Dr Sara Black

Sara is a critical education leadership and policy sociologist, with particular interest in the temporality and spatiality of everyday life and how this (re)produces social inequality. She particularly writes about discursive and structural underpinnings of technology as it applies to learning systems and activities.

Before coming to King's in January 2022, Sara worked at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg. She has experience across myriad contexts in the public education system in South Africa.

A former high school maths teacher and (prior to that) programmer, Sara entered the world of academia through teacher development back in 2014 when she began working with pre-service teachers at the University of Cape Town. Through teacher development, her interest in pedagogy and in structures and systems grew, resulting in doctoral research focused on the temporal and spatial constraints on teachers' practices in schools and the policy origins of these. Her former background in coding has also converged with these interests to critically engage with technological modalities and their relation to time-space in education practices.

When not thinking about education issues, she enjoys playing music, outdoor endurance sport and sewing.

Teaching 

Sara is currently teaching on the following modules: 

• Theories of Change in Schools (formerly School Effectiveness and School Improvement)
• Education Leadership and Change

She previously taught on: Education policy; Ethics for pre-service teachers; and Advanced Research Design.

Research interests 

• Critical education policy sociology.
• Education and temporality/spatiality; sociology of time and space as they play out in schools.
• Critical sociology of education technology; datafication and technicisation of pedagogy.
• Philosophy of social science.

PhD supervision

Sara is currently supervising dissertations on:

• Emerging education governance structures and public/private contestations in South Africa during the transition to democracy: a critical discourse analysis.

Sara is interested in supervising dissertations on:

• Critical sociology of education and time/space, including of EdTech practices.
• Critical policy sociology studies.
• Research on public/private partnerships in education.