplans – all in one place and oneenvironment thereby creating apotentially powerful digital product(Lazarus and Olivero, 2009).

There were of course teethingproblems as with all technology andbeing able to tap into Federica’sexpertise as both researcher andtechnical advisor on the project,through the Small Grant, wasinvaluable to me. We collected dataon areas such as:� The process of creating and

reading a videopaper

� The relationships betweencreating a videopaper andwriting an essay andassessment

� Student teachers’ perceptionsof videopapers as tools tosupport self-reflection

� The structure and content ofvideopapers and comparisonsof videopapers by differentgroups.

After positive experiences witha range of different MFL groupswe have shared our findingsthrough workshops andconferences both nationally andinternationally. Meanwhile thenetwork of teacher educatorsusing videopapers in their workexpanded within the University ofBristol and beyond to Swedenand Norway. In 2007 colleaguesfrom Bergen, Boston and Bristol,for example, held a jointsymposium on videopapers atEARLi (Olivero and Lazarus,2007).

The ESCalate grant was ourcatalyst and together with fundingfrom the Graduate School ofEducation at the University ofBristol has allowed the work toexpand and deepen. It has alsomeant that this year all PGCEMFL students reflected on anddemonstrated their practice andknowledge through a videopaper.

Education

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36 ESCalatenews


Angela graduated as a music

teacher in 2005 and since then she

has worked in Secondary Schools

throughout Glasgow. At present she

is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in

the Faculty of Education at the

University of Glasgow and is in the

process of completing her PhD

which looks at identifying and

accommodating gift and talent in the

music classroom.

I am nearing the end of my PhDstudies at the University ofGlasgow, researching how musicalgift and talent is recognised andaccommodated within school. Theproject looks at the influenceswhich impact on the musicaldevelopment of children and howthese experiences shape theyoung person’s approach tomusic-making. The study involveda large group of successful andcritically acclaimed internationalmusicians, in addition to teachersand pupils from universities,conservatoires and schools acrossthe UK.

At the end of my first year ofstudy (2006-07) I successfullyapplied for a student grant fromESCalate. The grant was to helpme collect data for my researchfrom across the UK. As a beginningresearcher, the process of lookingfor funding opportunities can(sometimes) feel a bit intimidating,from trying to find the funding

(which can be difficult in arts-basedresearch) to the process of writingthe application itself. ESCalate wasdifferent and offered support andadvice from the first note of interestto raising the invoices for the grant.One aspect which I foundparticularly useful was the feedbackon the original concept note.Applying to ESCalate was my firstattempt at ‘bidding’ for externalfunding and I wasn’t sure aboutwhat to do.The ESCalate teamhelped me, by letting me know whatan expression of interest (and later afull proposal) should include, howbest to estimate costings and manyother aspects of the grant.

While I was still undergoing myresearch, in the spring of 2009, Iwas invited to speak about myexperiences of being a new studentresearcher at the First AnnualESCalate conference inBirmingham. This was a greatopportunity, not only for myself inpresenting at the conference, butalso in that a number of studentsand representatives from theFaculty of Education made the tripfrom Glasgow to Birmingham. Theconference allowed us to networkwith other academics andresearchers and to share ourexperiences to date. I would saythat this has been a worthwhileaddition to being involved withESCalate ̶ getting to know otherpeople and their work. Aftercompleting my grant-funded projecta few people (parents and

‘‘This was a greatopportunity, not onlyfor myself in pres-enting at the (ESCalate)conference, but also inthat a number ofstudents andrepresentatives fromthe Faculty ofEducation made thetrip from Glasgow toBirmingham.

‘‘ESCalatenews 37

academics) contacted me aboutmy work and told me why theyfound it interesting. From apersonal perspective I feel thatthe whole process and ideologybehind ESCalate is significant.I think that it’s encouraging toknow that there is a teamdedicated to supporting newresearchers (as well as moreexperienced) by encouragingpeople to share their ideas witha wider audience.

Although my postgraduatestudies are nearing completionand the final project reportcompleted, I hope to remaininvolved with ESCalate. Thesupport and encouragement firstshown to me by the team almostfour years ago has acted as agood introduction to my work inacademia.

