Dr Claire Goodley

Lecturer

My profile

Biography

I joined MMU as a full time Lecturer for undergraduate and postgraduate Professional Development Programmes in April 2016. I teach extensively on these programmes, as well as acting as a tutor for Modern Foreign Language ITE students completing their PGCEs.  I am the Post Graduate Taught Programmes Recognition of Prior Learning Lead, helping students to navigate the different procedures, depending on their circumstances. For many, the most appropriate route is the APEL unit, which I teach and assess.

After teaching English as a Foreign Language in Italy for two years I attained my PGCE at the University of Manchester in 1999 and taught in secondary schools for seventeen years. I was Head of PSHE and Citizenship for 7 years, leading on whole school issues such as Healthy Schools, and writing policies related to health and well-being.  In this time we set up a multi-agency drop-in centre at school, bringing the services that some children were reluctant to seek out to a safe and comfortable environment.  I was also an MFL and Citizenship mentor to ITT students.

My MA dissertation focussed on the motivation of both teachers and pupils  in a target driven environment, with particular reference to the GCSE French course. 

My thesis title is Beyond the Terrors of Performativity: Exploring Teacher Agency in Neoliberal Times, which I am due to complete in 2018. It explores the impact of the current discourse of accountability on established teachers and how they / we are able to exercise power and agency within panoptic performativity. It explores the interstices that can be found within the context of this powerful educational discourse using tools provided by Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds Theory.

Expert reviewer for external funding bodies

Reviewer for Journal of Education Policy

Visiting and honorary positions

Reviewer for Journal of Educational Policy

Membership of professional associations

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Get in touch

0161 247 2123
1.43 Brooks Building

Teaching

Why do I teach?

I have always enjoyed that spark of recognition when something new is understood.  When teaching MFL in secondary schools this was a love of languages and sharing a new way of communicating with people of other cultures.  When teaching PSHCE I enjoyed learning how young people view and relate to their surroundings.

The Professional Development Programmes I teach on mean that at Masters level I can work with teachers and expert practitioners, helping them to find their own voice in the education debate.  At undergraduate level I feel priveledged to help students and education practitioners accomplish a long term goal and attain a degree.  For many this is a gateway into teaching, which for many is a life long dream. Working with ITE students lets me get back inside the classroom and keep my knowledge up to date and fresh.

Teaching means that you are invited into a very personal journey, which I find exciting and humbling.  Working within the educational field means that I do not forget this.

How I’ll teach you

I firmly believe in process led teaching.  This means that the way that I teach, or the methods that I use should align with the concepts that I am trying to put across.

All students bring personal experience and knowledge to their studies.  We will work together to incorporate this into your academic writing, and create a body of work that is both of interest and relevant to you and your current practice.

I am very interested in reflective practice, and this aligns with the units and programmes that I teach.  I will help you to develop your own ‘voice’ that straddles the worlds of research and practice through actively noticing and listening.

I am there not only to teach you key concepts, but to help you better understand them through reading pertinent literature. As you progress to dissertation at both undergraduate and postgraduate level I offer you support and work alongside you, helping you to locate and tease out tensions that are of interest to your research, and to formulate them into a piece of writing that you can be proud of. 

Research outputs

I am interested in Narrative Inquiry and the way that we that we tell stories to tell others (and ourselves) who we are.  To this end I am using Holland et al’s Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds theory in my thesis to explore the way that experienced teachers circumnavigate their role and their axiological values in a performative environment.

My current writing focusses on reflective practice, teacher performativity and fabrication and small moments of innovation where teachers find the interstices to be both the teacher that they are required to be (or perform as) and the teacher that they dreamt of being.