Key publications
Knowler HL (2019). "What sort of example is this. ?" Exploring the representation of children and young people at risk of educational exclusion in 'fly on the wall'/reality TV documentaries about schools. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference. 10th - 12th Sep 2019.
Abstract:
"What sort of example is this. ?" Exploring the representation of children and young people at risk of educational exclusion in 'fly on the wall'/reality TV documentaries about schools
Abstract.
Done EJ, Knowler H (2019). Painful invisibilities: Roll management or ‘off-rolling’ and professional identity.
British Educational Research Journal,
46(3), 516-531.
Abstract:
Painful invisibilities: Roll management or ‘off-rolling’ and professional identity
‘Off-rolling’ is widely defined as the illegal removal of students from a school roll, unlike permanent exclusion, which involves sanctioned formal procedures. It is a practice that brings very different logics, political agendas, governmental imperatives and the associated matter of school leader professional identity into sharp relief. Deviant professional identities have already been discursively constituted, despite the current lack of research into the motivation of senior school leaders who engage in ‘off-rolling’. This article draws on Foucault to explore tensions between a political standards and an inclusion agenda, and to consider how the professional identities of senior school leaders are shaped such that ‘off-rolling’ becomes possible. It is suggested that chronic underfunding of the inclusion agenda has combined with what England's Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) now describes as an over-emphasis on academic performance to create unsustainable pressures on many senior school leaders. The descriptor ‘contextual roll management’ may therefore be more appropriate. The moral outrage which accompanies public and political discourse around ‘off-rolling’ is theorised with reference to Apple, Ball and Popkewitz. Such moral indignation distracts attention from the wider socio-political and economic context within which schools are now required to deliver academic progress and inclusion. We conclude the article by outlining key empirical questions that have yet to be addressed.
Abstract.
Full text.
Done EJ, Murphy M, Knowler H (2016). University-based professional learning for women teachers and the ‘to care’ or ‘to lead’ dilemma.
Professional Development in Education,
42(4), 610-627.
Abstract:
University-based professional learning for women teachers and the ‘to care’ or ‘to lead’ dilemma
The authors consider the recasting of teaching as leadership with reference to school principals or heads and claim that many women teachers decline such senior roles and instead prioritize an ethics of care in resistance to neoliberal performative educational cultures. A future-orientated poststructuralist version of authenticity or authentic practice derived from Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Grosz is introduced that does not risk reinforcing gender stereotypes and a consequent political marginalization of women teachers. Grosz mobilizes the concept of authentic futurity in relation to feminism, but the authors contend that this concept might usefully provide women teachers with a less potentially marginalizing lexicon of resistance, and facilitate localized initiatives informed by an affirmative poststructuralist ethics embracing contingency and relationality. Care is interpreted as supporting virtual potentialities and their actualization. The Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of ‘becoming-woman’ and ‘becoming-imperceptible’ are explained in relation to ‘active listening’ as a leadership ‘skill’. The importance of university-based professional learning in addressing variations in professional capital and problematizing tired neoliberal discourses concerning leadership, teacher quality and ethics is emphasized throughout the paper.
Abstract.
Done EJ, Murphy M, Knowler H (2015). Mandatory accreditation for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators: biopolitics, neoliberal managerialism and the Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’.
Journal of Education Policy,
30(1), 86-100.
Abstract:
Mandatory accreditation for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators: biopolitics, neoliberal managerialism and the Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’
Recent changes to policy directives now require newly appointed Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) in UK mainstream schools to be qualified teachers. Training and accreditation through a nationally approved postgraduate award is now mandatory. Concepts drawn from poststructuralist biopolitics and critiques of neoliberal educational managerialism are mobilized in an analysis of recent inclusion policy and award requirements. Resistance to the positioning of SENCOs and pupils within a political narrative of economic priority and productivity is conceptualized as a Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’. The implications of biopolitical orientations for practitioner research are explored with reference to teacher action research.
Abstract.
Knowler H (2009). Where should pupils who experience Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties be educated?. In Gibson S, Haynes J (Eds.)
