School of Psychology

I first came to Keele in 1964 as an assistant lecturer, and then progressed through the ranks to Head of the Department and then professor, before taking early retirement in 1998.  Since then I have given the occasional lecture, taught 3rd year options, and supervised 3rd year dissertations, as well as continuing with my research.

The main – interrelated – themes of my research have been concerned with student learning, the design of instructional text, and academic writing, and I have published widely in each of these areas.  I am a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and the British Psychological Society, and I serve on the editorial boards of five academic journals.

• 2009. (with Lucy Betts).  Common weaknesses in traditional abstracts in the social sciences.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60, 10,  2010-2018
• 2008.  Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook.  Abingdon: Routledge.
• 2007.  Longitudinal studies of the effects of new technology on writing: Two case studies.  In M. Torrance et al (Eds.) Writing & Cognition: Research & Applications.  Amsterdam: Elsevier (pp. 293-305).
• 2006.  Reading and writing book reviews across the disciplines. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57, 9, 1194-1207.
• 2004.  Designing instructional and informational text.  In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.) Handbook of Research in Educational Communications and Technology (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum (pp. 917-947).

I have published over 350 research papers. A selection can be seen here:

Hartley - text production and academic writing
Hartley - teaching and learning
Hartley - Structured Abstracts