TEACHING
Quantitative Methods
In October 2013, Rachel Cohen and I were successful in an open competition to be awarded a Q-Step Centre at City, University of London, one of only fifteen in the UK. This initiative, funded by Nuffield Foundation, HEFCE and ESRC, seeks to engineer an overhaul of quantitative training in undergraduate social science. Since the inception of our own Centre, we have introduced new modules on data literacy, data analysis and data presentation, as well as embedding the use of number throughout the entire curriculum. By 2020 we will have produced a cohort of about 50 graduates with the degree title '.....with Quantitative Methods'.
In 2017 I took on the leadership of City Q-Step, a job I now share with my colleague Matt Barnes. In that time we have doubled the size of the student cohort and upped our external activities in terms of placements and collaborating with others outside the University. We are a host to Nuffield Research Placement students each summer and are partnered with the Government Social Research section of BEIS in encouraging students from BAME backgrounds to apply to the Civil Service. In 2019 we were awarded £125,000 on top of the original £950,000, to support our activities until 2021.
Pedagogic Research
I have a long-standing interest in the teaching of sociology in Higher Education, both as an activity and as an object of study. I obtained my Certificate of Teaching and Learning in 1994 shortly after starting my first appointment at the University of Plymouth. Later I was admitted to the Institute for Learning and Teaching (in 2000) through the initial entry route for experienced staff. I have been a Fellow of its successor, the Higher Education Academy, since its formation in 2004.
At the national level I have had extensive involvement in what has become known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). This began with a project on Assessment Strategies and Standards in Sociology, financed by a grant from the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL). This resulted in a resource workbook and an edited collection reflecting on a series of experiments using innovative forms of assessment practice. In 2001 HEFCE set up 24 Subject Centres to improve teaching, and I was actively involved in the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP), firstly as a member of its Steering Group and then as a Sociology Coordinator in 2003. In 2010 my colleague Robert Mears and I revisited the issue of assessment in undergraduate sociology and that work became a paper that later appeared in the HEA journal ELISS.
Teaching Experience
I have experience of teaching right across the spectrum of undergraduate sociology, not only to 'sociology students' but to those doing business studies, environmental science, computing and informatics and biological sciences. I have also taught quantitative methods to postgraduate students - in classrooms and in labs - and acted as convenor of programmes of study at all levels.
In October 2013, Rachel Cohen and I were successful in an open competition to be awarded a Q-Step Centre at City, University of London, one of only fifteen in the UK. This initiative, funded by Nuffield Foundation, HEFCE and ESRC, seeks to engineer an overhaul of quantitative training in undergraduate social science. Since the inception of our own Centre, we have introduced new modules on data literacy, data analysis and data presentation, as well as embedding the use of number throughout the entire curriculum. By 2020 we will have produced a cohort of about 50 graduates with the degree title '.....with Quantitative Methods'.
In 2017 I took on the leadership of City Q-Step, a job I now share with my colleague Matt Barnes. In that time we have doubled the size of the student cohort and upped our external activities in terms of placements and collaborating with others outside the University. We are a host to Nuffield Research Placement students each summer and are partnered with the Government Social Research section of BEIS in encouraging students from BAME backgrounds to apply to the Civil Service. In 2019 we were awarded £125,000 on top of the original £950,000, to support our activities until 2021.
Pedagogic Research
I have a long-standing interest in the teaching of sociology in Higher Education, both as an activity and as an object of study. I obtained my Certificate of Teaching and Learning in 1994 shortly after starting my first appointment at the University of Plymouth. Later I was admitted to the Institute for Learning and Teaching (in 2000) through the initial entry route for experienced staff. I have been a Fellow of its successor, the Higher Education Academy, since its formation in 2004.
At the national level I have had extensive involvement in what has become known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). This began with a project on Assessment Strategies and Standards in Sociology, financed by a grant from the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL). This resulted in a resource workbook and an edited collection reflecting on a series of experiments using innovative forms of assessment practice. In 2001 HEFCE set up 24 Subject Centres to improve teaching, and I was actively involved in the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP), firstly as a member of its Steering Group and then as a Sociology Coordinator in 2003. In 2010 my colleague Robert Mears and I revisited the issue of assessment in undergraduate sociology and that work became a paper that later appeared in the HEA journal ELISS.
Teaching Experience
I have experience of teaching right across the spectrum of undergraduate sociology, not only to 'sociology students' but to those doing business studies, environmental science, computing and informatics and biological sciences. I have also taught quantitative methods to postgraduate students - in classrooms and in labs - and acted as convenor of programmes of study at all levels.
