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Be different at ECER 2023 Glasgow with SERA-ECR

by Hermione Miao and Carrie Walton | SERA

The Scottish Educational Research Association Early Career Researchers (SERA-ECR) invites attendees of ECER in Glasgow to participate in a fun and thought-provoking video series.

We asked Hermione Miao and Carrie Walton, SERA-ECR network co-convenors to tell us more about their August action plan at ECER.

The SERA Early-Career Researcher (ECR) Network supports ECRs in Scotland to develop their capacity and capabilities as researchers within a supportive network and to share their research and connect with colleagues in education and the broader academic community.

The network co-convenor (Hermione Miao and Carrie Walton) organise monthly SERA_ECR events, currently featuring:

E for Edit your writing,
C for Conversations with scholars,
R for Reading club.

As a SERA Network, we have started making short videos with scholars talking about their research in plain words, making abstract concepts more accessible. We think this is a good way of sparking conversation, making connections and learning more about educational research.

We are now proposing to continue this short video series at ECER 2023, Glasgow (21-25 August 2023) as a fringe event.

An invitation to meet us at ECER Glasgow

Where to meet us

Our proposal is that during the networking time over tea/coffee breaks at ECER, we will take the opportunity to record some short video interviews. To gather questions for the interviews from conference delegates and ECRs we have developed a padlet that is now open for your questions.

How long would it take?

If you are willing to spend 10 minutes in conversation with the SERA_ECR network during ECER, please contact us, either in advance or at the conference. Or if we approach you for an interview at the conference, please, say yes!

It won’t be too formal, and it is not a research project, we just want to make a short video series, so that more people who are interested in education and educational research can hear directly from educators and educational researchers themselves.

In recognition of your contribution, and to get an idea of the international background of delegates, we will invite you to engage with the interactive posters we made for ECER. The first collaborative poster has a colourful world map and Scotland map for you to make connections between your place(s) and Glasgow.

The second collaborative poster invites you to reflect on “the value of diversity”.

Follow us on Twitter @SERA_ECR to track this fringe event.

As a network, we are interested to see how this fringe event unfolds and the potential connections it may create. See you at ECER Glasgow!

Hermione Miao

PhD Student

Hermione Miao (she/they) is studying for her PhD at the University of Stirling, and is nearing the finishing line to submit her thesis this autumn. Her research is about curriculum making and teacher agency. She used to teach geography in Chinese schools and international schools. She is a certified interpreter, with a passion for bridging for intercultural conversations. Since February 2023, she has started a Mapping Inspirational Women initiative. She likes organising events to connect people from diverse backgrounds and sustain these connections to improve the visibility of diverse cultures.

Carrie Walton

PhD Student

Carrie Walton is in her final year of a PhD at the University of Sunderland. Carrie also works as a Special Projects Lead for NHS Education for Scotland and is researching the professional practice of educators in the NHS. She is an avid collector of qualifications and a passionate devotee of lifelong learning and the pursuit of personal and professional development.

SERA – Early Career Researchers Network

The SERA Early-Career Researchers (ECR) Network supports ECRs to develop their capacity and capabilities as researchers within a supportive network and to share their research and connect with colleagues in education and the broader academic community. The network reflects on education within and beyond Scotland therefore we welcome ECRs from within and outside Scotland

Our ECR network includes:

Postgraduate students (PhD and Masters)
Educational practitioners researching any area of Scottish education
Postdoctoral researchers within 5 years (excluding career breaks/maternity or paternity leave) of completing their PhDs
Researchers/practitioners new to the field of educational research

Network activities:

Estelle Brisard Award: The prize is awarded for the best research paper written by an early career researcher based in Scotland and is presented annually at the SERA conference.
Writing workshops
Conversations with scholars (short video series)
Collaboration with other ECR networks (e.g. EERA and BERA).
Reading club (followed by conversational events with authors/editors)
Rapid-thesis competition (masters and doctoral students) – prize awarded for most effective presentation of dissertation/thesis in 3 minutes
Seminars and workshops in collaboration with members, other SERA networks, and external educational partners (e.g. ECR networks in other associations).
Networking events at the annual SERA conference

If you want to be involved, please join our mailing list or contact the convenors:

Convenors

Hermione (Xin Miao), PhD candidate, University of Stirling

Email: xin.miao@stir.ac.uk

Carrie Walton, PhD candidate, University of Sunderland; works for NHS Education Scotland

Email: carrie.walton@nhs.scot

Our general contact email is: ecrsera@gmail.com

School Uniform Policy in Scottish schools: Control and Consent

by Rachel Shanks | NW 6 Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures, SERA

A topic that is of continued interest to educational researchers – but also to teachers, pupils, and their parents – is school uniforms. As you may know, there is a marked difference between what pupils wear in school in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Ireland and the rest of Europe (recently Malta changed from formal uniforms to tracksuits). We set out to look into the reasons that schools give for having school uniforms.

I conducted the research with thirteen students from across the University of Aberdeen. A week-long course was designed to teach the qualitative data analysis software NVivo while taking part in an authentic research project. This was to provide undergraduates both research skills and experience.

I chose to analyse secondary school uniform policies because the policies are publicly available on school websites and do not involve confidential or sensitive information. We began our work with the identification of school uniform policies, school handbooks, and other information related to uniforms on each school’s website. After uploading the files, we read and coded the materials where we saw the reasons that were given for having a school uniform. Over the week, I benefited from over 300 hours of research assistance while the students learnt NVivo and applied this learning in the project.

Key Findings

Together we identified the different reasons that schools gave for requiring a school uniform. These included:

ethos, identity, pride, sense of belonging
safety, security/reduce truancy
preventing competition/discrimination
discipline and reduce bullying
employability
the reputation of the school
financial benefits
attitude to learning/improving standards of work

Students noticed more areas of interest, including the formality of the compulsory uniform from informal (no blazer or tie), mixed (blazer or tie) to formal (blazer and tie).

Of the 357 publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland we discovered:

343 schools (96%) require a uniform and just 14 schools do not
320 schools mandate the wearing of a school tie by both girls and boys
235 schools require a blazer to be worn
200 schools ban jeans

Three students have continued to analyse the data in areas of interest they identified, and we are close to submitting journal manuscripts. The students have also been involved in teaching doctoral students and university staff how to analyse qualitative research data using NVivo.

I asked the students to provide a summary of the analysis conducted so far and some of the questions or issues that arose from the research.

Uniform Policies & Gender – by Kirsten Phelps

Our analysis of school uniform policies regarding gender found that there were generally more rules and prescriptive policies for girls. Many policies mentioned the length of girls’ skirts using language that centred on the idea of decency or modesty. This suggests a placing of normative categories on girls and young women using school uniform policies, with those that follow the rules seen as moral/good and those who break them immoral/bad. Most schools in Scotland include ties as a mandatory part of their uniform for both boys and girls. This is notable as ties are not something usually worn in the workplace, or otherwise by women, yet they remain an entrenched part of the British school uniform.

School uniforms and employability discourse – by Annabelle Olsson

One specific justification for the uniform, employability, was analysed through the lens of governmentality. ‘Employability’ (Fotiadou, 2020; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006) is a concept referring to the ‘human capital’ – i.e., the skills, knowledge, and personal attributes – that makes an individual more likely to gain employment. Such discourses of employability generally overlook structural causes of unemployment, instead of placing the responsibility on the individual to continuously develop their skills and adapt to a precarious and competitive job market. In the policy documents, we discovered a rationale for the uniform based on such discourses. Fifty-three schools (15%) made linkages between the uniform and the world of work, illustrating a semi-hidden curriculum that implies that pupils should be presentable and employment-ready, conforming to the market and the workplace as well as their subordinate role within it.

Power and control in schools– by Jasper Friedrich

There appeared to be a tension between the practice of enforcing strict uniform policies and the way these practices are justified. While almost all policies include highly detailed regulations (some go as far as specifying the minimum length of girls’ skirts) and strict enforcement measures, justifications tend to focus on ‘soft’ values such as creating a sense of belonging and giving pupils self-confidence. We found it useful to analyse this in terms of Michel Foucault’s theorisation of different historical modes of power . When school uniforms were first introduced in the early modern period, they were what Foucault terms a technique of disciplinary power: one that ‘compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes’. We still very much see this in how the policies homogenize dress while differentiating between girls and boys, creating hierarchies (prefects often wear special uniforms) and excluding those who do not conform.

