Professor Aileen Kennedy

Personal statement

I grew up in Perthshire and Fife, originally planning to pursue a career as a professional cellist. I ended up opting for primary teaching instead, completing a BEd at the then Jordanhill College in Glasgow in 1992. I taught in a primary school in Clydebank for six years, leaving to become the first ever Professional Officer at the General Teaching Council for Scotland. In 2001 I took up a lecturing post at Strathclyde, staying for 14 years, before venturing to the east of the country for a 5-year stint at the University of Edinburgh. In Edinburgh, I had the joy of developing a radical new initial teacher education programme which qualifies graduates to teach across the primary/secondary transition, working in an explicitly activist way to progress social justice in schools and their communities. I was delighted to return to the University of Strathclyde in August 2020 to take up a position as Professor of Practice in Teacher Education. I am currently the Director of Teacher Education here in the School of Education, working with colleagues and wider stakeholders to enhance and promote our work in teacher education policy and pedagogy. My research focuses on how teachers learn, and the policy context within which that learning happens. This work enables me to conceptualise and explain the powers that influence teacher professional learning, exploring pedagogies for teacher learning that support a transformative and socially just orientation. Of central importance is the capacity for my research to speak to policy-makers and practitioners alike, and to offer new ways of understanding and articulating how teachers learn in ways that embrace and support a diverse pupil population. I am co-Principal Investigator of the ‘Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education’ (MQuITE) project, Managing Editor of Professional Development in Education, co-convener of the Scottish Educational Research Association’s Teacher Education Network (SERA-TEN).