Dr Alex Owen has worked in HE from 2008, following a role as a community-based Children and Family Worker. Her first lectureship involved teaching Family Support Work programmes at a London-based HE College. During this time she developed a passion for supporting student learning and the development of academic colleagues. In 2013, she was successfully appointed as a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, a learning and teaching intensive institution in North West England.
She later progressed to Head of Department and led the development of the Early Childhood subject area. With a team of academics and professional services colleagues, she successfully established a Single Honours undergraduate programme and an undergraduate Major programme for her discipline, as well as an institution-wide Foundation Year. In addition, she oversaw the development of a successful postgraduate suite for the department and an emerging departmental research profile. Due to her interest and expertise in enhancing learning and teaching she chaired the Faculty’s ‘Quality, Learning and Teaching Committee’ and she was appointed as a ‘Faculty Key Practitioner in Learning and Teaching.’
Following her experiences at Liverpool Hope University, she wanted to focus her attention fully on supporting the development of colleagues with teaching responsibilities. Therefore, from July 2019, Alex has worked as a Senior Academic Developer based in The Academy at the University of Liverpool where she leads the Peer Learning portfolio. At this research-intensive university she works in collaboration with colleagues from across the institution and beyond to enhance the development of excellence in learning and teaching through the use of professional dialogue.
Alex empowers teachers to achieve excellence in their practice through an approach that builds self-efficacy through professional conversations. From her experience, academic development can sometimes have limited long term impact due to the generalised nature of some CPD, however she has seen the transformative effect of professional dialogue to promote equality of colleague’s voices to ensure personalised and authentic development. In addition, she has seen first-hand the importance of professional dialogue in supporting colleague’s emotional wellbeing by enabling teachers to work through the challenges faced.