Alex Walker: Academic Learning and Development: you, me and my PhD
Personal reflections and considerations on tertiary academic development and on my own learning journey.
recent posts
- A phenomenographic research study of the Professional Recognition strand of the University Mentoring Scheme at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)
- The importance of collaborative conversations and an exploration of tertiary-ness through and beyond academic practice development
- A month into the PhD and a moment of reflection.
- And so it begins…(officially): My PhD topic – Exploring the potential for an integrated set of professional standards for practitioners working in tertiary education contexts and institutions: a phenomenographic investigation
- My learning journey: from there to here
Alex Walker
Alex heads the University of the Highlands and Island (UHI) Academic Practice Development provision, supporting the leadership and coordination of staff facing professional development and recognition across UHI. At UHI Alex has established pathways for staff to seek professional recognition, set up a successful mentoring programme and established a programme of development opportunities to enhance and develop learning and teaching. This is a personal blog to share reflections, ideas and learning through a PhD.
Category: Uncategorized
-
The end of semester has been extremely busy with our bi-annual learning and teaching conference and wrapping up activities for the year. The PhD has taken a back seat as a result, although I have managed few days over the last couple of weeks on the literature review which feels like progress. The literature review…
-
I had the opportunity today to present my ideas and research plans with colleagues in the Scottish Advance HE Principal Fellow Network. I joined the network a few years ago after achieving my PFHEA for strategic leadership in academic development and when I was invited onto the network as all new PFs are, I was…
-
Ah the literature review, important, yup. Also mindboggling at the start, the literature-verse seems so vast, where to start, search terms…procrastination. For a creative structure and organisation are a little challenging, I start with a nice table detailing each paper I find, it’s usefulness and search terms, referencing. However, over the last few weeks this…
-
This week was the official start of my PhD, although I enrolled a few weeks back the start date was 2 February and this week I had my first supervisory team meeting so all feeling very real now! To mark this, I thought I would share a little more on what I will be researching…
-
From there I tried really hard at secondary school. My Head Teacher called me into his office just before my GCSEs. I thought it was going to be a motivational conversation congratulating me on my hard work. Instead it was a talk that outlined how I was an average student with average grades and if…