Perspectives on Participation and Inclusion Engaging Education, A&C Black.
Abstract:
Where should pupils who experience Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties be educated?
Abstract.
Publications by year
In Press
Warnes E, Done E, Knowler H (In Press). Mainstream Teachers’ Concerns about Inclusive Education for Children with Special Educational Needs and Disability in England under Pre-Pandemic conditions. The Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs
Done EJ, Knowler H, Warnes E, Pickett Jones B (In Press). Think piece on parents, ‘off rolling’ and wavelength methodology: issues for SENCos.
Support for Learning Full text.
2021
Bei Z, Knowler H, Butt J (2021). How do we progress racial justice in education?. IPPR Progressive Review, 28(1), 76-84.
Done EJ, Knowler H (2021). ‘Off-rolling’ and Foucault’s art of visibility/invisibility: an exploratory study of senior leaders’ views of ‘strategic’ school exclusion in southwest England.
British Educational Research Journal,
47(4), 1039-1055.
Abstract:
‘Off-rolling’ and Foucault’s art of visibility/invisibility: an exploratory study of senior leaders’ views of ‘strategic’ school exclusion in southwest England
This article reports an unprecedented exploratory small-scale investigation of the views of senior school leaders in southwest England relating to ‘off-rolling’ (illegal exclusionary practices). ‘Off-rolling’ is conceptualised as a policy technology, however, the conceptual framework used in data analysis derives from Foucault’s treatment of power and pleasure, and the constitution in discourse of novel ‘permanent realities’. Relations of force that senior school leaders routinely navigate in neoliberal education cultures characterised by ‘performativity’ are highlighted. The latter describes pressures to evidence efficiency and continual improvement, including high-stakes performance monitoring and, in England, a national school inspection regime. The response rate to this online and predominantly qualitative survey was poor, which was attributed to the illegality of ‘off-rolling’ and the risk that academic research in this area could be perceived to reproduce the power–knowledge relations associated with a national school inspection regime and familiar neoliberal political or professional discourses around training of education professionals (where both are framed as addressing deficits to achieve improvements). Nevertheless, findings from a key question inviting comment on scenarios drawn from the authors’ teaching experience are presented here, as they highlight the issues arising in research of sensitive topics. Reliance on brief vignettes to explore levels of understanding was, arguably, a limitation of the study, risking participants interpreting this device as unwelcome external scrutiny. It is argued that Ofsted’s definition of ‘off-rolling’ as gaming (manipulation of academic performance data) effectively discourages recognition of exclusionary practices that are not irrefutably related to academic performance as such.
Abstract.
2020
Done EJ, Knowler H (2020). A tension between rationalities: “off-rolling” as gaming and the implications for head teachers and the inclusion agenda.
Educational Review, 1-20.
Full text.
Rizvi S, Knowler H (2020). Special Education Needs and Disabilities. In Hudson B, Leask M, Younie S (Eds.)
Education System Design Foundations, Policy Options and Consequences, Routledge.
Abstract:
Special Education Needs and Disabilities
Abstract.
Rizvi S, Knowler H (2020). Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. In Hudson B, Leask M, Younie S (Eds.)
Education System Design Foundations, Policy Options and Consequences, Routledge.
Abstract:
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Abstract.
Nkoana W, Williams H, Steenkamp N, Clasby B, Knowler H, Schrieff L (2020). Understanding the educational needs of young offenders: a prevalence study of traumatic brain injury and learning disabilities.
