This case draws on the author's doctoral studies about practitioners' narratives of poverty in the early years. The case discusses how focus groups provide a useful way of exploring early years practitioners' (EY practitioners) understandings of child poverty. The research was based in two Sure Start Children Centres with onsite Nursery Schools…

The context of this article was that, after researching issues of classroom management for a number of years, I was asked by managers at different institutions to speak to their staff about strategies for helping to counteract the problems tutors faced in many classes on a day-to-day basis. The question that emerged was how might managers in the…

An exploratory study is reported of the delivery of the Early Support and Key Working (ES&KW) training program in England for multiagency professionals and parents. This qualitative study examined how ES&KW training principles and content relate to contemporary pillars in early childhood intervention; how this training is structured to…

I argue for the continuing relevance of the Bourdieusian theoretical schema to research related to higher education. The paper discusses my use of Bourdieu in two research projects: an examination of the educational and occupational decision-making of final-year vocational A-level students; an analysis of the perceptions of final-year…

This paper explores the potential of an online TimeBank for inclusive research to address some of the challenges related to the unequal distribution of power and money for researchers within and outside the academy working in collaboration. The problem, the concept of TimeBanking, and the relationship of TimeBanking to inclusive research…

Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are said to experience severe congenital impairments to consciousness and cognition stemming from neurological damage. Such children are understood as operating at the pre-verbal stages of development, and research in the field typically draws conceptual resources from psychology to…

In 2003, I embarked upon a PhD that aimed to explore the societal impacts of closed-circuit television. England was fast emerging as the closed-circuit television capital of the world following an aggressive, state-funded roll out of closed-circuit television systems. Surprisingly, there wasn't a huge amount of empirical research being conducted…

While numerous studies examine perceptions of research held by university researchers, studies examining perceptions held by school pupils are rare. To address this gap and following analysis of questionnaire data (N = 2634, KS3/4/5 pupils), we conducted 11 group interviews with 100 pupils in England to investigate their experiences of research…

Educational researchers are concerned about the ways in which researcher identity can influence practice and findings for better or worse effect. However, writings which offer narratives, intended to instruct others in the ways in which the positioning and reflexivity of the researcher operates for better or worse, often present a view of identity…

The Children Crossing Borders (CCB) study is a polyvocal, multi-sited project on immigration and early childhood education and care in five countries: Italy, Germany, France, England and the USA. The complicated nature of the data pushed us as a group to expand our methodological resources to not only organize the data but also to make it…

In this paper we present our experiences of conducting focus groups with young people as part of a participatory approach to research design and participant recruitment. The research is a prospective, 10-year, qualitative, longitudinal project investigating young people's daily lives, relationships, and identities, and the ways these change over…

Many existing studies of diversity are concerned with social groups identified by externally determined factors, for example, ethnicity, gender, or educational attainment, and examine, either quantitatively or qualitatively, issues delineated by these. In evaluating methods used in previous research, we consider ways in which the adoption of…

The paper explores the value of practitioner enquiry in the development of common language and shared understandings for a group of mid-career professionals from a variety of public service backgrounds, brought together to formulate responses to the English agenda for integrating services. It draws upon data gathered from multi-professional action…

This paper reports on research aimed at investigating the ways in which teachers in Portugal and in England are experiencing recent changes in the policy environment which have affected their sense of professionalism and their professional identity. Data were collected through questionnaires and focus group interviews. Findings suggest the…

This paper emerges from a current research project that examines the relationship between contemporary English rurality and notions of identity and belonging. While this is primarily a methodological narrative we argue that this narrative speaks to an analysis of current rural relations. The paper concerns itself with two key methodological issues…