This thesis examines how Black or Ethnic Minority (B.E.M.) teachers understand themselves to be, and position themselves as, role models to pupils with whom they share cultural or ethnic backgrounds. Most research concerns the appropriateness of male/female role models and few studies investigate teachers’ perspectives. A feminist poststructural lens is applied to problematise the ‘role model’ concept and considers how role model relations are formed and sustained. B.E.M. teachers’ identity positioning’s are contextualised within macro (socio-political/historical) and micro (pedagogical) power relations. The empirical data derive from in-depth semistructured interviews with seven established B.E.M. (male and female) teachers who self-identify as role models. These data are analysed as constitutive work revealing a range of discursive regimes. I develop the idea of shared discursive history to understand B.E.M. teachers’ identifications as role models and how these become part of their pedagogy. Shared discursive history has three inter-related dimensions: teachers’ understanding of their shared marginalised position; their performance of the ‘role model’ construct; and their deployment of cultural resources. This framework makes visible how B.E.M. teachers’ enactment of their role is entangled in culture and is gendered. The findings suggest that hegemonic role model discourses based on mimicry are contested and reconfigured in practice by B.E.M. teachers. Their knowledge of B.E.M. pupils is predicated on the view that, for B.E.M. pupils to self-identify as achievers, they need to be schooled in resistance strategies. The teachers’ pedagogical work as role models promotes pupils’ criticality regarding themselves as learners and hegemonic representations of B.E.M. people.

The growing conceptual turn in UK tertiary-level art education has led to the increasing dematerialisation of the studio as a site for learning. This practice-based research responds to this context and advocates the primacy of the studio as a space for embodied experimentation. In contrast to the representational analyses prevalent in art historical discourse, I propose a new materialist reading of studio art practice to explore the transformative potentials of matter: specifically, how, by giving greater agency to materials, matter takes on a pedagogical role. Drawing on the work of Deleuze, Haraway, Barad and Hayles, I consider the prosthetic nature of art practice, and focus on the fluid boundaries of the artist-learner in the making process. I delineate how material agency operates within artistic assemblages to extend learner subjectivity, and suggest that the artist-learner experiences themselves as ‘other’ through affective intensities that traverse bodies in the artistic assemblage (both human and non-human). These encounters produce immanent learning experiences, as normative perceptions are challenged and new orientations affected. Artist-learners are therefore not discrete but entangled entities, and art practice, as a form of posthuman pedagogy, generates thought that is not exclusively human. This research offers a critical reappraisal of learning in a broader non-human context, where the non-human focus of this research considers how the materiality of learning becomes a core part of what is learnt and how the body becomes. The practices that I investigate can be understood as Critical Pedagogies, as they embrace embodied experience as a vital dimension of the learning process and bridge the gap between producers and consumers of knowledge. This investigation contributes to a field of research that aims to theorise more affective learning practices, and to critical discourse that focuses on the intra-action of cultural studies, art practice and education.

A number of students fail to progress through their university studies, with some re-sitting years or having their studentship terminated. In addition, some students may not reach their full potential despite progressing satisfactorily. The purpose of this research was to investigate performance of King’s College London Dental Students in end-of-year examinations, as they progressed through their programme and to identify factors which may affect progression. A mixed-methods research design was employed including a longitudinal data analysis, questionnaires, focus groups and one-to-one interviews. BDS1 students perceived differences in volume of university work, compared to school, caused difficulties. Approximately, 66% of BDS5 students progressed without resitting an end-of-year examination and those that did most commonly cited family problems as a contributory cause. In a regression model using gender, perceived stress scores, accommodation factors and debt worries as explanatory variables, none were predictors of examination performance. There were fluctuations in performance, with at least 70% of students not remaining within the same top, middle or bottom third of their year group, as they progressed. There was a weak to moderate correlation (r = 0.33 to 0.55, p < 0.05) between performance at beginning and end of the programmes though more than 70% of the variance was not accounted for. The unaccounted variance may be accounted for by findings in the qualitative strand of this research in which the six interview themes emerged: study/supporting study, the dental programme, personal life, feelings, students’ behaviour/differences/interactions, and assessment. The importance of support to successful progression was a recurring topic. In conclusion the performance of most students, relative to their peers, fluctuated as they progressed through their programme. Inter-personal interactions appeared to have a major influence on progression and may explain much of the variation in performance at beginning and end of the programme.

