Dr Alan Thomson
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Alan is the Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Sport and Physical Education degree. With particular expertise in understanding teacher interactions and interrelations in physical education departments, his teaching contributes to a range of socio-cultural and pedagogical modules at undergraduate level and to the sociological element of the taught Masters programme. Prior to working at a number of universities, Alan had previously taught in secondary education. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Focusing upon everyday life in physical education departments, Alan is interested in how power is used (and by whom) in different educational contexts. He seeks to make sense of how social and cultural perspectives of embodiment are used to socially construct physical educators' bodies and the role bodies play in the construction of identity. Current research projects include the embodied experiences of late entry physical education students and collaborations with colleagues at Liverpool JMU and Edge Hill that focus upon different perspectives of experiencing SEND. Alan is supervising PhD projects that include the active ageing of sea-kayakers and the experiences of educators in delivering an undergraduate physical education programme at a Chinese university through the medium of English.
Alan started teaching Physical Education at a secondary school on Merseyside, before taken up a post at Edge Hill University. Arriving at the University of Central Lancashire from the University of Lincoln, Alan brings considerable experience of teaching and quality assurance to the role. Over the years he has served on external panels at numerous universities as an advisor on (re)validations and Periodic Reviews and as an External Examiner. Alan also has an extensive background in football, having played to a high level and with many years experience of coaching at both professional and international levels. He is currently serving as a Governor at Wade Deacon High School in Cheshire.
- PhD Educational Sociology, Leeds Beckett University, 2017
- MA Education, Edge Hill University, 2010
- PGCE Teaching and Learning in HE, Edge Hill University, 2009
- BEd (Hons) Physical Education, Liverpool Polytechnic, 1991
- Embodiment
- Power
- Micropolitics
- Educator Identity
- Life history and (Auto)Ethnographic Narratives
- Member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA)
- Member of the International Society of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise (QRSE)
- Member of the Association for Physical Education (AfPE)
- School Governor, Wade Deacon High School, Widnes, Cheshire
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- Understanding the embodied experiences of late-entry students to physical education programmes
- The experiences of undergraduate students on placement in SEND schools (with Edge Hill University and Liverpool Juhn Moores University)
- The embodied experiences of an undergraduate physical education student student with CP (with Edge Hill University)
- Understanding how meanings of ‘effectiveness’ come to be socially constructed and embodied in the lives of physical education teachers. Paper presented at the ACRE Conference, Edge Hill University, July 2017
- Co-operation, contestation and conflict: A micropolitical understanding of how dominant discourses are consolidated and strengthened in a physical education department. Paper presented at the BERA Conference, Belfast, September 2015
- Methodological mayhem! Understanding the dilemmas of returning to research a familiar fieldspace. Paper presented at the Researching Education Conference, Edge Hill University, July, 2014
- Strangely familiar and familiarly strange: returning to teach physical education in a department five years after leaving. Paper presented at the BERA Conference, University of Sussex, September 2013
- An examination into the processes by which physical education teachers socially construct the meaning of effective teaching. Paper presented at the BERA conference, University of Manchester, September, 2012
- The influence of pedagogical theory on PETE students delivering constructivist approaches to physical education, PE Matters. Poster presented at the AfPE Conference, July 2011
Telephone:01772 894928
Email: Email:Dr Alan Thomson
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