The University of Sheffield
The School of Education

Dr Simon Warren PhD

Photograph of Dr Simon Warren


Lecturer


Email: s.a.warren@shef.ac.uk
Tel: (+44) (0)114 222 8089
Fax: (+44) (0)114 222 8105

Academic Profile

Following a variety of jobs on leaving school I found myself working in Community Arts and Education in Birmingham. I studied for my BEd at Birmingham Polytechnic followed by a period of primary school teaching in Sunderland and Birmingham before beginning my research career at Warwick University. I studied for my PhD part-time while working as a teacher and educational researcher, finally completing my PhD at Warwick. Throughout my career I have been interested in issues of power, social equality and policy.

Research Interests

The ‘big idea’ that animates my research is that of ‘belonging’ – multicultural belonging, political belonging, social belonging. This big idea is pursued in a number of areas:

Current Research Interests

‘Vocational Transitions into Higher Education’ – this project examines access into and through Higher Education of students entering with vocational qualifications. The empirical work focuses on the way policy and institutional practice constructs the ‘vocational learner’ and how this affects on the experience of transition into and through university.

‘The politics of language policy, language learning and multicultural society’ - this theoretical work examines the relationships between language-embedded cultural identity, the development of multicultural societies and the politics of language policy. The current focus of this work is on Irish-language embedded cultural identity in the context of increasing cultural diversity. This work has developed an analytical framework for exploring these issues and I am currently concluding an empirical study examining policy formation at a local level.

‘Learning to Cope’ - this project is under development with the aim of beginning in 2012. This project will examine the role of ‘learning’ in people’s strategies of coping with economic insecurity in two economically and socially vulnerable regions. Within this the experience of East European migrants will be given special attention in order to provide a critical perspective on ideas of the Knowledge Society.

Critical Race and Policy Studies

I have conducted a number of critical examinations of the relation between education policy and race equality. This has included an evaluation of Birmingham Local Education Authority (LEA) that resulted in the LEA reviewing its achievement strategies for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities. I was commissioned by the Home Office to conduct a review of education initiatives aimed at ‘new migrants’, refugees and asylum seekers, and to produce ‘Community Cohesion Standards for Schools’ jointly launched by the Home Office and the Department for Education and Skills. Simon has worked with a number of London LEAs on strategies to reduce exclusion of African and African Caribbean students.

Discourse Analysis of Policy

Throughout much of my work I have looked closely at the ways in which language is used in policy formulation and deployment. This has drawn largely on a Foucauldian approach to discourse, looking at the ways in which language reflects power relationships. I am interested in how it is possible for particular policy problems to be defined and named, what the historical and social conditions are of the construction of social phenomena as ‘social problems’ requiring policy solutions, and how only a certain range of policy solutions become legitimatised.

Teaching

Most of my teaching involves me working with professionals in the field of higher education and lifelong learning. Consequently I conceive the function of teaching as contributing to enhanced professional practice through the incorporation of ‘research’ and ‘scholarship’ into professional practice and identity. Of crucial importance is in encouraging students to develop a ‘critical stance’, that is to make their professional practice and the contexts of practice a focus for critical inquiry that emphasises issues of power and social distinction. Contrary to the contemporary focus on ‘student satisfaction’ I believe the student experience should be uncomfortable and troubling as it should be enabling students to question the taken for granted approaches to understanding the world and their professional practice.

I am Director of the Doctor of Education (EdD) in Higher Education & Lifelong Learning programme based in Dublin, and Strand Leader on Higher Education in the Doctorate of Education (EdD) based in Sheffield. Within the Sheffield EdD I am co-ordinator of the ‘Approaches to Education Policy Research’ module.

I am co-ordinator of two modules on the BA Education, Culture and Childhood

Academic Responsibilities

I am Chair of the Ethics Review Panel, School of Education.

Professional Activities

Research Students

Inez Bailey (Dublin EdD) is tracing the policy trajectory of lifelong learning in the Republic of Ireland with particular attention to adult literacy.

Julian Bowers- Brown (MPhil/PhD) is conducting an historical and philosophical examination of how ‘parenting’ has been constructed through English education policy therefore defining what is appropriate parenting in order to meet educational objectives.

Judith Breen (Dublin EdD) is conducting an empirical study looking at how ‘criticality’ is translated into ‘critical practice’ in higher education Management Education.

Sharon Brown (Dublin EdD) is studying the perceptions of students and academics of a key skills curriculum in one English university.

Teresa Bruen (Dublin EdD) is conducting a narrative based inquiry into the experiences of mature students engaged in higher education in the Republic of Ireland.

Sue Cordell (Sheffield EdD) is exploring representations of ‘widening participation and access’ using a literary discourse analysis of selected English novels.

Geraldine Gorham (Dublin EdD) is examining the different understandings stakeholders have of higher education learning and employability in tourism and hospitality in the Republic of Ireland.

Myles Hackett (Dublin EdD) is conducting an exploration of the professional identity of nurse lecturers in the Irish Higher Education system.

Sasekea Harris (Caribbean EdD) is conducting a narrative study of the contribution of librarianship to the post-colonial development of Jamaica.

