Well-being in the Early Years

Caroline’s professional background is as a qualified nurse and primary teacher. She practised both professions in in Leeds and London before joining Leeds Beckett University.

Caroline is now Head of Education, Childhood and Early Years within the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. She actively shares her passion for exploring the life-worlds of young children through professionally driven and pedagogically underpinned research. 

Caroline's research and pedagogical specialism focuses on the initial learning trajectory (the silent period) of young bilingual learners, their negotiations of participation in monolingual educational contexts, the diagnosis of selective mutism in bilingual learners and silent spaces as a pedagogical tool.

Sue Chambers is an independent early years consultant.

Chelle Davison is Head of Department, Undergraduate ITE, in the Faculty of Education, Arts & Business at the University of Cumbria. The Department has over 450 trainees studying early years, primary, secondary and SEN initial teacher education. It is working towards Early Years Teacher Status for the 2015 cohorts and Chelle will be offering her own expertise both to the new applicants for 2014 and those from 2015 onwards through master classes and public lectures. In addition Chelle has made significant contribution to a range of policy documents and government reviews, and is a devoted supporter of the professionalisation of the Early Years workforce.

Ian Lloyd is a Lecturer in Social Work at Staffordshire University. He is a contributor to our textbook, Well-being in the Early Years where he contributed a chapter which provided the social worker's perspective.

Jackie Musgrave is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Early Childhood at the University of Worcester.  She qualified as a sick children’s nurse and then taught early childhood care and education at a college of Further Education.  She has taught Higher Education students for the past 10 years. Jackie has a Masters degree from the University of Sheffield, where her research focused on an aspect of practice-based learning for level 3 students. Her doctorate research examined the effect of chronic health conditions on young children’s inclusion in their early education and she has just been awarded her PhD.

An inspiring speaker, author and regular media commentator on all things Early Years, Social Business and Child Poverty, for the past 10 years June O’Sullivan has been instrumental in driving a major strategic, pedagogical and cultural shift for Early Years education— introducing a new childcare model and stronger social impact through her work at the award-winning London Early Years Foundation (LEYF).

Susan Waltham is a Senior Lecturer teaching on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the School Of Education and Childhood at Leeds Metropolitan University. Her academic expertise is in child psychology and human development, diversity and equality. Her research is centred on identity construction in young children in multi-cultural, multi-linguistic settings. She also works as an independent consultant with organisations and early years settings in China, Pakistan and Malaysia. She was involved in developing a new school in Lahore, Pakistan that uses an emergent curriculum model for children of 3 to 12 years old. Currently she is working on introducing a play based curriculum to kindergartens (3 to 6 year-olds) in a number of cities in China. Susan has been a foster and adoptive parent for 31 years.