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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 at 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, am a lecturer and teacher education at the IOE, UCL Faculty of Education and Society. In this series of episodes, we are going to hear stories about academic journeys, achievements and legacy, which we hope will inspire you to embark on your own adventure as an early career researcher. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Professor Norbert Pachler. Did I see you here with us?
Zeinab El-Khateeb:He is the Vice Dean Enterprise at the IOE and has led and contributed to a number of a large scale international consultancy projects. His interests focus on the implication of AI on higher education, teacher education and development. Welcome to the episode and thank you so much for joining us.
Norbert Pachler: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.
Norbert Pachler:Thank you so much, first of all, for inviting me to speak to you. And I'll try my best to summarise what's been quite a long career as succinctly as possible. Rather than bore the audience with various different managerial roles, And I want to focus, I think, on my development as a researcher, as a scholar, as an educator. Throughout my time in education, I've always had an interest in three interrelated areas. Language education and language pedagogy is one of them.
Norbert Pachler:Teacher education and teacher development is another. And educational technologies are another. And over the course of my career, I've tried to progress my understanding and push back our understanding and the boundaries of these disciplines individually, but also try and combine them and bring them together Yes, in various definitely. And another thing I have tried to do is not treat research and scholarship as something that is separate, but try and create synergies with my professional work as a teacher, as an educator, as a teacher educator, and so forth. So, I started out my career as a teacher, undertaking my doctoral studies on a part time basis while teaching full time.
Norbert Pachler:As you can imagine, that wasn't exactly easy, required a lot of commitments on weekends, evenings But and all the rest of it obviously allowed me from the very start to understand the nexus between theory and practice first hand. And as I said, that's the sort of theme that I tried to carry through. I then was very lucky after a few years to be offered the role of advisory teacher for a London local education authority just at the time as the government was implementing a very, very significant policy reform, namely the national curriculum. And just at the time, Ron Deering was setting out various recommendations in response to anxiety by the profession around things like the assessment burden and the place of assessment in the national curriculum. And that gave me an opportunity to work with lead practitioners in schools, heads of departments and their teams, and develop interventions that we could then also inquire into systematically and evaluate.
Norbert Pachler:And I was able to produce a number of publications on the back of that work. So, again, trying to locate the work that I was doing very much in my professional practice. And from then, I had the opportunity to move into the area of teacher education. Unfortunately, just at the time that the IOE had its first Offstead inspection. But that went, well, I'm pleased to say.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:And
Norbert Pachler:I had, the opportunity to take on subject and program leadership and was able to continue this theme of theory and practice and developed my teaching into a manuscript that became a very successful research based textbook for student teachers with an accompanying practical guide, which is now in its fourth edition and going strong still. And what I learned there was, and again that's something that I tried to stick to for the rest of my career, how beneficial it was to work closely in collaboration with colleagues. So, I was very fortunate to find a creative colleague at the country of Christchurch at the time, with whom I was able to develop the book. And that sort of collaboration, not trying to do things on my own, but open myself up to the critique and constructive engagement of others, I think was very, very important. And that sort of theme of subject leadership, program leadership continued, and I was offered the opportunity here at the IOE to develop, co develop a completely new type of master's programme, the Master of Teaching, which instead of looking at education as the sort of academic study of the discipline of education, it looked at practice as the focal point for inquiry.
Norbert Pachler:And we were able, my colleague and I, to build a research agenda around the development of this new programme, enabling colleagues like myself who had come from school into the university, starting to teach and teach education programmes, and then trying to transition to master's programmes and other programmes, to work together to learn with and from each other and also provide opportunities for some colleagues to undertake their HD studies based on work they were doing, teaching on the programme and researching the programme.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:So, was very useful Yes. And
Norbert Pachler:finding those synergies. And that then, fortunately, it was a very successful initiative, got picked up by government and they developed for a few years a funded initiative, the Master of Learning and Teaching, which picked up the ideas that we had developed. We published a book, which is somewhere here in the office, out of the whole experience and were able to publish a lot of chapters, also, which tried to reflect on the practical work that we were doing, but also tried to contribute to theory building in the field. And what was so good was that we had eight or 10 people working on similar things, lots of opportunities for sharing. And on the basis of that work then, the institute submitted a successful bid to the Higher Education Funding Council, as was, as part of the Centre for Excellence initiative, you might recall that, where universities were encouraged to emphasise aspects of teaching and learning and reward teaching and learning.
