Critical and Reflective Practice in Education Editorial: the university as a dialogic space

The publication of the first number of the first volume of this new journal Critical and Reflective Practice in Education in the autumn of 2009 marks a significant point in institutional and personal academic trajectories. The editors’ host institution, University College Plymouth St Mark and St John (known as UCP Marjon), has had an interesting history. St John’s College Battersea was founded in 1840 by Edward Tufnell and Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth (the latter being the College’s first Principal). St Mark’s College Chelsea was founded in 1841 with Revd Derwent Coleridge (son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) as its first Principal. From the very start of their lives these Colleges were involved in critical and, indeed, reflective debates about the education of teachers and about the way teachers educate their pupils and students, especially when faced with the cut-backs imposed by the Revised Code of 1862