This paper offers a small slice of 'autosociobiography': autobiographical reflections which situate these impressions in a wider social context (Ernaux, 2022, Jaquet, 2023, Twellman & Lammers, 2023). These particular autosociobiographical reflections are about my experiences of university, and how they have offered both positive and sometimes…

This study investigates and reflects upon how over a decade of teaching English as a foreign language my attitude towards non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) changed from a negative perception to one of admiration. Focusing on language ideology and NNEST discrimination as conceptual lenses, I detail the evolution of my attitudes across…

This is an attempt to articulate and explore the relationship between the science of memory and the applied theatre project, "The Not Knowns." The project was a collaboration between theatre practitioners and a psychologist who worked together with a group of young people known, problematically, as the "not knowns" throughout…

This article uses autoethnography as the method of inquiry to explore definitions and contexts of early childhood education leadership. This affords a new space between the subjective and objective, the autobiographical and the cultural, to write in a way that lies between literature and the social sciences. Against a backcloth of scientific and…

The notion of worldview figures prominently in the recent discourse surrounding Religious Education (RE) in English schools following the publication of the final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) in 2018. This article reflects on the veracity of this initiative. It begins with an autobiographical reflection on the impact of…

A new form of narrative counselling for adolescents at risk of exclusion was piloted in 3 schools with 11 students between the ages of 13-14 years over a 6-7-week period. The intervention took into consideration that compared to adults, adolescents are more susceptible to being influenced by their immediate surroundings of home and school. A…

In currently dominant accounts, English as a school subject, its content and processes, are construed as an induction into a well-defined, already-established disciplinary discourse or set of discourses. In an attempt to challenge this version of English, I present some examples of autobiographical writing by secondary students and I tell the…

This autobiographical narrative explores how close childhood friendship can be destroyed by the perniciously divisive nature of the 11-plus exam. It describes an irretrievable situation in which all children are victims.

Since 2017 I have examined the impact of shifting professional practices demonstrated by students of an Artist Teacher MA programme at an English university. Students repeatedly discuss the transformative nature of the course, and through an impact case study I have interrogated the conditions which enable profound changes to occur. Emerging…

The College of Health, Psychology, and Social Care at the University of Derby has transformed its Interprofessional Education (IPE) offer from a top-down standalone event into a five-year strategy designed and delivered in genuine collaboration with students. Across the higher education sector, IPE has been a struggle, tokenistic at best, with…

Rapidly changing policy contexts in England have dramatically affected the provision of career guidance, and the training and development of its practitioners. This paper takes an autoethnographic and self-reflexive approach to exploring the experience of a Senior Lecturer in Career Guidance who manages a centre that offers the Qualification in…

The "sociological imagination"--the recognition of the relationship between "private troubles" and "public issues" (Mills [1959] 2000. "The Sociological Imagination". Oxford: Oxford University Press: 8)--is central to the discipline of sociology. This article reports findings of a 2014 study which…

Educational choices, especially the influence of class on these choices have been a subject of lively international debate. However, thus far, there has been little international and comparative research with respect to vocational and education training (VET) decision making from a subject-oriented perspective. This paper considers…

This co-authored article outlines the research process and key findings from the Stratus Writers Project, a participatory action research project with a group of seven students on the autistic spectrum at a university in the North of England. The project explores their experiences of university through critical autobiographies and offers unique…

This article records and evaluates a student's learning journey in two modules on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching (ELT) programme: an Oracy and ELT Pedagogy module and an Educational Technologies module. The notions of 'exploratory talk' and 'task-based learning' are explored using a single case study with material drawn from the…