Sawyers Building
0845 196 3520
simon.pratt-adams@anglia.ac.uk

Qualifications & Memberships

• University Teaching Fellow
• PhD. King's College, London: 'A Study of the Significance of the Same-Sex Peer Group on the Development of Young Males'
• MA in Urban Education, King' s College, London
• Diploma in Information Technology, Royal Society of Arts
• PGCE Primary Education, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Certificate in Youth and Community Work, Durham County Council
• BA (Hons) Theology, University of Durham

• British Educational Research Association
• University and College Union
• Institute of Policy Studies in Education

Courses

• Head of the department of Education (formerly Head of Research for the Faculty of Education)
• BA ITT primary

General experience

Before joining Anglia Ruskin University, Simon managed two different programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and held a cross-faculty managerial role as Principal Lecturer in Quality, Learning and Teaching. His management and leadership style is based upon his values and philosophy, being both people and task oriented and incorporating teamwork, facilitation, commitment and integrity.

Simon has proven expertise in conducting qualitative research. His funded PhD research: "A Study of the Significance of the Same-Sex Peer Group on the Development of Young Males" was a longitudinal study and involved four individual research projects. Recently Simon has completed research about the emotional perspectives of urban primary school headship, conducted in six metropolitan areas across England. Current research into Context Sensitive Mobile Learning in Urban Education was funded by his University Teaching Fellowship award and involves Simon collaborating with London Metropolitan University's Learning Technology Research Institute with whom he has co-presented academic papers at international conferences and seminars. He has also worked as a research colleague with professors from King's College, London, Goldsmiths College, University of London and Roehampton University.

Simon's concerns and interests in educational developments are also reflected in his pedagogic research and associate membership of two research institutes. He has worked with colleagues from the Institute for Policy Studies in Education in the investigation of working class men's constructions of masculinity and negotiations of (non) participation in Higher Education. This work received much interest from the education community with regard to future widening participation initiatives. Simon has also collaborated with colleagues in research about enhancing access and achievement in the education of boys.

Simon believes that research applied to pedagogic practice feeds into course delivery. By making research more accessible to students, he creates a dialogue between himself as active researcher and students in order for them to realise their potential as active researchers and welcome them into the academic environment. As his research is principally based in the urban locale, there are possibly reference points with the students he teaches. By keeping students up-to-date with educational research, as well as sharing his own empirical work, he encourages students to feel that they are at the cutting edge of education. Simon has presented his research at international conferences since 1998 and given guest seminars at many UK universities. Simon coordinated the Gender Education Research group at King's College, London.

Simon currently has a contract with Continuum International Publishers as series editor for Contemporary Issues in Education Studies and to date has nine books commissioned in this series. In 2006 The Urban Primary School was published by OUP/McGraw-Hill and was TES book of the week, and his second book Changing Urban Education was published by Continuum in 2010. Simon has published approximately 25 academic publications. In 2009 he had two articles published in international peer-reviewed journals and one chapter published in the edited text Promoting Equality in Primary Schools. An article 'Designing for Deep and Active Learning: Putting learning into context with mobile devices' is due for publication at the end of 2010.

Simon has participated in professional and research-based activities at other universities as a consultant and review panel member for education validation events. From 2001-2004 he was an external examiner at another HEI and in 2005 he was appointed as principal external examiner. In 2008 Simon accepted his third external examining position. He has also developed academic programmes internationally, in particular with the State University of New York and more recently in Israel.

In 2005 he was appointed departmental learning and teaching facilitator, requiring him to take a lead implementing and monitoring the university and departmental strategies and initiatives. He chaired the departmental learning and teaching committee and was appointed to the university's learning and teaching committee. In 2007 he was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship. Simon has professional experience of working with colleagues across a wide range of subject areas and settings, whether team teaching, mentoring new academic staff, organising international teleconferences with media staff or developing resources with learning technologists.

At London Metropolitan University, Simon led the Department of Education in responding to the challenge of e-learning. External bodies have reported positively on the creative and academically rigorous innovations in the design and delivery of e-learning activities that he has developed to stimulate and challenge student learning and harness potential. Simon has worked in the development of online learning materials on several modules and developed virtual learning environments. He has presented his research both nationally and internationally and has had two articles published about creative pedagogic practice.

His work has provided colleagues with greater understanding of the potential pedagogic opportunities of virtual learning and provided them with more flexible ways of working. Simon launched his own website in December 2005. In 2006 he completed an audit of the current use of technology and e-learning by academic staff in education, which was subsequently published in an academic journal. Recently, he has become interested in new paradigms for electronic online learning and teaching, and the potential this medium has for the development of learning communities in cyberspace.

In 2008 Simon was appointed as blended learning 'champion' with a focus on m-learning and the innovative use of virtual learning environments. He led a cross-university team in the development of an MA in E-learning. What is distinctive about his approach to these initiatives is the emphasis on the pedagogical, rather than technological aspects of this subject area.

Research interests

• Urban education
• Primary education
• Mobile learning technologies

Selected Publications

2010 Changing Urban Education, with Meg Maguire and Elizabeth Burn. London, Continuum (published in Spring 2010)

2009 Urban Education, Equality and Inequality, with Meg Maguire, in Promoting Equality in Primary/Elementary Schools, edited by Leena Helavaara Robertson and Dave Hill. London, Continuum International Publisher

2009 Urban Primary School Headship in England: an emotional perspective, with Meg Maguire in Critical Studies in Education, Volume 50, Number 2, June 2009, 115-127

2009 Improving the English urban primary school: questions of policy, with Meg Maguire, in Improving Schools, Volume 12, Number 1, March, 59-70

2007 A study of the use of technology and e-learning among academic staff in a department of education. Investigations in Learning and Teaching, Autumn

2006 The Urban Primary School, with Meg Maguire and Tim Wooldridge, McGraw-Hill/Open University Press

2005 Transferring Friendship: Girls' and Boys' Friendships in the Transition from Primary to Secondary School, with Rosalyn George, in Children and Society, Vol 19, 16-26

2004 Every Good Boy Deserves Football, with Elizabeth Burn. Chapter in Young People, Risk and Leisure: Constructing Identities in Everyday Life, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 243-255

2002 The fear of being seen as white losers: white, working class masculinities and the killing of Stephen Lawrence, with David Jackson, in Sociologi I Dag, argang 32, Nr 4, 103-113

2001 Working class men's constructions of masculinity and negotiations of (non) participation in higher education, with Louise Archer and Dave Phillips, Gender and Education 13, 4, 431-449