Personal statement

Claire is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood and Education Studies and has been a teacher for 20 years, working with young children and their families as well as a wide range of agencies in primary schools, nursery schools and children's centres in both London and Bristol.

Here at Bath Spa University, Claire is the Placement Lead working closely with students, settings, the University and other colleagues to support student placements and students' successful completion of the Early Childhood Graduate Practitioner Competencies throughout the undergraduate degree. Claire has been mentor and academic tutor to student teachers, as well as leading professional development training sessions for teachers, practitioners and leaders.

Claire believes in the importance of drawing from and being engaged in research for praxis, to reflect and act in order to transform. Claire’s research centres around young children and their families experiencing outdoor education as a way to address ecological and social justice.

Most recently, Claire has successfully gained a Masters in Education with distinction, engaging a thesis on ‘The Children’ of the Anthropocene: Thinking-with children and entanglement with human, more-than-human others, pedagogy, sustainability and justice in the forest’, as well as a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Claire believes deeply in democratic learning culture and her work seeks to nurture an ethic of care, de-centre the human and decolonise curricula. All children, from all backgrounds and with all abilities, have the right to an inspiring and challenging education that seeks to reveal our interconnections, taught by motivated, caring, and creative practitioners.

Claire believes in the transformative power of education to engage new perspectives and pedagogies that nurture a more equitable future for all.

Academic qualifications

  • PGCHE (Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education)
  • MA Early Childhood Studies (with Distinction), Bath Spa University, 2020
  • PGCE Early Years Education, Institute of Education, 2011
  • PGCE Primary 3-8, Roehampton University, 2004
  • BA English Literature and History of Ideas, 2001

Professional memberships

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Areas of interest

  • Children's voices
  • Listening pedagogies
  • Outdoor education
  • Posthumanist philosophies and perspectives
  • Interconnecting theory and practice as praxis
  • Pedagogy
  • Placement
  • Children's meaning making
  • Decolonising curricula