Nathan Douglas

Doctoral Researcher

School of Education and Social Work

Nathan has worked within primary education for over ten years. His experience has always been within Key Stage Two and he has had a direct input into designing, shaping and developing the curriculum experiences for children in the schools he has taught at.

Nathan started his career as a Class Teacher before moving onto a new school to lead English after three years. He became fascinated with the idea of 'professional identity' when he started leading English across a whole school. He came to understand that different teachers (including himself) presented themselves differently, at different times dependent upon the circumstances. This was something that he began to think about within his MA Education dissertation. After leading English for four years, Nathan moved onto a new school to oversee standards in Key Stage Two. He gained Assistant Headship there, followed by Deputy Headship, and it is at this school where he currently works, leading on teaching and learning, the curriculum, the pupil premium grant as well as having strategic and operational oversight of the school.

The notion of 'professional identity' took a stronger hold on Nathan as he gained promotions and realised that his 'self' is made up of so many different parts, which led him to begin an EdD in 2017. Nathan has ambitions to be a Headteacher and lead his own school. His EdD is helping him be really reflective, analytical and provides him with plenty of questions and insights to help him reach his goals.

Current Activity

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Research

Primary School Teacher Retention and Attrition in the 2020s: Neoliberal Influences on Experienced Teachers’ Professional Identity in a Dynamic Educational Climate

Nathan's EdD research is a qualitative case study that utilises online semi-structured interviews and reflective diaries. The inquiry has three main aims. The first aim is to explore experienced UK primary school teachers’ perceptions regarding the neoliberal accountability measures that seem to occur in school. Neoliberal accountability measures can often be thought of as wide, overarching policies, policy turns and practices, which can lead to it being misrepresented. Nathan's study seeks to finitely interrogate the complex, multifaceted neoliberal constructs and offer fresh perspectives on its existence in schools by rethinking it as neoliberalism/s. The second aim of this study is to seek understanding about the extent to which any neoliberal accountability measures are thought to influence the experienced teachers’ sense of teacher professional identity (TPI). There is general consensus on the phenomena that seem to influence TPI. However, in the literature on TPI, the relative importance of accountability measures has been subject to considerable debate.

Nathan will clarify some contradictions in this literature and see if it is possible that accountability measures lead to identity tensions or conflicts. Studies centred on teacher retention tend to focus on why very new teachers or much longer-serving ‘veteran’ teachers leave the profession. However, far too little attention has been paid to teachers within these two ranges and why they stay rather than leave in light of neoliberal accountability measures. As a result, it is not always clear why some teachers continue teaching. Therefore, the third and final major objective of this study seeks further understanding regarding how these experienced teachers describe and understand their reasons for remaining in the teaching profession, in a dynamic climate of accountability measures.

Research into experienced teachers’ reasons for remaining in teaching will be a second contribution to new knowledge offered by Nathan's study. His EdD study sits within the social constructivist worldview and uses Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as the theoretical framework to address the three above objectives. There have been few attempts at larger-scale qualitative studies with DST use. Many studies use DST outside the field of education with few or single participants. Therefore, his work seeks to remedy this by applying the theory to larger research samples, within the educational context, because DST is understood to address TPI issues. Utilising DST with multiple teachers will be a final theoretical-methodological contribution to new knowledge.