Dr Jill Swale is the Thinking and Teaching Strategies Co-ordinator at Kendrick School, Reading, identified as an ‘Outstanding’ school by OFSTED in 2005. Jill has developed staff training in different learning styles, multiple intelligences and thinking skills at Kendrick School, where she introduced Critical Thinking AS level and now trains other staff to teach it. In 2005 Kendrick received the Good Schools Guide award as the selective state school for girls with the best results for AS Critical Thinking nationwide. Jill was Study Skills Leading Professional for Reading LEA 2004-5, and frequently runs workshops on teaching methods and critical thinking in the South East. She is a regular speaker at Philip Allan critical thinking and sociology teacher conferences and has written workbooks and teacher files for the OCR Critical Thinking specification for Philip Allan.

Jill is also Head of Sociology at Kendrick. Her teaching methods received an ‘Excellent’ report at the last OFSTED visit to Kendrick, and five of her Sociology students have been named as AQA’s candidates with the highest marks nationwide. She is an Executive Member of the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences and regularly runs workshops at ATSS conferences. She also heads the Berkshire Sociology teachers’ network. Jill has recently written three books on education, the family and crime and deviance for the Philip Allan Advanced Topicmaster Sociology series.

Jill also teaches English and is Citizenship Co-ordinator. Her schemes of work and articles appear frequently in English Review, Social Science Teacher, Sociology Review and Teaching Thinking. She has over twenty years experience teaching in different types of schools, and also teaches Sociology and English to adults at Reading University. Though she teaches full time, Jill often visits schools to present thinking days to students, demonstrate sociology teaching strategies and to help staff plan schemes of work for critical thinking. Satisfied customers include Fort Pitt School, Chatham, St. Paul’s Catholic College, Burgess Hill, Reading Girls School and Helenswood School, East Sussex.