Alison Buckler

Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology
Stuart Hall Building (level 3)
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA

Email: a.s.buckler@open.ac.uk

Mobile: 07816 203 858

Title of research: Policy and practice in rural Sub-Saharan African schools: female teachers' voices and perspectives.

Supervisors: Professor Bob Moon and Professor Hazel Johnson.

Research interests: Comparative and international education, teacher education, education policy development, rural schools, ethnographies, narrative research.

Biography: Alison Buckler worked as a research assistant on the TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa) Programme between 2006-2009. TESSA is an international consortium of universities and teacher training institutions based at the Open University, UK. TESSA has created a bank of modular, multi-lingual teacher education resources available as open education resources (OERs) from www.tessafrica.net . As well as facilitating research projects to support the development of the TESSA materials and website, Alison carried out an ethnographic study of teachers' lives, in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan. Focussing on female teachers in rural schools, it is from this study that she is developing her PhD research.

Prior to working at the OU, Alison completed a joint honours degree in African Studies and Geography and an MPhil in the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She also works as an administrator for the British Journal of Music Education.

Languages: English, and learning Arabic.