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After National Service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, John Murrell trained to teach at the College of St.Mark and St.John in the Kings Road, Chelsea. Whilst teaching mathematics in a variety of secondary schools during the day, he studied in the evenings for a degree in Psychology at Birkbeck College, London. In September1968 he joined the staff of the Education Department at Homerton, to teach Psychology and Research Methods In 1974 he became the Director of Postgraduate Studies with responsibility for the training programmes of both secondary and primary PGCE students. Since the early 1970s he has been involved in the design and teaching of a wide range of training courses, both local and national, for members of the legal, medical and nursing professions. For twenty-one years, he directed an Advanced Diploma course, jointly awarded by Homerton and the University Board of Continuing Education, on training methods and professional development for Justices’ Clerks and Legal Advisors. This course was recognised as an essential qualification for those involved in the training of Magistrates in England and Wales. He was a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Office working party, which introduced appraisal into the Magistracy and, together with a legal colleague, designed, directed and taught the first national course on selection procedures for members of the Advisory Committees responsible for the selection of Justices of the Peace. More recently he designed and directed a course for Judges on the use of small group work in legal training. . He was the educational consultant to the Nightingale School of Nursing of St. Thomas’s Hospital and was involved in the King’s Fund Project 2000, which changed the role of trainee nurses from supernumerary to that of student. For three years he was a training advisor to the General Medical Board and for a decade was the Chair of the Nurse Education Committee of Addenbrooke’s. Hospital. In 1992 he was appointed the George Peabody Professor of Education and Human Development at Homerton, a personal chair created jointly by Homerton College and George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In the Honours List of 2004 he was awarded an MBE for services to higher education and he was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship of Homerton College in 2010. His publications have included a book on Nurse Training (co-edited with Hazel O Allen) and numerous articles on teaching and his research specialist topic, the assessment of professional competence. He is currently the Chairman of the ‘Homerton Retired Senior Members Association’ and completing a book on the historical links between Cambridge and the U.S.A.
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