Despite the prevailing evidence of the deepening class inequalities in the education system and the disproportionate distribution of university students in terms of class background, following the Browne report in 2010 the government raised the cap on tuition fees in England to £9,000 per year. Since most institutions have set their fees at the full amount, the cost of higher education (HE) has risen across the board, holding potentially grave consequences not just for the ‘widening participation agenda’ but for all students. It is out of this context that my research emerges. I am focussing on the extent to which the tuition fees may be putting young people off going to university and how this might differ by social class. Taking a Bourdieusian approach I am not focussing on the individual, their transitions or choices as I believe that young people’s ‘choices’ are situated within their ‘Horizons for action’ (their perceptions of the possible). Thus I am attempting to tap into the way in which the tuition fees may be impacting upon their ‘Horizons for action’. My research questions are:

1. To what extent do young people’s knowledge and perceptions of the increased tuition fees vary by social class background?

2. How do their perceptions of this debt fit in with their views of various other forms of debt?

3. In what ways are different schools providing information about the tuition fee system?

4. How might information about- and perceptions of- the increased tuition fees, finances and debt feed into young people’s ‘horizons for action’?

Selected recent publications

Abrahams, J. and Ingram N. (2013) ‘The Chameleon Habitus: Exploring local students’ negotiations multiple fields’ Sociological Review Online. 18(4)21 can be accessed at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/21.html

Mellor, J., Ingram, N., Abrahams, J. and Beedell, P. (2013) ‘Class matters in the interview setting? Positionality, situatedness and class’, British Educational Research Journal. early online view, 21^st February 2013. can be accessed at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3035/abstract

Previous research has shown that when compared to the majority of their peers, young people with looked-after status typically ‘underachieve’ within the education system. Following the Children Act 2004, local authorities have a statutory duty to ‘promote’ the educational achievement of looked-after children and young people. Thus, the implications for local authorities and their statutory duties are far reaching in terms of the development and implementation of appropriate policies. This thesis therefore, seeks to explore this landscape through a qualitative study of a sample of local authorities in Wales and their different models of promoting the educational attainment of young people with looked-after status.

My project will analyse how novice teachers construct the link between social deprivation and educational underachievement. It will, furthermore, examine the significance of these perceptions about poverty in shaping novice teachers’ professional responses, as well as their identities and their sense of agency. Also explored will be the impact of a school’s institutional logics upon these constructions about poverty, the teaching practices aimed at addressing its effects, and the identity and sense of agency of novice teachers. A mixed methods study will be used to generate six case studies of novice teachers working in secondary schools in high deprivation communities, which will illuminate the interaction between these factors over time.

This project is aiming to better understand how young people’s mental wellbeing is impacted by the transition from primary to secondary school.

It has been proposed that mental wellbeing is the “balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced” and this research posits that transition is a challenge that will require a young person to respond by utilising psychosocial resources.

Psychosocial resources are built in childhood as the first step towards future mental wellbeing status, yet childhood socio-economic status is an important mediator of the development of psychosocial resources. Where young people have fewer psychosocial resources to start with, transition becomes a greater challenge.

This is supported by findings that students from low SES backgrounds frequently have more negative experiences of transition than those with higher SES.

Young people who fail to engage with secondary school when they first join may never do so. This may mean that they never reach their academic potential, which has implications for health, employment, income and life expectancy.

Drawing from Bernstein’s theory of cultural transmission, it is proposed that young people who are unable to connect to their school will be more likely to be become disengaged and experience poor mental wellbeing. Conversely, if school culture aligns with each young person’s own cultural understandings, they will view the school as highly meaningful to them and be more inclined to engage with the school’s learning environment.

The school environment can thus act as a centripetal or centrifugal force on students, either drawing them inwards into the school culture, or outwards, towards situations that may produce health inequalities.

The first stage of this project will be multi-level modelling of school survey data. The findings from the quantitative analysis will then be used to inform qualitative interviews of school pupils.

The focus of my research project is the professional learning and development of headteachers in Wales and is sponsored in collaboration with the Welsh Government (WG) via the National Academy for Educational Leadership (NAEL) and the Economic, Social and Research Council (ESRC).

Educational leadership has been increasingly recognised as a catalyst for educational reform and school improvement. For Wales this has been an ongoing development initiated by two OECD reports (2014, 2017) which identified that the leadership capacity in Wales was underdeveloped. This was caused by a lack of professional learning opportunities at senior level and a coherent career framework, with both these factors impacting on the recruitment and retention of future leaders (Connolly et al, 2018).

Recent Welsh Government policies have sought to build leadership and professional capital across Wales and recognised the importance of investing in its future leaders: for example, the National Mission for Wales (2017); Schools as Learning Organisations Plan (2017); a National Approach to Professional Learning (2018).

These culminated in a revised set of professional standards for teaching and leadership and the establishment of the National Academy for Educational Leadership (NAEL), which aims to ‘secure, nurture and inspire’ educational leaders (2018).