Lorraine Horgan (Sheffield EdD) (with Darren Webb) is researching the role of Pharmacy continuing professional development with particular attention to the transfer of learning in the workplace in the Republic of Ireland.

Sally Hayes (Sheffield EdD) is examining the impact on nurse professional practice of the move to an all-graduate profession in England.

Seana Keating (Dublin EdD) is conducting a critical reflection on the education, training and regulation of non-pharmacist pharmacy staff in the Republic of Ireland.

Eileen Kelly-Blakeney (Dublin EdD) is conducting an investigation of the perceptions and experiences of non traditional entry-route students on concurrent initial teacher education programmes in the Republic of Ireland; focusing on the influence of social and cultural capital on students’ ability to negotiate and interact with the system, with particular reference to the impact of this on their emergent professional identities.

Deborah Le Play (Sheffield EdD) (with Vassiliki Papatsiba) is seeking to understand student retention in the context of the student experience and expectations of the first year of English undergraduate study in a ‘new’ university.

Tim O’Sullivan (Dublin EdD) is exploring employee ‘voice’ in the context of structural reform of the Irish higher education system .

Jane Rand (Sheffield EdD) is exploring the potential of a new model of knowing to disrupt the normative distinction between academic-vocational knowledge in the post-compulsory education setting in England.

Annnetta Stack (Dublin EdD)is studying the experience of ‘first generation’ students in Irish higher education with a particular focus on social class.

Stephen Wordsworth (Shefield EdD) is researching access to the Allied Health Professions through higher education study in England with particular attention to issues of social class.

Publications

Books

Power, S., Warren, S., Gillborn, D., Clarke, A., Thomas, S. and Coate, K. (2002) Education in Deprived Areas: Outcomes, inputs and processes with Perspectives in Education Policy. London: Institute of Education

Refereed Articles

Warren, S. (2012 forthcoming) The making of Irish-speaking Ireland - belonging, diversity and power, Ethnicities.

Warren, S., Webb, D., Franklin, A. & Bowers-Brown, J. (2011 forthcoming) Trust Schools and the Politics of Persuasion and the Mobilisation of Interest. Journal of Education Policy.

Warren, Simon (2007) 'Migration, race and education: evidence-based policy or institutional racism?', Race Ethnicity and Education, 10:4, 367 - 385

Warren, S. & Webb, S. (2007) `Challenging lifelong learning policy discourse: where is structure in agency in narrative-based research?´. Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 5-21.

Warren, S., Apostolov, A., Broughton, K., Evans, R., McNab, N. and Smith, P. (2006) `Emergent family support practices in a context of policy churn –an example from the Children´s Fund´. Child Care in Practice 12(4): 331-346

Warren, S. (2005) 'Resilience and refusal: African-Caribbean young men´s agency, school exclusions, and school-based mentoring programmes', Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(3), pp243–259.

Book Chapters

Warren, s. (forthcoming) ‘SÚIL EILE – A different perspective on migration, language acquisition, belonging and multicultural society’ in Jennifer Lavia and Sechaba Mahlomaholo (eds) Culture, Education and Community: Expressions of the Postcolonial Imagination, Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Warren, S. (forthcoming) ‘Private sentiment and public issues – Irish medium education and complex linguistic and political identification’ in Angela Pilch-Ortega & Barbara T. Sterner (eds) Transnational Spaces and Regional Localisation, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang.

Warren, S., & Webb, S., (2010) `Accounting for structure in agency: recursive methodology, social narratives and habitus´, in B. Merrill, (Ed.) Learning to Change: The Role of Identity and Learning Careers in Adult Education, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang.

Webb, S. and Warren, S. (2009) `Who is the `responsible learner´? Viewing learning careers through social narratives and recursive methodology´, in J. Field; J. Gallacher and R. Ingram (eds) Researching Transitions in Lifelong Learning. London: Routledge

Warren, S. (2010 forthcoming) `Against Cosmopolitanism? A theoretical exploration of the tensions between Irish-speaking Ireland and post-nationalist multicultural Ireland´, in S. Egger (Ed) Polish-Irish Encounters in the New and Old Europe. Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang.

Warren, S. (2006) `Integration of new migrants: education´ in S. Spencer (Ed) Refugees and other new migrants: a review of the evidence on successful approaches to integration. Oxford: Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford.

Vincent, C. and Warren, S. (2000) 'Education for Motherhood?' in C. Vincent (Ed) Including Parents? Citizenship, Education and Parental Agency, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Warren, S. (2000) 'An Alienating System?' in C. Vincent (Ed) Including Parents? Citizenship, Education and Parental Agency, Buckingham: Open University Press, 106 -127.

Warren, S. (1999) `Let's do it properly: inviting children to be researchers' in Ann Lewis and Geoff Lindsay (Eds.) Researching Children´s Perspectives (Buckingham: Open University Press).

Research Reports

Morris, K., Warren, S., Hek. R., Mason, P., and Plumridge, G. (2006) Preventative Services for Black and Minority Ethnic Children - A Final Report of the National Evaluation of the Children´s Fund. Research Report 778. London: DfES

Warren, S. and Gillborn, D. (2003) Race Equality and Education in Birmingham, Birmingham: Equalities Division, Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Race Action Partnership.