Norman J Jackson'Lifewide Education' and 'Creative Academic' Social Enterprises
Norman J Jackson
Doctor of Philosophy
About
104
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Introduction
My research spans two different fields. I began my career as a geologist with research in two domains - the Cornumbian ore field SW England and the geology of Saudi Arabia.
I made a mid career change to work as a researcher/scholar & developer of policy and practice in higher education. My projects in the field of higher education - in chronological order span 1) quality assurance, regulation/self-evaluation, benchmarking and brokerage in HE, 2) creativity in HE teaching and learning 3) lifewide learning & education 4) learning ecologies, 5) current projects include learning ecologies, ecologies of practice and creativity in practice
Additional affiliations
August 2011 - December 2015
'Lifewide Education CiC' and 'Creative Academic'
Position
- Founder and Director
Publications
Publications (104)
The magazine features the work of Marta Ockuly and a range of perspectives exploring the idea of creative self-expression which we came to understand as, “the ways and means by which a person connects, relates and interacts their inner cognitive/psychological world –their many selves holding beliefs, values, identities, perceptions, imaginings, rea...
Argues that education as an Important and distinctive contextual-cultural domain for creativity and the development of human creative potential
Creative Academic Magazine is an open access on-line journal published twice a year under a Creative Commons Licence for the benefit of the Higher Education community and anyone else who is interested in our work. It features and curates content that relates to the themes of:
1 creativity in everyday life including professional practice
2 creative...
Lifewide Magazine is the journal of the Lifewide Education Community. It provides a purpose and vehicle for exploring different dimensions of learning, development and achievement. It is published twice a year and each issue examines and explores in an informative but informal way, a different aspect of lifewide learning, education, personal develo...
The idea of learning ecologies developed through this book, provides a more comprehensive and holistic view of learning and personal development than is normally considered in higher education. A learning ecology provides us with affordances, information, knowledge and other resources for learning, developing and achieving something we value. It in...
he aim of this book is to make better sense of a long, complex, messy, change process through the stories of those who were involved. Over fifty participants were interviewed during the course of the study and their uniquely personal perspectives have been woven into a compelling story of organisational change. This book describes their ingenuity a...
The book was produced for the Learning Lives Conference held in March 2015
http://www.learninglives.co.uk/ It recognises and celebrates the many different ways in which universities are encouraging, supporting and recognising lifewide learning and personal development in UK Higher Education. The book will enable people who are involved in leading,...
This chapter provides a historical perspective on the origin and development of the lifewide learning and education to which it is hoped later contributions in the book can relate. The origin of these ideas can be seen in the educational philosophy and writings of John Dewey and Eduard Lindeman in the 1920s and 30s. For much of its history lifewide...
The challenge of 'cultivating creativity in university students' is bound up with the wicked problem of preparing them and enabling them to prepare themselves, for the unknown challenges they will encounter over a lifetime of working, learning and adapting to the changing circumstances of their lives. The challenge facing the leaders of our univers...
The ecological metaphor has been applied to many contexts and is well suited to human interactions between people and their environment, their processes for doing, learning and achieving, and for developing new knowledge in unstructured contexts. This chapter examines the conceptual basis for learning ecologies and considers the value of the idea f...
This article provides an overview of the problem of creativity in higher education and some of the research I undertook on the nature of creativity in higher education.
This book has been primarily written for people who are interested and involved in helping students maximise the learning and development they gain from their higher education experience. The authors contributing to this book hope that their attempt to examine and give practical meaning to the idea of lifewideness makes sense to you and helps you s...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to an educational design developed by the SCEPTrE CETL at the University of Surrey, aimed at encouraging, recognising and valuing learning and personal development gained through students’ lifewide (co‐ and extra‐curricular) experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores, through...
Bringing about significant change in a mature and successful work‐integrated learning (WIL) scheme is quite a difficult thing to accomplish. The University of Surrey, which has a long established WIL scheme based on year‐long professional training work placements, has embarked on a programme of research and development aimed at adapting and enhanci...
