Keith Hodgkinson

Keith’s career started as a secondary teacher of history, during which period he completed an MEd whose dissertation was entitled “Teaching Politics”. At Loughborough, he initially worked on the History of Education and also taught history teachers completing the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). He was a strong advocate for skills-based history teaching in schools and in particular the Schools Council History Project, which employed the evaluation of primary and secondary sources of evidence.

When the number of places in teacher training for history was reduced, Keith moved into multicultural and primary education. Multicultural education in the 1980s was an emerging field; the Swann report was published in 1985 and its recommendations were yet to become mainstream. Keith was proud that the town’s cultural diversity allowed his students to gain direct experience of teaching children from different backgrounds and he developed good links across the town, taking his students on an annual “temple tour” of places of worship for all the town’s major religions. Many students will have benefited from his practical advice on what we now refer to as unconscious bias in the classroom.

Keith later became Course Director for Primary PGCE, where he was again innovative in his teaching. He developed a module whereby the entire course took over a primary school, enabling school staff to complete additional training while providing his students with experience in how schools are run (Hodgkinson, Cambridge Journal of Education 21, 65 – 72, 1991). He later worked with the Children’s Society to improve student training in child protection and recognition of child abuse, which he concluded had been given “superficial and low priority” treatment in official guidance (for example, Taylor and Hodgkinson, Teacher Development 5, 75 – 86, 2001).

In his retirement, Keith returned to his love of history and was active in the Local History Society in East Leake where he lived. He researched and co-authored a number of books on local history on topics as varied as an autobiography of a C18^th benefactor and the experience of wartime evacuees. A book on the village in the 14^th century remains half finished.

Keith was a polymath who was fascinated by people and could engage in conversation with anybody on almost any topic (and frequently would do so). He was a passionate advocate for children and social justice. He is survived by his wife Mary (also a former Loughborough member of staff), daughters Jane and Emily, and three grandchildren. He will be greatly missed.