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Thoughts and ideas on education, culture, psychology, social science and more from our academics, students, alumni and wider community to create lasting and evolving change. Podcasts brought to you by UCL Institute of Education (IOE), the world's leading centre for education and social science research, courses and teaching, and a faculty of University College London (UCL).
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You're listening to IOE Insights, the UCL Institute of Education podcast and University College London.
Voiceover 2:This is Academia et al. The podcast for anyone and everyone. Figuring out life in academia.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:This is Academia et al, the podcast for Early Career Academics. I am Zeinab El-Khateeb, I'm a lecturer in Teacher Education at the IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society. In this series of episodes, we are going to hear stories about academic journeys, achievements and
Zeinab El-Khateeb:legacy, which we hope will inspire you to embark on your own adventure as an early career researcher.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Today, I'm delighted to welcome Professor Nicola Walshe in the studio here with us. She is the Pro Director Education at the IOE, Executive Director of the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, and the Educational Strategic lead for the UCL climate crisis, Grand Challenges. Her work also includes research exploring climate change and sustainability education across whole school ecosystems.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Nicola, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining us today.
Nicola Walshe:Thank you very much for having me.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Pleasure. First, it would be helpful if you could provide the audience with an overview of your academic journey and progression to the present day?
Nicola Walshe:Yes, of course. So, it isn't really, I guess, a typical traditional academic journey, although I guess there's lots of different permutations of what that might look like, particularly within a faculty, which includes education, of course. If I start when I did my undergraduate degree, I actually did an undergraduate degree in BSc Geography and Geology, and went straight on to do a PhD in Glaciology. So that was geophysics. I spent a lot of time in the High Arctic and in Iceland looking at effectively water flow through glaciers and the impact of water flow on the speed of which glaciers were flowing.
Nicola Walshe:So a very different background, sort of from a research perspective, than where I am now. And I think that's been a real advantage in giving me that interdisciplinarity, because I started off as a sort of pure scientist and with positivist research where I didn't ever have to think about the ethics of working on a glacier. Although I suspect now you might need to think a little bit more about that. So very different.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Absolutely. Yeah.
Nicola Walshe:I worked a little bit and then I decided that I really wanted to become a teacher and trained to be a geography teacher. I did my initial teacher education and I started teaching, but I missed very, while I was teaching, I love teaching, I love being in the classroom, but I missed that sort of academic thinking. And also was really interested in how the children and young people were learning in my classroom. I was a secondary geography teacher. So I then decided to do a master's in education alongside, it was part time, so I did that alongside my practice.
Nicola Walshe:And when I was doing my Master's, I sort of took the traditional route I was doing that at Cambridge and I started to explore, particularly focus on young people's understandings of sustainability and environmental and sustainability education, particularly within my practice at first. So I was researching around my practice, and I really enjoyed that. And an opportunity came up to work part time at the University of Cambridge on the PGCE course, so supporting student teachers from the university side whilst carrying on teaching. So that was the first thing that moved me into university. So for a while I worked partly in school still as a practitioner and then partly at university.
Nicola Walshe:And I loved that. And at the same time, I started a family, so I stopped the school part and I ended up just working at Cambridge, ultimately leading the PGCE geography there. And although my contract there didn't formally have research in it, I really loved that part of the work. There was a lot there of researching my practice, so researching the practice with the student teachers and also researching practice in schools. So very much focusing on geography education research, engaging with the geography teacher education community more widely, as well as thinking and focusing a lot on the sustainability element as well.
Nicola Walshe:Sort of fast forwarding a little bit, I moved from Cambridge to Anglia Ruskin University. That was the first time I had research in my contract, firstly as a senior lecturer, then I became deputy head of school and head of school there. And that was where I continued to collaborate further because I formally had research in my contract. It was where I got my successful first application for a UKRI funded grant. So I got an AHRC funded application for eco capabilities, which was a project looking at the effect of arts in nature practice on young children's well-being and nature connection.
