Public Policy and Professional Practice

I have taught at Keele since 2001.  Prior to this I worked and studied in universities and adult education in Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.  In 2001 I received my PhD from Cambridge University, on Higher Education and National Identity in the United Arab Emirates.  This research drew together my interests in Middle East studies, cultural anthropology and higher education in an interdisciplinary frame. 

My interests in higher education revolve around how the sector mediates social change, through students, systems and academic staff.  My work has had different foci in this context: identity and language, political awareness, and institutional cultures.  As well as contributing to current theoretical and empirical endeavours to re-map the business of higher education in today’s global, I am also committed to reflective inquiry as a route to understanding a business of which I am part.   My teaching and programme design, therefore, is grounded in the principles of critically reflective inquiry into learning, policy and professional practice.

Professional and academic memberships, fellowships and affiliations:

Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)

Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA)

The Higher Education Academy(HEA)

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)

British Association for Comparative and International Education (BAICE)

Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT)

My research interest in the ways that higher education through various globalizing processes is shaping socialization, citizenship and cultural production across national and regional boundaries, has several foci:

i. Critical policy sociology

ii. The emergence of ‘academic regions’

iii. Questions about higher education’s purpose, and saleable or valued higher educational knowledge: fulfilment of stakeholder expectations or critical transformation?

iv. The rapid emergence of higher education markets in the developmental states of the Arab Gulf

v. The relationship between access to higher education and political voice/emancipation for women in the Arab Gulf

vi. The impacts of policy, markets and student expectations on the nature of university learning (what happens in classrooms) in both communities

I am committed to helping build research capacity in both Arab Gulf studies and higher education policy sociology by facilitating dialogue between the two research communities.

To this end I have written in high impact international journals and other formats that cut across these areas, and have been invited to give talks in these areas in both the United Kingdom and the Arab Gulf.

I have also jointly organised a number of seminar series, such as Keele internal research seminar series (Higher Education: policy, work, identity (2004-5), and in conjunction with colleagues from Wolverhampton and Birmingham universities an ESRC/TLRP-funded thematic seminar series (Social Diversity and Difference, 2004-6.

I would welcome research inquiries from prospective research students interested in any of these areas.  I would also be very interested in collaborations bringing rigorous interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on higher educational and social problems.

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme:

Teaching Reflectively in Higher Education (Module Leader)

Design and Development in Higher Education (Module Leader)

Educational Studies

EDU-20027 Reflective Teaching (Module Leader)

EDU-30065 Education for Citizenship (Module Leader)

EDU-30074 Higher Education: policy and the student experience (Module Leader)

EDU-30071 Independent Research Project (Dissertation)

Workshops

EdD

EDU-40031 Introduction to theories and methods

EDU-40032 Critical and feminist theories and perspectives

EDU-40033 Research Methods and Evaluation: ethics and ethnographies (Module Leader)

Thesis workshops

Current doctoral students as lead supervisor:

Karen Castle, Teachers and their continuing professional development: Policy, professionalism and perceptions

Debbie Gilliland, Postgraduate international student experience in the UK

Rebecca Somerfield, A case study of how teachers function in multi-agency teams and factors which impact on their ability to engage

Alison Maguire, A case study: Two years BA (Hons) accounting and finance students' experiences and expectations

Shamim Warwick, Engaging the ‘new’ student in HE: challenges for learners and teachers

Jean Robson, Adding action to the blend: new possibilities for learning in cross-border management education in Bosnia-Herzegovina (MPhil, submitted)

Successful completions as second or co-supervisor

Maggie Atkinson, Complexity in policy-making: the governance of local education

Joanna Renc-Roe, Academics in transition - Internationalisation of academic professionals in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Katherine Heathcote, 'We can't have men here': problematics and possibilities of the masculine in physiotherapy education

External examining

Ahmed Ibrahim Rashid Alhodithy, Exploring comparative and psychological approaches to learning in the Saudi Arabia school system, University of Exeter, October 2007

Zahra Saeed Baalawi, Investigating the provision of academic development initiatives: a case study of a tertiary institution in the United Arab Emirates, University of Leicester, January 2008

Andrew Thomas, Actual and desired factors of effective organisation and management of teaching and learning practices: a case study amongst lecturers and middle-leaders at a higher education institution in Oman, University of Leicester, July 2009

Internal examining

Jane F. A. Rarieya, School leadership in Kenya: the lived realities of women heads of schools, June 2007

Moira Hulme, Researching teachers, changing teachers: practitioner research and the modernisation of teaching, October 2007

Lesley Elizabeth Cooke, Citizenship and Higher Education: an inquiry into student volunteers’ understanding of citizenship within a church university context, May 2009

Francis Farrell, Encountering difference: a study of adolescent males’ masculine identity work and its relationship to secondary age phase religious education, September 2011

Ronald Steven Sargent, Design and Technology: disjuncture between policy and practice, October 2011

Paul Skillen, How practice and outcomes for teaching reading to below average children were affected by policy in England and Florida, March 2012

I  also chaired two doctoral vivas, and regularly examined on doctoral progression panels.