Key publications
Hardman M, Riordan J-P, Hetherington L (2022). A Material-dialogic Perspective on Powerful Knowledge and Matter within a Science Classroom. In Hudson B, Gericke N, Olin--Scheller C, Stolare M (Eds.) International Perspectives on Knowledge and Curriculum: Epistemic Quality across School Subjects, London: Bloomsbury, 157-176.
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Ruck Keene H, Wren H (2020). Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice. In Burnard P, Colucci-Gray L (Eds.)
Why Science and Art Creativities Matter Re-configuring Steam for Future-making Education, Leiden: Brill - Sense, 271-299.
Abstract:
Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice
Abstract.
Hetherington L, Wegerif R (2020). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education. In (Ed) Teaching STEM Education through Dialogue and Transformative Learning, Taylor & Francis, 26-42.
Chappell KA, Hetherington L, Ruck Keene H, Wren H, Alexopoulos A, Ben-Horin O, Nikolopoulos K, Robberstad J, Sotiriou S, Bogner F, et al (2019). Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation.
Thinking Skills and Creativity,
31, 296-322.
Abstract:
Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation
This paper responds to recent calls to explore the nuances of the interaction between the sciences, the arts and their inherent creativity to better understand their potential within teaching and learning. Building on previous arguments that the science-arts-creativity relationship is dialogic and relational, this research focuses on the question: How are dialogue and material/embodied activity manifested within creative pedagogy? We begin with a fusion of Bakhtinian-inspired and New-Materialist understandings of dialogue drawing out the importance of embodiment in order to revitalize how we articulate dialogue within creative educational practice. We then take on the challenge of a materialist diffractive analysis to conduct research which complements the theoretical framing and offers our outcomes in a way that appropriately makes the phenomena tangible. We present the outcomes of the diffractive analysis including the constitution of matter as well as meaning in the dialogic space; and the emergence of new assemblages of embodied teachers, students, ideas, and objects within transdisciplinary educational practice. We conclude by arguing for the benefits of diffractive analysis: that we have fore-fronted the entangled relationality of trans-disciplinary creative pedagogy; avoided bracketing out aspects of education that are often side-lined; opened out the space of pedagogical
approaches that might be attempted; and begun to challenge what education is for. In so doing, the article aims to open up new ways for teachers, students and researchers to experience seeing, doing, feeling and researching science|arts creative pedagogy and provoke conversations about how this might develop in the future.
Abstract.
Full text.
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Keene HR, Wren H, Cukurova M, Hathaway C, Sotiriou S, Bogner F (2019). International educators’ perspectives on the purpose of science education and the relationship between school science and creativity. Research in Science & Technological Education, 38(1), 19-41.
Hetherington L, Hardman M, Noakes J, Wegerif R (2019). Making the case for a material-dialogic approach to science education. Studies in Science Education, 54(2), 141-176.
Publications by category
Journal articles
Postlethwaite KC, Morgan A, Skinner N, Hetherington L, Mansour N, Wegerif R (In Press). Diversity in Science Education: integrating pupil characteristics, theoretical models and practical interventions in UK primary and secondary classrooms.
Chappell KA, Hetherington L, Ruck Keene H, Wren H, Alexopoulos A, Ben-Horin O, Nikolopoulos K, Robberstad J, Sotiriou S, Bogner F, et al (2019). Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation.
Thinking Skills and Creativity,
31, 296-322.
Abstract:
Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation
This paper responds to recent calls to explore the nuances of the interaction between the sciences, the arts and their inherent creativity to better understand their potential within teaching and learning. Building on previous arguments that the science-arts-creativity relationship is dialogic and relational, this research focuses on the question: How are dialogue and material/embodied activity manifested within creative pedagogy? We begin with a fusion of Bakhtinian-inspired and New-Materialist understandings of dialogue drawing out the importance of embodiment in order to revitalize how we articulate dialogue within creative educational practice. We then take on the challenge of a materialist diffractive analysis to conduct research which complements the theoretical framing and offers our outcomes in a way that appropriately makes the phenomena tangible. We present the outcomes of the diffractive analysis including the constitution of matter as well as meaning in the dialogic space; and the emergence of new assemblages of embodied teachers, students, ideas, and objects within transdisciplinary educational practice. We conclude by arguing for the benefits of diffractive analysis: that we have fore-fronted the entangled relationality of trans-disciplinary creative pedagogy; avoided bracketing out aspects of education that are often side-lined; opened out the space of pedagogical
approaches that might be attempted; and begun to challenge what education is for. In so doing, the article aims to open up new ways for teachers, students and researchers to experience seeing, doing, feeling and researching science|arts creative pedagogy and provoke conversations about how this might develop in the future.
