School of Education

The Playing Teacher project is an ambitious research project focused on early career teacher identity and socialization, led by Dr Kathryn Spicksley (Lecturer in Teacher Education and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow 2022). The project sought to disrupt early career teacher mentoring through the development of a playful resource focused on teacher identity, co-produced by teachers and teacher educators. A number of publications related to this project have recently been accepted and published online. Please use the following links to explore these publications, or contact Kathryn Spicksley if you have any questions (Kathryn.Spicksley@glasgow.ac.uk):

Spicksley, K. (2026). The ghost in the machine: human reflections on building a digital text corpus about teachers. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2026.2661600

Stock, N., & Spicksley, K. (2026). The early career teachers’ subjection, resistance and resignification. Policy discourse with Butler, Lacan and Foucault. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2026.2673043

Spicksley, K., Kotzee, B. & Tian, M. (2026) Visible yet fuzzy: new adventures in (post)panopticism under England's 2019 Education Inspection Framework. Journal of Education Policy, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2026.2667294


First published: 9 July 2026