Creative Academy is a creative intervention aimed at transferring and adapting creative thinking and facilitation techniques used in the design world to the context of teaching and learning in higher education. It comprises a one or two day training and profes- sional development process aimed at helping higher education teachers and their stu- den...
The University of Surrey is developing the idea of a life-wide education. The intention is to develop a not for credit personal and professional development award through which a student's life-wide learning enterprise can be encouraged, supported, valued and publicly recognised. This paper is not intended to be a research study proving that life-w...
Graduates face a world of complexity which demands flexibility, adaptability, self-reliance and innovation, but while the development of creativity is embedded in the English National Curriculum and in workplace training, the higher education sector has yet to fully recognise its importance.
This book highlights how pressures such as quality assur...
Jackson, N., Oliver, M., Shaw, M., & Wisdom, J. (Eds) (2006) Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Creativity is a fundamentally human characteristic that is central to our well-being and productivity, yet so often we undervalue it in higher education. This article provides a practical introduction to the meanings and role of creativity in higher education learning and teaching. It summarises some of the perspectives on creativity that are being...
The idea of metalearning was originally used by John Biggs (19853.
Biggs , JB . (1985). The role of metalearning in study processes. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 55: 185–212. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) to describe the state of ‘being aware of and taking control of one’s own learning’. This paper explores the c...
This article addresses the challenge of developing new conceptual knowledge to help us make better sense of the way that higher education is approaching the ‘problem’ of representing (documenting, certifying and communicating by other means) students' learning for the supercomplex world described by Barnett (20003.
Barnett R (2000b) Realizing the...
During the 1990s, UK higher education was transformed through the full panopoly of levers available to government - legislation, funding to encourage expansion and change, regulation and a national review. As we enter the 21st century, new organizational agents acting as brokers are emerging as important facilitators of systemic change. The central...
Subject benchmarking developed by the Quality Assurance Agency, provides a good example of a systemic policy that is being introduced in the belief that it will lead to improvements in teaching, assessment, curriculum design and ultimately student learning. Guidance on how benchmark statements are to be interpreted and used is scattered through man...
Members of the curriculum network are invited to comment on and develop the ideas in this paper. Complexity theory provides a way of examining and making sense of complex natural and social systems. Complexity refers to the condition of the universe which is integrated and yet too rich and varied for us to understand in a simple mechanistic ways… c...
Provides an introduction to benchmarking in UK higher education. The introduction of subject benchmarking by the Quality Assurance Agency means that most academics are now aware of the term but they associate it with the process of regulating academic standards through a process of referencing to a subject benchmark statement (regulatory benchmarki...
The article introduces the idea of programme specification and background to the development of policy by the Quality Assurance Agency. Programme specification will promote an outcomes approach to learning and the specification of standards across UK higher education and provide the basis for a new national quality assurance framework that focuses...
The article introduces the concept of benchmarking as a referencing process to support self-regulation of quality and outcome standards in higher education programmes. It examines the potential for exploiting the product of programme specification to explain which institutional and external reference points or benchmarks have been used to inform th...
Programme specifications will have an important influence on academic practice in UK higher education. They will provide concise summary descriptions of the educational learning outcomes of programmes. They are intended to promote and support a systematic process of critical reflection on the curriculum and the means by which the desired outcomes a...
Benchmarking is a popular tool for self-evaluation and self-improvement in industry and commerce. It enables an organization to compare itself with others, to identify its relative strengths and weaknesses, and to improve its working practices accordingly. In higher education it is now being promoted to support the regulation of academic standards...
Education systems can be characterized on the basis of whether the academic and occupational/vocational education and training they provide is compartmentalized (tracked systems), systematically connected (linked systems) or fully integrated (unified systems). This paper describes how such a typology might be used to model strategic change at the h...
This article describes the rationale for a programme specification (Dearing recommendation 21) with reference to an example template produced by the Quality Assurance Agency. It examines the potential connection between programme specifications, which are concerned with helping teaching teams make their learning intentions more explicit, and progre...