Abstract.
Full text.
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Keene HR, Wren H, Cukurova M, Hathaway C, Sotiriou S, Bogner F (2019). International educators’ perspectives on the purpose of science education and the relationship between school science and creativity. Research in Science & Technological Education, 38(1), 19-41.
Hetherington L, Hardman M, Noakes J, Wegerif R (2019). Making the case for a material-dialogic approach to science education. Studies in Science Education, 54(2), 141-176.
Hetherington L, Wegerif R (2018). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education.
Journal of Education for Teaching,
44(1), 27-43.
Abstract:
Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education
Dialogic pedagogy is being promoted in science teacher education but the literature on dialogic pedagogy tends to focus on explicit voices, and so runs the risk of overlooking the important role that material objects often play in science education. In this paper we use the findings of a teacher survey and classroom case study to argue that there is a gap in the way that science teachers think about the role of materials and that this could be addressed by changes in the theory base of teacher training, augmenting the current constructivist and dialogic theory with the addition of new materialism in the form of Barad’s ‘Agential Realism’. Our findings suggests that science teachers do not regularly explicitly consider the relationship between the material resources they deploy and the dialogic learning taking place. We argue that science teacher training and professional development should pay more attention to the material-dialogic relationships in the learning that emerges in science classrooms.
Abstract.
Mansour N, Wegerif R, Skinner N, Postlethwaite K, Hetherington L (2016). Investigating and Promoting Trainee Science Teachers’ Conceptual Change of the Nature of Science with Digital Dialogue Games ‘InterLoc’. Research in Science Education, 46(5), 667-684.
Hetherington L (2014). Enmeshing Interruption in Assessment of Teacher Education. Response to Bernard Ricca. Complicity an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 9(2).
Hetherington L (2013). Complexity Thinking and Methodology: the Potential of 'Complex Case Study' for Educational Research. Complicity an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 10(1/2).
Hetherington L (2010). Less interested after lessons? Report on a small-scale research study into 12- to 13-year-old students’ attitudes to earth science.
School Science Review,
91(337), 59-65.
Abstract:
Less interested after lessons? Report on a small-scale research study into 12- to 13-year-old students’ attitudes to earth science
Results of a small-scale research study conducted with year 8 (ages 12–13) students suggest that although these students have generally positive attitudes towards earth science, girls tend to be less interested in it than boys. Interest in earth science was found to separate into two dominant factors, labelled ‘scientific’ and ‘people and change’, with the greatest gender discrepancy for the scientific factor. Results also showed that interest decreased after studying ‘The rock cycle’ topic. It is suggested that this could result from students’ perception of repetition in the curriculum: greater cross-curricular communication in the new key stage 3 (ages 11–14) curriculum may help to address this.
Abstract.
Hetherington, L. (2007). Science: How does it work in schools?. Into Teaching, 17
Hetherington, L. (2007). Where next? Career options. Into Teaching, 20
Chapters
Hardman M, Riordan J-P, Hetherington L (2022). A Material-dialogic Perspective on Powerful Knowledge and Matter within a Science Classroom. In Hudson B, Gericke N, Olin--Scheller C, Stolare M (Eds.) International Perspectives on Knowledge and Curriculum: Epistemic Quality across School Subjects, London: Bloomsbury, 157-176.
Dillon J, Hetherington L (2022). Creativity in school science. In (Ed) Debates in Science Education, Routledge, 227-238.
Hetherington L (2022). Teacher Education in Creative Pedagogies for STE(A)M Disciplines. In (Ed) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, Springer Nature, 1807-1812.
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Ruck Keene H, Wren H (2020). Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice. In Burnard P, Colucci-Gray L (Eds.)
Why Science and Art Creativities Matter Re-configuring Steam for Future-making Education, Leiden: Brill - Sense, 271-299.
Abstract:
Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice
Abstract.
Hetherington L, Wegerif R (2020). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education. In (Ed) Teaching STEM Education through Dialogue and Transformative Learning, Taylor & Francis, 26-42.