Nicola Walshe:So really at that point, I was able through my collaborations and these new opportunities to broaden my research beyond just geography teacher education and looking more broadly at climate change and sustainability education. And then I suppose the sort of latest chapter in the journey was moving to UCL, which is coming up to four years ago now. And I was lucky enough to come here as a professor of education as the head of department of curriculum pedagogy and assessment at the time. And where I was lucky enough with Alison Kitson to start the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, where I still work alongside, as she said, my pro director or vice dean education role for the IOE. So sort of a meandering journey of sort of focusing on practice and developing my expertise and my interests from very specifically geography and more broadly to sustainability and climate change education, but always with a focus on schools, learning, teacher professional development and really improving the quality of our education for all children and young people within England, but also more broadly.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Excellent. That's a really interesting story. And sustainability, I have to say that's something we work hard in teacher education to make it core subjects. Every subject in education can promote sustainability and keep it ongoing topic in teacher education. Brilliant.
Speaker 3:Thank you for sharing that interesting story. That leads us to the next question. Which professional accomplishment, which you have already touched on or initiative, do you consider the most significant to date?
Nicola Walshe:Yeah, thank you. I think it's really difficult to pick one. And I sound really stupid, but I still feel excitement when I get to a publication or publishing a paper. For me, the excitement and the sense of accomplishment of doing that never goes. And I remember still the first time it was from the first paper I ever had published in an academic journal was from master's program, which as I said, did when I was still teaching in the classroom.
Nicola Walshe:I remember feeling such a certain accomplishment, perhaps not quite the same, but I do still feel that. So I think it's still important to recognize those small things that contribute to that bigger sense of achievement and that you're making progress. I think more recently, one of the things that I think is most significant is my engagement with policymakers. So the work that I do to engage with both through formal and informal channels, but also more broadly internationally through my work with the British Council in countries like Iraq, through project work that we're doing in Egypt. So thinking about working with policymakers and providing and supporting them with evidence to sort of make an impact, find really, really significant moments because it feels like, and for me, doing research which is making a difference and which is important because it affects change is really significant.
Nicola Walshe:So those policymaker engagements are important. But I suppose the single one thing is setting up the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education. As I said, that was co founded with Doctor. Allison Kitson, who's a history educator at the IOE. I'm very lucky to work with her and a broader group of wonderful colleagues across the research team, professional development, the associate fellows.
Nicola Walshe:And I feel that sort of the sense of accomplishment that we collectively have through the work that we're doing, but also the support and the collective passion that we have for the work that we're doing is significant. And we're slowly, slowly making a difference. We have a long way to go and it's not always easy, but through that partnership work, we're starting to see a difference. And I think that's probably the thing that I would point to as my single biggest accomplishment, but it's very much a shared accomplishment, not just my own.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Absolutely. I mean, I can see it where it's going from teacher education perspective and the student teachers as well, sustainability, which is focused on a bigger picture, the impact that will be much, much bigger. Thank you for sharing that with us. Okay. So were there any individual, which I'm sure you've just mentioned about Alison, who inspired you, could be more than one individual, inspired your intellectual development?
Zeinab El-Khateeb:And did your research focus align with their interests?
Nicola Walshe:So, I count myself as being very lucky to have a lot of different people who have inspired or supported me across my career. It does tend to be people I encounter directly through work, and it's varied at different points in my career, as I say. So when I was an early career researcher with a sort of geography teacher education focus, particularly when I was leading the PGC Geography in Cambridge, Professor David Lambert in particular would be someone that stood out to me. He was very eminent in the geography teacher education field. He was a professor of geography education at the IOE, of course.
Nicola Walshe:First of all, was somebody who I looked up to. I read his work and it really stimulated thinking. But then as I got to know him through various conferences and events, he became a real mentor. We're still very much in touch and I still regularly see him. So he's sort of been a constant source of inspiration and support throughout my career.
Nicola Walshe:But I also wanted to mention, because this is really important to me, particularly through the leadership parts of my career, that I feel like I've worked with a number of really strong women academics who have been hugely inspirational in the academic leadership that they've shown, the way that they have a successful research career, but also demonstrate and role model very ethical leadership, pairing and compassionate leadership. They're not necessarily in my specific field, in fact, they're not, but they've been significant in framing my own development and allowing me to see what's possible and also sort of encouraging and supporting me to sort of take leaps and progress through my career. And an example would be Professor Katherine Lee, who was my head of school and Deputy Dean is now Dean at Anglia Ruskin University. So somebody that, as I say, who I have felt has supported and nurtured me, but also through their own career, both academic research, but also teaching and leadership have been really inspirational. But I will also say that now I'm inspired by some of the early careers researchers I work with.
