John Elliott is Emeritus Professor of Education in the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE), School of Education and Lifelong Learning, at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. He is a former Dean of the school, and a former Director of CARE. He also holds appointments as Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, Honorary Professor at Sheffield University, and Associate of the Von Hugel Institute in St.Edmunds College, Cambridge. John was recently awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (2002) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2003).

John was President of the British Educational Research Association (1989-1990), and for a decade pedagogical consultant to the OECD programme on "Environment and School Initiatives" (1988-1998). He has been a regular participant over the years in the influential Cambridge Conference. This conference meets every 4-5 years to review the state of the art and to forge new directions. John Elliott co-convened the latest conference, with Saville Kushner, in July 2004 at St.Edmunds College, Cambridge.

His long-standing interest is in understanding the problems of achieving significant change in the quality of students' learning experiences in classrooms and schools. In this connection, he is internationally well-known for pioneering the development of action research approaches to curriculum and pedagogical change. He is the founder of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) and a founding editor of 'Educational Action Research: an International Journal'.

Major projects include the Humanities Curriculum Project (under the direction of Lawrence Stenhouse, 1967-72), the Ford Teaching Project (1972-76), the Cambridge Accountability Project (1978-80), the Teacher-Pupil Interaction and Quality of Learning Project (1981-84), Teachers as Researchers (1994-97), The Development of Distance Learning Materials to support Practice-based Inquiry amongst teachers in the Republic of Namibia (1996-1999), and Practice-based research into the Curriculum Dimensions of Students' Disaffection from Schooling (Norwich Area Schools Consortium, 1998-2003).

In addition to his work in the field of curriculum development and action research, John has been associated for many years with the theory and practice of 'Democratic Evaluation', developed in education policy contexts under the leadership of his colleague Barry MacDonald.



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