Research interests

Ansgar's research investigates the unquestionable 'goods' of education. Currently he is pursuing a fellowship funded by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain looking into the history and politics of contemporary educational cynicism. In previous work he has investigated the possibility that education in all its forms, even where it appears most benign, is a form of violence. Setting education in its political context, his work offers a history of its good intentions, ranging from the birth of modern schooling and examination, to the rise (and fall) of meritocracy.

Research interests

Tom is an educational and child psychologist, researcher and teacher. Much of his work focuses on the work of professionals in inter-disciplinary and multi-agency contexts, in particular, via critical and qualitative methodologies. He has been working at Sheffield to build a community (local and international) committed to Critical educational psychology in which we

• interrogate the theoretical bases upon which psychological practices with children and young people are justified
• look to develop practitioner interventions which are both ethical and scientific
• move beyond psychopathologies to the experiences of the people involved

We invoke ‘three scientific distinctions’:

‘between the diagnosis and the child;
between a knowledge of children generally and our interpretations of the child before us;
between any descriptions of the child we construct and the descriptions that the child might potentially construct for themselves’ (Billington, 2006, p.158).

In using qualitative methodologies we

• work and research with not on children and young people, their families and schools, utilizing discourse analytic, psychodynamic and narrative approaches
• engage with philosophical, political and social constructionist discourse.

We also invoke ‘five critical questions’:

How do we speak of children? 
How do we speak with children? 
How do we write about children? 
How do we listen to children? 
How do we listen to ourselves (when working with children)? (Billington, 2006, p.8).

Research interests

Digital Literacies

Julia researches language and literacy in relation to digital text making practices. She investigates how people use technology to produce texts as part of their everyday-life, such as in social networking sites like facebook.com, flickr.com or Youtube, for example. She looks at how individuals produce texts using a range of modes, such as pictures, emoticons, moving images, different fonts, specialised spelling and vocabulary. Julia considers how this affects the way we live our lives, see ourselves and communicate with each other. She explores how this might affect how we conceptualise literacy and how literacy teaching could embrace `New Digital Literacies´.

Learning and Digital Technologies

Julia is investigating ways in which people learn in online spaces and when using new technologies. As well as exploring learning within informal web 2.0 spaces, or in using mobile technologies, she also has an interest in the ways in which the processes in these things can be harnessed to influence learning and teaching in more formal spaces such as schools and universities. She is interested in the cultural and social implications of new literacy practices and the ways in which these impact on individual lives and identities.

Textual Analysis

Julia is developing ways of analysing online interaction, particularly exploring how people are learning through their interactions. Her analytical approach takes account of linguistic and non-linguistic textual features such as emoticons, textual layout, sound and moving image. 

Research interests

Critical disability studies
Dan is interested in theorising and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, political, cultural and psycho-emotional exclusion of people with physical, sensory and/or cognitive impairments) and ableism (the contemporary ideals on which the able, autonomous, productive citizen is based).

Critical psychological and sociological theory
Dan is interested in engaging with poststructuralist, postconventionalist, social psychoanalytic and narrative accounts of exclusion and political resistance.

Non-normative childhoods
Dan hopes to engage with the expertise of non-normative children and their families to expose different ways of ‘being human’. This has extended his interest in critical disability studies to include ideas from queer theory, critical race, postcolonialism and feminism.

Studies of the human
Dan is working with colleagues in the School of Education and across the university to explore how we might understand the human in the 21st Century in a time of technological and capitalist advance.

Research interests

Critical Discourse Analysis

David´s publications in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have sought to expand understandings and theoretical frameworks for CDA in its socio-historic context and to consider potential applications for such an approach pedagogically through the niche offered by the recent incorporation of notions of Citizenship within the National Curriculum. His current research writing, linking with his former directorship and teaching on the MA Education Policy and Practice, encompasses a methodological analysis of approaches to the critical discourse analysis of educational policy documents. His distinctive contribution to this field, therefore lies in the synthesis of a well established theoretical methodology with practical pedagogical & research 

Academic Literacies

Again as an active and researcher and teacher in higher education, David´s interests encompass approaches and issues in academic literacies, particularly in terms of feedback at postgraduate level, research disseminated through both publication and professional development seminars. His work in academic literacy has had an impact on School and departmental assessment and feedback procedures. This work has been disseminated through professional development seminars and publication.