In contrast, the justifications for these strict uniform policies are often cast in terms of what Foucault would call ‘governmentality’, a type of power that seeks to manage people with their consent instead of controlling them. The emphasis here is on how students will feel more included and improve their ‘human capital’ as a result of wearing uniforms – the uniform is justified not as a convenient tool of administration and control, but rather as a valuable part of the ‘product’ schools can offer parents.

Next Steps

Further analysis of the data set includes looking at the affordability of school uniforms, to what extent religious/philosophical beliefs are taken into account in the policies, and what is in place for pupils who identify as non-binary or who are in the process of transitioning gender. I hope to conduct research in schools that have involved pupils in decisions around uniforms.

I also hope to collaborate with researchers in other countries on school uniforms, dress codes, and appearance policies, so please get in touch if this interests you.

Finally, this project showed how it is possible to combine the teaching of qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo with actual data analysis providing a win-win for the academic and the students involved.

References and Further Reading

Maria Fotiadou (2020) Denaturalising the discourse of competition in the graduate job market and the notion of employability: a corpus-based study of UK university websites, Critical Discourse Studies, 17:3, 260-291, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2018.1546606

Marie‐Pierre Moreau & Carole Leathwood (2006) Graduates’ employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis, Journal of Education and Work, 19:4, 305-324, DOI: 10.1080/13639080600867083

The Power Thinker – Why Foucault’s work on power is more important than ever

School sends pupils home for wearing unpolishable shoes, no blazer and old footwear – Metro UK

Affordability of secondary school uniform in Scotland – University of Aberdeen (PDF).

Authors

Dr Rachel Shanks

Senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland

Dr Rachel Shanks is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. She sits on the Executive Committee of the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) and is the link person with the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI). She is a co-convenor of EERA Network 6: Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures. Rachel is the Programme Director of the BA in Professional Development at the University of Aberdeen and regularly runs workshops on how to use NVivo. Her research interests fall into three main categories: professional learning and mentoring; digital technologies in education; and school uniform/dress code policies. Rachel is also a member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and is currently conducting research funded by BERA on teacher preparation and new teachers’ responses to teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kirsten Phelps

Graduate Student, St Andrews University

Kirsten is a graduate student studying Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asian Security at St Andrews University. Her interests include social movements and post-conflict transitions.

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Annabelle Olsson

Graduate Student, University College London

Annabelle is a graduate student in Health Humanities at UCL. Her interests include emancipatory education and student wellbeing, social and anthropological perspectives on mental health, and interdisciplinary research methods.

Jasper Friedrich

Graduate Student, University of Oxford

Jasper Friedrich is a graduate student at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He is interested in social and political theory, especially critical approaches and theories of power.

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The Challenges and Opportunities of Physical Education within the Context of Health and Wellbeing

by Dr Gray and Dr Sandford | NW 18 Research in Sport Pedagogy, SERA

During the #ReconnectingEERA online conference, that replaced the planned 2020 ECER conference in Glasgow, the Network 18 (Research in Sport Pedagogy) symposium on 27^th August 2020 was attended by around seventy delegates from across Europe. The symposium was originally planned as a ‘local context’ contribution within NW18’s programme of activities at the Glasgow conference, where it was intended to showcase just some of the excellent Physical Education (PE) research that is taking place in Scotland. The symposium was organised in collaboration with SERA and their PE network (ScotPERN) in order to build capacity, share ideas and facilitate conversations. Dr Shirley Gray and Dr Rachel Sandford provide an overview of the online symposium, reflect on the discussion generated and consider implications for future research agendas.

Curriculum for Physical Education in Scotland

Scotland offers a rich site for educational research, given that it is now ten years on from the introduction of a new curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence (Scottish Government, 2004). During this time, there have been several curriculum reviews, recommendations and further policy developments, which have presented numerous challenges for teachers. This was particularly evident with the PE curriculum, which in 2010 was relocated from the ‘Expressive Arts’ curriculum to the ‘Health and Wellbeing’ curriculum.

