Lindsay Hetherington

Lindsay is Head of Initial Teacher Education at the Graduate School of Education, and an Associate Professor of Science Education. She moved to GSE from her role as Head of Chemistry at Chew Valley School, Bristol to pursue her interest in research-inspired teaching and completed her PhD here in 2012.

In her teaching at GSE, Lindsay works primarily on the PGCE programmes, which use the ‘Exeter Model’, a unique curriculum approach for ITE and set of training tools that underpin the outstanding (Ofsted, 2017) ITE provision at Exeter. She also teachers on the MA Education Programme. Seeing the education of teachers in research-led teaching as an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of young people, Lindsay says she really values the combination of active researcher and teacher educator within her role.  

Seeing Science as an inherently creative discipline, and science education as crucial to addressing issues facing the planet in the Anthropocene, her research explores creative approaches to teaching that draw together the material world with dialogue. She is currently working on two EU-funded projects with Dr Kerry Chappell that use creative pedagogies, firstly with digital technologies to teach Ocean Literacy, and secondly to explore their impact within intensive interdisciplinary courses for futures education for adult learners (https://sciculture.eu). Kerry and Lindsay are further collaborating on an impact project to further develop and share materials for Science and Art teachers to support collaborative creative teaching approaches. Lindsay uses similar sociomaterial theoretical perspectives informing her science educational research to explore teacher retention and development. She is particularly interested in understanding teacher agency through this lens and is involved in projects which involve sharing the Exeter Model for ITE with teachers internationally and exploring its’ use.