High quality assessment feedback is crucial to effective student learning, motivation and academic progress. It is one of the most important aspects of an undergraduate student’s study experience and acts as a critical factor in the way students perceive both their learning and learner identity. However, annual National Student Survey (NSS) results continue to reveal that undergraduate students are least satisfied with their experiences of assessment and feedback when compared to other areas on which the NSS focuses. These results have raised important questions within the higher education (HE) profession about the fitness for purpose of current forms of assessment feedback. As such, a reappraisal of assessment feedback policies and practices sits high within the sector’s improvement agenda. In response to these concerns, there is a small but growing field of research that promotes dialogic feedback and the inclusion of opportunities for assessment feedback discussions between tutors and undergraduate students. Framed by socio-constructivist theorisations of learning, proponents claim that such assessment feedback discussions benefit students through developing their personal confidence and capacity to self-direct learning. Paradoxically, however, in spite of research evidence showing that students support the inclusion of these tutorial meetings, personal experience reveals a reluctance by some students to engage in discussion about their assessment performance. Through a phenomenological research design, the thesis aimed to gain a deeper understanding of students’ experiences and perceptions of discussing their performance with their marking tutor. Research participants included eight second-year, full-time undergraduate social science students. Each student participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of assessment feedback tutorials (AFT). The transcribed data was analysed using a six-stage Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) model. The research makes an original contribution to knowledge relating to both the practice and theory of dialogic feedback in undergraduate study. Specifically, the findings posit that some students face a significant predicament when discussing weak and/or failed assignments. Their desire to self-promote and/or self-protect a confident and capable learner identity, not only conflicts with their own self-awareness of their poor academic performance, but also with the tutor's expectations that students need to undertake greater responsibility for their own learning and academic performance. As a means of managing this tension, and the emotional pressures that an AFT creates, students draw upon a range of self-presentational behaviours to manage how they project themselves to their tutor. The thesis concludes that such strategic management of their self-presentation restricts opportunities for the critical dialogic exchanges needed to create co-constructive student/tutor relationships and deep learning. As such, it is recommended that, within undergraduate study, there is increased focus on supporting students to understand the role that dialogue plays in engaging with feedback and the personal learning opportunities it affords.

Over recent decades, education in England has been subject to increasing government intervention, with a parallel impact on teacher education itself: the ‘quality assurance’, monitoring and surveillance that has become part of the culture of schooling is also present in teacher education. Moreover, government drives to increase the role of schools in initial teacher education and a turn to a more technical view of teaching, based on a series of identified competences and skills, has had an impact on teacher educators working in higher education institutions. Alongside addressing the impact of change on this aspect of their role, teacher educators based in higher education have also had to contend with recent pressures to engage with ‘research and knowledge exchange’, and move more towards traditional academic research roles. However, the majority of teacher educators working in universities in England enter this role on the basis of their ‘recent and relevant experience’ in schools, rather than any academic attributes. They have rarely had a research background or training. This thesis explores the impact of these developments on a small group of teacher educators based in one institution, focusing on their narratives of change and their response to managerial shifts and their repositioning in the institution. Viewing their accounts through the lens of Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain’s (1998) work on ‘Figured Worlds’, it explores the way they talk about their changing roles, their perceptions of the extent of their professional agency, and their narratives of self in the context of change. The analysis suggests that, within the context of the wider political, economic and managerial changes that have an impact on their environment, teacher educators are subject to powerful neoliberal discourses that require them to re-position themselves, individually and as a group; they achieve this with varying degrees of success, albeit at some cost. Underpinning their stories is a deep sense of loss of professional agency and identity. The thesis argues that fundamental changes in values of the meaning of teaching and teacher education undermine teacher educators’ agency, despite their attempts to resist and adapt to change.

