About The Huish Centre
Huish students achieve spectacular results across all areas.
How?
Teachers are empowered as professionals.
All of Huish’s curriculum and student facing support staff conduct collaborative research projects annually. These include three distinct pathways: Academic Research, Lesson Study, and Collaborative Inquiry.
Across all three pathways, staff apply an evidence-based approach whilst actively engaging students as learning partners to evolve their practice collaboratively.
Research outcomes and impact are shared annually and those on the Academic Research pathway also contribute to the wider educational community by publishing their findings on Camtree, a digital library for teacher-led, close-to-practice research.
We are so proud of the way in which our staff engage with this professional approach and its subsequent powerful impact. We are very excited to share this with other institutions who also want to re-professionalise teaching with students at the heart of educational development.
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Our Team
I began my career as an Educational Research Assistant at the University of Cambridge, School of Education, supporting teachers with professional research and enquiry and working with secondary school student researchers, championing learner voice as an integral part of school development processes.
Since then, I have worked in the post-16 education sector for over 25 years in a variety of roles, as a History and Sociology Teacher, Head of Teaching and Learning at Varndean College, Assistant Principal for Academic Studies at Exeter College and as Principal of Richard Huish Sixth Form College in Taunton since 2020.
I have had a career long interest in the provision of high-quality professional development and in the meaningful transfer of practice between teachers and student facing staff working together in education.
I am passionate about the importance of leading quality improvement through Joint Practice Development models and am incredibly proud to be part of a thriving practitioner research community at Huish. Recent work has included collaborating with the SFCA and Camtree to grow a free to access digital library of close to practice research for post-16 educators.
My experience in education spans from Early Years to post-16, including mainstream, special, alternative and hospital settings. In addition to my role at the Huish Centre I am a freelance educator, speaker and adviser.
I designed the ‘Finding my Voice’ Oracy approach, I’m a collaborator for Myatt & Co and also a fellow of the Chartered college, and recently lead on the Oracy strand for the ‘Re-thinking curriculum project‘.
I’m and deeply honoured to be the Director of The Centre for Practitioner Development at Richard Huish College leading on the re-professionalisation of education.
With just over 30 years of teaching experience within the post-16 sector, I continue to find the most rewarding moments of my career come from working alongside colleagues to explore, refine, and reimagine our practice. I am Course Manager for A Level Biology and a Professional Learning Coach, and in recent years have helped develop and lead our cross-college Acton Research programme.
I’m passionate about the way Joint Practice Development reinvigorates practice—bringing fresh thinking, innovation, and shared learning to our community.