Examines the proposals made by the National Committee of Inquiry in Higher Education (Dearing Report) for a national quality assurance regime that is focused on academic standards. Provides a simple conceptual aid to explain relationships between the elements of the policy framework. Considers the methodologies that are being developed by the Quali...
Examines the reasons for the strategic move in UK higher education to a new national quality assurance regime that is primarily focused on academic standards. Considers the conceptual basis on which the new approach is founded as a precursor to examining the proposals made by the National Committee of Inquiry in Higher Education and the initial dev...
The third in a series of articles that explore the nature of academic regulation in the UK. Argues that UK higher education (HE) should aspire to a regulatory regime which is based on the principle of ‘partnership in trust’. The principle would facilitate a strategic move towards institutional self-regulation for those institutions that demonstrate...
The second of three linked articles which explore the dimensions of academic regulation in UK higher education. Provides a series of typologies and conceptual frameworks to aid understanding and facilitate discourse over the most appropriate strategic direction for change. Argues that the challenge is to devise a regulatory regime which is in balan...
The first of a series of three articles which map the dimensions and evolution of academic regulation in the UK. Argues that regulation is an important and substantial concept and set of activities which is far more comprehensive in scope and substance than the concept of quality assurance which it subsumes; that it involves the act of regulating (...
Suggests that the expansion of academic quality audit methodologies within higher education institutions is a significant development in UK quality assurance. It reflects increasing demands for accountability and also a desire for more dynamic and efficient methods for review and evaluation. The adoption of common regulatory frameworks and centrall...
Notes that expansion of academic quality audit methodologies within higher education institutions is a significant recent development in UK quality assurance, reflecting a shift to more dynamic processes to support self-regulation. Describes the range of current practice encountered in a survey of 25 higher education providers and offers a series o...
ldspar granite whose emplacement may have been influenced by active NWtrending faults, and by a major body of evengra ined, moderately porphyritic, syenogranite/ alkali feldspar granite and granite porphyry. The Crownhill intrusion comprises a core of strongly porphyritic, coarsegrained, biotite syenogranite, intruded by an evengrained syenogranite...
The Cornubian ore field of southwest England is associated with an S-type ilmenite series, high heat production (HHP), two-mica, tourmaline-bearing monzogranite batholith, which formed between 270 to 295 Ma. Three-dimensional modeling of gravity data indicates that it has a total volume of about 68 000 km 3 and is divisible into distinct western an...
The Cornubian ore field of southwest England is spatially associated with the roof of an S-type, ilmenite series, high heat production monzogranite batholith hosted by a deformed and lightly metamorphosed, upper Paleozoic marine mudstone-sandstone sequence. Three metallogenic stages can be recognized within the ore field: a prebatholith stage (300-...
The post-tectonic Sidarah monzogranite is composed of metaluminous to peraluminous, medium-grained, porphyritic biotite monzogranite. N-trending quartz veins containing disseminated pyrite and molybdenite and with a MoBiPbAg metallic signature occur within a 2.5 by 7 km area in the north of the pluton, close to a major Najd fault. Mineralization wa...
A porphyritic muscovite—albite—microcline microgranite crops out at Jabal Umm Al Suqian, 80 km NE of Bishah. It intrudes alkali-feldspar granite, quartz diorite and a conglomerate composed of dioritic clasts, and is enveloped by a shell of hydrothermally altered, albitized, greisenized and microclinized country rocks. The principal chemical feature...
Five types of rare-element mineralization have been recognized in these rocks: 1) Deposits of Nb, Zr, Y, REE, Sn, Ta, U, Th and F are related to alkali granites and their hydrothermal derivatives. Mineralization is generally disseminated in porphyritic microgranite stocks or concentrated in apical or marginal, layered pegmatite-aplite complexes. Ve...