International Journal of Educational Development,
78Abstract:
Understanding the educational needs of young offenders: a prevalence study of traumatic brain injury and learning disabilities
Offenders in custody are often disadvantaged in terms of education. Research shows that providing and improving education in custody can help reduce the possibility of recidivism and high crime rates in young offenders. Among various factors that can impact on youth's ability to engage effectively with education in custody, prevalence rates of neurodisabilities such as learning disabilities and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) remain high. Young offenders with neurodisabilities may present with various developmental, cognitive, intellectual, social functioning, language and communication deficits, that may impact on learner-teacher relationships and learning acquisition. For the purpose of this paper, we focused on learning disabilities and TBI given high prevalence rates for these neurodisabilities reported in the literature. We also report on general intellectual functioning given the association with specific learning disabilities. Despite contextual vulnerabilities, there is a dearth of literature on neurodisabilities and its associated impact on education for young offenders in South Africa. Our study sample included young offenders (n = 25) and controls (n = 56), aged 14–21 years. Measures of alcohol (AUDIT), substance use (MAP), learning disabilities and TBIs (CHAT), general intellectual functioning (WASI-II), and depression (BDI-II) were included for offenders and controls. Results show significant differences in TBI, alcohol use, substance use, and reported possible learning disabilities, with higher scores and rates for these factors, indicating poorer outcomes, in the young offender as compared to the control group. The young offender group also had significantly lower and therefore poorer verbal IQ (VIQ) scores than the control group. The results for VIQ were upheld even when the significant difference in age (young offenders were on average 5 years older) was controlled for. Results of this nature can potentially be used to inform rehabilitative efforts in our local youth centres for offenders in the hope of screening for various developmental and acquired neuro-disabilities so that rehabilitation strategies may be even more targeted for those with special education needs in of an already vulnerable population. Such results may also inform the schooling structures within such centres by providing profiles needs of offenders in custody based on screenings of neurodisabilities.
Abstract.
Full text.
2019
Knowler HL (2019). "What sort of example is this. ?" Exploring the representation of children and young people at risk of educational exclusion in 'fly on the wall'/reality TV documentaries about schools. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference. 10th - 12th Sep 2019.
Abstract:
"What sort of example is this. ?" Exploring the representation of children and young people at risk of educational exclusion in 'fly on the wall'/reality TV documentaries about schools
Abstract.
Knowler HL, Done E (2019). Exploring senior leaders’ experiences of off-rolling in mainstream secondary schools in England.
Web link.
Done EJ, Knowler H (2019). Painful invisibilities: Roll management or ‘off-rolling’ and professional identity.
British Educational Research Journal,
46(3), 516-531.
Abstract:
Painful invisibilities: Roll management or ‘off-rolling’ and professional identity
‘Off-rolling’ is widely defined as the illegal removal of students from a school roll, unlike permanent exclusion, which involves sanctioned formal procedures. It is a practice that brings very different logics, political agendas, governmental imperatives and the associated matter of school leader professional identity into sharp relief. Deviant professional identities have already been discursively constituted, despite the current lack of research into the motivation of senior school leaders who engage in ‘off-rolling’. This article draws on Foucault to explore tensions between a political standards and an inclusion agenda, and to consider how the professional identities of senior school leaders are shaped such that ‘off-rolling’ becomes possible. It is suggested that chronic underfunding of the inclusion agenda has combined with what England's Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) now describes as an over-emphasis on academic performance to create unsustainable pressures on many senior school leaders. The descriptor ‘contextual roll management’ may therefore be more appropriate. The moral outrage which accompanies public and political discourse around ‘off-rolling’ is theorised with reference to Apple, Ball and Popkewitz. Such moral indignation distracts attention from the wider socio-political and economic context within which schools are now required to deliver academic progress and inclusion. We conclude the article by outlining key empirical questions that have yet to be addressed.
Abstract.
Full text.
Knowler HL, Lazar I, Cortese D, Dillon JS (2019). TO WHAT EXTENT CAN THE EXPERIENCE OF OUTDOOR LEARNING CONTEXTS PREVENT PERMANENT SCHOOL EXCLUSION FOR OLDER LEARNERS? a VISUAL ANALYSIS. EDULEARN19. 1st - 3rd Jul 2019.
Abstract:
TO WHAT EXTENT CAN THE EXPERIENCE OF OUTDOOR LEARNING CONTEXTS PREVENT PERMANENT SCHOOL EXCLUSION FOR OLDER LEARNERS? a VISUAL ANALYSIS
Abstract.