Wegerif R, Postlethwaite KP, Skinner N, Mansour N, Morgan A, Hetherington LEJ (2013). Dialogic Science Education for Diversity. In Mansour N, Wegerif R (Eds.) Science Education for Diversity: Theory and Practice, Springer.
Conferences
Hetherington LEJ (2012). The challenge of assessment in an emergent curriculum: a case study of teachers’ responses. AERA 2012. 12th - 19th Apr 2012.
Hetherington LEJ (2011). Enacting Curriculum: a Complexity Perspective on Teachers’ Descriptions and Interactions. AERA 2011. 8th - 12th Apr 2011.
Hetherington L (2009). Researching the Emerging Curriculum: is there a place for a Pedagogy of Emergence?. 3rd Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies. 7th - 10th Sep 2009.
Abstract:
Researching the Emerging Curriculum: is there a place for a Pedagogy of Emergence?
Abstract.
Publications by year
In Press
Postlethwaite KC, Morgan A, Skinner N, Hetherington L, Mansour N, Wegerif R (In Press). Diversity in Science Education: integrating pupil characteristics, theoretical models and practical interventions in UK primary and secondary classrooms.
2023
Noakes J (2023). Agency and authorship in project-based STEM: a cultural historical activity theory perspective.
Abstract:
Agency and authorship in project-based STEM: a cultural historical activity theory perspective
This thesis uses cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and a combination of ecological, relational and authorial perspectives on agency to explore the practice of project-based STEM activities in English secondary schools. While the educational consensus in England has shifted back in favour of traditional teaching methods and away from “progressive”, student-centred pedagogies including PBL, STEM activities are still considered by many to be a viable strategy for promoting pupil engagement and interest in STEM subjects. This study explores what place STEM PBL activities can have in schools, what needs and motives they are perceived to meet, and how they are implemented in complex school environments. Cultural historical activity theory prompts us to consider STEM PBL activities as historically emergent, object-oriented social practices, situated among networks of other activities and shared objectives. Meanwhile the ecological perspective offers a challenge to the linear consumerist ‘pipeline’ metaphor that is common in STEM policy discourse. This thesis positions teachers as critical agents within their local STEM ecosystem and pupils as purposeful agents who author their own interest pathways and experiment with ways of acting in the world through STEM.
The research was conducted as a series of three case studies incorporating a range of data collection methods. A hybrid analytical approach combining reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) and Engeström’s (1987) third generation activity theory framework was applied to provide both a system level view and a broad, multi-voiced account of the cultural context and participant perspectives. The findings indicated that teachers face a contradiction between meeting the demands of curriculum and qualification targets, and teaching in ways that they enjoy and believe to be meaningful for pupils. STEM projects and challenges delivered in enrichment time (lunchtimes or after school) were seen to offer an antidote, an opportunity to break away from the status quo, to explore new practices, develop new communities and relationships and to foster pupil agency in a low risk environment. The relative difficulty of establishing successful activities was found to be strongly influenced by the maturity and diversity of the school’s wider STEM ecosystem and the number of ‘keystone’ teachers involved in planning and sustaining engagement across the school. Teachers were found to exercise considerable agency in drawing upon their past experiences, present resources and future aims, as well as making strategic use of externally provided structures and incentives. As a result, pupils were afforded opportunities to co-author their own activities to various extents by acting through their environments and agentively navigating and negotiating the resources available to them.
Bringing together the insights from a survey of the policy context in England, a review of the literature on STEM PBL, and the theoretical and empirical work in this study, it is argued that spaces for teachers and pupils to engage with STEM in creative, collaborative and agentive ways are more important than ever. I suggest that STEM PBL activities are not a challenge to the importance of a knowledge-rich curriculum, but a valuable addition to it, giving life and meaning to the tools and expertise of STEM disciplines while allowing pupils to construct their own interest pathways and ‘try on’ new roles and identities. It is further argued that the combination of STEM ecosystem thinking and the activity theoretical framework provides tools for understanding how pupil agency can be facilitated and how PBL can be developed and embedded in specific local contexts.
Abstract.
2022
Hardman M, Riordan J-P, Hetherington L (2022). A Material-dialogic Perspective on Powerful Knowledge and Matter within a Science Classroom. In Hudson B, Gericke N, Olin--Scheller C, Stolare M (Eds.) International Perspectives on Knowledge and Curriculum: Epistemic Quality across School Subjects, London: Bloomsbury, 157-176.
