Hi my name is Duncan, and this is my site!
I'd like to thank you for visiting and engaging with my content and I thought it would be useful to give a quick introduction to me and my content.
I am an academic, with a very messy career journey that has always centered around education in both Higher Education, and Further Education and Skills contexts. I have taught English for Academic Purposes, Clinical Communications, Psychology, Teaching and Learning, and whatever a learner needed from me. I have also worked in management positions in Education, and was also seconded to a Frontline management role in the National Health Service (NHS).
My blogs will centre around the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, though there may be some deviation at times. I will also include some personal blogs, especially around music as I'm a musician and play in bands and orchestras in my spare time.
Across the top of the site you'll find headings to some further information about me including my CV, outputs, and projects that i'm working on. Feel free to explore and get in touch if you want any further information. You can also find me on twitter, just click on the links on my site or my id is @duncan_cross .
Compassionate rigor sits at the heart of my teaching and learning practice as a desire to support learners and colleagues but also to hold them to unwavering standards of success. Life very often interrupts our 'perfect' plans that we hold in our minds. I believe that we can, and should, be compassionate and flexible to support our learners and colleagues to achieve their goals, but at the same time we can ensure that they are meeting their goals and achievements to the best of their abilities without compromising on standards.
To achieve this you have to actively engage in conversation and I like to use a clinical communication model called ICE to manage and match mutual expectations in the learning journey. In 2017 I gave a TEDx Talk on ICE and I have delivered workshops and written blogs on how to use the model. Further details can be found here.
If the model interests you I'd be really interested to hear about your experience, if you do decide to comment below please include:
your context
how using the model felt
how the conversation started and ended
was it successful?
would you use it again? why or why not
If used multiple times, how's it going?
The information you provide may be used for research purposes including publications and dissemination of findings. If you would rather remain anonymous please drop me a message on my contact page
Thanks for coming to my blog and I hope to be posting on a fairly regular basis, though please don't hold it against me if work gets in the way.......
D