Full text.
2016
Done EJ, Murphy M, Knowler H (2016). University-based professional learning for women teachers and the ‘to care’ or ‘to lead’ dilemma.
Professional Development in Education,
42(4), 610-627.
Abstract:
University-based professional learning for women teachers and the ‘to care’ or ‘to lead’ dilemma
The authors consider the recasting of teaching as leadership with reference to school principals or heads and claim that many women teachers decline such senior roles and instead prioritize an ethics of care in resistance to neoliberal performative educational cultures. A future-orientated poststructuralist version of authenticity or authentic practice derived from Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Grosz is introduced that does not risk reinforcing gender stereotypes and a consequent political marginalization of women teachers. Grosz mobilizes the concept of authentic futurity in relation to feminism, but the authors contend that this concept might usefully provide women teachers with a less potentially marginalizing lexicon of resistance, and facilitate localized initiatives informed by an affirmative poststructuralist ethics embracing contingency and relationality. Care is interpreted as supporting virtual potentialities and their actualization. The Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of ‘becoming-woman’ and ‘becoming-imperceptible’ are explained in relation to ‘active listening’ as a leadership ‘skill’. The importance of university-based professional learning in addressing variations in professional capital and problematizing tired neoliberal discourses concerning leadership, teacher quality and ethics is emphasized throughout the paper.
Abstract.
2015
Done EJ, Murphy M, Knowler H (2015). Mandatory accreditation for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators: biopolitics, neoliberal managerialism and the Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’.
Journal of Education Policy,
30(1), 86-100.
Abstract:
Mandatory accreditation for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators: biopolitics, neoliberal managerialism and the Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’
Recent changes to policy directives now require newly appointed Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) in UK mainstream schools to be qualified teachers. Training and accreditation through a nationally approved postgraduate award is now mandatory. Concepts drawn from poststructuralist biopolitics and critiques of neoliberal educational managerialism are mobilized in an analysis of recent inclusion policy and award requirements. Resistance to the positioning of SENCOs and pupils within a political narrative of economic priority and productivity is conceptualized as a Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’. The implications of biopolitical orientations for practitioner research are explored with reference to teacher action research.
Abstract.
2014
Done EJ, Murphy M, Knowler H (2014). Post-Identitarian Postgraduate Pedagogy: Deleuzian Mediation and Resistance to ‘Measuring Up’.
Power and Education,
6(3), 268-282.
Abstract:
Post-Identitarian Postgraduate Pedagogy: Deleuzian Mediation and Resistance to ‘Measuring Up’
’Measuring up’ in postgraduate education implies correctness, correspondence and conformity to institutional and governmental imperatives. Following Deleuze, such imperatives are conceptualised in this article as neoliberal striation of educational space. Two corollaries of the marketisation of higher education and neoliberal instrumentalism are fearful compliance and a lexicon in which truth or freedom has no place. The authors explore the affective dimension of learning which neoliberal educational discourse renders invisible. Deleuze, like Foucault, defines truth as unhiddenness or the making visible of things that would otherwise remain hidden. Deleuzian truth-telling is the production of a problem that must be recognised as such and mediation is an essential feature of praxis as resistance. The authors explain the role of mediators using examples drawn from their own academic and teaching practices. Going beyond critique is an important theme of this article. The authors problematise a recent implicit suggestion that teacher educators disregard fearful compliance and instead prioritise the conceptualisation of the joy in learning in the present. A later characterisation of good academic research, as research which shows us that we are freer than we think we are, is endorsed as it mediates transgression of neopositivist orthodoxies. Mediation implies a field of sub-personal intensities in which, following Foucault, being oneself no longer makes sense or, following Deleuze, subjectivity is paradoxically both collective and individual.
Abstract.
2013
Done E, Knowler H (2013). Features of a post-identitarian pedagogy (with reference to postgraduate student writing and the continuing professional development of teachers).
Studies in Higher Education,
38(9), 1319-1333.