Whereas initially, teachers were supported by just two pages of broad curricular guidelines (Scottish Government, 2009), today they work with twenty-two pages of specific benchmarks (Education Scotland, 2017). These benchmarks indicate what pupils should be able to know and do as they progress through school. The programme for high stakes examinations in the senior years (ages 16-18 years) has also undergone several changes over recent years, and debates remain ongoing as to how they might be further developed in the future.

Research in Physical Education in Scotland

Researchers in PE in Scottish universities have been fascinated by these developments and have spent the last ten years exploring the impact of the new curriculum on teachers’ learning, practice and the learning experiences of students. Specific areas of research have included:

exploring the curriculum development process;
understanding the nature and role of health and wellbeing within the context of PE;
teacher change;
in-service and pre-service teacher learning;
teaching social and emotional wellbeing;
the role of digital technology and social media in how young people learn;
gender issues in PE, and;
critical pedagogies of affect.

Online Symposium at #ReconnectingEERA

The online symposium consisted of five presentations that exemplified just some of the work that has been done within these areas in recent years. Some of the references for this work can be found below.

The first presentation was by Dr Andrew Horrell from the University of Edinburgh. He presented findings from a study that took place at the time teachers were planning their new curricula in line with policy demands. He highlighted the ways in which regimes of accountability exerted a powerful influence on teachers and had a significant impact on the decisions they made about curriculum design.

The next presentation was by Professor Kirk, Cara Lamb and Dr Eishen Teraoka from the University of Strathclyde. They presented the findings from two studies that explored the pedagogies of PE teachers who paid specific attention to pupils’ learning in the affective domain. The first study explored the perceptions and experiences of teachers who were committed to engaging with pedagogies of affect. In the second study, they highlighted the challenges that teachers faced when attempting to learn and enact an activist intervention specifically designed to support girls’ positive experiences in PE.

Following this, Elaine Wotherspoon from the University of the West of Scotland reported the findings from her study that explored recently graduated PETE students’ levels of preparedness for teaching PE within the Health and Wellbeing curriculum. She discussed the factors that contributed to their feelings of preparedness, but also highlight that, the more they learned ‘on the job’, the less they felt that their PETE experience sufficiently prepared them for their entry into the profession.

In the final presentation, Dr Jess and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh presented their findings from the first phase of a longitudinal study exploring the professional visions of final year PE students. Guided by complexity thinking, they analysed twenty student essays that focussed on a future vision for PE. Results highlighted a diverse range of ideas and a discussion followed about the various factors that teachers will need to negotiate if their vision is to be realised.

In summary, these four presentations provided an insight into just some of the academic work that is being carried out in Scotland within the broad field of physical education. Together, they helped to showcase how the new Scottish curriculum has provided an exciting backdrop for educational research. This research provides academics, working with/alongside teachers, the opportunity to explore how PE practice might best ensure that young people have positive, healthy and meaningful experiences now and in the future.

In sharing this work and inviting comment, the symposium offered an opportunity for attendees to discuss key issues around health, PE and the curriculum, and make relevant connections to their own contexts. One exciting outcome here is that those delegates in attendance from Wales, a country that is currently going through very similar curriculum reform, sought to continue discussions with the panel beyond the symposium and now plan to organise a further joint symposium in the future.

The online symposium has served not only to raise the profile of educational research in Scotland but also to forge stronger connections between the ScotPERN and NW18 networks and identify opportunities for future collaborative research within Europe and beyond.

If you would like to see these presentations, then you can find them on the SERA ‘connects’ YouTube channel here:

Dr Shirley Gray

Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh

Dr Shirley Gray is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on issues relating to gender and equality, social and emotional learning, pupil motivation and the professional learning of teachers.

Dr Rachel Sandford

Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University

Dr Rachel Sandford is a Senior Lecturer in Young People and Sport at Loughborough University, UK. Her research centres on young people’s attitudes towards, experiences of and development in/through sport and physical activity. She has a particular interest in issues around popular culture, embodied identity and positive youth development.

References

Scottish Government (2004) A curriculum for excellence. (Glasgow, Learning and Teaching Scotland).

Scottish Government (2009) Curriculum for excellence: health and wellbeing: experiences and outcomes. (Glasgow, Learning and Teaching Scotland).

