March News and Events from the Association of National Teaching Fellows
When I offered to pull together a blog for the UK National Teaching Fellows community back in January 2014, I was looking forward to a nice and gentle creative challenge. I was totally taken aback by the amount of activities, events, books and initiatives that fellows engage in. So the last year has been a little busy but it is great to see our community grow, with over 300 Twitter followers, and thousands of visitors to the blog.
There are 643 National Teaching Fellows in the UK, and the recent annual survey showed what a diverse group of teachers, librarians, technologists and support staff make up the community, and equally diverse is the range of educational specialist areas and interests of the group. Many are leaders within their own institutions, and some are retired or have moved beyond the education sector but still are actively involved. The Association of National Teaching Fellows (ANTF), to which all fellows automatically become a member, welcomes everyone, and draws people together to raise the profile of learning and teaching nationally and internationally.
This month sees the preparation for the 10th Annual Association of National Teaching Fellows Symposium come to fruition. Fellows are invited for both days, and day two is open to the learning and teaching community. Do contact us (via this blog) if you wish to participate in the Pecha Kucha which will be 5 minute snap-shots of teaching activities.
New books! Michael Waring and Carol Evans have just released a new book exploring critical approaches to teaching and learning, and the authors answer some very fundamental questions such as “what is pedagogy” and “how does it inform teaching practice”? To order the book and find out more visit the Taylor and Francis website.
And finally conferences! Details of the 2015 EuroSoTL conference are newly launched. The 2015 European Conference on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning will be held at University College Cork on June 8-9th, and will explore the scholarship of teaching and learning, and how this can bridge boundaries in Higher Education. This is a regional event of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL) which many National Teaching Fellows participate in, and the Cork event will be the inaugural European conference. There are NTFs as keynote speakers at this event.
