Propping up the Performative School

Jo Bishop is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the University of Huddersfield in England. Jo has worked in further and higher education teaching across a range of subject areas encompassing Social Policy, Sociology, Politics, Youth Work and Community Development, Applied Law (Youth Justice), Sociological aspects of Children and Young People’s Development, Research Methods and more recently Gender and Trans Issues in formal education.

• Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The Wider Policy Context Giving Rise to Learning Mentors Chapter 3. Historical and Comparative Accounts of Paraprofessional Experiences Chapter 4. Introducing Institutional Ethnography as a means to Research Marginalised Work Chapter 5. Introducing Priory Park High School Chapter 6. The Official and ‘Seen’ Work of the Learning Mentors Chapter 7. The Unofficial and ‘Unseen’ Work of the Learning Mentors Chapter 8. View from the Top – A Coherent and Consistent Senior Leadership view of the Learning Mentor Role? Chapter 9. View from Middle Management: The Multi-faceted Learning Mentor Chapter 10. Mentors Talking Back Chapter 11. View from an ‘Older’ Paraprofessional Group Chapter 12. Discussion and Conclusion

This book shines a much-needed light on the often overseen and undervalued, yet ever present 'educational paraprofessional'. Using a policy focus and rich ethnographic data the author brings new theoretical and empirical insights into the analysis of the 'educational paraprofessional', while intricately highlighting the neglected but valid role that they occupy within the diversified and performance-driven English state school system.