Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
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Nigel has had a wide-ranging teaching and research career in the fields of sociology, education studies, research methods and teacher training. Before joining the Institute of Continuing Education in 2007, he was a Research Associate in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and earlier still an MPhil and then PhD student in Sociology and Politics at Wolfson.
Before returning to study in 1997, he was a lecturer in a Further Education college. He is an active researcher in the areas of widening participation, educational attainment and lifelong learning more generally with a particular focus on issues of gender, social stratification, theory building and inclusive curricula design. Nigel teaches on a variety of courses for the Institute, supervises postgraduate students and teaches research methods on the MSt in Coaching. He is also a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College and a member of the Faculty of Education.
Nigel is Academic Director for a number of courses at the Institute including: two Madingley Weekly Programme Courses (Crime and Deviance: Nuts, sluts and perverts? and Sex and Gender: Men, Women and Social Change); the Certificate in the Principles and Practice of Assessment; and the MSt in Advanced Subject Teaching. He contributes to teaching on the Madingley Weekly Programme, the MSt in Advanced Subject Teaching and supervises MPhil and PhD students for the Faculty of Education.
The history of educational attainment, widening participation and lifelong learning research
The development, incorporation and restructuring of further education in England and Wales
Differential student funding, bursary provision, public policy and legislative change in higher education
Student recruitment, socio-economic experience and progression in further and higher education in England and Wales
Gender, ethnic and socio-economic variations in educational attainment at GCSE and A/AS level in further education colleges combining numerical and narrative data
Gender and social class theory with particular reference to the new sociology of masculinity, gender and power relations, and continuous measures and models of social stratification
Mixed methods research design and theory-building in educational research including the development of inclusive and holistic research projects based on the conceptual tools of the Cambridge School of Sociology
Theorising educational practice, the making or doing of education, without recourse to Bernstein, Bourdieu or postmodernism
Widening participation and higher education policy
Gender and ‘social class’ divisions within education
The new sociology of masculinity
Pedagogical practice in immediate post-compulsory education
Issues of citizenship in education
Aspects of international higher education (including the growth of transnational higher education, gender differences in HE and the utility of notions of ‘capital’ for exploring class differences in university systems)
Joint Principal Investigator, Cambridge Bursary Scheme Evaluation Project, Faculty of Education (a longitudinal (2000-2011) evaluation of the impact of differential student funding on access to Cambridge, students’ lifestyles and students’ destinations)
Member of the Equality, Education and Development (EED) Research Group, Faculty of Education
Editorial Advisory Board: British Journal of Sociology of Education
Peer reviewer for the following journals: British Journal of Sociology of Education; Cambridge Journal of Education; British Educational Research Journal; British Journal of Educational Studies; and Educational Review
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