Upon election, the coalition government in England (2010 – 2015) were swift to introduce reforms intent on improving standards of education in England. Central to the reforms were measures designed to improve the quality of both teaching and teachers, factors widely recognised as lying at the heart of educational improvement. A national network of Teaching Schools was announced, outstanding schools that would lead and develop career long teacher development. The work of all Teaching Schools would be underpinned by six core strands of professional development including a requirement to engage in research and development activity. This thesis reports on the extent and nature of research activity occurring at six Teaching Schools in the North West of England. The research findings offer insight into the potential for school-based teacher-research activity to support meaningful professional development within the teaching profession. Furthermore, findings indicate the conditions required to facilitate teachers in their research endeavours such that research activity may become established as a meaningful and sustainable expectation of practice. Analysis of the data makes clear the real potential for school-based teacher-research activity to underpin career-long professional development and learning. However, the results indicate that existing levels of teacher research literacy are low and teachers require support, guidance and access to research resources and expertise. School leadership emerged as a highly significant factor in creating a research-rich environment in which research is valued and celebrated. However, the strongly ‘top-down’ model of organisation evident in each research-active school has implications for the long-term future of a research agenda. An absence of ‘bottom-up’ momentum is likely to leave the research agenda vulnerable to staff change or shifting priorities either of which may cause the agenda to collapse, a factor that was not acknowledged by participants. This research adds to existing knowledge on the benefits of teacher-research activity and provides robust evidence for politicians, policy makers and practitioners that a blend of ‘bottom-up’/‘top-down’ organisation is required to build a self-sustaining model. A blended approach existing within a research-rich school culture and supported by research expertise offers the potential to establish a sustainable model of teacher research activity. This research indicates that research active teachers are enabled to effectively interrogate their practice and find answers to their professional questions and problems. Research offers teachers the means to become empowered, agentic professionals who through ongoing inquiry, learning and professional development are positioned to become more effective in their practice.

This thesis explores the formation of personal epistemologies and their impact on the development of professional subject knowledge in beginning teachers of English. The inquiry draws on a small sample of Secondary English student teachers studying for a Postgraduate Certificate of Education qualification (PGCE) at a university in the UK. The research explores the development of student teachers’ ‘personal epistemologies’, or belief systems concerning the nature of knowledge. It emphasises the importance of the affective, as well as the cognitive dimensions of the development of subject knowledge and identity. The thesis shows how autobiographical memory feeds into personal epistemology and argues that as this remembering becomes overlaid with new contexts and pedagogical learning, and permeated by the dominant discourses which surround the subject, a sense of shift emerges, entailing disconnection and reconnection, continuity and disjuncture. These temporal shifts encompass beliefs, pedagogy, context and inter-subjectivity, which meld to provide a sense of dynamism and fluidity in personal epistemology. Whilst such shifting perspectives might generate tension and uncertainty, it is argued that there is also a sense of energy and praxis as new learning emerges. The research identifies the need for spaces which provide opportunities for reflexive and transformative questioning that puts the self at the heart of the inquiry. It is argued that affect, memory, discourse and cognition are intertwined in complex ways in the development of student teachers’ personal epistemologies, and that it is important for teacher educators and policy makers, as well as for student teachers themselves, to understand the complexity of these entanglements and their role in the development of subject knowledge for teaching. The research employs a paradigmatic shift from interpretive, constructivist research methods to post-structural methodology in order to engage with the complexity and multiplicity of the voices emerging. Hope is identified as a powerful concept running through student teachers’ personal epistemologies. However, there is also evidence of what might be termed the ‘limitations of hope’ and the shutting down of hopeful voices through negative discourse. This research argues for student teachers’ hopeful voices to be heard, listened to, and explored as part of the multiplicity of voices emerging in the process of becoming a teacher. The outcomes of this research offer teacher educators conceptual resources with which to examine the process of professional knowledge development. Although the focus is on the personal epistemologies of beginning teachers of secondary English, the conceptual framework underpinning this study could be utilised to explore personal epistemology more widely.

In 2006, the UK government piloted free childcare for two-year-olds from disadvantaged families, expanding this into the ‘two-year-old offer’ (DfE, 2014). Despite efforts to widen participation, families from minority ethnic communities appear less likely to take up the offer (DfE, 2012). Research into non-engagement by families, particularly mothers, from minority ethnic communities frequently find reasons such as language barriers, a lack of service awareness or issues relating to isolation. These conclusions reflect cultural and political tensions that locate problems within communities and do not question powerful normative discourses. Through the narrated experiences of a small group of mothers from Pakistani and Somali heritage, whose young children have engaged with the two-year-old offer, this study interrogates discourses of (non)engagement. The study moves away from focusing research ‘on’ participants, to trouble the neoliberal discourses of equality that shape early years policies, constructing ideas of (non)engagement. By putting a postcolonial feminist lens to work with the stories shared by women in this study, nuanced discussions emerge that entangle their experiences of (non)engagement with broader experiences of sameness, difference and belonging that hint at invisible, powerful equality discourses. The impact of working with postcolonial feminism as a theoretical tool and methodological approach enabled me to think differently about the women’s stories, offering an important focus for analysis, whilst also unsettling the many assumptions and taken-for-granted knowledges I was carrying with me, as a doctoral student. Ruptures, ambiguity and precarity became themes to analyse, not only the study topic of (non)engagement, but also the experience of conducting the research.