The foci of this research will assess and feed into two of these central initiatives in Welsh education reform: a. the revision of Professional Standards for Teaching and Leadership which were revised in 2016 and in use in all schools in September 2017. b. the establishment of the National Academy of Educational Leadership in 2018 an ‘arm’s length’ body focussed on headship issues.

If you have any further questions about this research or would like to participate further in this research please do not hesitate to contact me.
Gill Ellis on ellisg5@cardiff.ac.uk

This thesis aims to explore the place, use and purpose of online networks for home-schooling. Subsidiary to this, it aims to analyse the significance of these technologies for challenging representations of home-schooling and rethinking the relationship between the individual and the collective in education.

The focal research questions will explore:

1. What are the representations of home-schooling?
2. What is the nature and intended purpose of online networks for home-schooling?
3. In what ways are online networks re-appropriated and selectively embedded in aspects of home-schooling?
4. In what ways can ‘the social’ be re-theorized from this?

The project aims to set in context other research which has investigated the nature of under- and post-graduate quantitative method training, along with perceptions and practices of both students and teachers.  Although a lot of research has been carried out at undergraduate level onwards, little attention has been given to the processes undertaken and perceptions being formed by students before they get to university.  This project aims to discover if similar problems that are faced at undergraduate level, in terms of teaching and learning quantitative methods, are also found in A-level study.

This research primarily concerns the A-level curriculum.  Following Prideaux’s (2003) conceptualisiation of curriculum, this includes how such curriculum is planned (by Govt and the relevant exam boards), how it is delivered (by institutions and teachers) and how it is experienced (by students).  The study will address whether there is disparity between how social sciences are portrayed to students and how they are documented in curriculum documentation.  Another disparity may occur between said curriculum(s) and how teachers understand and interpret this, as indicated with their following pedagogical practices.  These factors are important in the extent to which they, along with efforts to promote quantitative methods, affect the experiences and choices of students at higher levels of study.

To investigate the relationship between school and university curriculum, several different sources of information will have to be sought.  The curriculum will have to be mapped, in terms of how it is officially documented by exam boards and content providers, such as the Welsh Joint Education Committee (who are part funding this studentship), along with how it is actually practiced.  A-level students’ and teachers’ experiences, perceptions and practices will have to be sought, through a sample based on a cross-section of courses using both a large survey and case studies.  Similarly the experiences, perceptions and practices of those teaching quantitative methods and analysis at first year undergraduate level will be sought.

Selected recent publications

Hampton, J.M. (2012). The reporting of effect size in Educational Psychology literature. MMU Psychology Journal (Dissertations) UK accessible at  http://www.did.stu.mmu.ac.uk/MMU_Psychology_Dissertations_UK/2012dissertations/LtoQ/Lancaster/

Jess’s PhD project is a collaboration between Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru (the National Museum Wales) and is designed to foster a greater understanding of how young people engage with exhibitions and artefacts.

The ESRC funded project will involve the innovative use of Bio Mapping techniques to better understand young people’s use of and engagement with museums.

Previously Jess led the delivery of an AHRC & Design Council funded project exploring the role of design in creating economic benefit and social value in the Bristol and Bath region. As part of the team at the Pervasive Media Studio, she worked closely with the Playable City team to deliver the International Playable City Award, which promotes citizen engagement through playful urban technology interventions.

My research focuses on how young asylum-seeking, trafficked and refugee children and young people experience transition to life in the UK. Through interviews with 50 young people, I will explore how these young people make sense of the educational, cultural and spatial transitions they have experienced. More broadly, the research will examine how discourses of children’s rights, immigration control and educational inclusion work to construct these children in policy and practice.

The research aims to explore the ‘dyslexia’ label by looking at what teachers understand about dyslexia, what demographic factors result in an individual getting a diagnosis of dyslexia, and how diagnosis effects a child’s academic trajectory. This will be done by analysing primary survey data, the Millennium Cohort Study and Welsh administrative data.

In establishing a curriculum relevant for the 21st century the Welsh Government introduced the Foundation Phase (a curriculum framework for 3-7 year olds) in 2008, and it clearly states that ‘personal and social development, well-being and cultural diversity is at the heart of the Foundation Phase and should be developed across the curriculum’ (DCELLS, 2008, p.14). For this to happen, the challenge is for all stakeholders to adopt a sociocultural view of the child. Gerver (2010) states that systems tend to assume ‘that all children should be the same, reach the same learning states at the same age, be able to do the same things at the same time in the same way, know the same ‘stuff’ and share the same interests’ (p.65). The Foundation Phase therefore is an opportunity to move away from this tradition and an opportunity for practitioners to reflect on and to some extent rethink their practice for example, take a different view of the child (namely sociocultural), act differently whilst in the best interests of the child (Aasen and Waters, 2006).

My aim is to find out how personal and social development and well-being is understood by a range of stakeholders and to evaluate provision. Also, I aim to investigate what theoretical perspectives underpin practice and whether this impacts positively or negatively on children’s well-being. I also want the study to inform practice and hope to develop different ways of documenting personal and social development where children have opportunities to become meaning makers and social agents of change.

