I am a Reader in Art and Design Education and Senior Academic Fellow (Digital Learning) at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA).

Professional Profile: Pedagogy and Research

I am the Programme Leader for the M.Ed in Learning, Teaching and Supervisory Practices in the Creative Disciplines, and lead the Cross-School Postgraduate Electives Programme, co-convene the undergraduate and postgraduate ethics committee, and have a senior academic development role within the organisation.

I am the Deputy Principal Editor of the International Journal of Art and Design Education (IJADE) and Associate Editor of the Journal Culture, Biography and Lifelong Learning, based in Pusan University, South Korea (2014-Present). I was a Senior Researcher to an interdisciplinary ESRC/EPSRC Project entitled ‘InterLife: Interoperability and Transition’ (Dec 2008 - Nov 2012). In this project, I was responsible for conceptualising the Art and Design Education Programme for the ESRC/EPSRC grant application and leading the Art and Design Education Programme for this multidisciplinary team.

I am widely published, having been submitted in the last UK Research Excellence Framework 2014 [Unit of Assessment: Art and Design], and I am a regular speaker at conferences and events, both internationally and nationally. I supervise a growing cohort of PhD students whose PhDs are educationally focused across different disciplines within GSA.

Research Interests

I am an interdisciplinary art educator and researcher working across education, art and design education and the social sciences. With a background in Fine Art (Painting), digital media and education, I have pioneered methodologies to support practice-based learning in both distributed, blended and place-based studio learning contexts. Over the last two decades, I have been involved in an extensive and varied programme of technology enhanced learning (TEL) research relating to both formal and informal learning, that has spanned projects in Higher Education, Adult Education and Schools. This work has focused on developing and applying innovative arts-based methods to educational interventions using advanced technologies to support learning, facilitate collaborative creative engagement and enable participants to become investigators of their own practice. For example, in a recently completed ESRC/EPSRC funded research project I investigated the use of virtual platforms - such as Second Life, to support interdisciplinary inquiry based investigations using creative practices as the principal vehicle for exploring young people’s life transitions. In this work I developed methodologies to support creative collaboration, the sharing and reconstruction of personal narratives, and the development of young people’s voices through photography and film-making.

My current research interests in Art and Design Education have been built around engagement in key strategic themes and developed as an internationally focused programme of research in Art and Design Education that includes theoretical and methodological innovation, extensive empirical findings, and wide publication in international peer reviewed journals and conferences. My contributions to research in Art and Design Education are as follows:-

• The development of advanced research methodologies (e.g. avatar automated mapping (tracking), discourse analysis techniques and critical event recall) and the use of visual research methods (Photo-voice, photography, film- making, rich pictures, storytelling, interactive story boarding, biography) to investigate and sustain learning communities (formal and informal) in virtual environments;
• Designing and developing virtual environments to actively engage groups and communities in Art and Design based activities, to support and enhance psychological well-being, social development and educational transitions;
• Researching and elucidating the ethical aspects of engaging individuals, groups and communities in creative exploration and expression using advanced technologies in virtual environments;
• Investigating and developing innovative pedagogical approaches (e.g. collaborative working and participatory research online) to social justice education & intercultural education through technology that draws on the field of Art and Design Education as the principal vehicle for exploration;
• Theoretical innovation through the use of Activity Theory as a research lens for investigating the relationship between learning, creativity and collaboration in virtual environments in Art and Design Education.