Leadership

Professor David Pedder completed his PhD in 2001 from the University of Cambridge as an ESRC-funded student. He carried out a mixed methods investigation for his thesis: ‘The impact of class size on effective teaching and learning: a conceptual and methodological investigation’. In 1996 he obtained his MSc in Educational Research Methodology at the University of Oxford.

Professor Pedder joined ECAE in September 2018 as Deputy Vice Chancellor – Academic. Before taking up his position with us he was, from September 2017, Professor of Education at the Education Research Centre, University of Brighton School of Education. Previously, he was Professor of Education and Director of Research at the University of Leicester School of Education between 2011 and 2017. Between 2000 and 2010 he was Research Associate, Senior Research Associate, Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.Since 2016 he has been Co-editor of the International Journal of Lesson and Learning Studies.

David has extensive experience teaching English as a Foreign Language, working in workplaces, schools and classrooms in Japan (1985-1988) and, with Voluntary Service Overseas, in high schools in West Papua, Indonesia (1989-1995). He has many years’ experience working alongside fellow teachers to support professional learning and practice development in a range of pre-service and in-service contexts in Indonesia and the UK.

He also has extensive experience as an educational researcher in a large number of national and international research projects. In broad terms his research focuses on the quantitative and qualitative study of classroom teaching and learning, teachers’ professional learning, organisational learning, school improvement, and educational leadership. More specifically, his ongoing research programme is concerned with understanding and promoting the spread and uptake of effective learning, teaching and leadership practices across classrooms, schools and networks. As part of this research programme he explores how educational change is achieved at different scales and in different organisational, policy and cultural contexts. This has involved a sustained research and development focus on pedagogic innovation, teachers’ professional learning and organisational conditions that foster advances in both. His research addresses complex questions of how the values, thinking and practices of students, teachers and leadership teams recursively interact to influence school improvement, teachers’ professional learning, and classroom teaching and learning.

Professor Pedder has published extensively in prestigious international peer-reviewed research journals and has co-authored and contributed to several books and other publications.