Victoria Tait

Victoria is a Lecturer Practitioner in Education for Sustainability with a particular interest in the role of environmental and sustainability education in Initial Teacher Education, and in using sustainability as a tool for fostering interdisciplinarity in teaching and learning.

victoria.tait@aru.ac.uk

Background

Victoria worked as a practitioner in Education for Sustainability for 6 years before starting in her role as Lecturer Practitioner. Prior to this, she spent 3 years teaching English as a Foreign Language in formal and informal educational settings in France, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.

As a Lecturer Practitioner in Education for Sustainability, Victoria supports the implementation of sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals in ARU’s Ruskin Modules and wider curriculum. Her focus is on ensuring that key sustainability pedagogies align with institutional priorities to create an Active and Inclusive curriculum.

Victoria also works directly with students and the SU to empower our students to take action on the issues they care about. A selection of these projects is included below.

• Supporting the creation of an orchard as North Cambridge Academy. You can view the project video here.
• Training volunteers as part of a project with Cambridge City Council to understand the value of Cambridge’s canopy cover. You can read about the project here, or listen to a podcasting recording by the Tree Lady Talks here.
• Supporting a mass tree planting event with Chelmsford City Council
• Supporting ARU’s first Sustainable Fashion Week. You can read about this here.

In addition to this, Victoria also co-edits the Global Sustainability Institute’s annual So What? magazine and contributes to other initiatives run and organised by the Institute.

Teaching

Victoria is involved in the delivery of three of our Ruskin Modules. She has led Guest Lectures for courses such as the BA Fashion Design course and BA Social Work course, and welcomes new opportunities to work with staff to deliver sustainability related content that aligns with their Module and Course Learning outcomes.

Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and French (Hons), University of Southampton

Selected recent publications

Walshe, N. & Tait, V. (2019). Making Connections: A conference approach to developing transformative environmental and sustainability education within initial teacher education. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1677858