Abstract:
Features of a post-identitarian pedagogy (with reference to postgraduate student writing and the continuing professional development of teachers)
This article responds to Aitchson's observation that development of new pedagogic practices for teaching writing is inhibited by lack of research into how such pedagogies work in practice. The article refers to research into the introduction of a module, 'Writing as Professional Development', on a part-time master's-level programme for practising teachers at a UK university in 2009. The module was conceived as a post-identitarian pedagogic strategy with the potential for wider application. The post-structuralist rationale for this strategy is outlined, along with key features. Post-structuralist constructivism and expressionism challenges the separation of thought and affect in the positivistic and cognitive educational psychological frames that predominate in teacher education, continuing professional development and educational theory more generally. Relational post-identitarian pedagogic practices can generate empathic support for experimentation, and facilitate writing from experiential realities whilst simultaneously fostering critical engagement with theory. © 2013 © 2013 Society for Research into Higher Education.
Abstract.
2011
Done E, Knowler H, Murphy M, Rea T, Galec K (2011). (Re)writing CPD: Creative analytical practices and the 'continuing professional development' of teachers.
Reflective Practice,
12(3), 389-399.
Abstract:
(Re)writing CPD: Creative analytical practices and the 'continuing professional development' of teachers
This paper explores the concerns which prompted the introduction of an innovative Masters level module designed for practising teachers at a university in the UK. The module was intended to offer an alternative to positivistic modes of reflectivity and to introduce reflective writing practices that acknowledge the constitutive force of writing. Experimentation with writing styles is not usually associated with continuing professional development offered to teachers. We explain why we view writing as a legitimate and valuable reflective research method for practitioners and why we support efforts to challenge the sedimented assumptions that inform teacher training and professional development activity directed at practising teachers. Our adopted pedagogic strategy was to introduce teachers to reflective writing that simultaneously promotes self-reflexivity and highlights the creative and constitutive power of writing. We sought to challenge pervasive dualisms or binaries (e.g. teacher: student, creative-analytical, cognition: affect) and featured the work of Laurel Richardson in support of this agenda. It is argued that practitioners may be better served by reflective writing practices that foster ethical sensibility through recognizing the intuitive or affective dimensions of the writing process. Previous contributors to this journal have called for an expansion of the modes of reflectivity that qualify as reflective practice in higher education. The introduction of the module can be read as a response to that call. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.
Abstract.
Done EJ, Knowler H (2011). (Re)writing reflective practice with Deleuze, Guattari and feminist poststructuralism.
Reflective Practice,
12(6), 841-852.
Abstract:
(Re)writing reflective practice with Deleuze, Guattari and feminist poststructuralism
Previously, we have challenged pervasive sedimented assumptions about reflectivity in continuing professional development provision for practising teachers. The introduction of a Masters level module, featuring the 'creative analytical processes' of Richardson and the 'nomadic' writing practices of Richardson and St. Pierre was presented as a response to calls for a plurality of styles of reflectivity. Here, we contextualise nomadic writing and the rhizomatic or nomadic subjectivity it implies, with reference to Deleuze and Guattari and process philosophy more generally. Deleuze's Bergsonian treatment of subjectivity, memory and thinking is outlined and related to Schön's account of the experienced practitioner and feminist poststructuralist concern with embodied reflectivity. Aesthetic intuitive understanding is considered with reference to philosophical concepts of intuition. We distinguish intuitive understanding and knowing and argue that the former permits thinking differently about practice and can foster ethical sensibility. Nomadic writing is non-teleological, exploratory, and legitimises reflective writing from lived bodily realities rather than sanctioned narratives. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.
Abstract.
2009
Knowler H (2009). Where should pupils who experience Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties be educated?. In Gibson S, Haynes J (Eds.)
Perspectives on Participation and Inclusion Engaging Education, A&C Black.
Abstract:
Where should pupils who experience Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties be educated?
Abstract.
2007
Gibson S, Knowler H (2007). The joy of meeting pupil needs through developing community. In (Ed) Joyful Teaching and Learning in the Primary School, 113-121.
