果冻传媒

I am undertaking a part-time PhD exploring the contrasting environmental education curriculum policies of the UK nations. After a career in business, I completed my PGCE in Secondary English at the University of Cambridge and spent a number of years as a Head of English and as Principal Examiner and paper setter for A Level English Language and Literature with a UK awarding body. My direct experience of the influence of policy on curriculum-making and teacher practice led me to complete an MA in Education Policy and Society at King’s College London, where I was awarded the Outstanding Performance in Education prize. My dissertation considered the responsibilising discourse of the central pillar of the UK government’s Covid ‘catch-up’ response, the National Tutoring Programme, and the negative impacts of ‘sneaky’ metaphoricity that diverted focus and finance from the original policy intent, to support disadvantaged students. My curriculum interests have expanded beyond one individual subject discipline to consider the development of education as one of several critical social levers being positioned by policy to address the climate emergency – and how discourse is being mobilised in that process. My study will consider the comparative national and international influences and power dynamics shaping and framing government strategy in the UK nations regarding environmental education curriculum policy. In foregrounding the construction and mediation of environmental education I aim to expose the interplay between curriculum policy and intent and the loci and actors in which and by whom curriculum practice is constructed. As a former teacher from a background in a subject discipline that is more traditionally excluded from environment, sustainability and climate change curricula, I am also interested in the interdisciplinary nature of environmental education and the role and influence that all subject disciplines might play in an impactful environmental education curriculum.

Environmental education; education policy; curriculum-making; responsibilisation; discourse.