Geoff Whitty has been Director of the Institute of Education, University of London, since September 2000. He taught in primary and secondary schools before lecturing in education at Bath University and King’s College London. He then held Chairs and senior management posts at Bristol Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College before joining the Institute as the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education in 1992.
His main areas of teaching and research are the sociology of education, curriculum studies, education policy, health education and teacher education. He has led evaluations of major educational reforms and has assisted schools and local authorities in building capacity for improvement. His many publications include Making Sense of Education Policy, Sage Publications 2002, and Education and the Middle Class (with Sally Power, Tony Edwards and Valerie Wigfall), Open University Press 2003, which won the Society for Educational Studies 2004 education book prize.
Geoff Whitty has been a member of the General Teaching Council for England since 2003 and has been a specialist advisor to successive House of Commons Education Select Committees since 2005. He is a past President of both the British Educational Research Association and the College of Teachers and a former Chair of the British Council’s Education and Training Advisory Committee. In 2009, he was awarded the Lady Plowden Memorial Medal for outstanding services to education.