Andrew Hobson

Andrew J. Hobson is Professor of Mentoring and Professional Learning. His research examines mentoring and coaching as processes that facilitate professional learning, development, and wellbeing across educational and wider professional contexts. He has a particular scholarly interest in the mentoring of early career teachers and head teachers, and has an extensive track record of publications, leadership of research and research‑and‑development projects, and the supervision of doctoral researchers in these fields.

Professor Hobson’s contributions to the field include introducing the concept of judgementoring (Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Hobson, 2016), which has since become influential in research and policy discourse, and developing the ONSIDE Mentoring framework (Hobson 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022), an evidence‑informed model that articulates principles of effective, developmental mentoring. He serves as Editor‑in‑Chief of the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, providing academic leadership in shaping and advancing international scholarship on mentoring and coaching in education.

After completing a first degree in Politics (University of Lancaster) and an MA in Political Philosophy (University of York), Professor Hobson (Andy) undertook a PGCE in Social Science (University of Birmingham) and began working life as a teacher of politics, sociology and economics in the secondary and further education sectors. He completed his PhD on student teachers' experiences of initial teacher preparation at the University of Leeds in 2001. He has subsequently been employed as Senior Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research, Lecturer in Educational Research Methods at the University of Leeds, Associate Professor in Teacher and School Development at the University of Nottingham, and Research Professor in Education and Director of Academic Research at the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University.

Andy came to the University of Brighton in 2014, and was appointed to the national expert panel for Education in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), the UK's system for assessing the excellence of research in higher education institutions.

Andy is interested to work with applicants seeking to conduct research relating to the professional learning, development and/or well-being of teachers, leaders and other professionals. Specific foci may include but are not restricted to studies of:

• Mentoring and/or coaching for early career teachers / professionals
• Mentoring and/or coaching across professions
• Judgementoring
• ONSIDE Mentoring
• Co-mentoring (collaborative, compassionate mentoring and coaching)