Walker, Rob

(b. 1943, Bedford, England). Ph.D. Science Education, Kings College, University of London; M.Phil. Sociology, University of London; B.Sc. Sociology, London School of Economics.

Walker is on the faculty at the University of East Anglia and is Director of the Centre for Applied

Research in Education (CARE). He works as part of a four-person team called the Learning Technology Group, which offers advice and support on the effective use of technology in learning and teaching. He has also been on the faculty at Deakin University in Australia, the University of Keele, and London University.

He has made significant contributions to use of case study methods in research and evaluation. Walker's contributions to education and curriculum evaluation are through both his evaluation projects and his published works, which include A Guide to Classroom Observation (with Clem Adelman); Changing the Curriculum (with Barry MacDonald); Biography, Identity and Schooling: Episodes in Educational Research (with Ivor Goodson); and Research as Social Change (with Michael Schratz). He worked with Jack Easley and Bob Stake on the NSF Case Studies in Science Education, now classic examples of quality case study research. Walker has also contributed to the understanding of narrative in evaluation through his writing, as well as through his multimedia presentations of case studies, such as the UNESCO CD-ROM Growing Up in Cities and Hathaway Primary School: A Multimedia Case Study.

Walker was influenced early on by Basil Bernstein, who supervised Walker's work for his master's degree in philosophy. Bernstein encouraged him to do classroom research when not many people were doing it and also encouraged him to use film to record classroom activities, a method Walker continues to use. Walker's strongest influences, however, have been his Australian colleagues, Chris Bigum, Marie Brennan, and Stephen Kemmis, and his colleagues at CARE, Barry MacDonald, John Elliott, Jean Rudduck, and Lawrence Stenhouse.

Walker has advised and participated in the work of numerous external organizations and agencies, including government, universities, schools, publishers, museums, galleries, consumer and client groups, the police, commercial and business companies, foundations, and the media. He has been recognized for his excellence in teaching (he was the recipient of the 1991 Deakin University Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching) and uses of multimedia (in 1996 he was a finalist for the Australian Multimedia Awards) and educational technology (in 1989, he received the Australian Society for Educational Technology Award).