International English Language Teacher Education

In line with the university´s commitment to a research-led teaching approach, David´s research has sought ways in which critical and innovative approaches to English Language teaching, learning and assessment can be understood. Currently his funded research project in relation to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) suite of examinations (£7,500 funded by the British Council/ Cambridge ESOL/ IDP:IELTS Australia) investigates such concerns. Historically this has led to an engagement with pedagogical issues around learning at a distance (including development of innovative Distance Learning (DL) teaching materials and processes), a variety of international contexts, and more recently, through work on two funded research sponsored by learndirect (Ufi Ltd) (£35,000 each) which sought to consider the learning of English by adult speakers of other languages under the recent Government initiatives on `Skills for Life´ and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Research interests

Rachael is interested in the factors that influence children’s attitudes and beliefs about literacy. Her PhD examined young children’s perceptions of themselves as readers at the time of entry into the formal education system. Rachael is especially interested in understanding how constructions of reading are influenced by children’s home and school discourses, including the impact of technological change within communication practices in society. As a consequence, young children’s interactions with new media and digital technology are also of interest to Rachael.

Issues of confidence and motivation for learning are also inherent factors within Rachael’s research. In particular, she is concerned with developing an understanding of the factors which influence children’s confidence and attitudes towards themselves as learners. Rachael is also interested in gender studies and has explored young boys’ and girls’ attitudes towards aspects of literacy. Moreover, she is concerned with developing a critical analysis of the ways in which gender is conceptualised and researched.

• Inclusion in the early years
• Early literacy work with parents
• Arts-based learning in the early years
• Children´s views of their early years settings
• History of early childhood education

Research interests

Co-producing legacy: What is the role of artists within Connected Communities projects? Kate is the PI on this research project which will explore how artists work within the AHRC Connected Communities programme. The programme has encouraged arts and humanities academics to work in different ways with communities to co-produce research across a range of disciplines. Many academics have worked with artists to realize ideas and help with a community engaged approach to research. At the same time artists have framed, challenged and theoretically informed engaged research. Helen Graham, Steve Pool and Amanda Ravetz make up the project team. The team will work with Castlefield Art Gallery, A-N The Artists Information Company, Arts Council England and the AHRC Connected Communities leadership fellows to generate and disseminate findings. The project lasts for one year, from February 2014 to January 2015 and is an AHRC Connected Communities development grant.

Imagine. Kate has taken over the running of the AHRC/ESRC Connected Communities funded consortium ‘Imagine’ Project. The project is called, ‘The social, historical, cultural and democratic context of civic engagement: imagining different communities and making them happen.’ The shorter title of the project is ‘Imagine’. This is a Connected Communities Programme investment of £2.2M (funded by ESRC). Grant number ES/K002686/1.

The ‘Imagine’ programme is a five-year project running from 2013 to 2017 which brings together a range of different research projects working together across universities and communities. The universities involved include Kate Pahl at Sheffield (lead), Angie Hart at Brighton, Sarah Banks at Durham and Paul Ward at Huddersfield, with further involvement from the universities of Edinburgh, Kent, Birkbeck, Stirling, Westminster, Warwick, and partners from the University of Crete, University of Osnabruck, Germany, Dalhousie University, Canada and Malardalen University, Sweden. International partners include Etienne Wenger and Bev Traynor, Susan Hyatt, Indiana University, Harvinder Bedi, Development Support team, Pune, India, Eric Lassiter, Marshall University USA and Lynda Cheshire, University of Queensland, Australia.

Research interests

Gareth researches system change and policy reform in higher education, nationally and internationally. He has led major research projects funded by the research councils, government departments and national agencies on aspects of organisation and participation in tertiary education. He was a research consultant to the Dearing inquiry into higher education (1996-97) and the Foster review of further education colleges (2004-05).

His current work is focused on three areas:

• models of mass higher education
• college systems in cross-national perspective
• policy inquiry processes

Discourse Analysis and Challenging Behaviour

Kathryn´s primary research interest relates to investigating the way in which the identities of adolescent boys are discursively constructed and how this influences the practice of school exclusion. Through this work, she has utilised a range of methods for analysing spoken discourse: Conversation Analysis, Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis which have been applied to naturalistic conversations taking place with young people, parents, teachers and educational psychologists. Kathryn has also critically investigated how the education media creates grand narratives relating to young people at risk of exclusion and how these discourses can be resisted.

