Subject Specialist Conference 2017

In April, the School of Education and Professional Development was privileged to welcome onto campus four hundred trainees nearing the end of their two-year, In Service in Teacher Education course for their annual, two-day Specialist Conference.  This exciting and vibrant event enables them to share their scholarship and expertise in the teaching of their subject to others who teach the same or a similar discipline. Trainees come from across our whole Consortium of partner institutions, which stretches from the North East to Suffolk.

Running successfully since the early 1970s in various forms, this event provides an unprecedented chance for peers to come together to develop their specialist teaching, network with others  and showcase what are often superlative examples of teaching approaches.  The ethos is one of supportive and critically evaluative friendship and Specialist Tutors year after year praise the commitment, passion and ingenuity of our trainees as well as their willingness to share.

Specialist subjects include STEM, Social Sciences, Humanities, Sport, Business, Hospitality and Beauty Therapy to name just a few and all are experts in their own field. All the trainees give presentations on their teaching methods over the two day conference and benefit from the resulting discussions and debates about how their methods correlate, asking each other questions to further develop their teaching approaches in an engaging exchange of ideas and expertise.

There was also a keynote lecture on each day from Professors within the University. Day one saw Professor Paul Thomas discuss ‘Counter-Terrorism, the Prevent Duty and the role of Education’ followed by Professor Robin Simmons on the final day who spoke about ‘Employability, Knowledge and Vocational Learning: From Liberal Studies to Functional Skills’

You can see what our attendees got up to throughout the day by using #Hudconf17