Roger Aspland – A Tribute for ‘A Man for All Seasons’
By: Alumni Team
Roger Aspland, a long serving member of the academic staff at UEA within the School of Education and Professional Development, died peacefully on 6 May 2026 aged 86 at the home he shared in Norfolk with his wife Penny. In the weeks preceding this event he was able to enjoy several conversations with former colleagues and friends that inevitably focused on the experiences they had shared at UEA.
Roger joined UEA in 1981 following the merger with Keswick Hall College of Education and the formation of a new School of Education. Up to this point Roger had established himself as a physical education specialist in the field of initial teacher training, based on his considerable accomplishments as an all-round sportsman. Professor Anne Cockburn, a post-merger ‘new blood’ appointment, recalled that:
I first met Roger over 40 years ago and throughout found him to be an exceptional colleague and friend. He was a keen sailor, enthusiastic rock climber and played rugby for his county. He also took part in a very competitive and highly entertaining hockey match involving various, very amateurish members of the School of Education.
Following the merger Roger retrained to equip himself to run courses for serving teachers in the field of management education. In doing so he was opened to new horizons of possibility with respect to his own future work. He took to ‘management’, as a field for his own higher education work with colleagues, like ‘a duck takes to water’; displaying personal dispositions and qualities of judgement in the way he quietly and self-effacingly, yet firmly, handled the problems and conflicts which arise for, and between, practitioners in this context. It resulted in a succession of Deans/Heads of the School of Education at UEA acknowledging the support Roger gave them informally or more formally as their deputy in a senior management role. In 1993-96 he served as my Deputy at a time when the School of Education faced a shifting policy context in the field of initial teaching education, one that gave stronger control over the curriculum and supply of teachers to central government. The university gave me credit for handling the problems decisively in a way that minimised conflict. It took me years to realise that much of this credit was due to the back-up I received from Roger as my deputy; the quality of which was also reflected in his subsequent work as Dean, prior to his retirement. It is aptly captured by another former colleague and head of school, Professor Nigel Norris.
He was a fine Dean of the School and a great colleague: the safest of safe pairs of hands, phlegmatic, self-effacing and good at getting the best out of people. He was frequently there in the background making things work and getting things done; a man for all seasons.
In this latter respect Roger embraced yet another horizon of possibility in the form of applied research in education. Nigel Norris writes:
I had the good fortune to work closely with Roger in the 1990s. A brilliant fieldworker, he made an important contribution to our independent evaluation of comprehensive curriculum reform in Finland.
Roger’s personal qualities as a ‘man for all seasons’, in the changing flow of activity within a busy department of higher education, was also captured in testimony provided by other former colleagues. They experienced a man who combined empathy towards colleagues with high expectations regarding both his and their higher education practice.
Looking back on Roger’s practice at UEA, Barbara Zamorski – a long serving teacher and researcher at UEA who was also a member of the team that evaluated the Finish National Curriculum – recalled:
In my experience of working with Roger, which incidentally I always enjoyed, it seemed to me that he rarely subscribed to the concept of ‘good enough’. Rather, he embraced an ‘above and beyond’ approach. This was always obvious in the writing and lecturing he engaged in, and his commitment, thoroughness and carefully ordered attitude to his work was much appreciated by students and colleagues alike.
I could offer a list of examples that embodied this attitude. But a somewhat more unusual but telling example of such an attitude occurred in Finland, when Roger was working with a team of five of us on an evaluation of the new Finnish educational curriculum. As a team, we spent our time, separately, in different regions of Finland. The Finnish were welcoming and most helpful, and at one point, when Roger found himself in the upper and colder reaches of the country, he was invited to join a couple of Finnish colleagues for a regular social event. Following his usual approach to full commitment, he agreed to meet with them in the evening on a more informal basis than usual, always useful in an evaluation. He subsequently found himself sitting in a sauna, under a cold and starlit sky, chatting about a range of ideas and philosophies. The event finished by all the participants running out of the sauna and rolling around in the snow! Now that's what I call ‘above and beyond’.
This ability to incorporate a personal dimension into professional practice was also evident, if less narratively expressed, in the following tributes to Roger’s work at UEA:
Roger was Deputy Dean of School during the short time that I was Dean, and it was a great reassurance to me to have him by my side – he was a rock! Roger was respected by all sections of the School -- those primarily engaged in teacher training and those primarily in research roles -- and this helped to hold the School together at a time when it risked splitting apart. I was delighted when I moved on to a role as PVC that he agreed to take on the Deanship (the first non-professor to take on the role) and of course he carried the position with authority, humanity and sound common sense. Thank you, Roger. (Professor David Bridges)
Roger had a very committed and practical approach to whatever he was doing, be it fitting a new kitchen or managing his team of highly creative, but I suspect, rather challenging colleagues when he was Head of School. He was, he told me recently, rather reluctant to take on the Deanship but – as was ever his way – he did it calmly and effectively; steering us through the trials and tribulations of research assessment exercises and what seemed like endless Ofsted inspections. From a personal perspective, I can say that he was extremely supportive of new colleagues (for example inviting me to join a highly experienced team launching a BPhil degree) and maintaining my morale when I was having a particularly challenging time when I – like he several years before me – was Head of EDU.
Roger was a very dependable person who you could always rely on. He was extremely kind and retained his sense of humour right to the end. (Professor Anne Coburn)
For several years Roger was Dean of the School of Education at a time there were several aspects of my job that I was not very good at. At all times he was patient, constructive and helpful and he helped guide me towards a better understanding of what I might do to get better at things.
In spite of his natural modesty, I gradually became aware of the respect that he was held in as Head of School. He had a calm, quiet and thoughtful approach to the challenges facing the school, and a common-sense way of handling difficult issues. Although unfailingly polite, he could be firm and decisive when necessary and always seemed to make sensible and fair decisions.
As well as being an exemplary colleague, as the years passed, I got to know him as a friend. In addition to the decency and integrity of his professional persona, he was kind, good fun and good company. In all the years I worked with him, I never heard anyone say a bad word about him. I will miss him, but I feel very lucky to have known him and to have worked with him. (Professor Terry Haydn)
John Elliott, May 2026.