Category Archives: Uncategorized

Follow the links below to explore a series of articles that I wrote for the International Schools Network on how intellectual wellbeing can positively impact teaching and learning in international contexts. The key is to link practice and practice architectures in a critical way that leads to transformation. Start by becoming attentive to practice andContinue reading “Intellectual wellbeing in international schools”

Patrick Alexander Jacques-Olivier Perche What does it mean to teach well? What does it feel like to be a good teacher? In this short article, we wish to pose these questions as a way of exploring the concept of intellectual wellbeing, which we define as the positive sense of self derived from an authentic engagement with theContinue reading “Intellectual Wellbeing: The Pursuit of Freedom in the Professional Learning of Teachers”

Here’s a recent talk I gave for the Oxford Brookes ‘Brave New World’ seminar series. In the talk I explore what new possibilities there may be to re-imagine schooling after the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, I argue that it’s time to move away from age- and phase-based schooling limited to assessed curricula and the physicalContinue reading “School’s Out Forever”

https://www.educationonfire.com/education-on-fire/145-schooling-and-social-identity-with-dr-patrick-alexander/ I had a great time recently chatting with Mark Taylor of Education on Fire about Schooling and Social Identity. It’s an important time to be asking critical questions about schooling and socialisation. Is the current age-based system of organising learning in schools in need of radical change? Dr. Patrick Alexander from Oxford Brookes University sharesContinue reading “Schooling and Social Identity: new podcast”

My new book with the above title is now out (Feb 2020) with Palgrave Macmillan. You can access the book here: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137388308 – get your librarian to buy a copy! Here’s an outline of what the book is about: School’s Out, Forever My new book Schooling and Social Identitysuggests that the current age-based system ofContinue reading “Schooling and Social Identity: Learning to Act Your Age in Contemporary Britain”

(originally posted here) In the moment when current school-leavers open their A-Level results letters today, new imagined futures will be conjured into existence, illuminating in new and sometimes unexpected ways the path that leads beyond the present. In this moment, young people may confirm imaginings of the future already well-forged through years of careful preparationContinue reading “Imagining the Future on A-Level Results Day”

This post reaches you from a suitably changeable July afternoon in Oxford, with dark clouds hurrying across the sky, promising rain but giving over to occasional patches of good old-fashioned, elusive English Summer sunshine. I‘m reminded today of a similar summer afternoon last year, when I sat down with David Mills, the out-going editor ofContinue reading “Teaching Anthropology in Uncertain Times “

What do you want to be when you finally grow up? In 2014, on a humid September morning, I boarded a crowded subway train to arrive at the New York City public high school where I would spend a whole year exploring this question. I wanted to find out how high school kids make senseContinue reading “Growing Up to Be ‘Kinds of Men’”

    Like most social scientists, my approach to methodology is in important ways entangled with personal narrative.  My interest in age as a field of social analysis emerged from my early experiences as a secondary school teacher.  As a twenty-three year-old trainee, I was barely older than the more senior teenage students in myContinue reading “Life Course as Method: Age Imaginaries in School Ethnography”