James Nottingham is the founding director of Challenging Learning, a group of companies with 30 staff in six countries. He is a world-renowned keynote speaker and author and creator of the Learning Pit®, one of the most popular ways to encourage and structure questioning, challenge, and reflection.
His first book, Challenging Learning, was published in 2010 and has received widespread critical acclaim. Since then, he has written eight more books for teachers, leaders, support staff, and parents. These books share the best research and practice for enhancing learning through challenge, dialogue, feedback, questioning, growth mindset, collective and self-efficacy, and leadership.
It was as a teacher that he created the Learning Pit® – a student-friendly version of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Quite remarkably, the model has captured the imagination of educators around the world; indeed, do a search online for the ‘Learning Pit’ and you will find well over 200 million references. He also co-founded P4C.com, a resource and collaboration site for teachers using P4C (Philosophy for Children) as a way to develop critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking.
Before training to be a teacher, James worked on a pig farm, in the chemical industry, for the American Red Cross, and as a teaching assistant in a school for deaf children. At university, he gained a first-class honours degree (a major turnaround after having failed miserably at school). He then worked as a teacher and leader in primary and secondary schools in the UK before creating an award-winning, multi-million-pound social regeneration project supporting education, community groups and businesses across North East England.
In 2006, James co-founded Challenging Learning with Jill Potter (now Jill Nottingham!). In 2009, Martin Renton joined the team and since then, the three of them have established Challenging Learning in six countries: the UK, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the USA. Their team of 30 consultants, researchers, designers and admin staff support pre-schools, schools, colleges, and school districts with long-term projects that strengthen the lives of all learners.
James splits his work time between keynoting conferences, leading whole-staff training days; running demonstration lessons; writing and researching; and leading his team of company directors. He often headlines national and international conferences, as well as co-presents with well-known researchers such as Carol Dweck (Mindset) and John Hattie (Visible Learning). His presentations are characterised by a rare skill for blending arresting anecdotes, hard-edged research, gentle good humour and practical advice woven into truly compelling narratives.
Skolvärlden (Swedish Teaching Union) describes James as “one of the most talked about names in the world of school development” and the Observer newspaper in the UK listed him among the Future 500 – a ‘definitive list of the UK’s most forward-thinking and brightest innovators.’ In 2020, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an award granted to individuals judged to have made outstanding achievements to social progress and development.
He lives beside the beach on the English-Scottish border with his wife, three children, two guinea pigs and two mini-sausage dogs. His family and friends think he’s a little too proud of his KWO Räunchermänner but still buy him one every year. He loves photography, beach walks, cliff runs, and cheering on his kids at their many sporting events.
Profile Images
If you have booked James to speak at your event, then you are welcome to use any of the photographs on this page. In all other cases, you should check with Challenging Learning before using any of our images.
Most of the photographs were taken by Andrew Billington or members of the CL team. All images are copyrighted by Challenging Learning.
Profile Images
If you have booked James to speak at your event, then you are welcome to use any of the photographs on this page. In all other cases, you should check with Challenging Learning before using any of our images.
Most of the photographs were taken by Andrew Billington or members of the CL team. All images are copyrighted by Challenging Learning.
Studio Shots
Action Shots
Speaker Set Up
To ensure a high-quality presentation, please make sure the following is provided (shown in rank order of importance to James) …
A must
- An AV set-up including projector and screen, plus either a HDMI or VGA cable (and 3.5mm speaker cable if sound is not going to run through the HDMI cable). James will bring the relevant USB-C adaptors for his Macbook as well as his own presentation remote.
- A room and AV set-up that allows James Nottingham to have his laptop on stage with him. He likes to edit his slides in response to audience feedback and skip slides without scrolling through everything – neither of which can be done if his slides or laptop are situated elsewhere.
- If a microphone is needed, then please ensure it is a head mic or lapel mic so that James can keep his hands free for presenting. A handheld mic is much more limiting, so please avoid these if possible.
Everything else is a bonus, including:
- A clear stage with just a small table for his laptop. A podium is not needed, nor is a ‘top table’. James likes to move on stage so as to engage his audience, which means anything on stage can become an obstruction.
- Lots of still water (not sparkling) throughout the presentation, plus a good coffee on arrival (double espresso is his poison of choice) would be perfect.
- For full-day events, it works best to seat delegates at tables (3-8 delegates per table). If space doesn’t allow for this, then rows of chairs are fine.
- High quality WiFi at large events can be useful to support online questions and feedback but is not a necessity.