Dr Alison Buckler, Faculty of Education and Language Studies (FELS), has won second place in the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Doctoral Dissertation Awards.
Alison’s thesis ‘Understanding the Professional Lives of Female Teachers in Rural Sub-Saharan African Schools: A Capability Perspective’ is one of the two ‘highly commended’ theses.
The study drew on, and extended, the data collected for the TESSA Teachers' Lives project - which Alison started working on in 2006. This data provided a focus for exploring the relationship between official representations of teachers' work and the professional lives teachers create and experience. Focussing on women teachers and rural communities, the thesis looked beyond contemporary official portrayals of teachers’ lives to understand the actual contexts in which teachers live and work.
Drawing on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach, the thesis considered official documentary evidence alongside ethnographic evidence from rural and under-resourced schools in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan. It proposed a concept of professional capability for teachers and used this concept to challenge existing notions of ‘quality’ education and to provide insights into how teachers’ professional capabilities influence the type of education they deliver.
Throughout her research, Alison was supported by her supervisors, Emeritus Professor Bob Moon (FELS) and Professor Hazel Johnson (DPP).
Alison will be writing an article about her research which will appear in the next issue of BERA Research Intelligence publication.
BERA supports high quality research in education; the Doctoral Dissertation Award recognises the top three PhD, DPhil or EdD theses for research in education awarded by a British University.
24 July 2013
