Research Interests
My research is in the broad field of lifelong learning, focusing in particular on further education and vocational education and training. I am interested in the relationship between policy and practice, and in how policy is experienced, formed and reformed at micro levels of practice. I have an underlying interest in social justice and in/equality in the context of people's changing experience of learning, education and training, and the relationship between learning, education and people's wider lives.
I am on the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training and I convene the British Educational Research Association Special Interest Group in Post-Compulsory and Lifelong Learning.
Teaching
I am course director for the professional doctorate (EdD) programme. I also teach on a range of other programmes, including the Cert Ed/ PGCE in Post-Compulsory Education and Training and the MA in Lifelong Learning. My main areas are: the formation of learner identities and professional identities; 14-19 vocational education; widening participation in further and higher education; and qualitative research methods.
