November has been another productive and busy month. Many of the strategic aspects of my work have been making visible progress this month, for example the revision of the Faculty Teaching, Learning and Assessment implementation plan for 2009-10 is now being prepared as a final draft for consultation. Additionally I have worked closely with colleagues to progress our institutional application for Higher Education Academy accredition of our professional development framework for academics. I have also been busy working with part-time undergraduate students, teaching, assessing and marking work throughout the month.
A particular highlight this month was signing a book contract for a new text with the publishers Learning Matters, a book that will be co-authored with and led by my colleague Ian Mathews. We both have a strong interest in the use of knowledge and evidence in professional practice and this will form the subject matter for this book. The photo below was taken when the publishers commissioning editor came to the University to meet with myself and other colleagues who have authored texts for them.
I am third from the left in this photograph with colleagues who have also written for the publisher Learning Matters
May has been another incredibly busy, but very productive month, on a number of fronts. My doctoral thesis has received positive feedback from my supervisors and with some minor amendments should be finalized for submission next month. I have also now signed contracts with Sage Publications to sole-author two social work books over the next two years, details are on my ‘publications’ page. This is a really exciting opportunity and, as I always enjoy writing, I look forward to getting ‘stuck into’ this work very soon. I have also submitted an abstract proposal for a chapter in a new edited book to be published by Continuum, but I am not going to say too much at this stage, as this has yet to be negotiated.
May has been a month for completing all the marking and beginning to think about teaching commitments for the next academic year. The marking process is lengthy but is now in the latter stages with reports being prepared for various examination boards in the next couple of months. I know that students wait anxiously for confirmation of grades, so this is an important time of the academic year.
At home, the kittens, or rather ‘cats’, were one-year old. As pedigree pusses, they are house-cats, but following a safe exploration in the back garden, it became clear that they would enjoy the experience of fresh air and some different scenery. So amid much laughter in the family, my ‘other half’ has agreed to build them a cat run – I will upload some photographs here when the run is finished and in use!
I am writing this April update at the beginning of May as I enjoy a bank holiday following my return from 10-days in Hong Kong. My time throughout April largely focused on three areas of work; marking student assessed work; writing my doctoral thesis; planning for and being in Hong Kong. I have also been ‘playing about’ with Twitter, have a go at ‘tweeting’ myself and ‘following’ various famous ‘twitterers’; it is quite good fun actually, although I am not sure there are any obvious effective educational purposes for this form of cyber-socialisation….might reflect on that though.
I completed a large set of marking by the middle of April, knowing that there is more student work coming in for assessment in May. Whilst marking represents a hard, concentrated period of work, I always enjoy being able to focus on one aspect of teaching and learning, seeing feedback as a significant part of the process. Over the quieter Easter period, I set aside some ‘chunks’ of time to work on my doctoral thesis and experienced great relief in completing the first full draft of the whole thesis. I updated my doctoral web pages to reflect some of the philosophical, theoretical and practical developments that have arisen through the writing process; this has been a great learning curve. Whilst fully aware that there may yet be several re-writes and further amendments before a final version is arrived at, it feels very satisfying to now be working with a full document and to have a ‘feel’ of the full product. I meet with my supervisors later in May, so the process continues!
My trip to Hong Kong was mainly for work purposes to present as an invited speaker at an international symposium ‘Anti-poverty social work practice’. The symposium was held at, and principally organized by, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. With a colleague, I represented the journal ‘Practice: Social Work in Action’ and spoke about the special issue of the journal to be published next year (2010) focusing on Poverty in East Asia. I am one of the guest editors of this special edition which will be published to coincide with the Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development which will be held in Hong Kong in June 2010.
Of course, it would make little sense to travel all that way (12 hour flight from Amsterdam) without adding on some annual leave and a little sightseeing. I have not been to Hong Kong before, so everything about it was new; some wonderful sights; a different culture; interesting food; a safe environment; and kind, polite and generous people. I am hopeful of being able to visit again for the World conference next year and look forward to meeting colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong again, and perhaps going into the Chinese mainland afterwards. In the meantime, I have various exciting projects planned for the coming months…but more of that in future blogs.
