Centre for Public Policy Research

We are a multidisciplinary centre committed to using research to inform national and international policy debate. As well as conducting research, the Centre organises seminars and research meetings and has a particular interest in supporting innovative policy-relevant teaching, and research by and in collaboration with doctoral students.

The interests of the Centre are focused on the theoretical analysis of policy-making and policy effects; the work and practices of public service professionals; the value bases and ethical implications of public policy; the social relations of welfare; and social justice. It brings together work from different academic perspectives within and across different sectors of public policy.

The Centre's research activities are grouped around four overlapping strands:

Public sector restructuring - this is a long-standing programme of externally-funded research into public sector change, including quasi-marketisation and allied processes. It includes theoretical and empirical work on managerialism in schooling and critical analyses of New Labour policies and discourses; eg, work on 'social exclusion' and 'partnership' strategies and the ethics of privatisation. This work has attracted substantial international recognition and has resulted in a number of international research collaborations, including an applied philosophy project with partners from seven European countries (and the US Hastings Center) on comparative trends in health care marketisation.

Professional change and professional development - this work analyses the roles, practices and subjectivities of public sector professionals in the light of shifting policy contexts and broader social change. It includes work on the educational implications of the growing need for 'value literacy' in the pharmacy profession. It has resulted in published work on issues such as the nature of professional knowledge, teacher and student identities and conceptions of 'the good practitioner' in education and the health professions.

The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme seminar series on Changing Teacher Roles, Identities & Professionalism has enabled us to further develop and consolidate this work and to strengthen networks with other national and international researchers.

Professional values and ethics - this body of work brings together our interest in the evolving value climate of public sector work with scholarship in applied ethics. Theoretical work has continued on a broad range of questions and settings, including: The 'responsibilisation' of parents; Internal marketing' practices in schools; Dilemmas in health education and public health practice; Involvement in decision-making about the purchase and use of medicines; Professional ethics in nursing, medicine and pharmacy; A strand of work that has emerged more recently relates to values and ethics in research, including the perceptions and ethical constructions of 'bench scientists' working in health service settings on controversial developments in biotechnology.

Equality and social justice -this programme seeks to marry scholarship in philosophy and sociology of education with a commitment to 'just practices'. As well as undertaking foundational work on the principles of education and healthcare activities, we have argued for plural and embodied social justice models that entail forms of social research which transcend the critical/problem-solving dichotomy. Work within this strand also focuses on issues of identity and their relationship to inequalities - for instance, drawing attention to complexities of race/ethnicity, social class, gender and sexuality. This research has involved working with policy partners on a range of agendas, including: Challenging primary school exclusions; Widening access to HE Ethnic Minority Students in ITT; Teacher-research on African-Caribbean attainment; The recruitment and progression of women working within SET (science, engineering and technology); British-Chinese pupils‚ identities and achievement in mainstream and supplementary schools; Urban pupils‚ engagement with schooling and post-compulsory education; British Muslim pupils‚ identities.