Dr Alan Thomson
Thomsona@edgehill.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy

Sport and Physical Activity

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Research Interests:
Social construction of effective teaching, Using Narrative / Life History / Ethnography methodologies, Micropolitics, performativity and surveillance, Discourses around power, Embodiment and identity

Qualifications:
PhD - Leeds Beckett University , MA Education (Distinction) - Edge Hill University, PG Cert in Teaching and Learning Support in HE - Edge Hill University , BEd (Hons) Physical Education - Liverpool Polytechnic , Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Biography:

Alan joined the Department after teaching in North West secondary schools for sixteen years. He has also spent time teaching, playing football and coaching in the United States. Alan's recent research seeks to understand how teachers of physical education come to socially construct their conceptions of effectiveness, and how this is embodied in their praxis. He makes use of ethnographic, narrative and life history methodologies to represent how effectiveness constructions change temporally according to the contextual lives of the teachers, and the complex environments of schools. Outside of work, Alan had a long involvement in football, playing in the Conference, and coaching at Tranmere Rovers FC for twelve years. Between 2005 and 2008 he was the England Schoolboy's U18 goalkeeper more...

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