Narrative Therapies

Kathryn has been working over many years to develop evidence-based intervention techniques to support children who have suffered loss, abuse or neglect. This work relates to the use of therapeutic stories to help children explore and come to terms with their social and emotional worlds in an attempt to repair their damaged identities. Kathryn is trained in the use of narrative and motivational interviewing techniques, which she uses in her practice. More recently Kathryn has qualified as a Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) Practitioner and uses VIG to support teaching assistants, parents and foster carers in developing attuned relationships with the children for whom they are caring and supporting.

Research interests

Andrey´s research interests include language and education, sociolinguistics, multilingualism and faith-based complementary schooling. He has published in the fields of multilingualism, the sociology of language, the sociology of language and religion, language and education and language and identity. He is interested by the range of literacy and language practices bi- and multi-lingual children experience, and the way these relate to and interact with, and upon, one another. Much of his recent research has taken place within theoretical frameworks which view language as a social practice and language as performance.

Research interests

Educators' and Students' Lives and Careers

Pat is interested in how people perceive and experience being educators and particularly in the ways in which different aspects of life and social and cultural circumstances and influences can impact upon those perceptions and experiences. Her research has included investigations of: how becoming a parent affects professional practices; age and the male PE teacher; being an RE teacher in a secular society; how university teachers experience the imperative to publish caused by the Research Assessment Exercise; and the perceptions and experiences of secondary school teachers accused of sexual misconduct which they say they did not commit. Currently Pat is looking at the experiences and perceptions of children, adolescents and young people who have a parent with dementia.

Qualitative Research Methodologies, Methods and Re-presentation

Pat is interested in qualitative inquiry per se and especially in auto/biographical approaches, such as life history and autoethnography. Her work in the Caribbean has led to an interest in decolonizing research and she has undertaken collaborative work around this theme with students there. Pat takes the view that the ways in which researchers write about their work and how they present their findings is never a neutral or objective matter. In recent years social scientists have begun to use a range of creative approaches, including narrative, fiction, poetics, and performance and Pat is personally involved in exploring, developing, using and making the case for, alternative forms of research writing.

Research interests

Darren’s current research focuses on education, hope, power, citizenship and utopia. As with his teaching, Darren adopts an interdisciplinary approach to his research, which draws on philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, theology and political science. He is keen to look at the construction of hope within educational settings as a means of exploring the role of education in, on the one hand, fostering critical inquiry and active citizenship and, on the other, constraining future possibilities and reproducing relations of power.

Research interests

Tony´s research interests are focused in areas of critical psychology and psychoanalytic concepts and theory. To date his research has focused on contributing to the concept of a critical educational psychology. Related areas of interest include group dynamics, conceptions of mental health and emotional wellbeing, case study research and the use of reflexive and interpretative research methods.

Research interests

Elizabeth’s fields of research and teaching include early childhood and primary education, focusing on the following themes: learning, pedagogy and curriculum; play and learning; policy analysis and critique (national and international); equity and diversity; teachers’ beliefs and practices; professionalism and critical perspectives in education. Within the theme of play, her research focuses on pedagogy and practice, the ways in which play has been captured in policy sites, and the construction of ‘educational play’. She draws on critical and post-structural theories to interrogate policy frameworks, and the ways in which teachers and children are positioned within policy discourses. A longstanding interest is children’s own play cultures, meanings and purposes, including how they exercise power and autonomy in different forms of play. Elizabeth is interested in respectful and ethical ways of researching and understanding play from children’s perspectives.

Because of international trends towards the expansion of early childhood and primary education, and continued interest in play and pedagogy, Elizabeth’s research aligns with colleagues in many different countries. She works with colleagues in New Zealand and Australia to develop socio-cultural approaches to researching and theorising contemporary issues such as professionalism, international policy-making and policy travel, and cultural understandings of play. She has worked with organisations such as the National Union of Teachers, and Education International to research issues of equity and diversity in policies and practices of teacher unions www.ei-ie.org.