Professionalism, social inclusion, and civic society

The Scottish Government has signalled its commitment to the development of more integrated relationships between the Higher and School Education sectors’ systems and institutions. “Teaching Scotland’s Future” enjoins that teacher education in Scotland

[…] requires a more integrated relationship between theory and practice, between the academic and the practitioner, between the provider of teacher education and the school (Donaldson, 2010, p. 4)

Here at Aberdeen the School of Education currently aspires to renew its vision of the intersectionalities of Teacher Education and Professional Learning, Pedagogical Innovations and its Networks and Partnerships (connectedness to the world beyond the Higher Education or school classroom) – to develop new connectivities across all of these that will strengthen our approach to the preparation of teachers and other children’s sector practitioners.

This project aims to explore the social theory and questions of interdisciplinarity and inter/professional collaborations for the preparation of teachers and other child/youth public sector practitioners. The final research design and methods to be used will be decided as part of the project, but in the first instance it is envisaged that strong research questions will be identified by prospective candidates and that the proposed approach will be suited to an interdisciplinary perspective.

Applicants with an interest in social theory and questions of interdisciplinarity and inter/professional collaborations in the preparation of teachers and/or other child/youth public sector practitioners are invited to submit a 2000 word research proposal. The aims of the proposed research should be contextualised within the relevant research context and the conceptual literature, and the research methodology should present a clear rationale for the proposed approach. Proposals must include appropriate reference to the academic literature in the research fields and should explicitly consider any ethical issues that are likely to arise in the course of the research.

Previous projects have drawn on e.g. Bourdieuian social and multiple capitals theory and theorizations of physical, social and mental space to study social in/exclusion advantage and disadvantage in schools and their communities; hermeneutic phenomenology to examine school and community ethos; Foucauldian theories of power to examine the interdisciplinary and inter/professional knowledges and practices used by individual practitioners working across two children’s professions and agencies. Policy study has been a key dimension of a number of previous studies e.g. using Bourdieuian capitals theory and theorizations of knowledge and power to compare gender policy and practice in two European countries.