Policy Press

Education and learning

Only a third of children in the world’s poorest households currently complete school. Two thirds of all illiterate adults are women and nearly half the global illiterate population lives in Southern Asia.

In focusing on education policy and the inequalities that are both in-built in education systems and perpetuated by them, our publishing responds to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education. Revealing and addressing some of the challenges in education, including those around technology and the digital divide, it looks to internationally-sourced evidence-based solutions, challenging traditional neoliberal approaches to learning.

Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Education and learning, we aim to address the following goal:

SDG Publishers compact logoSDG 4: Quality education

Showing 73-84 of 183 items.

Generational Encounters with Higher Education

The Academic–Student Relationship and the University Experience

Employing a generational analysis, this book offers an original approach to the study of Higher Education and documents the changing nature of the relationship between academics and students. Examining wider issues of culture and socialisation, this is a timely contribution to current debates about the University around higher education.

Bristol Uni Press

Children Framing Childhoods

Working-Class Kids’ Visions of Care

Based on a unique longitudinal study and offering a critical visual methodology of “collaborative seeing”, this book shows how a diverse community of young people in Worcester, MA used cameras at different ages (10, 12, 16, 18) to capture the centrality of care in their lives, homes and classrooms.

Policy Press

Degrees of Freedom

Prison Education at The Open University

The first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received, offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of education in prison.

Policy Press

Lifelong Learning Policies for Young Adults in Europe

Navigating between Knowledge and Economy

This comprehensive collection discusses topical issues that are essential to both scholarship and policy making in the realm of lifelong learning policies and how far they succeed in supporting young people across their life courses, rather than one-sidedly fostering human capital for the economy.

Policy Press

Social Research Matters

A Life in Family Sociology

Drawing from forty years of experience, Julia Brannen offers an invaluable account of how research in family studies is conducted and ‘matters’ at particular times. An exceptional resource for family scholars and those interested in the methodology of social research.

Bristol Uni Press

Parents, Poverty and the State

20 Years of Evolving Family Policy

Naomi Eisenstadt and Carey Oppenheim explore the radical changes in public attitudes and public policy concerning parents and parenting, arguing that a more joined-up approach is needed to improve outcomes for children: both reducing child poverty and improving parental capacity by providing better support systems.

Policy Press

Resisting Neoliberalism in Education

Local, National and Transnational Perspectives

Edited by Lyn Tett and Mary Hamilton

Neoliberalism is having a detrimental impact on wider social and ethical goals in the field of education. Using an international range of contexts, this book provides practical examples that demonstrate how neoliberalism can be challenged and changed at the local, national and transnational level.

Policy Press

Data in Society

Challenging Statistics in an Age of Globalisation

This book analyses societal trends and controversies related to developments in data ownership, access, construction, dissemination and interpretation, looking at the ways that society interacts with and uses statistical data.

Policy Press

Tea and the Queen?

Fundamental British Values, Schools and Citizenship

Teachers in the UK are now required to promote ‘British values’ in schools to all pupils. This book draws on observations and teachers’ views to discuss issues of citizenship, social class, ethnicity, religion, counter-extremism and community cohesion, and the implications of this policy for teachers, students and society.

Policy Press

The Politics of Scale in Policy

Scalecraft and Education Governance

Drawing on empirical data from the field of education governance, the book traces how scales are crafted and mobilised in policymaking practices, demonstrating that ‘scalecraft’ is key to understanding the production of hegemony.

Policy Press

The End of Aspiration?

Social Mobility and Our Children’s Fading Prospects

Duncan Exley draws on expert research and real life experiences – including from an actor, a politician, a billionaire entrepreneur and a surgeon – to issue a wake-up call to break through segregated opportunity. He offers a manifesto to reboot our prospects and benefit all.

Policy Press

Education and Race from Empire to Brexit

This book offers an historically informed discussion of the failure of the education systems in Britain to counter hostilities towards racial and ethnic minorities and migrants, which have escalated after the vote to leave the European Union, and left schools and universities failing to engage with a multiracial- multicultural society.

Policy Press