Schools, policy and inequality
Professor Alice Bradbury will outline her work on policy and inequality in early years education, focusing on how reforms have engendered cultures of accountability and datafication.
Schools, policy and inequality
05 Mar 2025, 17:30 – 19:30
Schools, policy and inequality: Researching why teachers do what they do and what it means for children
Primary schools and early years settings shape children’s lives immensely, but there are huge differences in how teachers teach and organise their time. Policy is a major influence on practices, but often changes. At the same time, there are significant disparities in attainment by social class and ‘race’, and differences in how children from different groups experience education.
Alice will explore how projects on assessments, practices during Covid, and on schools’ support during the cost-of-living crisis cohere to form a picture of a sector faced with serious challenges in the last 15 years. Taking a policy sociology approach, she will reflect on this work and discuss how underlying dominant discourses such as the idea of ability as fixed work to reproduce inequalities in schools. Understanding why teachers do what they do, and how school leaders make decisions involves exploring both how schools are responsive to policy but also to what extent they resist and reshape policy reforms.
This in-person event will be particularly useful for researchers, policymakers and teachers.
The IOE Professorial Public Lecture series
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Each lecture is free and open to everyone - staff, students and members of the public.
Related links
- IOE Professorial Public Lecture Series
- Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0 - 11 years)
- Department of Education, Practice and Society
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IOE Communications.
Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education, Practice and Society
UCL IOE
Alice is also Co-Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0-11 years), a leading research centre focused on primary and early years education. Her work explores the relationships between policy, practice and inequalities.
Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education, Practice and Society
UCL IOE
She has written and researched extensively on parents' relationships with schools and how these are shaped by class, race and gender; analyses of parenting, especially mothering; education policy and how policy works out in schools and classrooms; and individual and institutional attitudes towards diversity and citizenship.
Her research interests include the interdisciplinary fields of early childhood and international development, and early childhood across cultures, particularly in South East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.
She is interested in the social, cultural and policy influences on children's development and early learning in a range of formal and informal contexts such as preschool and home-based settings.
Further information
Ticketing
Pre-booking essential
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes
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