Education Scotland (2017). Benchmarks: Physical Education.

Scottish Research References

Carse, N, Jess, M & Keay, J. (2020), ‘Primary Physical Education in a complex world (Part 4): Advocating for the Education in Primary Physical Education‘ Physical Education Matters, pp. 21-23.

Carse, N, McMillan, P, Jess, M, McIntyre, J & Fletcher, T. (2018).Exploring the collaborative in a collective self-study. in D Garbett & A Ovens (eds), Pushing Boundaries and Crossing Borders: Self-Study as a Means for Researching Pedagogy . University of Auckland, pp. 489-496.

Craig, M, Thorburn, M, Mulholland, R, Horrell, A & Jess, M. (2016). ‘Understanding professional issues in physical education: A Scottish insight‘, Scottish Educational Review, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 80-100.

Gray, S., Wright, P., Sievwright, R., & Robertson, S. (2019). Learning to Use Teaching for Personal and Social Responsibility Through Action Research. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education.

Horrell, A., Sproule, J. & Gray, S., (2011). Health and wellbeing: a policy context for physical education in Scotland. Sport, Education and Society. 17(2) 163-180

Jess, M, Keay, J & Carse, N. (2019) ‘Primary physical education in a complex world (part 1)‘ Physical Education Matters, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 23-25.

Kirk, D., Lamb, C. A., Oliver, K. L., Ewing-Day, R., Fleming, C., Loch, A., & Smedley, V. (2018). Balancing prescription with teacher and pupil agency: spaces for manoeuvre within a pedagogical model for working with adolescent girls. Curriculum Journal, 29(2), 219-237.

MacIsaac, S., Kelly, J. & Gray (2017). ‘She has like 4000 followers!’: the celebrification of self within school social networks. Journal of Youth Studies.

MacLean, J., Mulholland, R., Gray, S. & Horrell, A. (2015) Enabling Curriculum Change in Scotland – PE Teacher and Policy Constructors’ Perceptions compared. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2013.798406.

Mcmillan, P 2017, Understanding physical education teachers’ day-to-day practice: Challenging the ‘unfair’ picture. in M Thorburn (ed.), Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education. Routledge Research in Education, Routledge, Abingdon; New York, pp. 159-175.

Roberts, J, Gray, S & Camacho-Miñano, MJ. (2019). ‘Exploring the PE contexts and experiences of girls who challenge gender norms in a progressive secondary school’, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2019.1696688

Stewart, S., Gray, S., Kelly, J. & MacIsaac, S. (2019). Investigating the development of masculine identities in physical education. Sport Education and Society.

Teraoka, E., Ferreira, H. J., Kirk, D., & Bardid, F. (Accepted/In press). Affective learning in physical education: a systematic review. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education.

The Effects of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Children’s Education

by Prof McKinney and Dr Head | SERA

The theme of the ECER 2020 conference was Educational Research: (Re)connecting Communities. This focus was initially prompted by the concerns about the potential effects of Brexit and other fractures in communities in Europe. The conference aimed to interrogate the capacity of educational research to address the complexity of the challenges that are encountered in connecting and reconnecting communities in contemporary Europe.

The effects of Covid-19 and the consequent lockdowns that swept across Europe and the world led to further, more extensive, fractures and disconnects across Europe. Schools, universities and workplaces were closed. There were severe restrictions on travel and movement around Europe.

As the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns continued, a number of serious issues arose for children and the continuation of their education in Scotland. For many children and young people, school became an online engagement with teachers. The use of platforms and materials and the frequency of contact varied across Scotland’s 32 local authorities with learning resources provided by schools, media companies and commercial companies.

The Effects of Home Schooling

Recent research indicates that the move to learning at home for the majority of pupils led to mixed results for pupils, parents and teachers. Some parents and carers became anxious about adopting a greatly enhanced role in supporting the formal education of their children in the home. The formal education of children is normally assumed, almost exclusively, by highly qualified professional teachers in a school setting. There were not always sufficient resources at home to support formal home learning.

