Centre for Transformative Change in Schools (CenTCS)

This theme considers questions such as:

  • How do we reimagine education for justice, democracy, and sustainability?
  • Which philosophies and praxes in education help us understand threats to global democracy and human flourishing and what do we consider to be the education response?
  • What roles do place-responsiveness, critical consciousness, agency, and activism play in transformative change in schools?
  • How might we conceptualise the role of educator learning in pursuit of transformative change in schools?

The Autistic School Staff Project

Rebecca Wood, Francesca Happé (King’s College London), Laura Crane (University of Birmingham), Damian Milton (University of Kent) (co-leads), Rabaha Arshad

Keywords: autism; autistic teachers; inclusion; neurodiversity

 

2025/26 Project Stream 1 - Transformative Professional Learning

Ismail Özgür Zembat (Lead), Brianna L. Kennedy, Lauren Boath, Kat Brack

Keywords: transformative professional learning; transformative teaching and learning; transformative change in schools and society; social justice

View more info

 

2025/26 Project Stream 2 - (Dis)connections and Boundaries

Brianna L. Kennedy (Lead), Deniz Ortactepe-Hart, Max Antony-Newman, Ruth Unsworth, Francisco Valdera-Gil, Lixin Li, Rebecca Wood, Rhona Brown, Claire Ramjan

Keywords: teachers and communities; funds of knowledge; diversity; school connections; minoritized pupils, families, and communities

View more info

 

New Materialism and the study of classroom practices

Ruth Unsworth (lead), Mark Murphy

Keywords: studying change; complexity of teaching; situational views of teaching

 

Towards a Weak Ontology of Education

Ruth Unsworth (lead), Gunnlaugur Magnússon (University of Uppsala, Sweden), Dion Rüsselbæk Hansen (SDU, Denmark), Matthew Clarke (University of Aberdeen), Stephen Heimans (University of Queensland, Australia), Anne M. Phelan (British Columbia University, Canada)

Keywords: education as complex and rich relational activity; education as transformative through language, subjectivity, and the vitality of unexpectedness