Chapter 1: Educational Policies and Professional Identities: Showcasing Lessons From Doctoral Practitioner Research

The inspiration for this collection can be traced to an earlier book, Bathmaker and Harnett's (2010) edited Routledge volume ‘Exploring Learning, Identity and Power through Life History and Narrative Research’. That collection contained 12 chapters, many sole-authored by staff of the University of the West of England (UWE), and most of which focused upon doctoral studies employing qualitative approaches to educational research. Contributors included Richard Waller (RW) and Jane Andrews (JA), two of this collection's editors. RW and JA have co-led UWE's Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) since 2014, having redeveloped the programme upon appointment to the role.

Unlike the previous collection, this volume only showcases doctoral work, much of which was influenced by UWE's EdD's Researching Educational Policy and Professional Identities (REPPI) module. REPPI explores the interplay between education policy (whether at national, regional or local level) and the professional identities of those working within the education system. These topics are frequently investigated by candidates in the EdD's research phase, and occasionally by our PhD students too (many of whom are practitioner-researchers themselves, including Georgie Ford, the sole PhD graduate whose work features here). That was the case before the REPPI module was developed and introduced in 2014, and has remained so in the decade since. REPPI explores issues, across all education sectors, including the tensions between professional autonomy, personal values and ‘performativity’, and how they are facilitated or constrained by policy diktats, whether on a macro, meso or micro level, and that is what the chapters here consider.