The effects of digital poverty, or digital exclusion, became apparent as awareness grew that some families did not have adequate equipment or even access to the internet to support their children in online learning. Not all members of the teaching profession had the skill set for the sudden move to online teaching and learning and, like many other professionals, had to upskill. Further, all teachers had to spend a substantial amount of time preparing and implementing online learning. There was serious disruption to the exam diet for senior pupils and a highly publicised reconfiguration of assessment practices leading to a controversial recalculation of grades for the major public examinations.

All of this unfolded in the context of serious concerns about rising levels of child poverty pre-COVID-19 and further increases as a result of job losses during lockdown. This situation contributed to a rise in food insecurity for many families and more families now seek free school meals for their children and access food from foodbanks. The effects of the rising levels of child poverty will have consequences for the physical and mental health and well-being of the children and young people.

The New Normal

There are other ways to view the outcomes of the lockdowns. As we came out of lockdown and schools resumed, ‘The New Normal’ was a phrase that came into current use. An important aspect of ‘new normal’ is the new knowledge, which will inform any altered concept of normality. New knowledge can emerge through any number of activities, but typically, it is the result of sustained engagement with others, materials and contexts during which we come to assimilate the nuanced experiences and perspectives of others in a new way.

Positive Effects of the Lockdown for Learners

Children and young people will have had a range of experiences of lockdown. As a result, they will have developed new knowledge about themselves as learners. There are likely to be pupils who will have experienced ‘schoolwork’ differently in a positive way; who have engaged with their learning at their own pace and on their own terms. Some will have enjoyed working alone, whilst others might have benefited from engagement with siblings and parents.

Anecdotally, we have probably all heard of examples of children and young people learning new things and developing skills and interests not directly connected to schoolwork. They have already blended their own ways of organising and engaging with their learning, their own interests and other people with whom they have interacted during this period.

The likelihood is that all young people will have learned new things and have a stronger sense of themselves as people and learners. It is important that this new knowledge is sought out, recognised and built on as our children, young people and schools return. We are in a unique situation and should take the opportunity to engage children’s and young people’s new skills, newly-realised abilities and personal interests. We should blend these insights into practice and pedagogy in schools as we simultaneously explore new ways to allow them to demonstrate their learning.

Positive Effects of the Lockdown for Teachers

Teachers will have learned new things about themselves, their colleagues and the children and young people with whom they work and the relationships among them. Teachers know that young people’s emotional experience of learning is as important as their cognitive experience. The current situation presents a unique stimulus for teachers to make sense of the relationships they have with each of their pupils.

Teachers already see their pupils as learners and not simply people who have to be taught. They will already be aware of pupils’ skills abilities and interests, and the new experiences which young people bring to school could be used to enhance and enrich the learning of all young people. Teachers’ interactions with pupils during lockdown will have enriched their own sense of themselves as teachers and their place in the lives of their charges. This new knowledge will help reinforce any new sense that pupils have of themselves as learners and teachers have of themselves as teachers.

EERA also has a role to play, and the recent online events had a significant role in reconnecting our research communities. The events provided new spaces in which education was explored, theorised and researched from the perspectives of all member associations and networks. EERA also has a role in generating the new knowledge that will increasingly and relentlessly nudge forward our understanding of education.

Professor Stephen J. McKinney

Professor, School of Education, University of Glasgow

Stephen J. McKinney is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. He leads the research and teaching group, Pedagogy, Praxis and Faith. He is the past President of the Scottish Educational Research Association. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Beliefs and Values, Improving Schools, the Scottish Educational Review. He is a visiting professor in Catholic Education at Newman University, an Associate of the Irish Institute for Catholic Studies and on the steering group for the Network for Researchers in Catholic Education. He is a member of the European Educational Research Association Council. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the London School of Management Education. His research interests include Catholic schools and faith schools, the impact of poverty on education and education and social justice and he has published widely on all of these topics.

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Dr George Head

Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Glasgow

George Head is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Glasgow, Scotland. George is a past-president of the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) and has represented the association on the European Educational Research Association (EERA) Council and served as Senior Mentor to the EERA Emerging Researchers Group. He is a visiting professor at Newman University, Birmingham. His areas of academic interest include Inclusive Education and the learning and teaching of young people whose behaviour schools find difficult. George was a member of the Local Organising Committee for ECER 2020 which was scheduled to take place in Glasgow

Be different at ECER 2023 Glasgow with SERA-ECR