Lee Sutherland is the founder of Learning Matrix. Rather than first telling you about her illustrious qualifications, let’s rather talk about what she believes in.
She believes that there is enough research around teaching and learning to ensure that practitioners and policy makers have a load of ammunition (not in the Trump-sense of the teachers carrying guns) to improve the learning experiences of all individuals, be they school-going pupils, secondary school teenagers, tertiary education and training young adults, or mature students who want to return to or continue their education.
The learning environment, with policy or practice, in which she functions is dynamic, interactive and fluid.
She gets angry when she sees some of the poor policies and practices in education and training that should have been eradicated years ago, and she strives to right the education and training world, one intervention at a time.
Her mantra is …” doing things in the same way and expecting a different outcome is insanity” (with apologies to Albert Einstein).
She is passionate about the power that education and training has in transforming society.
She does come with credentials. Lee has had 36 years in education and training, having started out as a secondary school teacher of English language and literature, before moving onto to teacher education, then academic staff development, and finally quality assurance, engaging with all sectors of the education and training environment as well as with industry.
She completed a BA and HDE (PG) in order to teach, but once she found her niche she moved onto a BEd, followed by a MEd and finally a DEd. She has worked at a national level in several SADC countries and in the Middle East.
A combination of Lee’s experience and qualifications ensures that Learning Matrix is able to offer a range of services to institutions on a consultancy basis.
No learning environment is too challenging for Lee: she has developed materials for a unit of learning “Mix and batch concrete” to developing and delivering training to South African parliamentarians in research methodology and preparing dissertation proposals.
Her particular interests are in policy development, implementation and monitoring, Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), research mentoring and National Qualifications Frameworks.
In her private life, Lee is a secular humanist, middle-of-the-road feminist, would-be traveller, ardent reader and cat lover.