Hugh Busher

University of Leicester | LE · School of Education

The Education Sciences Special Issue, Regulation and Ethical Practice for Educational Research, focuses on the ethical aspects of the generation of knowledge in educational research to examine learning, the relationships between learners, educators, organizational leaders and other stakeholders and how those relationships are affected by people’s s...

This paper sets the context for questions covered in the Education Sciences Special Issue: Regulation and Ethical Practice for Educational Research: What are appropriate ethical appraisal and approval practices for particular contexts? How can ethics committees effectively support educational researchers and educational research? To do so, the pape...

Alison Fox and Hugh Busher Chapter 14 Critical ethical reflexivity: Reflections for practice and knowledge Reflections on the preceding chapters are scaffolded by a previously published ethical appraisal framework referred to as the CERD framework (Stutchbury and Fox, 2009; Fox and Mitchell, 2019) which draws on four key traditions of Western eth...

There are many challenges in undertaking ethically and critically defensible qualitative research for education. The chapter outlines how the book tries to create a safe public space for researchers, whether novice or experienced, to reflect on the complexities of such decision-making. In each chapter, different researchers make explicit their valu...

This final chapter examines the authors’ reflections, learning and practical adaptations made in response to the four questions which authors were asked to address: 1. What values prompted you to do your research and how did you share these with participants? 2. What were the ethical considerations raised beforehand and how were these tackled in te...

This chapter discusses the ethical and micro-political complexities of a research project which aimed to help students to express their identities through the use of photographs and scrapbooks in relation to the official policy and value discourses of a secondary school in England. Student voice/views are important because many students can articul...

This chapter reflects on the use of mind diagrams to uncover the views of mature adult students about their experiences of Access to Higher Education (AHE) courses in England and the social injustices their experiences often revealed. The students in the study were frequently economically marginalised and usually poorly qualified formally, but ofte...

This paper challenges current dominant thinking in Universities about the processes of ethical appraisal of research studies in the Social Sciences. It considers this to be founded on unjustifiable and inappropriate principles, the origins of which are presented before discussing alternative, more inclusive and ethically defensible approaches. The...

Researchers have the moral and practical responsibility for constantly reflecting on their research practices throughout the life of a research project, including its writing up and publication phases, as well as taking cognisance of research ethics guidelines from research bodies and institutions. Researchers must have a care for participants in t...

Providing theoretical grounding, case studies and practical solutions, Implementing Ethics in Educational Ethnography examines how researchers can overcome ethical dilemmas associated with and encountered during ethnographic research. From the initial stages of research design such as consideration from regulatory bodies, through research occurring...

Providing theoretical grounding, case studies and practical solutions, Implementing Ethics in Educational Ethnography examines how researchers can overcome ethical dilemmas associated with and encountered during ethnographic research. From the initial stages of research design such as consideration from regulatory bodies, through research occurring...

This chapter discusses the practicum as a liminal space through which preservice teachers change their status from that of novice to that of competent if inexperienced practitioners. This change in competence and the transformation in identity which goes with it is not achieved by pre-service teachers on their own but through their engagement in cl...

This paper discusses the educational, social and economic backgrounds of Access to Higher Education (AHE) students and how these factors influence students’ choices of courses and colleges in which to pursue their desires for entering Higher Education (HE) despite the risks involved and the initial lack of confidence of many of them in their capabi...

This paper discusses how mature Access to Higher Education (AHE) students worked hard to gain access to Higher Education (HE) because they wished to pursue careers that required this level of education. They wanted to transform themselves as learners to achieve their aspirations despite the hurdles that many faced, such as maintaining families, con...

Improving Opportunities to Engage in Learning investigates the experiences of mature adult learners returning to formal education. The book challenges the policy discourses in which Access to Higher Education survives by suggesting that continuing education is more about determination by students to alter their identities and career opportunities t...

Researchers have the moral and practical responsibility for constantly interrogating their research practices throughout the lives and after-lives of their projects. Research ethics guidelines from research bodies and institutions may help as aide-memoires. Researchers must have a care for participants in their research projects, especially those w...

