Peter Tomlinson 1941-2024

We were sorry to learn of the death in Oxford on July 12 of Peter Tomlinson, Emeritus Professor in Pedagogy and Professional Learning. He was 82. 

Peter Damian Tomlinson was born and brought up in London. He began his higher education as a member of the Olivetan Benedictine monastic congregation, where he was known as 'Brother Bernard'. He graduated with a BPhil in Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1963. Following theological studies in the Flemish Jesuit Faculty at Leuven and a period as a primary school teacher in London, he graduated from Worcester College, Oxford in 1968 with an Hons BA in Psychology and Philosophy. He then took an MA and PhD in Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at Toronto, completing his doctorate in 1971. 

Following a year as Research Fellow in Psychology at the Farmington Trust Unit for Moral Education, Oxford, Peter's academic career commenced in 1972 with his appointment to a Lectureship in Psychology at the University of York Department of Education. Here he carried out the only British longitudinal study of Kohlberg's then dominant theory of moral development. He was Book Review Editor of the Journal of Moral Education from 1976 to 1990. 

In 1979 Peter moved to a Lectureship in Education in the School of Education at Leeds, where he took over provision of research methods teaching and shared that with educational psychology at all levels. In the former he provided a development backbone over the following 20 years, expanding the range and depth of offerings with the involvement of new colleagues and achieving consistent success with his submissions to each of the subsequent ESRC studentship recognition exercises. 

An abiding concern in Peter's academic life had been to promote the effective use of psychology in education and training through critical awareness of the nature, bases, relevance and inter-relationships amongst claimed psychological insights. This was seen in his 1981 book Understanding Teaching: Interactive Educational Psychology and whilst continuing to teach, supervise and publish across a range of topics, his research interests progressively focused on professional learning. This led to perhaps his most striking contribution, Radio-assisted Practice (RAP), in which unobtrusive on-line coaching was provided through use of covert radio communication.

In 1990 Peter was promoted to a Senior Lectureship and in 1997 to a Readership in Education. During this time his work evolved in line with the early nineties' shift to school-based initial teacher training in England and Wales, yielding a highly acclaimed 1995 book: Understanding Meaning: Reflective Strategies for School-based Teacher Preparation.

In 1998 Peter became Editor of this country's most prestigious journal in its field, the British Journal of Educational Psychology, as it came under the control of the British Psychological Society. He steered BJEP wisely through this challenging period. In 1999 he was promoted to Chair in Pedagogy and Professional Learning. He retired in 2003 but continued working part-time as a Senior Fellow until 2005. 

In keeping with his favourite characterisation of the scholarly ideal – Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford, who would "gladly lerne and gladly teche" – Peter Tomlinson was the most committed, generous and stimulating of colleagues.