Dillon J, Hetherington L (2022). Creativity in school science. In (Ed) Debates in Science Education, Routledge, 227-238.
Hetherington L (2022). Teacher Education in Creative Pedagogies for STE(A)M Disciplines. In (Ed) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, Springer Nature, 1807-1812.
2020
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Ruck Keene H, Wren H (2020). Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice. In Burnard P, Colucci-Gray L (Eds.)
Why Science and Art Creativities Matter Re-configuring Steam for Future-making Education, Leiden: Brill - Sense, 271-299.
Abstract:
Creative Pedagogy and Environmental Responsibility: a Diffractive Analysis of an Intra-Active Science|Arts Practice
Abstract.
Hetherington L, Wegerif R (2020). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education. In (Ed) Teaching STEM Education through Dialogue and Transformative Learning, Taylor & Francis, 26-42.
2019
McKerr L (2019). Birth, Death and Survival: an Arendtian analysis of pre-service teacher identity on the PGCE route.
Abstract:
Birth, Death and Survival: an Arendtian analysis of pre-service teacher identity on the PGCE route
This research focuses on the identity development of pre-service teachers on a one-year, university-based teacher education route (PGCE) in England. In the English education system, concerns have been raised about many aspects impacting pre-service teachers during their PGCE and beyond: a neoliberal, market-driven education system; high levels of performativity and accountability within the teaching profession, and the lack of attention to the process of identity formation within teacher education.
This study is significant in that it provides a rationale for pre-service teacher identity formation to be considered in its own right. By bringing an Arendtian framework to the research, it offers pre-service teachers an opportunity to think about themselves, and the influences that act upon their professional identity, in a new way. As a result of this research, it is intended that pre-service teachers will be better able to deal with the challenges that face them as beginning teachers, and that teacher education will embed identity development as an evolving process in their programmes.
This study is situated within a theoretically enriched empirical approach. The methodology was driven using Arendtian theory, specifically the use of Arendt’s ‘conditions’ related to the concepts of birth, death, survival, worldliness, plurality and self-development. This qualitative research gathered data from three PGCE pre-service teachers as they ‘became’ teachers. Over the period of their PGCE year, this included an online introductory life story to gather insights into their awareness of a teacher identity, a face-to-face semi-structured interview to explore pre-service teachers’ awareness of their developing teacher identity, and a critical incident interview, reflecting on the key episodes that impacted on how they viewed themselves as teachers. The data was analysed using Arendt’s ‘conditions’, and presented as the story of three pre-service teachers.
The outcomes of this study are that pre-service teachers felt that the research methodology allowed them to become more aware of, and interrogate, their identity; the Arendtian framework was an ‘identifier’ that denoted the depth of emotion, the impact of events faced during their teaching experience, and how they successfully resolved these issues. Arendt’s ‘conditions’ were interpreted slightly differently by each pre-service teacher but, combined with the critical incident timeline, acted as a driver for an emergent, dialogical and relational approach to pre-service teacher identity.
Abstract.
Chappell KA, Hetherington L, Ruck Keene H, Wren H, Alexopoulos A, Ben-Horin O, Nikolopoulos K, Robberstad J, Sotiriou S, Bogner F, et al (2019). Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation.
Thinking Skills and Creativity,
31, 296-322.
Abstract:
Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: their role and manifestation
This paper responds to recent calls to explore the nuances of the interaction between the sciences, the arts and their inherent creativity to better understand their potential within teaching and learning. Building on previous arguments that the science-arts-creativity relationship is dialogic and relational, this research focuses on the question: How are dialogue and material/embodied activity manifested within creative pedagogy? We begin with a fusion of Bakhtinian-inspired and New-Materialist understandings of dialogue drawing out the importance of embodiment in order to revitalize how we articulate dialogue within creative educational practice. We then take on the challenge of a materialist diffractive analysis to conduct research which complements the theoretical framing and offers our outcomes in a way that appropriately makes the phenomena tangible. We present the outcomes of the diffractive analysis including the constitution of matter as well as meaning in the dialogic space; and the emergence of new assemblages of embodied teachers, students, ideas, and objects within transdisciplinary educational practice. We conclude by arguing for the benefits of diffractive analysis: that we have fore-fronted the entangled relationality of trans-disciplinary creative pedagogy; avoided bracketing out aspects of education that are often side-lined; opened out the space of pedagogical
approaches that might be attempted; and begun to challenge what education is for. In so doing, the article aims to open up new ways for teachers, students and researchers to experience seeing, doing, feeling and researching science|arts creative pedagogy and provoke conversations about how this might develop in the future.