This paper discusses the complexities of using ethnography to investigate the experiences of students on formal learning courses who use digital and hybrid (online/offline) spaces to develop their learning and create networked communities that complement their face to face experiences on formal courses. Formal and informal learning by students take...

Non-traditional mature students on Access to Higher Education (AHE) courses have to struggle to assert themselves by entering university and escaping from precarious economic circumstances despite the social and policy contexts they face and their prior experiences of learning, which were often unsuccessful. The chapter draws on a study that was ca...

Students form a diverse undercaste in schools which is distinguished by markers of age and levels of academic knowledge from those people who are placed in charge of schools and colleges, the teachers and more senior leaders, by society. Schools in England are regimented by performative national and local discourses and policies that are maintained...

This study to investigate how teachers develop their skills and knowledge to construct enthusiastic student learning and what part school principals play in that development was carried out in four primary schools serving disadvantaged communities in Beirut. In the absence of rich research in Lebanon on this topic, western literature was used to co...

This chapter argues that engaging with students’ voices by listening to the multiplicity of their views on learning and teaching in school helps teachers to construct learning communities with them and tune teaching and learning processes to the social and cognitive needs of students. It takes the view that students as citizens and members of schoo...

Mature students’ experiences of learning and teaching on Access to Higher Education course are coloured by their socio-economic backgrounds, their prior experiences of learning and their relationships with their tutors. After giving informed consent, 60 students and 20 tutors across seven colleges in a region of England in 2012–2013 took part in in...

145 words) An important way in which people can (re)present themselves in different situations, such as being an AHE student, is visually as well as through talking and acting. Drawing and labelling pictures by participants in social situations or taking photographs or drawing concept or mind maps are part of a broad range of visual methods that al...

The aim of the present study is to conduct a systematic review research which focuses on research studies into the school practicum. In order to identify the main issues and also to provide a contemporary picture of practicum, 114 studies published on the topic are reviewed and analysed in terms of: (i) aims, (ii) main participants, (iii) methodolo...

There is a dearth of literature on Access to Higher Education (AHE) tutors, which this paper addresses. Tutors play an important part in constructing emotional and academic support for students. Understanding their constructions of professional identity and their views of the students they teach helps to explain the learning environments they creat...

This article examines the extent to which Access to Higher Education courses can be defined as communities of practice. Other studies have already revealed the importance of mutual engagement and supportive relationships between students and between students and tutors in facilitating learning. While previous studies carried out on Access to HE (AH...

Despite the diversification of the student population in higher education, there has been little empirical research on the impact of Access to Higher Education (AHE) courses, on mature students' learning identities, and of the changes in higher education policy on their chances to participate. Using data from a study examining AHE students' learnin...

Hybrid communities using online and face-to-face communications to construct their practices are increasingly part of everyday life amongst people who have easy access to the internet. Researching these communities raises a number of challenges for researchers in the pursuit of ethical research. The paper begins by exploring what is understood by h...

The aim of the present study is to conduct a systematic review research which focuses on research studies into the school practicum. In order to identify the main issues and also to provide a contemporary picture of practicum, 114 studies published on the topic are reviewed and analysed in terms of: (i) aims, (ii) main participants, (iii) methodolo...

How student teachers experience their transformation into serving teachers in the liminal social spaces of the school-based practicum (teaching practice) is of key importance to them, their future students and their educators. The practicum is a challenging experience for student teachers, even with help from university and school-based mentors, as...

This paper investigates the views of 20 full-time international postgraduate students, many of whom were Chinese, on living, learning and becoming successful students at one university in a multicultural city in the Midlands of England. The qualitative study built on findings from the International Students’ Barometer (ISB) survey for the universit...

Length: 9157 words, including references (1528 words) and abstract (206 words)] Abstract (206 words) This paper argues that engaging with students' voices by listening to the multiplicity of their views on learning and teaching in school helps teachers to construct learning communities with them and tune teaching and learning processes to the socia...

