We have agreed that the journal will invite and include notices of recently completed theses in the Sociology of Education. This will be an important resource for readers to follow through as well as to provide the names of colleagues who are new entrants to the discipline.
This is an open invitation starting with theses completed from 2017 onwards. We would like the following information:
Name of author
Thesis title
Awarding university
Degree and year
A 200-word synopsis of the thesis (which must include an indication of overall purposes, theoretical elements, research design and method, nature of conclusions and significance for the sociology of education)
An email address
Please forward these to Helen Oliver, BJSE Editorial Office. Email: [email protected]
We will include this call for the above information in forthcoming issues of the journal.
Executive Editors
Name of author: Sherridan Emery
Thesis title: Cultural Well-being in Classroom Communities: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study
Awarding university: University of Tasmania, Australia
Degree and year: PhD, 2019
Well-being is an increasingly important aspect of schooling policy and research internationally. Research focusing on well-being has extended understandings of its physical, social, emotional and cognitive aspects; however, cultural aspects of well-being remain underexplored. While the term culture has various and contested meanings, potential convergences between culture and well-being, and their role in schooling, are being realised. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions and practices of cultural well-being in classroom communities. Three research questions framed the inquiry: what are educators’ perceptions of cultural well-being; how do educators support cultural well-being in classroom communities; and what might a typology of cultural well-being look like? The research design integrated a constructivist grounded theory methodology with situational analysis to explore interpretations of cultural well-being. Methods included interviews with 15 teachers from schools across diverse socio-economic settings. The findings revealed that teachers constructed multiple meanings of cultural well-being informed by their social and cultural locations. Prominent interpretations of cultural well-being related to students’ sense of connection to school, people, places and cultures. These findings contributed to the development of a typology of cultural well-being that enabled interrogation of complex power relations that the concept of cultural well-being surfaced.
Email: [email protected]