Norbert Pachler:And I was invited by the then director to co lead the Centre for Excellence in Work Based Learning for education professionals, which was able to build on all the groundwork that we had done previously and provide, because we got funding, provide opportunities for staff from across the university to take short succumbents and undertake research and development projects on their programme with a particular view to integrating technology into the teaching and learning. And again, I was able to lead there the sort of innovation at the level of institutional pedagogy, but also personal professional development for staff. Most importantly, I think of all, we were able to build a strong community of practice within the institute through which we could support each other newer researchers and practitioners working on the various different projects. That allowed us then to gain a lot of international attention and provided us the opportunity to work on international projects that were funded by the EU and others. So one of those, for example, was undertaken evaluation of EU wide initiative in STEM education, introducing technology into pedagogy together with the OECD and things like that.
Norbert Pachler:So, I suppose what I'm trying to show is that it's very helpful to have a sort of thread throughout your career, a thread that's thematic, so you can build, develop, as develop, well as a thread that's sort of conceptual, in my case, this whole area of the nexus between theory and practice, which again incrementally, I think, helps to ensure that you don't just have sort of isolated publications. But I didn't realise that until a little while in. As you go for promotion and senior promotion, it becomes more and more important to be able to demonstrate your own intellectual project and having this sort of theme running through from the start is obviously very helpful in helping you present your body of work as a coherent body of work that makes a contribution to the field. I then transitioned into various different senior management roles within the IOE and UCL. And I've always tried to remain active as a researcher in terms of my own personal research, are also contributing to research projects.
Norbert Pachler:But most importantly, an area I've enjoyed a lot over the years, supervising PhD and HD students. I've particularly enjoyed working with international HD students who have sort of tended to explore aspects of their own personal pedagogical practice in their universities or schools very often in Santito and been able to accompany them on their journey has been quite interesting. And some of them have obviously then gone on to take up more senior roles in universities, become researchers, and I'm still working with some of them to this day, exploring new fields. I think it's also important to stress that, you know, this theme of collaboration, I alluded to it already, manifested itself in my own career also through seeking members of various different professional bodies, you know, be they within my sort of own domain, such as the Association for Language Learning in my case, who then gave me the opportunity back in 1999 to take on the editorship of their house journal, which I've subsequently converted over the twenty odd years I've been with it now into one of the leading international academic peer reviewed journals in the field. And have had the opportunity to work with and get to know loads of colleagues the process.
Norbert Pachler:Collaboration, putting oneself forward for various different contributive tasks. So, for example, in connection with the British Educational Research Association, I've been a member of the College of Reviewers now for the last five years or so. So, it creates work, but also gives you an opportunity to really work closely with like minded colleagues in the fields.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:It's the development of others as well, alongside you, isn't it? So, the journey. That's really, really informative. Thank you so much. Next question.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Yeah. Which professional accomplishment or initiative, which you've actually talked about it already, but do you consider the most significant to date? Yeah. I know you've talked about amazing initiative that you've already touched on. Which one would you think is the most significant?
Norbert Pachler:There's of course many, I'm pleased to say. But for our purposes today, I think I want to stick with the sort of academic sphere. In the context of the Center for Excellence for Work Based Learning for Education Professionals, I was able to convene interdisciplinary group, of international researchers from a wide range of fields such as, education, cultural studies, media education, semiotics, pedagogy, sociology, design based research, education technology, and so forth, around the label of the London mobile learning group. So to set the scene a little bit, we are in sort of the mid 2000s, around 2005. Nokia is the dominant mobile device.