Selected Recent Publications

• Reflection paper (2010): Making sense of Swedish practice: is it that different from practice in Wales? http://www.tactyc.org.uk/reflections-papers.asp
• Playwords-Spring (2012) Issue 44: International Perspectives on Playhttp://www.commonthreads.org.uk/playwords.htm

This international comparison will examine policy making and pedagogical practices in two countries where new ‘computing curricula’ are being introduced. How do policy makers and schools plan and deliver these new programmes, especially as they prepare students for future employability, including how issues of inclusion related to class and gender are addressed?

A mixed-methods approach will be adopted to address theoretical and empirical gaps in Singapore and UK. The comparative aspect will explore how, possibly contrasting, national planning agenda produce more or less effective learning.

The study will address the following principal research questions:

• What are key policy makers and secondary teachers’ perceptions of the status of computing in the curriculum?
• How are policy makers planning, and how are schools experiencing, training to meet this new statutory curriculum requirement?
• How is the ‘computing curriculum’ being implemented and linked to knowledge acquisition in preparing students for future employability?
• How effective are current pedagogical practices operating within the delivery of the ‘computing curriculum’ to ensure issues of inclusion, particularly class and gender, are properly addressed to avoid a possible ‘digital divide’?

In the light of research suggesting a causal relationship between parental involvement in schools and the attainment of young people, this project will examine whether participation in adult community learning has links with the nature and extent of parental or familial involvement in schooling. It will be focused on areas of social disadvantage and will look at the experiences of family members, young people and teachers. It is envisaged that the outcomes will include a tangible contribution to policy and practice. This studentship includes collaborative funding and in-kind support from the Worker’s Educational Association (WEA South Wales) and WISERD (The Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods).

My research is being carried out within a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), a form of Education Other Than School (EOTAS).  I am interested in understanding how staff make sense of their own occupational roles, and what good practice means to them within their daily routines.  My broad research questions focus on the types of occupational identities that exist in PRUs, and how work is carried in order to meet both the policy requirements and the needs of the young people.

I have an interest and experience of using ethnographic methods and participatory methods with young people.

Selected recent publications

Evans, R., Brown, R., Rees, G., and Smith, P.  (2017) Systematic review of educational interventions for looked-after children and young people:  Recommendations for intervention development and evaluation,  British Educational Research Journal, 43(1), 68-94. Can be accessed at:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3252/full

The transition to secondary school is well-documented as a significant change in the lives of young people within the UK education system. A large body of research aims to identify the transition’s ‘effects’ on academic achievement and young people’s wellbeing, and how to ameliorate these. Yet to date, there has been little exploration of how children and their families actively navigate the process of school transition, or critical examination of the transition as a space for the reproduction of educational inequalities.

This project centres the voices of children and their parents, using creative research methods with 17 child-parent/carer pairs over a period of 15 months to explore how they navigate the school transition. Problematising the dominant narrative of a ‘good’ transition to which young people should universally aspire, the study examines how class and gender are (re)produced through the processes of becoming a Year Seven pupil.

The experiences of ‘mixed race’ young people in Britain are under-researched within the social sciences (Song, 2010) and there continues to be a need for research that adopts an intersectional approach which highlights the unique experiences and challenges faced by different ‘mixed race’ ethnic groups. In hope of addressing these issues my PhD aims to investigate how social structures of ‘race’, class and gender affect the lived experiences of ‘mixed race’ young people – of Black Caribbean and white British descent – as they transition into adulthood. As a researcher, I am dedicated to exposing the relationship between personal troubles and public issues. The public issue I am grappling with in this work is how limited racial categorisations lead to the stigmatisation of ‘mixed race’ people and their families (Banks, 1998; Ifekwunigwe, 2001). In a world that conceives of race in binary terms of ‘Black and white’ (Gines, 2014), racializes class privilege as a ‘white experience’ (Rollock, 2015) and through further racialisation eroticises gender (Crenshaw, 1989), ‘mixed race’ people must form identities whilst navigating limited categorises which attempt to define them and shape how they (and their actions) are interpreted others.  When people look upon ‘mixed race’ people, through their racial gaze, they may become confused – wondering what type of person are they? Are you Black? White? Something other? The numerous possibilities of heritage and questions of belonging provoked by and concealed within the ‘mixed race’ body makes it ambiguous (Ifekwunigwe, 2001). This is a vulnerable position to occupy as it is one that constantly shifts across time and space. This shift does not occur – at least not in the first instance – in the mind of the individual, but in the minds of others. Despite this, it is the person of mixed heritage that must respond and develop their sense of self in relation to every changing perceptions others hold of them. This process – known as racialisation – is a public issue. This, alongside other processes of classification determine, in part, the social position – of ‘mixed race’ people. Through exploring the personal (private) biographies of my participants, their families and friends I investigate how the role of the social position occupied by these ‘mixed race’ young people impacts upon their life experiences. I am interested in these individual’s respondes to the process of racialisation they have been exposed to, how their responses have changed across space and time and the extent to which the different reactions/strategies they adopt are shaped by family, upbringing, time in education & social networks.