Profile

I taught in primary schools for over 20 years and joined the OU in 1992 as a researcher working with Professor Peter Woods and Dr. Geoff Troman specialising in primary teacher's work and teacher and pupil creativity from a sociological perspective. These two strands have been held together by an interest in exploring the agency of the individual under conditions of tension and constraint and in particular the effects on their creativity.

We completed in 2008 an ESRC 2 year study of the effects of creativity and performativity policies in primary schools and in 2007 we completed another ESRC project on primary teacher identity. In 2006 I completed a nine nation European research project into creative learning http://clasp.open.ac.uk and was Co-Director of an ESRC seminar series on Creativity in Education with Anna Craft with whom I edited a Special Edition of BERJ on Creativity and Performativity published in 2008. I am co-founder and editor of the Ethnography and Education journal, www.tandf.co.uk/journals,  commissioning editor of a series of the same title with Tufnell Press www.tufnellpress.co.uk and I co-organise an annual Ethnography Conference in Oxford www.ethnographyandeducation.org . I was co-founder of the European Ethnography Research Network at ECER and the Creativity SIG at BERA and am now the ECER Lead co-ordinator.

More details and publications can be found on the CREET Policymaking and Professionalism Research Group pages and the Open University ORO site and I am co-convenor of the Policy and Professionalism, Leadership and Life Long Learning CREET research group.