About the project
This project runs from May 2025 to August 2027 and the work was funded by a Research Project Grant from the Leverhulme Trust.
Background
We live in a time when more teachers are desperately needed. This research explores how ‘being a teacher’ is constructed by 17–18-year-old school leavers, who have spent 13 years in compulsory schooling. We investigate the assumptions about teaching that school leavers have developed. This is based on how young people perceive teachers’:
- actions
- interactions
- ways of communicating.
Our analysis will advance:
- conceptualisation of how young people construct ‘being a teacher’
- the ways in which young people are possible teachers on leaving school.
Methodology
We use two-stage narrative interviews with young people on-site in schools. This enables the data to yield inter-disciplinary perspectives that can probe the complexities of ‘being a teacher’ according to 17–18-year-olds.
Moving interviews around the schools builds rapport with participants. We make explicit our interest in their unique perceptions as young people situated within schools, with extensive historical, social and cultural experience of teachers. These are followed by a semi-structured interview approach to support narrative production. To help stimulate perceptions and interpretations of being a teacher and teaching, we use:
- visual prompts
- artefacts.
We combine these with participants’ reflections on their projected adult futures. This project brings to bear sociological and psychological perspectives. We explore issues of identity and power that emerge from the participants’ perceptions of teachers and their own projected adult lives.
Figured worlds
To understand these constructions of teachers and teaching, our research builds on the concept of ‘figured worlds’. ‘Figured worlds’ are simplified, often unconscious, taken-for-granted theories or stories about how the world works (Holland et al., 1998).
Young people’s ‘figured worlds’ of teaching are thus the implicit theories they hold about teachers, informed by:
- artefacts
- discourses
- behaviours.
We examine:
- how young people’s experiences of teachers shape these figured worlds of teaching
- their imagined (non)futures as teachers.
Funder
Contact us
Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research (CTTR)
Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
UCL Institute of Education
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Image
Richard Stonehouse for UCL IOE.