Nicola Walshe:So some of the research fellows, they're sort of innovative thinking and they're hard working and they push the boundaries of climate change sustainability education, research and policy engagement. And I still feel that I learn an awful lot from them. So I think it's really important to remember that people who are inspirational can come in all shapes and sizes, but also different times in your career and life that might be in places that you wouldn't necessarily expect them. And I really do learn a lot and very much value, particularly the research fellows that I work with at the moment.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Absolutely. I completely agree with you because when I was a teacher, I did action research. I learned a lot from the children in the classroom.
Nicola Walshe:Yes, exactly.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Similar. It's that partnership of learning, isn't it? We learn from one another and that's showing practice.
Nicola Walshe:Yes, absolutely. And I could absolutely have mentioned all of the children and young people that we've worked with through our research as well. I think that's a really important point. Thank you.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:No problem. And same thing applies for my student I work with at the moment, the IOE, the stuff they come with is very professional. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that. So that's last question.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:What your academic advice would you have for the early career researchers, which he just mentioned, and that can include staff members and students and both, because we have staff members who are also students.
Nicola Walshe:No, absolutely. So I guess three things. One, the first would be do something you're passionate about. Now I know that's really difficult because you don't always have a choice, and you may be starting off on a big research project, which is you don't have control necessarily about how it's shaped. Although I think the most positive relationship to have with these big projects are where you do have the ability to shape them to a certain extent anyway.
Nicola Walshe:But it's so important for me when things are difficult and when you're very busy or when you have a particular challenge, because of course, academia is a journey of challenges, opportunities and highs that we've talked about in terms of accomplishments, but also days where it's more tricky. They're having that underlying passion and knowing that it's something you care deeply about, for me anyway, makes a big difference. So knowing that or believing strongly that all children and young people should have a strong entitlement for climate change and sustainability education, wanting to overcome the inequalities in that educational experience, for me drives things that I do even on the most difficult days. So try to do something wherever possible that you really care about. The second one would be developing collaborations and partnerships because some academics I know like working individually, but that's not me.
Nicola Walshe:I thrive working with teams and collaborations, forming partnerships. And as we've already alluded to, that might be people in academia, it might be senior professors, it might be early career researchers, but it also might be some of our students who are wonderful co researchers. Or when I've worked with artists before, or teachers, I try to include them and build them into projects where they become co researchers with me as well. So engaging with a whole range of different stakeholders and collaborating and forming those partnerships, again, helps, I think, strengthens very much the research that we're doing, but also gives you that sense of community, which helps you to keep going, gives you more opportunities. And then I suppose, perhaps it sounds a little twee, but the third thing is on those difficult days, keep going and know that the work that you are doing is important because it is.
Nicola Walshe:And you are very much valued. And on those difficult days, try to remember that, but also look after yourself. So you need to prioritise your own personal well-being. Use those communities, those collaborations, use passion, but also take time for yourself as well, because unless you are well, you can't achieve anything for those broader projects that you're involved with.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Completely understand and I agree with you. It's that sharing practice and community of practice, but nevertheless don't forget your own well-being. Many thanks for you joining us today, really appreciate it. It has been very interesting and very informative.
Nicola Walshe:No problem at all, thank you for having me.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:You're very welcome, it's a pleasure.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Please follow the link in the show notes to find out more about Professor Nicola Walshe's work, as well as discovering more podcasts from the IOE. And if you like what you have heard, please give the IOE podcast a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. This will help us to reach more listeners who may also enjoy the podcast. I'm Zeinab, thank you for listening, have a good day.
Voiceover 3:Academia et al is brought to you by the IOE's Early Career Network and IOE Marketing and Communications. The podcast is presented by Zeinab El-Khateeb.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:The theme music was composed by Ronnie Zhu, editing by Teresa Baker of UCL Educational Media, and Jason Ilagan is the executive producer of the IOE podcast.
Voiceover 1:Thanks for listening. Search IOE Insights for more podcasts from the IOE.