Robin Alexander is a British educationist and academic known particularly for championing the cause of primary education,[1][2] for his leadership of the Cambridge Primary Review,[3] and for his research and writing on education policy, culture, curriculum, pedagogy, dialogic teaching[4] and comparative and international education. He is currently Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Education Emeritus at the University of Warwick.[5] In 2011 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences and chaired its Education Section 2018-21.[6]
Career
The son of artist Isabel Alexander and documentary film-maker Donald Alexander, he was born in 1941 and educated at the Perse School and the universities of Cambridge (Downing College, MA, PhD, LittD), Durham (PGCE), London (Ac Dip Ed) and Manchester (MEd), and at Trinity College of Music (ATCL). He taught in schools and colleges before moving to the universities of Leeds (1977–95) and Warwick (1995–2001), at both of which he was Professor of Education. In 2001 he moved to Cambridge University, as Visiting Fellow of Hughes Hall (2001–2), Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow (2002–4), Fellow of Wolfson College (since 2004),[7] Professorial Director of Research in the Faculty of Education (2006–10)[8] and Director of the Cambridge Primary Review (2006–12).[3] From 2013 to 2017 he combined his Cambridge affiliation with an honorary chair at the University of York and leadership of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT), a not-for-profit company dedicated to building on the work of the Cambridge Primary Review.[9] At the University of York he also co-directed the joint CPRT/IEE project on dialogic teaching and social disadvantage, funded 2014–17 and successfully subjected to randomised control trial by the Education Endowment Foundation.[10]
Board of Trustees, Children and the Arts, formerly the Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts (2014–21).[24]
Publications
Alexander's research has yielded over 300 publications.[25] These deal mainly with pedagogy and classroom research, discourse analysis and classroom talk reform, curriculum, the educational policy process and its impact, and international, comparative and development education. Much of this work has focused on the primary phase of schooling. His books and monographs include:
Professional Studies for Teaching (1979)
Developments in PGCE Courses (1980)
Advanced Study for Teachers (1981)
The Self-Evaluating Institution (1982)
Primary Teaching (1984)
Change in Teacher Education (1984)
Changing Primary Practice (1989)
Policy and Practice in Primary Education (1992)
Curriculum Organisation and Classroom Practice in Primary Schools (1992)
Innocence and Experience: reconstructing primary education (1994)
Versions of Primary Education (1995)
Other Primary Schools and Ours: hazards of international comparison (1996)
Policy and Practice in Primary Education: local initiative, national agenda (1997)
Time for Change: curriculum managers at work (1998)
He has been an occasional columnist for the Times Educational Supplement, The Guardian and other national newspapers[26] and from 2014 to 2017 edited and contributed to the weekly CPRT Blog.[27]
