Super Seminar Presenters

Roy van den Brink-Budgen is a leading expert on Critical Thinking. He has been working in the subject for twenty-three years, and has a greater range of experience in this subject than anyone in the UK. He was centrally involved in the development of its assessment for eighteen years, including being Chief Examiner for most of the time that the subject has been assessed at A-level. Roy has produced a number of resources for Critical Thinking, including the first book that was aimed at non-university students (fifteen years ago and still widely-used), five other books on the subject, an online course, a CD-Rom, and (uniquely) a Critical Thinking card game. He has run more INSETs in Critical Thinking than anyone else in the UK and has a very wide range of teaching experience with the subject (including primary, secondary, further, and higher education students – and prison education).

Joanna Haynes is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Plymouth. A very experienced educator, Joanna has worked in many different settings, primary and secondary schools, community, adult education, teacher training, continuing professional development and higher education. Joanna is author of 'Children as Philosophers' (2002, 2008 routledgefalmer), a book on philosophy with children which has been translated into Spanish and Greek. She has published many articles and papers in the fields and is co-author of Storywise: Thinking through Stories (2000 dialogueworks). Joanna has been actively involved in developing philosophy in practice over the last sixteen years.

Barry Hymer is a former primary and secondary school teacher and educational psychologist, currently practising as a freelance educational consultant and author. Barry’s belief that performance follows a commitment to learning – not the other way round – underpins his devotion to learning-led educational approaches (e.g. Philosophy for/with Children, Dilemma-Based Learning, Logo-Visual Thinking) and to his reputation as a freethinker in the field of gifted education. Barry is the author of five books and the recipient of the 2003 ICPIC Award for Excellence in Interpreting Philosophy with Children. He continues to work directly with pupils on a regular basis, as well as with their teachers and parents.

Michael Lacewing is Director of the company A Level Philosophy, and a Senior Lecturer in philosophy and Director of Research at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also a consultant on A level philosophy to the British Philosophical Association, and has published several textbooks for A level philosophy, all published by Routledge, most recently Philosophy for AS, Philosophy for A2: Unit 3, and Philosophy for A2: Unit 4.

David Leat is Professor of Curriculum Innovation at Newcastle University. He had formerly been the Geography PGCE tutor at the university, from 1989 to 1999. Between 2001 and 2004 he was on leave of absense, working for the DfES in the KS3 Strategy as a Regional Director, putting research into practice. He is particularly interested in the impact of thinking skills interventions on teaching and learning

Bill Lucas is Co-Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester. Bill has been a teacher and school leader. He founded Learning through Landscapes and was Chief Executive of the Campaign for Learning (where he created the first ever national research project exploring learning to learn.) Bill is a prolific author of titles such as Power up your mind, The Creative Thinking Plan (with Guy Claxton), Help your child to succeed (with Alistair Smith) and rEvolution; how to thrive in crazy times. His latest book (written with Guy Claxton) New kinds of smart; how the science of learnable intelligence is changing education will be published in Spring 2010. Bill is in demand all over the world as an entertaining and authoritative speaker about learning, leadership and creativity.

Sue Lyle has been an educator for 35 years as teacher, teacher advisor and teacher educator. She is currently Head of Continuing Professional Development at Swansea Metropolitan University. Sue works extensively with local authorities to provide both short courses and accredited courses for teachers. Her current research interest is the promotion of pupil voice and she has recently completed a review of the Teaching and Learning Research Project's work on pupil voice for the Welsh Assembly Government. Over the past five years she has led a CPD programme, 'Leading the Learning' for Swansea LA to prepare teachers as school champions for pupil voice through teacher action research. Another important component of pupil voice has been the development of Philosophy for Children throughout Swansea. As a SAPERE accredited trainer, over 1500 teachers and 45 whole schools have had SAPERE Level 1 training since 2003. Research into how head teachers use CPD to support the school development plan has shown that a diversity of leadership styles can achieve outstanding results for individual schools.

Deborah Michel has long and varied experience within education having taught in primary, secondary and special schools before becoming an educational psychologist. Her main interest has been an exploration of how schools identify their core purpose and how they can turn this into action. Much of her work has focused on the development of school communities that nurture and promote social and emotional learning and emotional wellbeing. She was a key contributor to the development and writing of the DCSF’s Social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL) for both primary and secondary schools and led on its development and implementation from 2003-8. Deborah has authored a number of practical books for children and young people, including the Headwork series.