Norbert Pachler:Real big displays yet, navigation, not through touch but through buttons and so forth. And in this particular context, was I able to understand and work with colleagues the significance and to understand the affordances of mobile devices and mobile services. And as, you know, know today, they've become absolutely integral to our everyday lives.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:You feel lost without Iqbal?
Norbert Pachler:Why is this? They remain contested in the context of school based education, but they fundamentally changed the world in which we live and And how we live within the we managed to understand that at the time, or at least sense that something like this was happening. And we were able to work in the context of this group for about five years or so systematically on a number of areas that allowed us to really develop a field that was only masoned and emerging. There were only a handful of researchers internationally working in the field. Mike Sharples is one example, Agnes Kukulska Hume, who you may know because she's a linguist, is another, yeah, and one or two others.
Norbert Pachler:So, we were able to shape a field. And I'm particularly proud in the context of the 2010, book, that, we published, the the core team of all of researchers, Anders, of leadership, which set out what, we think is a coherent theory of mobile learning. I could obviously go into this now, in detail, but that probably, would would go too far. But, the opportunity to really develop a set of analytical tools that are obviously based on a huge range of existing research finding in a wide range of disciplines that was, I think, very enjoyable and also, from my perspective, theoretically, a very significant achievement. The particular theoretical frame we developed in that context was the so called mobile complex, which we used as device to try and describe the transformations that are going on in the economy, in society, in culture, in media, and how they impact on education.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Really interesting. And again, collaboration.
Norbert Pachler:Absolutely. Disciplinary, international, collaborative. And the other thing I've sort of mentioned it already, and I think I'm very proud of, is the language learning journal. It, you know, has now a large number of submissions every year. We have six issues per year, per volume.
Norbert Pachler:We have 240,000 downloads, every year. So, we've managed to develop a resource for the profession and for researchers. And one of the things why I'm particularly fond of it and why it's particularly hard work, because unlike some other journals, we make a particular effort to nurture and support early careers researchers and colleagues new to publishing. So, it isn't unusual for colleagues to be asked and supported to do various revisions to get the manuscript to the point that it can be included and make a good contribution rather than just being told, no, thank you. And so, that, I think, is also something.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Of course, because you're also helping the new research, the early research, definitely. Thank you so much. So, was there an individual who inspired your intellectual development? And did the research forecast align with your research interests? It doesn't have to be one individual, because I So, be multi individual if you want.
Norbert Pachler:So, I've been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work at the world leading faculty of education for nearly three decades now, and that has given the privilege of getting to know and being able to work with a wide range of, colleagues, who've been, world leading in their fields. There's one in particular I probably want to pick out although there's a number of them, and that one individual is Gunther Kess, who joined the institute before me. He was an established senior academic at the time of my arrival, and he was someone who was willing to invest some time in me and support me through mentoring activities, through conversations, through explorations of new ideas, through interdisciplinary thinking. I'm not sure whether you are familiar with him, but he obviously is very well known for his development of the concept of multimodality, which of course plays into this whole idea of educational technology and language very centrally. And also his perspective on learning as meaning making and the social practice through the use of a range of semiotic resources.
Norbert Pachler:And that sort of theoretical perspective really helped to develop the theoretical perspective on mobile learning that I spoke about earlier on. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago. The amount of personal time he was willing to invest, not just with me, but with other colleagues as well, developing these sorts of collegial mentoring relationships that I particularly valued. Let me mention one other, because there's a point that I would like to make, and that's around the collaboration. I've always tried throughout my career to partake in projects, international projects, learn from practice in other institutions in other countries and all of that.
Norbert Pachler:And in the context of one of these projects that the IOE was involved in, and I was the IOE's representative, I met the former dean of the School of Education of the University of Castle in Germany, Professor Ben Pachler. And to this day continue to work with him developing new ideas. And what I particularly valued, although I myself come from that tradition of academic life, through conversations with him, through collaboration with him, I managed to gain an even deeper understanding of the German academic tradition of learning, which you might know brings together philosophy with education around sort of the notion of Bildung, which is very much around personal and cultural maturation, seeing education as that. The very idea of the university is significantly developed by one of these German philosophers.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:An exchange of knowledge, isn't it?
