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PhD year by year

After receiving your application, we try to establish if we have the necessary expertise to supervise your project and we begin to form a supervisory team for you. This will normally consist of a Director of Studies (DoS), who will be your lead supervisor, and at least one other supervisor, who will offer you additional support and guidance throughout your studies. If, following a successful interview, you are offered a place as a full-time student, your programme of study will look something like this:

Part time students follow the same structure as full-time students but normally complete the PhD over a period of five to six years. Part-time students take two modules in each of their first two years, and will normally Transfer to PhD in their fourth year.

Supervisors

Dr Sean Bracken 
Expertise: leadership of learning and teaching; inclusivity in higher, secondary and primary education; linguistic and cultural diversity.

Dr Mandy Duncan
Expertise: sociological perspectives of childhood, global perspectives of childhood, children’s rights, children’s participation in child protection interventions, early childhood, social research methods.

Expertise: educational leadership, early childhood care and education, creativity in education, inclusion, mentoring, resilience, internationalisation.

Expertise: student experience, values, mental health in university students, religious education, generational theory, Gen Z, the scholarship of teaching and learning, reflexivity in research, narrative research, narrative analysis.

Expertise: early years/ early childhood care and education, empathy and compassion, emotional labour, practitioner/ teacher self-care/ mental health and wellbeing in school.

Professor Alison Kington
Expertise: educational identities of teachers and pupils, teacher careers and retention, teacher/collective self-efficacy, classroom behaviours and interaction, teacher-pupil relationships, peer relationships in the classroom/friendships, and children's socio-cognitive development

Methodological expertise includes: mixed and merged methods, repertory grid techniques, critical event (and other) narrative approaches, observational techniques

Expertise: Educational leadership; adaptive leadership; leadership networks; emotions and identity in leadership; social pedagogy; social capital; early childhood; case study research; social constructivist research.

Disciplinary expertise: pupil alienation, teacher-pupil relationships, teacher identities, peer relationships, teacher efficacy, teacher expectations and the expectation effect, critical incidents.

Methodological expertise: grounded theory, mixed methods, critical realism, integration of quantitative and qualitative data.

AIEd; technological determinism; philosophy of education.

Rachael Paige
Expertise: teacher presence and teacher identity, leadership in educational contexts particularly relational leadership, developing positive school communities, positive behaviour approaches in primary schools, collaborative approaches including communities of practice.

Expertise: Primary Physical Education, Pedagogy, leadership, physical activity, action research, reflective practice, Learning theory, Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction.

Expertise: Trauma- aware practice; childhood adversity: child poverty: parenting and family support; kinship care; forced migration and human trafficking; participative methodologies; visual methods.

Dr Elizabeth Russell
Expertise: lives and identities in education; teachers and schooling; higher education; social justice; religious education; oral history; interpretivist research.

Dr Alexander Sewell
Expertise: applied practice-based research investigating inclusive educational practice (all developmental/educational levels). Qualitative research exploring the lived/living experience of mental health. Research of any methodology seeking to further interest in and understanding of neurodiversity/neurodivergence. Practice-based research exploring supporting the education of parents for pre-conception, birth, and the critical first 1000 days of life.

Dr Carla Solvason
Expertise: concepts of educational justice and exploring policy in practice; educational cultures and re/creating cultures; social justice; educational opportunity; philosophy of education; children’s language development.

Dr Marie Stephenson
Expertise: leadership, theory & practice; ethical leadership & ethical decision-making; qualitative research; pedagogic innovation; and educational leadership.

Expertise: teacher training and teacher development, teacher identities, professional development through networking, leadership, social research methods, higher education, and interpretivist research. Affiliated to social pedagogy research group.

Expertise: Pupil-teacher relationships and classroom management; Education policy and its impact on equity (especially racial equity); Geographies of educational policy and equity; Methodological expertise: Critical Race Theory, Critical Policy Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis; mixed-methods secondary data analysis.

Affiliated to the Social Psychology of Education research group.

All students engage with our Researcher Development Programme (RDP). The RDP aims to develop and enhance the skills, both generic and specific, that you will need to complete your research degree but also to become an effective researcher. The RDP is organised around thematic clusters, consisting of modules, and workshops, delivered face-to-face by subject specialists from across the University and the dedicated Researcher Development Team, or online through our virtual learning environment.

As part of the RDP, you will complete a Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods (PG Cert). All students must complete the PG Cert in order to progress on their MPhil/PhD Programme. The PG Cert is strongly focused on developing your programme of research, starting from establishing your development needs, and preparing you for the planning and subsequent delivery of your programme of research.

Full-time students will complete the PG Cert in 12 months and part-time students in 24 months.