Adult learners on Access to Higher Education courses struggled with institutional and social structures to attend their courses, but transformed their identities as learners through them. Although asymmetrical power relationships dominated the intentional learning communities of their courses, their work was facilitated by collaborative cultures an...

This paper investigates experiences of Access to Higher Education Diploma students in England in order to better understand ways in which they enact their agency as learners and conceive their future professional trajectories against the current UK policy backgrounds. Using repeated focus groups with 60 students aged 19-54 from seven Further Educat...

This paper discusses the complexities of investigating the experiences of participants in hybrid (online/offline) learning communities through educational ethnography. In these communities, people construct small cultures in the liminal spaces or 'border crossings' between the virtually real and 'actually' real, using computer-mediated and face-to-...

Chapter Objectives: This chapter focus on ethical research practices in educational leadership by considering how value driven research processes reflect and articulate with some of the key dynamic vectors of educational organisations-power, culture, decision-making, construction of identity, learning communities, policy contexts. It discusses how...

Student voice is a key component in constructing discourses of respect, empowerment and citizenship in schools. It can help schools to become learning communities, rather than knowledge factories, that serve the needs of the majority of their members, the students, as successfully as possible and prepare them for future lives in a wide variety of c...

Student teachers and staff from three universities in Turkey and from Leicester University, England took part in an exchange programme in Turkey and Britain in 2008-2009. Funding for this from the European Union (EU) and Turkey was in part related to Turkey's application for EU membership and currently contested discourses about the nature of citiz...

This study of four private primary schools in Beirut, Lebanon, investigated why the children in the schools appeared to out-perform their peers in other schools. The study investigated the cultures that teachers and principals constructed in schools with children and their parents, wondering whether they would exhibit characteristics said to epitom...

This paper draws on a range of theoretical perspectives on the construction of new teachers’ professional identity. It focuses particularly on the impact of the development in many national education systems of a performative culture of the management and regulation of teachers’ work. Whilst the role of interactions with professional colleagues and...

The aim of the present study is to conduct a systematic review research which focuses on research studies into the school practicum. In order to identify the main issues and also to provide a contemporary picture of practicum, 114 studies published on the topic are reviewed and analysed in terms of: (i) aims, (ii) main participants, (iii) methodolo...

This article explores how pupils and teachers in an 11-16 mixed secondary school in an area of urban disadvantage in the UK experience pupil voice. It used visual methods to unpick some of the ways in which official and unofficial discourses of pupil voice, engagement, discipline and inclusion were played out in this school. A typology of pupils, b...

This article discusses the views of Turkish and British novice teachers on pedagogy and pedagogical relationships with school students when confronted with the pedagogical practices of the ‘Other’ in particular policy contexts. Experiences of those practices were gained by novice teachers during an exchange visit for British and Turkish university...

The relationship between departmental improvement and school improvement is well established within the research literature. Within the United Kingdom, subject or curriculum leaders play an increasingly important role in securing and maintaining departmental improvement, however preparation and training for the role is highly variable. This article...

This article discusses some perspectives on citizenship education in Turkey and Britain in the context of current contested discourses on the nature of European identity and of the European Union (EU). It is based on data collected during an EU-funded student teacher exchange programme between three universities in Turkey and Leicester University i...

The 'Voices' project, 2007-09, was funded by the British Academy, Award Number: LRG-45482

This paper reports on an ongoing study that contrasts the 'voices' and work-related identities of some students who are said to be disaffected with those of other (said to be engaged) students and teachers in a secondary school in England, UK. The research project investigated how student identities are (re) constructed in school, promoting or inhi...

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for a school as an organisation. In this there are three core elements: people (including students), power to energise or prevent action and culture that is constructed by a community's members to reflect its norms, values and beliefs. However, in this construction some people are more influential than oth...

This paper argues that studies of middle leaders have focused too much on their functions and characteristics, taking insufficient account of the influence of social and political contexts on leaders’ choices of actions. Use of the analytical framework of Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) can address this oversight, but it pays insufficient at...