Schools, policy and inequality - Professor Alice Bradbury | UCL IOE

Описание: Schools, policy and inequality: Researching why teachers do what they do and what it means for children

Primary schools and early years settings shape children’s lives immensely, but there are huge differences in how teachers teach and organise their time. Policy is a major influence on practices, but often changes. At the same time, there are significant disparities in attainment by social class and ‘race’, and differences in how children from different groups experience education.

Alice explores how projects on assessments, practices during Covid, and on schools’ support during the cost-of-living crisis cohere to form a picture of a sector faced with serious challenges in the last 15 years. Taking a policy sociology approach, she reflects on this work and discusses how underlying dominant discourses such as the idea of ability as fixed work to reproduce inequalities in schools. Understanding why teachers do what they do, and how school leaders make decisions involves exploring both how schools are responsive to policy but also to what extent they resist and reshape policy reforms.

Professor Alice Bradbury
Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCL IOE

Alice is also Co-Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0-11 years), a leading research centre focused on primary and early years education. Her work explores the relationships between policy, practice and inequalities.

Professor Carol Vincent (Respondent)
Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCL IOE

She has written and researched extensively on parents' relationships with schools and how these are shaped by class, race and gender; analyses of parenting, especially mothering; education policy and how policy works out in schools and classrooms; and individual and institutional attitudes towards diversity and citizenship.

Professor Lynn Ang (Chair)
Pro-Director of Research and Development, UCL IOE

Her research interests include the interdisciplinary fields of early childhood and international development, and early childhood across cultures, particularly in South East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.

She is interested in the social, cultural and policy influences on children's development and early learning in a range of formal and informal contexts such as preschool and home-based settings.

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