Rate My Professor Jackie Waterfield

Professor Jackie Waterfield serves as Head of the Division of Dietetics, Nutrition and Biological Sciences, Physiotherapy, Podiatry and Radiography within the School of Health Sciences at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, a role she has occupied since 2017. Prior to this appointment, she enjoyed a distinguished career as a physiotherapist followed by a position as Senior Lecturer at Keele University, where she earned the National Teaching Fellowship in 2014 for her innovative approaches to healthcare education. Her principal academic interests lie in pedagogies supporting professional development, real-world learning, and the integration of theory and practice in healthcare training. To address the theory-practice gap, she has implemented methods such as simulated patients, videoed assessments, practice-based portfolios, and non-discipline-specific mentoring, creating authentic learning environments. Dr Waterfield teaches across postgraduate, undergraduate, foundation-year, and doctoral programmes, with a strong emphasis on tutoring and mentoring. She completed a Faculty Learning and Teaching Fellow secondment at Keele focused on portfolio development for higher education staff and led the creation of the university's first fully online e-module, sparking further e-learning initiatives funded by University Innovation Projects. In 2009, she received the Jo Campling Memorial Prize from the Academy of Social Sciences for her paper on lifelong learning and continuing professional development in their political and social contexts, themes central to her doctoral thesis. Externally, she engages with professional and regulatory bodies to advance competence standards and good practice in healthcare, and serves as an external examiner for taught programmes and research degrees at multiple universities.