Reflections on university-based ITE

When I left teaching after 19 years, in 2021, I had no idea that I would return to the sector, let alone to music education. I joined the University of Hertfordshire in March 2022. Currently, I hold a portfolio of roles, including academic skills tutor and visiting lecturer in Initial Teacher Education (ITE), teaching on a variety of programmes (degrees of study). I'm also a visiting tutor, quality-assuring the university-school partnerships and tracking secondary student teachers through their training year. I became familiar with programmes, processes, and the inner workings of the School of Education, and began to understand how this all fitted into the wider university system. As well as this, I completed the Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. This opened my eyes to pedagogies and practices in HE, giving me ample opportunity to make comparisons to secondary education, and consider how to reconcile the experiences.