Keynote Speaker
Institute Role
Kathryn is currently directing a project on Formative Assessment in vocational education and adult literacy and numeracy programmes, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, National Research Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy and the Quality Improvement Agency for Lifelong Learning.
Former Experience
She has worked in post-compulsory education in the field of post compulsory education for the past 20 years, first as a practitioner in youth employment schemes and further education and as a researcher specialising in the principles, politics and practices of assessment and its links to learning, motivation and autonomy. She has published a number of books on assessment in post-compulsory education, including Learning Autonomy in Post-16 Education: the politics and practice of formative assessment (2002) and Understanding Assessment in Post-Compulsory Education: principles, policy and practice (2003, 2004). She has also written a range of articles on assessment and, more recently, on the rise of a ‘therapeutic ethos’ in education and assessment.
Other Professional Responsibilities
Kathryn is a member of the Assessment Reform Group, the City and Guilds Research Strategy Group and the Access to Higher Education Assessment working group for the Quality Assurance Agency. She is on the editorial boards of Studies in the Education of Adults and is books review editor for the Journal of Further and Higher Education. Kathryn also works as a consultant to the National Board of Education in Finland on reforms to assessment and evaluation in Finnish vocational education.
Professor Ecclestone is co-author of a forthcoming book that is critical
of the "therapy culture" that is pervading education and assessment and
undermining intellectual inquiry.
According to an article in the Times Higher Education (12 June 2008)
'In The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Dennis Hayes and Kathryn
Ecclestone of Oxford Brookes University argue that institutions presume that students and staff are at emotional risk. According to the professors of education, this is creating a culture in which:
- "Can't cope" lecturers perceive bullying in any workplace situation they do not like.
- Expressions of emotion are valued as highly as expressions of ideas.
- "Infantilised" students seek difficulties to declare such as dyslexia so that they can get more support.
- "Diminished managers" are afraid to take decisive action.'
see http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402376&c=1
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