Claire has over 20 years of experience as a senior teacher, creative technologist and programme manager in the EdTech sector. Her teaching background was broad as a Technology subject specialist in secondary education, before transitioning to link with special educational needs, which goes some way to explaining her interest in promoting inclusion and valuing diverse communities with current digital making activities.
Claire took the role of Head of Education for large scale EdTech implementations with a managed service provider after her last teaching role, leading a team of educators to design and deliver professional development for leaders and teachers. The launch of the Computing curriculum in 2014 shifted her focus towards supporting school leaders and teachers with the move from ICT to Computing and the evolving pedagogies involved with managing that change.
During this role she launched new programmes to support outstanding teaching of Computing, particularly with the Computer Science and Digital Literacy strands of the curriculum. This involved equipping teachers with the knowledge and skills to embed ‘Maker Education’ into the formal curriculum and to build networks of support with collaborative opportunities. Across city-wide implementations in Salford and Hull, Claire launched the Research and Play programme with primary and secondary school practitioners, based on academic research findings from the Fablearn programme.
Programmes in schools included initiatives to encourage girls to take up STEM subjects at KS4 and address the lack of diversity in those fields. Interventions addressed the perception from some girls that STEM subjects are ‘too difficult to learn’ and the team supported school leaders to rework the curriculum and address this issue as all learners made decisions about GCSE.
The Foundation for Digital Creativity launched in September 2017.