Professor David Young
Academic Adviser
I've been a teacher for a long time. During this time I've taught literally thousands of learners, from reception class infants to doctoral candidates, and I've always been interested in what they thought about their learning. My PhD was about pupils' perspectives on the curriculum they were offered. Another career-long interest has been to get learners to write for real audiences, not just do exercises.
After working in schools and a local authority advisory service, in 1991 I joined Derbyshire College of Higher Education, now the University of Derby, where I'm Professor of Work Based Learning. I've been engaged in the development of award-bearing work based learning in higher education since the mid-1990s and I've done lots of external examining, staff development and consultancy in the field, both in the UK and internationally. This is all interesting stuff, of course, but still the most exciting part of my professional life is working alongside work based learners - many of whom are as new to academic ways as they are skilled and experienced at work - as they begin to discover the real excellence of which many of them are capable. I think really that most of my early career was just about getting ready to be involved with them.
I led the University of Derby team which won the Times Higher Education Award in 2006 for Most Imaginative Use of Distance Learning and I was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2007.
