Frank Banks is Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education and former Director for âInternational Development in Teacher Educationâ at The Open University UK. He was responsible for a number of global teacher professional development projects such as the nine-year ÂŁ15 million ($18.5 million) UK funded âEnglish in Actionâ project in Bangladesh to improve the English competence of 25 million people; the ÂŁ6 million ($7.4 million) Teacher Education Sub Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme that won the Queenâs Award for Higher Education 2010; and the three year ÂŁ10 million ($12.3 million) UK government funded TESS-India Open Educational Resources (OER) for Teachers in India project. He led the academic team for the current Open Universityâs OER initiative OpenLearn (www.open.ac.uk/openlearn).
Professor Banks was also director for the innovative distance and open-learning initial teacher education course at The Open University. This novel approach to initial teacher education won the Queenâs Award for Higher Education in 1995 and was judged to be of âoutstandingâ quality by Her Majestyâs Inspectors in England and in Northern Ireland.
His research interests are the Professional Development of Teachers and the links between School Science and School Technology. He is the convenor of âDEPTHâ technology teacher international education research group which has produced a set of linked international studies of Developing Professional Thinking for Technology Teachers (DEPTH). A second edition of his jointly authored book âTeaching STEM in the Secondary Schoolâ is in press.
Before joining the Open University, Frank worked as a school teacher of science, engineering and technology in different secondary comprehensive schools, and as an elementary primary school advisory teacher. He has authored or edited 15 books/handbooks for teachers and over 100 academic papers; and acted as a consultant in the professional development of teachers to Egyptian, South African and Argentinean government agencies, UNESCO and the World Bank.
