The NAPEP Annual Course 2026 will be hosting an impressive line up of keynotes and speakers. As always our speakers are guaranteed to inspire and educate.
Dr Shinel Chidley
Shinel has worked in a range of educational settings for more than 18 years. She has a Doctorate in Educational, Child and Community Psychology from the University of Exeter, and a PGCE and BSc (Hons) Psychology from the University of Plymouth. She has worked as an EP with local authorities since 2013.
Shinel is passionate about applying implementation to all aspects of an EP’s role to facilitate meaningful and lasting change. Her interests include person centred approaches, play, mediated learning experiences, and implementation.
She is the first author of an article in Educational Psychology in Practice (EPiP, 2020) and the creator of the ‘Implementation Framework’, which is introduced in the article. She has previously presented on this topic for the Association of Educational Psychologists.
As well as being a local authority EP, Shinel has her own private practice where she works in a range of school settings and pursues her professional passions and supports others within the profession to implement change. As part of this, she has presented to and provided implementation support for EPs working for local authorities and in private practice, to initial EP doctoral training programmes, and to other professionals working in the education sector (e.g. staff in the virtual school) on LA wide change initiatives.
Shin and Phil are currently writing a practical guide to implementation theory and practice, ‘Using Psychology to Support Change in Education: A Toolkit for Successful Implementation’ © Shinel Chidley and Phil Stringer, 2027, Routledge (in progress).
Session: What behaviour change can you buy for £200 million?
Melissa Jones
Melissa Jones has spent four years in the PEP role in the large rural county of Staffordshire, taking a traditional SEND focused EPS into the 21st century via a renewed focus on psychology, relationships and research, and increasing role meaning and impact of the Eps in the service. She feels eternally lucky to have a talented team of EPS, AEPs and TEPs who have stepped into this space, as an example, the EPS was shortlisted recently for the county innovation awards (twice) for their digital literacy intervention. Prior to her role in Staffordshire, Melissa held senior and acting Principal Educational Psychologist posts in Solihull, specialising in SEMH and leading work that successfully reduced exclusions through psychologically informed approaches. She previously spent eight years in senior specialist roles in Birmingham.
Alongside the busy PEP role, Melissa embarked on a PhD four years ago, investigating behavioural economics and its utility to educational psychology, and successfully completed this in January of this year. When she is not working, she likes to spend time with her family and friends as well as running, hiking, and gardening.
Session: Opening the Black Box: Decision Architecture and Leadership in Educational Psychology
Dr Phil Stringer
Phil is currently Course Co-Director of the CPD Doctorate Programme at UCL, where he has worked since September 2012. Having trained as an EP at UCL, the longest established training programme in the country and now, regrettably, in its final year, he worked as an educational psychologist with local authorities from 1978 until 2020. For some 37 years of that time he worked in senior leadership roles, including as PEP in one of England’s largest local authorities. He has always had a commitment to the wider profession. He has undertaken a range of editorial roles for the two national professional journals in the UK, Educational Psychology in Practice and Educational and Child Psychology, including the editorship of the former for six years and from 2001 to 2025, editorial board member of the latter, which included co-editing a series of special issues. His PhD is from the University of Southampton for a thesis studying why some people become EPs. He is the sole or joint author of 40 articles in professional journals, book chapters, editorials, book reviews, and research reports.
He has extensive training and longstanding practice in dynamic assessment and significant interests that he shares with Shin, which embrace applications of mediated learning, implementation science and practice, community psychology, professional ethics, qualitative research methods, and participatory action research.
Session: What behaviour change can you buy for £200 million?
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