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The Mental Health in HigherEducation project (mhhe) wasestablished in 2003 with the aimof enhancing networking and thesharing of approaches to learningand teaching about mental healthacross the disciplines in UKhigher education. ESCalatebecame a partner of the project in2007, joining four other HigherEducation Academy SubjectCentres: Social Policy and SocialWork, Psychology, HealthSciences & Practice andMedicine, Dentistry and VeterinaryMedicine.

38 ESCalatenews

The observation that ‘a smallincrease in levels of wellbeing canproduce a large decrease inmental health problems acrosspeople of all ages’ (Foresight,2008) is embedded in the thinkingbehind the Government’s NewHorizons policy (DoH, 2009). Thelinks between mental wellbeingand learning are increasinglyrecognised, with a plethora ofreports on the role of schools insupporting pupils’ mental healthand an interest in the wellbeing –across FE and HE contexts – ofboth students and lecturers.

Jill Andersonwrites about what happens when a well-establishedsubject centre supports the work of aninterdisciplinary project to achieve remarkable results.

Part of our remit is to work withoutside agencies,to help disseminate,support anddevelop theirresources to benefitour community.The followingarticles are fromtwo such groups

New Horizons: ESCalateand the Mental Health inHigher Education project

�

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Jill Anderson is Senior Project

Development Officer of the Mental

Health in Higher Education project,

based in the Department of Applied

Social Science at Lancaster

University. She currently teaches

mental health on the BA/MA in

Social Work and is enrolled in the

Doctoral Programme in Educational

Research at Lancaster.

What happens when you bringtogether an established subjectcentre with a sound grasp of itsconstituency, and the issues thataffect it, and a small interdisciplinaryproject with a focus on a particularcross-cutting issue? Through itslink with ESCalate, mhhe has beenable to refine and develop its workin three ways:

Initial Teacher Education.Workshops on wellbeing and InitialTeacher Education have been run atESCalate and TEAN conferences, inconjunction with the nationalCAMHS support service. This hasserved to raise awareness amongstteacher educators of the range ofresources available to support theintegration of wellbeing issues withinprogrammes (Everybody’s Businessfor example); and amongst policymakers of the context within whichInitial Teacher Education isdelivered1.

Student mental health andwellbeing. The primary focus ofmhhe has been on mental health asa content area of curricula. It isthrough our relationship withESCalate that we have been able tobring issues around the mentalhealth and wellbeing of studentsmore to centre stage. Wesupported the ESCalate-themedfunding call on wellbeing, and wereinvolved in reviewing applications.Two ESCalate-funded projects havea focus on this area2.

ESCalatenews 39

ReferencesDepartment of Health (2009) NewHorizons: A shared vision formental health, London:Department of Health

Foresight Mental Capital andWellbeing Project (2008). FinalProject report – Executivesummary. The Government Officefor Science, London

Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R.(2003),Threshold concepts andtroublesome knowledge (1):linkages to ways of thinking andpractising in the disciplines,Edinburgh: ETL OccasionalReport 4

1 www.mhhe.heacademy.ac.uk/ite 2 www.mhhe.heacademy.ac.uk/studentmentalhealth 3 www.mhhe.heacademy.ac.uk/thresholdconcepts

Threshold concepts, troublesomeknowledge and mental health. TheESCalate-themed funding bid tookas one starting point the work byMeyer and Land (2003) on thresholdconcepts and ‘troublesomeknowledge’. In parallel, the MentalHealth in Higher Education projecthas been exploring the notion ofmental wellbeing as a ‘thresholdconcept’, across a range ofdisciplines in higher education. Thiswas one theme of our recentconference: Living and Learning,Learning and Teaching: mentalhealth in higher education3.

