Viv Ellis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3593769 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Viv Ellis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Viv |
| FAMILY NAME | Ellis |
| SIGNATURE | ELLIS V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4904-2968 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
These reforms have teeth’
The affective dimensions of education policy enactment have often received less attention in the research literature, especially regarding teacher education policy. This article reports on a study of the affective responses of university‐based teacher educators in England to the significant initial teacher education reforms of 2019–2022: the Core Content Framework and the Market Review, and the associated inspection regime. Using data from focus …
Teaching quality, social mobility and ‘opportunity’ in England
Drawing on data from a study of the changing landscape for teachers' professional development (PD) in England, this paper addresses the provision of PD for teachers in schools serving highpoverty communities designated as 'Opportunity Areas'. Beginning with critical examination of relationships between teaching quality and social mobility, the paper reports on the analysis of organisations that won funding in the first round of the Teaching and L…
A new political economy of teacher development
This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services ‘by substitution’ and, specifically theories of the ‘shadow state’. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE) project, the paper’s context is the current situation of post-qualification teacher development in Engl…
‘Come to a screeching halt’
Based on interviews with a global sample of ITE leaders, this paper explores whether the changes forced on institutions and individuals as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic can be classed as innovation. The paper goes beyond collating the various practical and organisational changes the ITE leaders made and instead focuses on the kind of changes enacted around the world and whether and how these changes can be seen as adding new value to h…
Mediating ‘School Direct’
The period 2010 to 2014 is widely acknowledged as a time of highly significant education reform in England, including of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced a programme of ‘school‐led’ education policies, of which ‘School Direct’ was intended to shift the balance of power, resources and modes of training teachers away from universities towards schools. Through an analysis of interview…
Innovation in teacher education
Actual Texts, Possible Meanings
Jerome Bruner’s experiment over 30 years ago suggested that imaginative literature had greater affordances for the ‘subjunctification’ of experience by those who heard it read aloud than did transactional prose such as a news article. By ‘subjunctification’, Bruner meant the capacity to use the resource (the short story, for example) to transform one’s experience of the world, to render understanding in more complex ways and to do more than get t…
Teaching other people’s children, elsewhere, for a while
Teach for All is a good example of a globally travelling educational reform policy. In this article, we examine the rhetoric of the reform through an analysis of its public discourse, specifically the websites for the umbrella organization, 3 of its 35 constituent projects (Teach for America, Teach First and Teach for China) and one associated project (Teach First Norway). The analysis focuses on the rhetorical production of teaching as something…
Academic work and proletarianisation
Living with Ghosts
The continuing instability of Education as a discipline is examined against renewed arguments for its ‘disciplinary’ status. Teacher education in particular is seen as Marjorie Garber’s concept of ‘discipline envy’ to propose a more positive relationship between disciplines that might work for the good of teacher education
Institutional conceptualisations of teacher education as academic work in England
The Rhetorics of English in Education
Reenergising Professional Creativity from a CHAT Perspective
This article offers a critical examination of aspects of a practice- and theory-developing intervention in the teacher education setting in England designed as a variation of Developmental Work Research. A positive case is argued for the distinctiveness of such cultural-historical activity theory [CHAT-] informed interventions and some points of contrast are drawn with the British tradition of educational action research. In describing the practi…
Connecting Does Not Necessarily Mean Learning
Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school subject departments (history and modern foreign languages) is analyzed. Informed by Cultural Historical Act…
‘How One Learns to Discourse’
James Moffett's Teaching the Universe of Discourse set out an agenda for the study of development in writing, which influenced James Britton's work in the UK. Subsequently, however, the work of both these thinkers was largely set aside in the approach to writing taken by national strategies in England. In this article, we trace the history of these developments, and seek to rescue Moffett's and Britton's work from being characterised as no more t…
Exploring the Contradictions in Learning to Teach
Something more to tell you
How do young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (lgb) experience secondary schooling? How do they feel that questions of sexuality are dealt with in the curriculum and do they find this treatment helpful? This article presents the findings of a project that replicated Trenchard and Warren's 1984 study, Something to tell you . The findings are analysed and some suggestions are made as to changes in lgb‐identifying people's experiences…
A Conversation with Vincent Crosby
Something more to tell you
How do young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (lgb) experience secondary schooling? How do they feel that questions of sexuality are dealt with in the curriculum and do they find this treatment helpful? This article presents the findings of a project that replicated Trenchard and Warren's 1984 study, Something to tell you . The findings are analysed and some suggestions are made as to changes in lgb‐identifying people's experiences…
Academic work and proletarianisation
Teaching other people’s children, elsewhere, for a while
Teach for All is a good example of a globally travelling educational reform policy. In this article, we examine the rhetoric of the reform through an analysis of its public discourse, specifically the websites for the umbrella organization, 3 of its 35 constituent projects (Teach for America, Teach First and Teach for China) and one associated project (Teach First Norway). The analysis focuses on the rhetorical production of teaching as something…