James Nottingham has taught in primary, secondary, middle and special schools and is now director of his own company, committed to the creation of world-class education through improvements in teaching and learning, communication, creativity and leadership. With a well-earned reputation as an inspirational keynote speaker and presenter, James was recently listed among the Future500 by the Observer newspaper, a "definitive list of the UK's most forward-thinking and brightest innovators". James co-founded a social enterprise project (Raising Aspirations in Schools) to regenerate areas of the UK characterised by under-employment, low aspirations and lack of community engagement. By supporting teaching and learning in schools ranging from very large comprehensives to small, 10-pupil rural nurseries, as well as working with families and community groups, this project grew into a multi-million pound enterprise that was recognised with an outstanding contribution award in 2005. James now travels the world supporting nurseries, schools, universities and learning networks in the pursuit of excellence, is the European coordinator for the international Community Designed Education network.

Will Ord has working experience of education in many contexts. In schools, he has been a Head of RE, Deputy Head of Sixth Form and a School Governor. As Chair of SAPERE from 2003 to 2006, and as Professional Officer for ACT (the Citizenship Education subject association) from 2002 to 2004, he gained invaluable experience working with the DfES, the QCA, LAs, Ofsted, AREIAC, the Citizenship Foundation, as well as many primary & secondary schools. During the last 6 years, Will has also been an author of several text books for students and teachers, articles for magazines and journals, and was a regular writer for the TES. He is presently an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, and an independent Education Trainer and keynote speaker.

Roger Sutcliffe taught firstly at junior level and then at secondary level before becoming a freelance trainer. He has been president of both the national society, and the international council, for philosophical inquiry with children. He has always been convinced that teachers, of whatever subject at whatever level, are the better for taking a philosophical approach to their task. He has been evaluator of two Geographical Association projects, and co-designer of an International GCSE titled 'Global Perspectives', being piloted by Cambridge International Exams. He has also done consultancy work for Antidote (Campaign for Emotional Literacy) and been closely involved in the Helen Hamlyn Trust ‘Open Futures’ project.

Tim Taylor is a teacher/consultant from Surlingham Community Primary School, Norwich. Tim researched and practiced using Mantle of the Expert, first in his own classroom and then later as a consultant in other teacher’s classrooms. In 2004 he became an Advanced Skills Teacher. He is now a freelance consultant for three days a week, facilitating support and training in the use of MoE. For the other two days, he teaches his own class, which allows him to keep in contact with regular school life and develop MoE contexts over extended periods. As a consultant, Tim has led and participated in many professional development projects in schools across the UK. He has taught in the USA and is a visiting lecturer at Newcastle University. Part of Tim’s work is to manage mantleoftheexpert.com.

Chris Waller is the Professional Officer at the Association for Citizenship Teaching. He was a teacher in secondary schools for 30 years and has taught in England and Canada. Seconded to Hampshire LA in 1997 to work on their Citizenship guidelines and then to the Crick Committee in 2000, he was involved in writing the Citizenship schemes of work and programmes of study for Citizenship in England prior to their introduction in 2002. Current work sees him supporting teachers and others involved in the teaching of Citizenship, meeting with government departments, explaining the English Citizenship curriculum to colleagues in other nations and working with the national Citizenship CPD programme.

Mick Waters spent four years as Director of Curriculum at the QCA before becoming Professor of Education at Wolverhampton University and the first President of the Curriculum Foundation. Mick had become a head teacher in Cumbria by the age of 28, and moved from there to become chief inspector for Birmingham Education Authority, when Tim Brighouse was CEO. Later he served as CEO of Manchester, before moving to the QCA. Mick is an inspiring speaker, not least because of his enduring enthusiasm for bringing learning to life and life to learning.

Steve Williams spent 15 years teaching English in inner-city secondary schools before becoming involved in the Philosophy for Children network in the UK, as one of the founder members of SAPERE. He has since worked with children of all ages in a wide variety of schools. He is also very interested in writing for learning, especially writing of scripts for Readers Theatre, and in online education. He has been involved with national and international projects in these fields. He worked for five years as a full-time senior editor for an educational publishing company, editing books and magazines including 'Teaching Thinking and Creativity', a well-respected publication with a world-wide reputation.

Mary Young has specialised for fifteen years on Global Citizenship: what it might be, why it is important, and how it can be promoted in education. Working for Oxfam Education until the early 2000’s, she was lead author of their publication: 'Global Citizenship: The Handbook for Primary Teaching.' Prior to this, she had been a class teacher and teacher educator in various locations, including rural West Sussex; Newham, East London; Malawi, East Africa and Bhutan in Asia.

Currently she is a Citizenship consultant in West Sussex Local Authority and a lecturer at the University of Chichester. Her work is concerned with complex but everyday issues - for example, encouraging people to examine and challenge their own attitudes towards inequality, inclusion and diversity, and to think and act in ways that are rooted in social justice, critical and creative thinking and compassion for all life on earth.