In summary, the partnershipbetween ESCalate and mhhe hasfunctioned to increase the emphasisof the mhhe project on the mentalhealth of children and adolescents(through our exploration of the placegiven to mental wellbeing in theeducation of school teachers). Ithas fed into our growing interest inthe mental health of learners and ofteachers and how this links with theways in which mental health istaught. Finally, it has grounded thework of the project more thoroughlyin recent bodies of thinking withineducational research. We havebeen extremely grateful for thesupport of ESCalate and lookforward to a continued anddeveloping relationship.

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The Higher Education LearningPartnerships (HELP) CETL hasbeen working with University ofPlymouth Colleges (UPC) tosupport the provision of HigherEducation (HE) in FurtherEducation (FE) Colleges. Myresponsibility at the HELP CETLwas to provide opportunities forlecturing and support staff fromacross the UPC network toengage in scholarly activity andresearch through its reward andrecognition strategy, known asthe Award Holder Scheme.Personally, I am relatively “new” toeducation, entering HE in FEfollowing the completion of a PhDin Physical Geography. Thereforewhilst I am an experiencedresearcher, I was, and still amdeveloping as an academic, sothis made our collaboration withESCalate very valuable for me, aswell as the HELP CETL and ourpartner college staff. Our jointwork has allowed us to providefurther development anddissemination opportunities to theAward Holders that would haveotherwise been unavailable.

Working to support HE in FElecturers to engage in scholarlyactivity and research for me is atwo way exchange; I haveassisted them in developing as

40 ESCalatenews

Rebecca Turnerexplains how the collaboration between ESCalateand the HELP CETL provided invaluable supportfor scholarly activity amongst staff at theUniversity of Plymouth Colleges. �

Write

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Rebecca Turner is currently an

Educational Researcher and

Developer at the HELP CETL at the

University of Plymouth. Whilst

working at the CETL Rebecca has

supported scholarly activity and

research across the University of

Plymouth Partner College network,

and has also been undertaking

similar work for the Academy’s HE

in FE Enhancement Programme.

Recently she has been researching

the impact of the expansion of HE in

FE on lecturing.

researchers, and they haveenhanced my knowledge in a wholehost of areas. Award Holders havesuccessfully presented theirresearch at conferences. Howeverwritten dissemination, particularlythrough scholarly articles, was stillproving challenging. Although TonyBrown was a member of the HELPCETL Advisory Group, I had notpreviously worked with ESCalate,and was therefore unsure of wherea request for help to support HE inFE practitioners to developacademic writing skills would lead.Fortunately ESCalate were receptiveto this idea and the Award HolderWriting Group was created.

Through the Writing Group webuilt on the existing ethos ofdialogue and worked collaborativelyto provide a supportive environmentfor writing - both physically by wayof a retreat and metaphorically byforming a group of supportive

colleagues. Over the following 12months, collectively we went on anexciting and creative journey thatresulted in 11 Award Holders writingscholarly narratives which reflectedon their experiences of working toprovide HE in Further Educationcolleges and undertaking research.These narratives were collated intoa joint HELP CETL/ESCalatepublication: Putting the I into Identityand Other Stories1. This publicationrepresented a significant milestonefor the Writing Group, the HELPCETL and UPC. For the AwardHolders it demonstrated thedistance they had travelled in theirdevelopment and for the HELPCETL/UPC it showcased thecommitment of UPC staff toteaching and learning.

ESCalate provided the HELPCETL with the expertise, freedomand confidence to run with an idea.However, this collaboration did notend with printing the publication:ESCalate, the HELP CETL andAward Holders have continued toshare their experience with others inthe HE community. In supportingthe Writing Group ESCalateprovided the HELP CETL and theAward Holders with a nationalplatform to disseminate their workand the expertise to explore a newarea of activity. Although the HELPCETL ends in July, the activity that ithas supported is continuing withinUPC and its partner college network.

ESCalatenews 41

‘‘ESCalateprovided theHELP CETL withthe expertise,freedom andconfidence torun with an idea.‘‘

1 http://escalate.ac.uk/6105

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42 ESCalatenews

Rosemary Deem is currentlyDean of History and SocialSciences at Royal Holloway,University of London, VisitingProfessor of Education at BristolUniversity and Visiting Professorof Management at LeicesterUniversity. Until January 2009she was Professor of Educationand Research Director forFaculty of Social Sciences andLaw at the University of Bristol.An Academician of the UKAcademy of Social Sciences,Rosemary is a sociologist whohas worked at Loughborough,York, the Open and LancasterUniversities and the formerNorth Staffordshire Polytechnic.She was director of ESCalatefrom 2001-2004.