Institutional conceptualisations of teacher education as academic work in England
A new political economy of teacher development
This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services ‘by substitution’ and, specifically theories of the ‘shadow state’. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE) project, the paper’s context is the current situation of post-qualification teacher development in Engl…
Connecting Does Not Necessarily Mean Learning
Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school subject departments (history and modern foreign languages) is analyzed. Informed by Cultural Historical Act…
Mediating ‘School Direct’
The period 2010 to 2014 is widely acknowledged as a time of highly significant education reform in England, including of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced a programme of ‘school‐led’ education policies, of which ‘School Direct’ was intended to shift the balance of power, resources and modes of training teachers away from universities towards schools. Through an analysis of interview…
A Conversation with Vincent Crosby
Something more to tell you
How do young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (lgb) experience secondary schooling? How do they feel that questions of sexuality are dealt with in the curriculum and do they find this treatment helpful? This article presents the findings of a project that replicated Trenchard and Warren's 1984 study, Something to tell you . The findings are analysed and some suggestions are made as to changes in lgb‐identifying people's experiences…
Exploring the Contradictions in Learning to Teach
‘How One Learns to Discourse’
James Moffett's Teaching the Universe of Discourse set out an agenda for the study of development in writing, which influenced James Britton's work in the UK. Subsequently, however, the work of both these thinkers was largely set aside in the approach to writing taken by national strategies in England. In this article, we trace the history of these developments, and seek to rescue Moffett's and Britton's work from being characterised as no more t…
The Rhetorics of English in Education
Reenergising Professional Creativity from a CHAT Perspective
This article offers a critical examination of aspects of a practice- and theory-developing intervention in the teacher education setting in England designed as a variation of Developmental Work Research. A positive case is argued for the distinctiveness of such cultural-historical activity theory [CHAT-] informed interventions and some points of contrast are drawn with the British tradition of educational action research. In describing the practi…
Connecting Does Not Necessarily Mean Learning
Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school subject departments (history and modern foreign languages) is analyzed. Informed by Cultural Historical Act…
Living with Ghosts
The continuing instability of Education as a discipline is examined against renewed arguments for its ‘disciplinary’ status. Teacher education in particular is seen as Marjorie Garber’s concept of ‘discipline envy’ to propose a more positive relationship between disciplines that might work for the good of teacher education
Institutional conceptualisations of teacher education as academic work in England
Academic work and proletarianisation
Actual Texts, Possible Meanings
Jerome Bruner’s experiment over 30 years ago suggested that imaginative literature had greater affordances for the ‘subjunctification’ of experience by those who heard it read aloud than did transactional prose such as a news article. By ‘subjunctification’, Bruner meant the capacity to use the resource (the short story, for example) to transform one’s experience of the world, to render understanding in more complex ways and to do more than get t…
Teaching other people’s children, elsewhere, for a while
Teach for All is a good example of a globally travelling educational reform policy. In this article, we examine the rhetoric of the reform through an analysis of its public discourse, specifically the websites for the umbrella organization, 3 of its 35 constituent projects (Teach for America, Teach First and Teach for China) and one associated project (Teach First Norway). The analysis focuses on the rhetorical production of teaching as something…
Innovation in teacher education
‘Come to a screeching halt’
Based on interviews with a global sample of ITE leaders, this paper explores whether the changes forced on institutions and individuals as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic can be classed as innovation. The paper goes beyond collating the various practical and organisational changes the ITE leaders made and instead focuses on the kind of changes enacted around the world and whether and how these changes can be seen as adding new value to h…
Mediating ‘School Direct’
The period 2010 to 2014 is widely acknowledged as a time of highly significant education reform in England, including of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced a programme of ‘school‐led’ education policies, of which ‘School Direct’ was intended to shift the balance of power, resources and modes of training teachers away from universities towards schools. Through an analysis of interview…
Teaching quality, social mobility and ‘opportunity’ in England
Drawing on data from a study of the changing landscape for teachers' professional development (PD) in England, this paper addresses the provision of PD for teachers in schools serving highpoverty communities designated as 'Opportunity Areas'. Beginning with critical examination of relationships between teaching quality and social mobility, the paper reports on the analysis of organisations that won funding in the first round of the Teaching and L…
A new political economy of teacher development
This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services ‘by substitution’ and, specifically theories of the ‘shadow state’. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE) project, the paper’s context is the current situation of post-qualification teacher development in Engl…
These reforms have teeth’
The affective dimensions of education policy enactment have often received less attention in the research literature, especially regarding teacher education policy. This article reports on a study of the affective responses of university‐based teacher educators in England to the significant initial teacher education reforms of 2019–2022: the Core Content Framework and the Market Review, and the associated inspection regime. Using data from focus …
Sociology (16 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Global Education and Multiculturalism (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Mathematics education (6 works) · Global Educational Policies and Reforms (5 works) · Higher education (5 works)