Abstract.
Full text.
Hetherington L, Chappell K, Keene HR, Wren H, Cukurova M, Hathaway C, Sotiriou S, Bogner F (2019). International educators’ perspectives on the purpose of science education and the relationship between school science and creativity. Research in Science & Technological Education, 38(1), 19-41.
Hetherington L, Hardman M, Noakes J, Wegerif R (2019). Making the case for a material-dialogic approach to science education. Studies in Science Education, 54(2), 141-176.
2018
Hetherington L, Wegerif R (2018). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education.
Journal of Education for Teaching,
44(1), 27-43.
Abstract:
Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education
Dialogic pedagogy is being promoted in science teacher education but the literature on dialogic pedagogy tends to focus on explicit voices, and so runs the risk of overlooking the important role that material objects often play in science education. In this paper we use the findings of a teacher survey and classroom case study to argue that there is a gap in the way that science teachers think about the role of materials and that this could be addressed by changes in the theory base of teacher training, augmenting the current constructivist and dialogic theory with the addition of new materialism in the form of Barad’s ‘Agential Realism’. Our findings suggests that science teachers do not regularly explicitly consider the relationship between the material resources they deploy and the dialogic learning taking place. We argue that science teacher training and professional development should pay more attention to the material-dialogic relationships in the learning that emerges in science classrooms.
Abstract.
2016
Mansour N, Wegerif R, Skinner N, Postlethwaite K, Hetherington L (2016). Investigating and Promoting Trainee Science Teachers’ Conceptual Change of the Nature of Science with Digital Dialogue Games ‘InterLoc’. Research in Science Education, 46(5), 667-684.
2014
Hetherington L (2014). Enmeshing Interruption in Assessment of Teacher Education. Response to Bernard Ricca. Complicity an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 9(2).
2013
Hetherington L (2013). Complexity Thinking and Methodology: the Potential of 'Complex Case Study' for Educational Research. Complicity an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 10(1/2).
Wegerif R, Postlethwaite KP, Skinner N, Mansour N, Morgan A, Hetherington LEJ (2013). Dialogic Science Education for Diversity. In Mansour N, Wegerif R (Eds.) Science Education for Diversity: Theory and Practice, Springer.
2012
Hetherington LEJ (2012). The challenge of assessment in an emergent curriculum: a case study of teachers’ responses. AERA 2012. 12th - 19th Apr 2012.
2011
Hetherington LEJ (2011). Enacting Curriculum: a Complexity Perspective on Teachers’ Descriptions and Interactions. AERA 2011. 8th - 12th Apr 2011.
2010
Hetherington L (2010). Less interested after lessons? Report on a small-scale research study into 12- to 13-year-old students’ attitudes to earth science.
School Science Review,
91(337), 59-65.
Abstract:
Less interested after lessons? Report on a small-scale research study into 12- to 13-year-old students’ attitudes to earth science
Results of a small-scale research study conducted with year 8 (ages 12–13) students suggest that although these students have generally positive attitudes towards earth science, girls tend to be less interested in it than boys. Interest in earth science was found to separate into two dominant factors, labelled ‘scientific’ and ‘people and change’, with the greatest gender discrepancy for the scientific factor. Results also showed that interest decreased after studying ‘The rock cycle’ topic. It is suggested that this could result from students’ perception of repetition in the curriculum: greater cross-curricular communication in the new key stage 3 (ages 11–14) curriculum may help to address this.
Abstract.
2009
Hetherington L (2009). Researching the Emerging Curriculum: is there a place for a Pedagogy of Emergence?. 3rd Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies. 7th - 10th Sep 2009.
Abstract:
Researching the Emerging Curriculum: is there a place for a Pedagogy of Emergence?
Abstract.
2007
Hetherington, L. (2007). Science: How does it work in schools?. Into Teaching, 17
Hetherington, L. (2007). Views of Planet Earth: Systems Thinking in Earth Science Education Pilot Study.
Hetherington, L. (2007). Where next? Career options. Into Teaching, 20