Julie Anderson is SeniorLecturer at the University ofPlymouth, Faculty of Education,working primarily on theirInternational MastersProgramme (IMP). She is avisiting fellow at the GSoE,University of Bristol and one oftwo Associate Directors withESCalate. She worked asresearcher and then manager ofESCalate. Immediatelypreceding her appointment toPlymouth in January 2010, sheworked for fifteen months onsecondment from ESCalate tothe Higher Education AcademyYork office with the Director ofNetworks, David Sadler.

1) How/why did you first getinvolved with ESCalate?

Rosemary Deem: I joined theUniversity of Bristol in January 2001from Lancaster University and soonbegan talking to the then ESCalatemanager Arlene Gilpin about theCentre's activities. At Lancaster I hadbeen heavily involved in developing theinstitution's Teaching and LearningStrategy and had been foundingDirector of the University GraduateSchool as well as a member of theExecutive of the UK Council forGraduate Education. When the Directorof ESCalate, Professor Roger Murphy ofNottingham University, decided to stepdown I was encouraged by theGraduate School of Education to standfor the directorship. I took over in 2001,combining this role with that of Directorof Teaching and Learning for theGraduate School of Education at Bristoland also continued to do research,teach and supervise research students.

Julie Anderson: After working inschools, in business and nearingcompletion of a PhD, in 2002 I appliedfor an advertised researcher post withthe University of Bristol, GraduateSchool of Education where ESCalate isbased. ESCalate, like all 24 Subjectcentres, was relatively new – just acouple of years old – and so it was anexciting chance to get involved withsomething very different within highereducation.

2) Which of ESCalate’sachievements were you most proudof during your time in post?

RD: We established a range of activitiesand resources stretching from thoseteaching students studying for highereducation qualifications in furthereducation through to supervisors ofdoctoral students and also undertook aproject about education academics'understanding of education policyacross the four UK countries and howthis shaped their practice as educators.We also found ways to involveacademics who were highly research

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ESCalatenews 43

active in ESCalate's events – a groupwho are often quite resistant to beinginvolved in anything concerning teaching,learning and assessment.

JA: A recent external evaluation of thecentre undertaken through talking withESCalate contacts, project holders andattendees at our many events etc.,resulted in a report that outlined thatESCalate has achieved much that hasbeen welcomed by the educationcommunity UK wide.

A substantial part of my post for manyyears was running the ESCalate fundingof projects. This work involvedsupporting and advising potential biddersfrom all over the UK – as well as beingpart of the decision-making processrelating to who was finally offeredfunding. Interest in the funding meantthat this inevitably involved very difficultchoices, with ESCalate always looking totry to predict where funding would makemost impact in the sector and be bestvalue for money. It was particularly goodtherefore to hear, via the aboveevaluation, that this work had attractedsome very positive feedback, especiallysince it was one of the things I was mostpleased to have been part of.

3) What did you find most challengingabout your role?

RD: Firstly reaching academics whobecause they worked in educationdepartments felt they had nothing new tolearn about teaching, learning andassessment in higher education; holdingevents in England which were notLondon based – we held successfulevents in a number of locations inScotland, Wales and Northern Ireland butregional events in England did notsucceed; also having an ESCalatepartner HE site whose managers sawESCalate not as something valuable andinteresting in its own right but as a sourceof extra income. In time we ended therelationship with this partner site andfound a new and more enthusiasticpartner site, though some important workwas done by members of staff at theoriginal partner site.

JA: Giving feedback to unsuccessfulapplicants was one the mostchallenging parts of the job. I alwaystried to telephone people to informthem in person. Almost withoutexception, these conversations withcolleagues were gracious andfeedback (taken from the evaluationcomments received for each bid) waswelcomed. On occasions theseconversations led to unsuccessfulapplicants working with ESCalate inother ways and many said that ithelped them develop and expand theirideas further. It was seldom pleasantbeing the bearer of bad news.

