Jill Duncan

Jill Duncan is an Assistant Professor in Education at The School of Communities and Education at Northumbria, and a member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and Fuse (Centre for Translational Research in Public Health). She leads the Postgraduate Certificate in Primary Education (PGCE) and both level seven modules (Professionalism in Inclusive Practice and Learning, Teaching and Assessment in the Core Curriculum) holding responsibility for the development and delivery of effective learning experiences of approximately fifty postgraduate education students, while also supporting colleagues across all disciplines as they work towards their Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Jill is also an external link colleague within the Northumbria / Baltic partnership and an external examiner at Aberdeen University. Jill is also co-lead for admissions across Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes. This involves leading internal and external partners involved in the recruitment process as well as liaising with central admissions to ensure smooth activity. 

Jill’s research interests are informed by her teaching and build on her PhD which focused on holistic provision incorporating academic, pastoral and professional strands, all underpinned by an ethic of care, for postgraduate distance-based students within ITE. She has presented her work regionally, nationally, and internationally. She is currently pursuing opportunities with external colleagues to publish further work linked to this area to help raise the recognition of key themes including the conceptual nature of care within vocational programmes as well as work alongside internal services to promote recognition of this. Based on her work on interdisciplinary and simulated learning in educational practice, Jill chairs a group called ‘Medium Technology’ which includes Northumbria colleagues, external partner E-Qualitas and international colleagues in Sweden. The group is exploring the impact of low, medium and high levels of technology on depth of student understanding linked to key professional themes relevant to primary and secondary education. 

Before joining Northumbria, Jill held various school-based roles across sectors including primary teacher, subject (art and design, mathematics) and age phase leadership together with assistant head teacher. She successfully fulfilled international partnership work in Sweden based on developing mathematics and information technology across primary and secondary sectors as part of a working group. Alongside her school-based roles, Jill completed a master's degree in education at Newcastle University. This school-based and cross-sectoral experience provided the basis for her current work in higher education on subject-specific, Art and Design pedagogy, which includes an internationally recognised partnership with The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art to support enhancement opportunities for students and to raise the recognition of gallery practice for schools. Jill is currently chairing an international working pilot group across Belgium, Sweden and United Kingdom (UK) contexts. This work has been presented at national and international conferences and will be the focus of forthcoming conference activity in Albania. Jill’s international impact has also included delivering transformative CPD to qualified primary and secondary teachers in Beijing, China, as part of an internal working group.  

Research interests include project-based learning, creative approaches to outdoor learning, an ethic of care within Higher Education, pastoral support for students, phenomenology, and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), simulation based learning and gallery education.