This thesis is concerned with the teaching and learning of popular music, not as a process that can be defined and extrapolated, but as an interaction between musicians who consciously take on the roles of teacher and learner. The research project reported in this thesis focuses on the thinking that leads people to consider themselves to be musicians and how they frame their music making activities: their musicianship. Thinking takes place in the mind of people - their psyche. This thesis asks what psychoanalysis can contribute to research on music education, what insight can it bring to existing thinking frames that musicians and music teachers use? It explores how a reading of the work of Jacques Lacan may lead to new thinking frames that can help refine understandings of how musicians learn, how they identify with their own musicianship and how they interact with others. Set as an action research project, the researcher uses his own experiences and the discourses that his students, teachers and fellow musicians engage in, to consider how the language we use informs our thinking and to explore methods for overcoming common difficulties encountered in music learning environments. There are the practical considerations of the materials and activities musicians engage in, but significantly Lacan asks us to also consider our motivations to act. Enjoyment, its production and manifestation, lie beneath and motivate the way we use musical materials and how we choose which activities to engage in. Psychoanalysis employs challenging conceptions that have become entangled in anti-foundational philosophies concerning the truth and how we evaluate the world around us. The thesis takes key ideas: the master signifier; the split subject; the role of the Other in the psyche to create meaning; and jouissance, to understand how musicians think by mapping Lacan's framework of the Graph of Desire onto musical language to produce a model of the internal dialogues of a musician's psyche. With the help of Slavoj Žižek's application of psychoanalysis to cultural studies the resulting language is used to analyse the discourse of professional musicians in rehearsal to understand how the ambiguity of language has an impact on the way musicians learn. The thesis then considers how this sits with formal teaching and learning discourses encountered in British educational contexts. It concludes that music teachers need to recognise the important role we play for our students in leading them into ownership of their musical learning and that anxiety has a place in helping us recognise that a fear of uncertainty forces us to provide only a partial knowledge to our students. Music teachers play the role of the 'subject supposed to know' to our students, one that if we are successful our students should eventually reject. Ultimately it is argued that whilst many of the conventions and thinking frames we use to understand music education are valid, there is a need to maintain the joy of music making as central to the motivations of musicians, whether they be acting in the role of performer, composer, producer, teacher or learner.

This thesis investigates the importance learners and teachers of Modern Languages in England attach to the development of intercultural understanding, and the extent to which this is incorporated in everyday practice in the context of secondary education. In particular, the research explores whether a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach is an effective means to develop learners’ intercultural understanding. This is important because the curriculum for languages in England gives little importance to the development of intercultural competence through integrative models, at odds with many other countries. The research followed an action research approach within a pragmatic paradigm, through a mixed-method approach, using qualitative and quantitative instruments including questionnaires, interviews, lesson observations logs as well as an intervention programme of 15 lessons. 94 students of French in Year 8, across four different schools, and 19 teachers, participated, including myself. Two of the four classes were involved in the intervention programme. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis was undertaken to identify emerging themes and issues. The main conclusions of the thesis are that time and curriculum constraints prevent many language teachers from implementing intercultural teaching, even where they value it. In addition, teachers are placing additional constraints upon themselves, often making intercultural opportunities dependent on learners’ linguistic ability. Yet CLIL materials used in the intervention with low to mid ability students were successful in increasing affective motivation, cultural knowledge as well as learners’ intercultural understanding, through exposure to cognitively challenging content. This study makes several notable contributions: firstly, it highlights the importance of material choice when teaching for intercultural understanding; secondly, it gives a voice for teachers and learners of foreign languages to express their views on the importance they themselves attach to the teaching and learning of intercultural understanding; thirdly, it provides a useful insight in the use of a CLIL approach for the teaching of languages other than English. Finally, it addresses the potential benefits of this approach for lower secondary students in England, with a particular focus on lower attaining students, where little empirical evidence exists. The research therefore recommends a greater place for intercultural understanding in policy, teacher training and practice, not limiting the onus of delivery to language teachers alone. It also recommends the development a corpus of intercultural materials, the use of technology to develop a community of practitioners for intercultural teaching, and targeting the most receptive age group for intercultural teaching.