One who was less than happy not tobe offered funding did a Do you knowwho I am? which was a bit intimidatingat the time! Although he was aprofessor, it had been judged that hisproject lacked the sort of innovative,cutting edge or novel approach thatwould offer something particularlyuseful to the education community,and is one of the strengths ofESCalate. It rates the what, not the“who”! Some of the most valuableideas ESCalate has supported havebeen with people just starting out intheir academic careers and as yet withno academic reputation. No old schooltie for us!.

4) You have been involved in anumber of exciting projects overthe years – what is your currentarea of academic or professionalinterest?

RD: I don't have a lot of time forresearch in my present managementposition at Royal Holloway but havecontinued to maintain an interest inhow leaders of public serviceorganisations interpret their role aschange agents and preparethemselves and emerging leaders fortheir work. This was facilitated by beinga co-investigator on a 2006-9 UKEconomic and Social ResearchCouncil project led by Mike Wallacefrom Cardiff Business School whichcompared change agency and theperceived effects of national leadership

development body provision inhospitals, secondary schools,primary care trusts and universitiesin England. I am also fascinated bythe rise and obsession of manyuniversities with national andinternational league tables.

JA: I have just started a new studyto explore the learning styles ofeducation colleagues working inHE. The findings should bepertinent for students wanting toextend their own learning – and forthe lecturers who want to supportthem. The work will focus inparticular on how colleagueshave overcome barriers or otherpotential limits to learning. Thiswork is still in its infancy and Iwould be delighted to hear fromanyone interested in talking abouttheir own learning and howit has changed. I can becontacted initially [email protected]

5) What do you foresee as beingthe greatest challenge thatESCalate will have to face in thecoming years?

RD: Funding is likely to be themajor challenge as highereducation along with other publiclyfunded services begin to face largecuts. Some politicians will see theSubject Centres as an easy targetfor funding reductions or closure.

JA: As in every area of life today,HE is facing considerable cut backsin funding and the Higher EducationAcademy Subject Centres are noexception. ESCalate will be calledon to maintain and develop the bestof what it does with what in realterms is likely to be considerablyfewer resources. I would hopehowever that this may providefurther opportunities for othersoutside the core ESCalate team atBristol to perhaps offer venues,ideas, workshops etc and so helpsupport the work which seems tobe so useful to many in the sector.

FACE 'Which way now to widen participation? Lifelong learning,Economy & Society' The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for researchers and practitionersto share good practice in access and continuing education. Keynote speakers willprovide an insight into the challenging policy agenda ahead and some inspirationdrawing on their own experiences and expertise.

Technology for Learning: developing the teachers A joint ESCalate, JISC RSC Northern and Success North event at NewcastleCollege Teaching Development Centre.

UK ITE Network for Education Sustainable Development/ GlobalCitizenship Third Annual Conference Education of Hope: the impact of ESD/GC on the well being of teachers andyoung people

30 June-2 July 2010

9 July 2010

15 July 2010

Southampton SolentUniversity ConferenceCentre

Newcastle College TeachingDevelopment Centre

London South BankUniversity

eventsDate(s) Details Venue

For more details and to book for these and other events, which ESCalate advertises, go to:www.escalate.ac.uk/events/future

Forthcoming events

£50 worth of book token prizesfor each successful bidHot Topics are short pieces, usually an electronic offering by teachers and students.They are a eureka! moment that makes a concise suggestion about how to solve a problem ora challenge. A Hot Topic discussion enhances teaching or learning in some simple,imaginative and creative way: something that is essentially ‘of the moment’, something thatworks for you. Suggested topics might be...

� New Technology� Education for Sustainable Development � Accreditation � New ways of looking at assessment and feedback � Student engagement

If you would like to submit a bid go to http://escalate.ac.uk/hottopicsand read the bids that have been successful and find out how to apply

our first ten years - a special edition 10 yearsour first ten years - a special edition i received...

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