Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
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Dr Meg Tait is Head of Cambridge’s new Centre for Teaching and Learning. She is also Official Fellow in Academic Development at Queens’ College. Working in educational development at Cambridge since 2003, Meg is course director for the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and leads the University's Teaching Associates’ Programme, accredited by the Higher Education Academy. Originally a linguist and literary historian, she has a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Education at UCL Institute of Education. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Meg is particularly interested in changes in how professional knowledge, and professional learning, are conceptualised.
The Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education brings Meg into contact with highly motivated people teaching across the full range of disciplines studied at Cambridge. She sees her contribution as supporting them in developing ways of thinking and practising as educators that are ambitious and rigorous, as well as practicable in the context of their own teaching.
I am joint Head of the University’s Personal and Professional Development Service and lead the Academic Practice Group’s support for early-career academics, postdoctoral research staff and doctoral students as they take on new responsibilities in the fundamental activities of the University: education, research and academic service. I am also working the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and a small team of colleagues to set up the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning, which will support teaching and learning staff, encourage and fund teaching innovations and provide a strategic focus for institutional, national and international priorities. I am playing a leading role in shaping the aims and scope for the Centre, in particular its educational development activities.
I am course director for the University’s Teaching Associates’ Programme (TAP), responsible for curriculum development and a team of tutors to provide a flexible introduction to the theory and practice of teaching and learning in higher education for early-career researchers. I have substantially redesigned the programme over the last two years, to strengthen the role played by theory both in the content and in the design of the programme itself. As the Higher Education Academy’s institutional contact in Cambridge, I am responsible for maintaining the HEA’s accreditation of all teaching development programmes in Cambridge.
Contributions beyond Cambridge include serving since 2014 as external assessor for Oxford University’s Teaching Fellowship Programme, for early-career academics; acting as external panel member of the periodic review of Imperial College’s School of Professional Development (2014); serving on the organising committee of the annual Standing Conference on Academic Practice, which draws together practitioners and researchers taking a holistic view of academic work and academic roles.
I am also Official Fellow in Academic Development at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where I work with the Senior Tutor, Fellows students and staff to enhance the College’s academic environment and performance.
I am currently studying for a Master’s in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Education at UCL Institute of Education. This has included in-depth studies of course and curriculum design, assessment practices, theories of learning and research into teaching and learning strategies and techniques, as well as educational research methods and methodologies and theoretical perspectives on innovation and change in higher and professional education. My Master’s dissertation will explore conceptions of professional learning in the context of a research-intensive university.
Member, Society for Research into Higher Education
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