Norbert Pachler:Yes, and the relationship between research and practice and all of that. And he, through his very deep personal knowledge of these philosophical traditions, which I was familiar with, I haven't studied them rather than and I learned from him how to use them effectively as analytical tools to unlock perspectives, analytical, critical perspectives on issues of current relevance for which they were never designed. And that's why I thought I'll mention him because that offered me, you know, untold opportunities to really look afresh and look anew and look differently to other colleagues here in The UK who tended not to be immersed in that tradition of thought at these problems.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Your perspective, isn't it?
Norbert Pachler:Yes.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:You so much. What academic advice do you have for early career researcher? This could be staff member or also
Norbert Pachler:Yes, there's many things.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:I know, I can tell. I already mentioned so many of them, any significance Let more
Norbert Pachler:me mention a few. So, think one thing I have found, based on personal experience, to be really important is to approach one's career with the right disposition, by which I mean actively going out to seek opportunities and create opportunities for oneself, rather than to hope that they would come and wait for them. So, you know, when there are expressions of interest, consider applying for them. If there are calls for tender, you know, have a look at them, consider doing that. And obviously be prepared for setbacks.
Norbert Pachler:There will be many, yeah. If we look at the sort of success rate, for example, bidding for research council grants, you know, you look at 12%, 13% So, or it requires a lot of The hard work and point that I would like to make in this context is, you know, don't just, for example, think of an application for a bid as a proposal, but also think about how you might be able to use the work and the material later on for publication or for another purpose. So use it as sort of the starting point for developing ideas that you then want, even if the funding isn't forthcoming, you can repurpose in other ways. I've certainly tried to do that. I think, again, I think I've alluded to, it's important to actively build personal professional networks and to seek collaborations and international collaborations, particularly in the context of publication because it's a well known fact, you look at the work, for example, Simon Marginson, that papers that have been coauthored by international authors from different countries, you get a much higher impact rating as if you were a sole author or an author just from one institution or from one country.
Norbert Pachler:So look at those and use, as I said, we said earlier on, membership of various organisations as a useful starting point for that. I have also often tried to use membership of organisations, for example, the American Educational Research Association, and their conferences as opportunities to propose and, on land more occasions, been selected to put together workshops, colloquia symposia, rather than individual papers, which again gives the opportunity to work with others, gives you the opportunity to then collect these various contributions into either an edited book or a special issue of a journal. So, again, try and be strategic and make the hard work that it is necessary to get published work for you as much as possible. I've talked about mentoring. Of course, looking out mentoring opportunities, asking your head of department if you don't have an immediate colleague, whether they can help you and support you to find someone.
Norbert Pachler:And be willing, and I think that's important, to learn from those senior colleagues. By and large, they have some really helpful and sage advice to offer. I would also probably say, in my own experience, it's been really valuable to invest time in reviewing for journals. It's time consuming. You don't sort of get any immediate benefit.
Norbert Pachler:But I've reviewed for many, many journals and obviously also edited my own journal and it just gives you such a good opportunity to stay abreast with developments in the field and particularly new emerging themes in the field. And I found this quite helpful and I've tried wherever possible to be constructive in my feedback because I know I want submit a paper in a few weeks time and I'm hoping to get constructive feedback from colleagues that help me improve my work. So those would be some examples of pieces of advice. That I've received.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:Honestly, very, very, very helpful. Thank you so much for joining us today and it has been very informative and pleasure to have you here with us.
Norbert Pachler:It's been my absolute pleasure to spend some time with you today and I hope our listeners found the podcast informed.
Zeinab El-Khateeb:I'm sure they will. I found it very, very informative. Please follow the link in the show notes to find out more about Professor Norbert's work as well as discovering more podcasts from the IOE. And if you like what you've heard, give the IOE podcast Father's Tale Reading on Apple or Spotify. This will help us to reach more listeners who may also enjoy the podcast too.
Zeinab El-Khateeb: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. The theme music was composed by Ronnie Shu, 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.