Viki Bennett Kane

Biography

Viki has extensive experience of lecturing, leadership, management and inter-institutional collaboration in Higher Education. As a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader at Bath Spa University for 15 years, she led on the design and delivery of successful and long-standing Foundation and Honours degrees in Early Childhood and Education Studies, focusing on delivering a positive, purposeful and professionally relevant student experience. A significant element of Viki’s role was leading on collaborative partnerships between the University and regional Further Education Colleges, with a responsibility of reviewing, developing and reporting on reciprocal academic understandings and consistency of standards and procedures. As such, Viki gained a valuable and informed understanding of supporting a wide range of undergraduate students to develop their own principles and academic practices into employment roles with young children.

Before working in Higher Education, Viki started her career as an early years teacher after she gained her PGCE in 1992. Teaching the youngest children in schools established her belief in the importance of the role of the reflective, caring and knowledgeable teacher in young children’s lives, aware of and fascinated by, children’s agency and competence. Following her teaching roles, she then worked in quality improvement at Wiltshire and Bristol local authorities, monitoring inspection outcomes, running training and professional development, and facilitating local professional networks for early years settings and practitioners.

She has a Master’s in Early Childhood Studies in which her dissertation research used focus groups as a method to examine practitioner reflections on the importance of play for young children. Viki has also collaborated on published research with two other universities, exploring the potential and impact of Foundation degree academic study for teaching assistant graduates professionally and personally. Recently, she carried out funded research with Bath Spa University and the charity, AT The Bus, to investigate the practice of art as therapy in primary schools.