Education, Equity and Social Identities
Our core research areas address questions about equity, difference, identity, and knowledge in changing socio-cultural contexts.
We are currently engaged in research projects that have a particular focus on:
- Citizenship
- Curriculum new generation knowledge
- Interdisciplinarity
Across a range of projects and areas of expertise, we address the social and cultural circumstances in which education/ schooling/workplace learning now take place.
Our research encompasses sociological, philosophical and historical enquiry as well as cultural studies and arts and performance-based approaches.
What are the contemporary experiences of social and educational inequality?
Are new manifestations of difference and inequality emerging alongside the persistence of older, more conventional, e.g class- or gender-based patterns?
How, and in what way are child, youth and adult identities taking shape?
How can interdisciplinary, or ‘new generation’ knowledge respond to changing socio-cultural circumstances; and what new ways of seeing and thinking about education and young people might they open up?
What conceptual and methodological resources are most fruitful for addressing these pressing questions?
Such questions are vital for educational research, but also for teacher education and for teaching. They come together in concerns about citizenship and identity; about new knowledge and curriculum – in schools, other educational institutions, workplaces and sites of informal learning. They represent significant and pressing social and educational issues; and researching them warrants further conceptual and methodological attention. What approaches offer the most fruitful directions?