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Dr John Ravenscroft

Head of the Institute for Education, Teaching & Leadership / Senior Lecturer

Education, Teaching and Leadership (ETL)

Email: john.ravenscroft@ed.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 6181

Location:

Charteris Land

Background

After my first degree in Psychology I became very interested in Cognition, Language and especially Child Language. By various routes I ended up taking a Masters degree in Philosophy and Psychology of Language, this opened up a whole new world of Ontology and Cognition, and for a while I became very interested in Primate Cognition and Primate Thought and for many years I carried around inside my head what it is to be a Rational Animal. Meanwhile I got on with my life and went to live as you do in New Zealand, Japan, and spent some time in Mongolia. Upon my return to the UK after several years working in the Psychology department and even the Parapsychology department at Edinburgh University I became the manager of Visual Impairment Scotland, and created the first UK child visual impairment notification system. I also became the Head of the Scottish Sensory Centre and during this tenure not only did a fulfil an ambition of mine to write a PhD on Primate Thought, I went to Australia for 18 months to the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children to develop and create Australia's first visual impairment notification system. Again upon my return I became Deputy Head of Department for Educational Studies, and now I am currently the Head of Institute for Education, Teaching & Leadership (ETL).

Qualifications:

BSc (Hons) Psychology
Master of Arts "Philosophy and Psychology of Language"
PhD (Edinburgh) "Ontology of Inductive Systems"

Principal interests

Specific areas of interest include:

visual impairment
inclusion
childhood and disability studies
the nature of representation
primate cognition
evolution of the casual mechanisms of cognitive growth

Research supervision:

I am keen to supervise research under the headings above.

I currently have three PhD students covering areas of visual impairment and sport, transition and language. I would particularly like to hear from any students interested combining my interest regarding the nature of representation and disabilities.

Current and recent research

Current and recent research:

School-age Sight Testing in Scotland. (June)
Profile of Children with Visual Impairment in Scotland and Australia
The Competences of Teachers supporting Children with Visual Impairment
Collaborative Working with Children with Complex Needs

Publications

Publications list for Dr John Ravenscroft

Teaching

Post Graduate Courses

The Nature of Enquiry
Collaborative Working in Children's Services

Undergraduate Courses

Education 1: Childhood
Education 4: Research Methods
BA Childhood Practice: Research Methods (2b)

This article was published on May 6, 2013