Project Title: Teachers’ Preparation for, and Experiences of, Race in the Classroom.
My twelve-year career as a secondary school English teacher, including seven years leading a department, fundamentally shaped my commitment to curriculum change, social justice and representation. This practice-based interest, built upon a foundation in English literature (BA, King’s College London; MA, UCL), fuelled my subsequent academic pursuits, beginning with an ESRC-funded MSc in Education at the University of Oxford.
My MSc dissertation, awarded the UK Literacy Association (UKLA) Student Research Prize, investigated how teachers navigate issues of representation. It revealed a critical gap: whilst teachers aspired to diversify their curriculums, they often felt ill-equipped to teach ethnically diverse texts, as these works were absent from their own education. This finding directly drives my current DPhil research, which focuses upon teacher education. My goal is to investigate how teacher education programmes address issues related to representation, with the aim of providing an evidence base for effective approaches that empower new teachers with the pedagogical skills and confidence to effectively teach a diverse range of texts, thereby bridging the implementation gap identified in my prior work.
I actively integrate my research insights into my teaching on the PGCE English course at Oxford and in my role as a governor at a London state school.
