Professor Maggie MacLure

Professor Maggie MacLure

Emeritus Professor

My profile

Biography

I am a (MA, DPhil) Professor of Education. I joined Manchester Met from the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at the University of East Anglia, where I was Professor of Education and Chair of Research.

I started my career as a researcher on the influential Bristol Language Development Project, and later moved to the National Foundation for Educational Research, where I helped to develop the national framework for the assessment of ‘oracy’, for the Assessment of Performance Unit. I have continued to carry out research on language and discourse on a range of topics including classroom talk, secondary school parents’ evenings and press representations of educational issues. In my most recent funded research projects I have returned to the study of early childhood education, with two ESRC-funded projects on behaviour in early years classrooms.

I lead the Theory and Methodology Research Group in ESRI, and I am the founder and director of the international Summer Institute in Qualitative Research. My book, Discourse in Educational and Social Research, won the 2004 Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. I am a former member of the Executive Council of the British Educational Research Association.

Get in touch

0161 247 2053
Brooks Building

Impact

Toddler threading elastic into a plastic tube on a wooden table

Thinking in action: the Listening-2 project

Using slow-motion video to understand how children relate to the world through their bodies and their senses.

Read the article

Projects

Addressing ‘problem behaviour’ in the early years: an innovative film resource. Co-Director, with Rachel Holmes ESRC (2010-11) 

Becoming a problem: how and why children acquire a reputation as ‘naughty’ in the earliest years at school. Co-Director with Liz Jones. ESRC (2006-8) Download a copy of this report

Consultancy to Primary Review. With Ian Barron and Rachel Holmes. Esmeé Fairbairn via Cambridge University. (2007-8)

Young Men’s Health. Director. Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council (2005-6)

Touchlines: the problematics of ‘touching’ between children and professionals. Co-Director with Heather Piper and Ian Stronach. ESRC (2004-5)

New Directions in Educational Research Methodology: Rebuilding a Community of Enquiry. ESRC (2001-3)

Secondary School Parents’ Evenings. ESRC (1997-8)

Teachers as Researchers in the Context of Award-Bearing Courses & Research Degrees. Co-Director with J. Elliott. ESRC

The Press, Public Knowledge & Education (1994-5) Employment Department: Knowledge Issues, and the Implications for the Standards Programme at Professional Levels of Competence. Co-Director. ESRC (1990-1)

Teachers’ Jobs and Lives. Principal Investigator ESRC (1997-9)

Teaching

Postgraduate teaching

  • Research methods
  • Parental involvement
  • Discourse analysis
  • Language and power
  • Early childhood education

Supervision

  • Home computing in a migrant community
  • Art education
  • Student writing for professional development
  • Workplace learning
  • Anorexia and the body
  • Personal geographies

Research outputs

  • Theory and methodology in applied social research (especially poststructuralism and deconstruction)
  • Art-informed research
  • Discourse analysis
  • Childhoods
  • Language and literacy
  • Affect