Beryl pegmatite near Jabal Tarban forms a carapace on a small stock of alkali-feldspar microgranite. Geological, petrographic and geochemical features indicate a genetic relationship between pegmatite and microgranite. Crystallization of quartz and alkali feldspar from a low-Ca granitic magma resulted in formation of a residuum enriched in rare ele...
Two overlapping stages can be distinguished in the formation of the Arabian Shield: (1) an ‘island-arc stage’, between about 900 and 660 Ma, during which the formation and nature of plutonic magmas was controlled by subduction-related processes; and (2) a ‘post-accretion stage’, between about 700 and 550 Ma, which was dominated by granitic magmas d...
A reconnaissance survey indicates that trondhjemite (low-K, low-Ca tonalite) is widely distributed and a volumetrically significant component of many Arabian diorite—tonalite complexes. Eight trondhjemite provinces are provisionally identified, but it is likely that trondhjemite will prove to be a ubiquitous, though minor, component of most island-...
The Jabal Hamra silexite, a crescent-shaped stock 300 m long by 100 m wide, averages over 6000 ppm combined REE and is the Kingdom's highest-grade resource of these elements. It is anomalously radioactive (total-count gamma radiation 1000–3000 cps), has high average contents of U (75 ppm) and Th (263 ppm) and is also enriched in Nb, Zr, Y, Sn and T...
The Jabalat post-tectonic granite pluton is composed of albite- and oligoclase-bearing, low-calcium, F-, Sn- and Rb-rich subsolvus granites. These granites display evidence of late-magmatic, granitophile- and metallic-element specialization, resulting ultimately in the development of post-magmatic, metalliferous hydrothermal systems characterized b...
Post-orogenic 700-550 m.y. felsic plutonic rocks of the Arabian Shield include alkali granite, alkali-feldspar granite, monzogranite and granodiorite; syenite and monzonite also occur but are volumetrically insignificant. Most of the specialized and mineralized plutons are low-Ca granites. Plumasitic types are composed of leucocratic, alkali-feldsp...
Broadly based reference statistics are a prerequisite for geochemical classification of granitic rocks and an aid to prospecting for related mineralization, in that they define normal and hence anomalous compositions. As a first step toward providing such statistics, average compositions have been estimated for a population of granitic rocks about...
Five examples of disseminated rare element mineralization with sufficient resource potential to warrant exploration. All are
characterized by enrichment in a suite of granitophile elements, which typically includes Nb, Ta, Sn, rare earth elements,
Y, Th, U, and Zr, but they differ in size, geometry, mode of occurrence, and lithology. Two types of m...
Late Precambrian granitoid rocks occurring within a 44,000 km2 area of the western Arabian Shield are subdivided on the basis of geology and petrology into older (820 to 715 Ma) and younger (686 to 517 Ma) assemblages. The older assemblage contains major complexes which can be assigned to either one of a granodioritic or trondhjemitic petrologic as...
A petrological assessment is made of 11 volcano-sedimentary belts in the central Arabian Shield using 118 new chemical analyses. The oldest (>900 m.y.) are chemically immature bimodal suites of low-K tholeiites and sodic dacite/rhyolite depleted in lithophile elements. These lavas have chemical characteristics similar to immature island arcs such a...
Five new Rb/Sr whole-rock isochrons for the youngest volanic succession of this area (M.A. 83M/3205) indicate that very late Precambrian (690-570 m.y.) volcanicity was an important event in the evolution of the shield. Initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios range 0.7027-0.7036 and Rb/Sr ratios are uniformly low (<0.4) except for a few metarhyolites. Most of the...
Large amounts of diorite—tonalite magma were intruded into the island-arc successions of the southern Arabian shield between ca. 900 and 700 Ma ago. Major oxide, trace element, rare earth (REE) and isotopic data are presented for two plutons exemplifying older and younger members of this plutonic phase. The Thurrat pluton, which was emplaced into v...
Field, petrographic, fluid inclusion, radiogenic (K/Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, Rb/Sr) and stable isotope (D/H, 18O/16O) studies have been applied to mineralization in the roof and flank of the Land's End granite. Isotopic evidence for magmatic-hydrothermal activity is restricted to the earliest mineralization stages. The principal ore-bearing main stage fluids...
