Mrs Sandra Nicol

Biography

Sandra Nicol joined the staff of the School of Education in 2005 and has worked with a range of students including undergraduate, Gaelic medium, music, and postgraduate. She was a member of the teaching staff achieving the status of Senior Lecturer.

Prior to that, she taught in primary for 15 years mostly in middle and upper stages with a focus on areas of literacy, music and sport. 

She became a Chartered Teacher in 2004, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2015 and a Senior Lecturer in 2017.

She has now retired but continues to support the School of Education and the wider university where and when she can. She is a past member of the University Panel for the Higher Education Academy, was a reviewer for the journal Education in the North and is a retired member of the Scottish Education Resource Association.

External Memberships

Sandra is a registered Chartered Teacher with GTCS from 2004

She was a reviewer for the journal Education in the North

She was a member of the Higher Education Panel within the University of Aberdeen

She was a member of the Scotiish Research in Education Association for several years

Research Overview

Sandra has been working with the Elphinstone Institute to promote the use of Scots/Doric in education at all levels and was part of the team providing education in Scots/Doric to all MA and PGDE students, working with other collegues to research the promotion of Scots/Doric in schools. 

Was a reviewer for the journal Education in the North.

Interests are studying at Master's level, film education and the use of Scots/Doric in education.

Here is the link to a Doric version of the winning European film award for students, and also the original video made by Year 2 student Alex Hodgson.

The Edit competition is a yearly, global, 3 day long Hackathon-style event focusing on the creation of educational videos. Students from universities around the world are given a short time period to create a 4-minute long video with pedagogical value. This video is then uploaded and shared online where it is judged by a panel of staff from each competing university and graded on ‘artistic value’, ‘pedagogical value’ and the ‘use of technology’.

Pedagogy of Poverty placed overall first in the 2016 competition, and was featured in the University of Aberdeen News.

Publications

Nicol, S. & Cornelius S. (2018) Book chapter 17: Effective supervision of Master's researchers in Professional Contexts in Developing Research Writing Edited by Susan Carter and Deborah Laurs New Zealand

Chapter available online

Journal Papers - Academic Journals

Gray, D., Graham, A., Dewhurst, Y., Kirkpatrick, G, MacDougall, L., Nicol, S., and Nixon, G.  (2009) Scallops, Schools and Scholars: Reflections on the Emergence of a Research Oriented Learning Project Journal of Education for Teaching (JET) (Special Issue) and in Menter, I. and Murray, J. (eds.) (2011). ‘Developing Research in Teacher Education, London: Routledge

Viv Ellis¹, Melissa Glackin², Deb Heighes³, Mel Norman⁴, Sandra Nicol⁵, Kath Norris⁶, Ingrid Spencer⁷ & Jane McNicholl¹¹University of Oxford; ²King’s College, London; ³University of Reading; ⁴University of Brighton; ⁵University of Aberdeen; ⁶Bradford College; ⁷Leicester University A difficult realisation: The proletarianisation of higher education-based teacher educators Journal of Education for Teaching (JET) (Special Issue) Vol. 39 Issue 3 2013

Cornelius, S. & Nicol, S. Understanding the needs of Masters dissertation supervisors: supporting students in professional contexts. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice. January 2016 Vol 4. No. 1

Exhibitions – Group

Poster Psychology Conference 2013 in partnership with the then Chief Educational Psychologist Dr Pauline Stephen now Chief Executive and Registrar GTCS

Current Research

Currently working with the Elphinstone Insitute to support the promotion of Doric

Collaborations

Past collaboration: Working in partnership with Dr Colin Chrisitie on indigenous language use (North East Scots) in education to encourage student use of Scots and Doric in everyday teaching.

Teaching Responsibilities

Sandra has now retired from the School of Edication but continues to support Doric education as and when required.