I am a professional. What does that mean? I am an educator, a teacher, a leader. I am a researcher. As I continue on my doctorate journey, I hope to be able to articulate what it means to be a professional in the field of education and how I can influence the education system.

I've been a teacher for 35 years - in the London boroughs of Hillingdon, Croydon, Sutton, and now in Surrey. I became a headteacher in 2001 and a National Leader of Education in 2012. I've led a Teaching School, believing that we can influence our education system through supporting teachers. I am now a Chief Education Officer in a large multi academy trust in the south of England.

We have a fragmented education system that is heavily criticised by the media and constantly meddled with by politicians. Our schools are challenged by underfunding and external pressures within a framework of accountability (quite rightly - it's public money) that does not work for every school.

My initial proposal for a research question in 2019 was: What are effective governance structures that support school improvement in a multi-academy trust? This has inevitably changed over the years as I have worked on my research. Follow my journey through the EdD. I hope there may be something on this site that is of use to you, and I hope that I will get some feedback on my academic thinking that will benefit my research.

I am proud to be a research student at the Institute of Education (IoE) at University College London (UCL). The Education EdD is a research degree for experienced professionals from education. It is a part-time degree, normally 5 - 7 years. There is an assessed taught element, an Institution Focused Study (unique to the UCL IoE EdD programme) and a thesis, making a distinct contribution to the knowledge in the field of study.

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I removed feeds (on the right sidebar) today for both X and Mastodon. I don’t really post on social media sites and tend to use them to follow other people. My posts were becoming outdated and irrelevant and I rarely look...

Thank you for organising the coffee chat for #UKEdGovs researchers this morning @hoylerosemary.bsky.social It's always useful to share our EdD/PhD journey! #PhDSky

— Alex (@alexc7.bsky.social) 2024-09-20T12:10:30.972Z

RSS Feed from Pat Thomson’s blog – patter

  • writing from the PhD part one 29th August 2024
    So you want to write from your PhD thesis. Where to start, you might ask? Your first job is to decide whether your PhD is a book – or not. Perhaps the thesis could be a book but won’t because … Continue reading →

RSS Feed from The Thesis Whisperer

  • Academic Cyborgs and Bullshit Reading 12th August 2024
    The other day, my good friend Professor Narelle Lemon sent me a link to an academic paper called “AI and its implications for research in higher education: a critical dialogue”  because it cited … one of my old blog posts. It’s a good paper, and open access, so I recommend having a read. It’s written […]