Field, petrographic, fluid inclusion, radiogenic (K/Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, Rb/Sr) and stable isotope (D/H, 18O/16O) studies have been applied to mineralization in the roof and flank of the Land's End granite. Isotopic evidence for magmatic-hydrothermal activity is restricted to the earliest mineralization stages. The principal ore-bearing main stage fluids...
Regional correlation suggests a subdivision of the stratigraphy into 3 'sequences'. 'Sequence' C (c.1200-950 Ma) typically consists of fine-grained clastic terrigenous sediments interbedded with volcanic/volcanoclastic deposits. These were deposited in a marine basin marginal to, but some distance from, a continental landmass. 'Sequence' B (c.950-6...
The most important late Precambrian stratigraphic units of NE Africa and Arabia are tabulated within a crude radiometric framework, and inferred correlations are suggested. Two geographical groupings of stratigraphies can be recognized. Continental clastic sedimentary and anorogenic volcanic successions are found around the Tanzanian craton, while...
Models for the late Proterozoic to early Palaeozoic evolution of the Arabian Shield require a knowledge of the fundamental basement in the region. In the south-central Arabian Shield there are several areas of gneissic granitoid rocks which could represent such pre-Pan African basement. Whole-rock Rb-Sr isochrons for 2 of these areas are presented....
Several discordant, garnet-bearing bodies are described from the St. Just part of the Land's End granite aureole, Cornwall. It is suggested that thesemformed by a combination of metasomatic replacement
and dilation with concomitant precipitation. Other Ca-Fealuminosilicates (containing large amounts of Zn, Sn, B,
and Be) are also present in the bod...
A NE-trending field traverse across the Arabian Shield (approximately 41o00'E/19o30'N to 45o30'E/23o30'N), combined with photo-interpretation, existing maps and geophysical data, has resulted in a strip-map covering about 600 x 100km. This map reveals distinct structural/lithological provinces. The provinces are described and are believed to be fun...
Thermometric and salinity data are presented for fluid inclusion populations in samples of hydrothermal vein material (quartz intergrown with wolframite, cassiterite, stannite, arsenopyrite, pyrite/chalcopyrite, hematite and limonite) and in metasomatic quartz overgrowths in granite, greisen and kaolinized granite. These data indicate that multista...
In the Cligga stock there are two groups of fractures, produced by separate episodes of brittle deformation which affected the granite and adjacent slates. Generalized models constructed by interpretation of fault and fracture traces on geological cross-sections provide a coherent explanation of the formation mechanisms for the two groups of struct...
Explanation The thinking in this paper is motivated by a number of propositions. The first is that many higher education teachers have little knowledge of the educational theories that underlie teaching and learning, consequently their conceptual understanding of teaching and learning inhibits their development as teachers. The assumption that the...
This paper focuses on the pressures for change and seeks to provide an overview of the main pressures for change. The Imaginative Curriculum project is founded on the belief that designing a curriculum is a creative act and pressures, far from suppressing the spirit and imagination of academics, provide constant stimulus for creativity. We want to...
Questions
Question (1)
I have initiated a small scale research project to try and gain a better understanding of learning ecologies and invite anyone who is interested to collaborate either by sharing your thoughts in this community forum or contributing a short narrative (around 500 words if possible) which describes a 'project' that they have undertaken which involved significant learning and personal development. It can be related to any aspect of your life eg work, family, hobbies, home, travel, making something, coping with a difficult challenge and anything else. I will assemble all the stories and make a preliminary analysis from an ecological perspective and then send the paper to everyone who has contributed so that they can develop it further. In this way I think we will end up with an interesting and unique perspective on the idea of learning ecologies in practice.
If you would like to contribute please email your narrative to me by 07/07/13
Here is a link to an example learning narrative
Thanks for any contributions
Professor Norman Jackson
Lifewide Education
