Early Career Educator
Name
Biography
Sammy is as a teacher educator on the Postgraduate Certificate in Education at Ulster University. He has over 15 years’ experience as a post-primary school teacher and leader and is currently Course Director for Technology and Design Education within the School of Education at Ulster. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the School of Education’s INSPIRE Active Learning Champion.
His teaching and research nexus focuses on the use of educational technology to support learning and teaching, particularly within Initial Teacher Education. Sammy gained an MSc in Educational Multimedia in 2007 with distinction from Queen’s University Belfast, embedding a vein of innovation and integrating digital technologies to transform teaching and learning throughout his practice.
The life-long employability and capacity for diversification of students are critical to Sammy within his teaching. His skills in inclusive and active learning, from teaching the Northern Ireland Curriculum (NIC), are inherent in all that he does. Sammy has held several leadership roles within Technology and Design and Engineering and Manufacturing Education in Northern Ireland including Principal Moderator and Chief Examiner roles for Awarding Authorities. He is currently the Chair of Examiners for GCSE Engineering and Manufacturing. Alongside his experience developing rigorous assessment tools and resources, his familiarity embedding these strategies within teaching and learning in Higher Education are both natural and well developed.
Title
Adding some SWIVL to our Digital Pivot
Summary
This case study explores the work of colleagues in the School of Education, led by the applicant, in reimagining practicum assessment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Work focused on engaging with stakeholders, identifying technological affordances aligned with pedagogic priorities, selecting core facilitating technologies, supporting and developing the skills of colleagues, developing the competence and confidence of students and implementation across the majority of schools throughout Northern Ireland. Stakeholders, students and colleagues report favourably upon the innovative deployment of hardware to facilitate unobtrusive remote observations of pre-service teachers’ placement activities and cite and pilot capacities for expanding integration within managed-/post-pandemic andragogy.