Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, this book examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands.
Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on opposing ‘sides.’ This book traces how students and their teachers form connections to the past and each other that cut through the forces that might divide them. The findings illustrate novel ways to think about the potential for education to assist post-conflict recovery.
The field of education policy research is a dense, crowded space owing to its complicated relationship to different intellectual histories and the influence of various ontologies or ‘turns’. To aid comprehension and clarity, this book describes the history, contribution and application of over 90 keywords in the field of education policy research. It is designed as a reference, learning and teaching tool to assist students, educators and researchers with:
• complex learning and teaching;
• wider and background reading and knowledge building;
• critical scholarship and research;
• interdisciplinary thinking and writing;
• theory development and application.
Education in India concentrates on exam performance and consequently the teacher in India often acts as a disseminator of textbook material, as well as maintaining class discipline and respect. This book explores low-income female teachers’ speech and syntax as a crucial resource in which agency, freedom and empowerment is enacted within a strong oral tradition in India.
The book demonstrates how this socially and economically marginalised group overcome prejudices to develop relational agency and embed their authority. It shows how they establish their values and why their beliefs shape attitudes to aspiration, achievement and freedom of choice. It concludes with recommendations for policy and improvements to reflective practice in teaching.
Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues.
This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged.
Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left inequalities in schools wider and uncertainty about the future greater. Now seems an appropriate time to think about the contribution schooling makes to the communities it serves and the country generally.
However, drawing on his recent research, Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of Education governance after 20 years of reform has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life.
Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.
Education policy has a long tradition of political sociology, but the dominant trend continues to be sociological.
Drawing on data and analysis from the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity (EPKP) project, supported by funders such as the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), this book aims to restore the role of political analysis by presenting a new political sociology for framing, conducting and presenting education policy research.
In doing so, it will be the first in the field to connect political thinking from Arendt with sociological thinking from Bourdieu, producing innovative analysis for and about educational reform.
Based on the Transforming Lives research project, this book explores the transformative power of further education.
Outlining a timely and critical approach to educational research and practice, the book draws extensively on the testimonies of students and teachers to construct a model of transformative teaching and learning. The book critiques reductive ‘skills’ policies in further education and illuminates the impact colleges and Lifelong Learning have on social justice both for individuals, their families and communities.
For trainee teachers, teachers, leaders, researchers and policymakers alike, this is a persuasive argument for transformative approaches to teaching and learning which highlights the often unmeasured and under-appreciated strong holistic social benefits of further education.
Although higher education in the UK has expanded opportunities for much of the population, in many ways it remains stubbornly elitist.
In order to address this crisis in education, Peter Scott, a leading expert and unique voice, examines the development of mass higher education and proposes a ‘radical escape-forward’. He calls for more robust action to secure fair access at all levels and changes in the governance and management at both system and institutional levels to ensure more democratic accountability.
Setting out a clear and radical programme for reform, this book makes an important contribution to current debates in education in the context of the evolution of the UK economy and wider society.
Education policies should drive success and equity but in many countries they are failing to do so. Situating the cases of England and Australia within broader global policy trends, this book critically analyses what has gone wrong.
The authors draw on extensive research in education to review the impact of multiple policies on students, teachers and schools, with a focus on communities where children and young people need education most. They issue a fundamental challenge to the policy orthodoxies of recent decades and set out a blueprint for making education both better and fairer.
Nuanced interconnections of poverty and educational attainment around the UK are surveyed in this unique analysis.
Across the four jurisdictions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, experts consider the impact of curriculum reforms and devolved policy making on the lives of children and young people in poverty. They investigate differences in educational ideologies and structures, and question whether they help or hinder schools seeking to support disadvantaged and marginalised groups.
For academics and students engaged in education and social justice, this is a vital exploration of poverty’s profound effects on inequalities in educational attainment and the opportunities to improve school responses.
