Lifetime award presented to Jim O’Brien at IPDA 2018
December 1, 2018
Professor Jim O’Brien became the first recipient of an IPDA Lifetime Award at our recent annual conference in November 2018. The following information about Jim was published in the conference programme.
Jim was a teacher of history in comprehensive schools in the west of Scotland, before taking up a career in higher education. He worked in St Andrew’s College of Education, Glasgow, and became Assistant Principal (Educational Development) there. He was appointed to Moray House Institute of Education in 1993 as Vice Principal, and became the permanent Vice Dean in 1998 when the Institute merged with the University of Edinburgh. He held a personal Chair in Leadership and Professional Learning until 2009 when he retired.
Jim’s development work and research interests have been in the field of continuing professional learning and school leadership. He has been a member of a number of national development groups such as the Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) programme; the Chartered Teacher Standard and the national CPD Advisory Group on School Leadership.
Jim has had a long involvement with IPDA, being an active committee member, secretary to the Association and President from 2005 to 2008. He was made a Fellow of IPDA in 2009. He has also played a major leadership role in taking the IPDA journal, Professional Development in Education, to its present status as a major international academic publication. He became co-Managing Editor in 2012 and was instrumental in advising on academic quality and strategic vision. Jim retired from the Editorial Board of PDiE in 2017.
The following photos show Jim at recent IPDA conferences:
