Dr Jo Trowsdale

Jo has developed teacher education courses at primary and secondary level, led arts education programmes for a major arts centre and a regional arm of a national creative learning programme. She has also spent time embedded in a local engineering company researching apprenticeship training. Jo’s first degree and PGCE were in English and Drama; her MPhil in Arts Education and PhD in Sociology.

In HE she has taught a broad range of education and sociology of education modules at masters and undergraduate level and supervises doctoral students. At Suffolk she supports educational research and the development of the university’s social mobility agenda as well as contributing to teaching on CELT’s PGCAP.

Jo has developed a distinctive art-making model for education (TAME) which emphasises student agency in learning, more active pedagogies and cross-curricula approaches. Her research argues for the unique ways in which ‘art-making’ can support learning not only in the arts, but across the curriculum. Her recent projects have identified the value of art-making for developing children’s confidence in their learning and creativity as well as their knowledge and skills in STEM subjects. Working with colleagues in statistics, she has developed tools for measuring children’s confidence in their learning and creativity that begin to meet the need for more quantitative measurement in arts-based education.

Jo is co-convenor of the Creativities in Education Special Interest Group of the British Educational Research Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and holds an honorary senior fellowship at the University of Warwick. Recent work as part of the STEAM educational community has included engagement with colleagues at the University of Exeter and Brookes University in the UK, across New Zealand and an extended partnership with colleagues at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Jo is a trustee and adviser for a number of community arts organisations. She supports effective evaluation in community arts and in educational settings.