Professor Robin Alexander

Position/Status

Fellow of Wolfson College
Professor of Education Emeritus, University of Warwick
Director, The Cambridge Primary Review

E-mail Address

rja40@cam.ac.uk

Phone

+44 (0)1223 767511

Qualifications
Honours
Membership of professional associations/learned societies

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Profile

Robin Alexander is Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Warwick, and former Professor of Education at the University of Leeds. He has held two Leverhulme Research Fellowships and visiting academic posts in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India and Singapore, and has honorary doctorates from two universities.

Educated at the universities of Cambridge, Durham, London and Manchester, he has taught in schools, colleges and universities and has served on UK government advisory bodies (CATE, QCA) and government enquiries ("three wise men"). He has also undertaken research in many other countries, notably Denmark, Finland, France, India, Russia and the United States, and has worked in development education in Bangladesh and India on behalf of BRAC, DfiD and the EC. He was elected President of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) for 2008-9.

Alexander´s earlier research and writing included the books The Self-Evaluating Institution (1982), Primary Teaching (1984), Change in Teacher Education (1984), Changing Primary Practice (1989), Versions of Primary Education (1995), Policy and Practice in Primary Education: local initiative, national agenda (1997), and Learning from Comparing: new directions in comparative education research Vol I (1999) and Vol 2 (2000). This corpus includes work on policy, pedagogy, curriculum, evaluation, international comparative and cultural studies, teacher education and, especially, primary education. Subsequently, his Culture and Pedagogy: international comparisons in primary education (Blackwell 2001) won top education book prizes on both sides of the Atlantic and led to Essays on Pedagogy (2008), Education for All, the Quality Imperative and the Problem of Pedagogy (2008) and to his extensive and continuing work on classroom talk reform and the advancement of dialogic teaching (Education as Dialogue, 2006 and Towards Dialogic Teaching: rethinking classroom talk, 4th edition 2008).

Since 2006, Alexander has directed the Cambridge Primary Review, an independent enquiry into the condition and future of primary education in England, and the biggest such investigation since the 1960s. The Review published 31 interim reports between 2007 and 2009 before its 600-page final report and recommendations, Children, their World, their Education, appeared in October 2009 together with an 850-page companion volume The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys. With continuing support from its sponsor, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Review then entered its current phase of dissemination, policy engagement and network-building for which it was re-constituted as a Faculty Research and Teaching Centre.

Robin Alexander's work has been honoured by prizes, awards, honorary doctorates and visiting chairs, by major marks of recognition from the teaching profession including Europe's largest teaching union, and most recently by election to a fellowship of the British Academy (FBA).

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Further Information

Personal website http://www.robinalexander.org.uk/ (contains biographical data, information about affiliations, research, consultancy and publications, links for ordering books and monographs and for downloading selected articles and reports).

The Cambridge Primary Review website http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/ contains full details of the Cambridge Primary Review, its remit, personnel, procedures and publications, including the final report and current networking phase, together with contact details.