Mifsud, Denise

Dr Denise Mifsud is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Management and Governance in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. She has many years of practitioner experience in education settings in both teaching and top-level leadership roles within the Ministry for Education, Malta. She previously held a full-time lecturing post at the University of the West of Scotland as well as being a part-time lecturer at the University of Malta. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research within the same university. She was awarded her PhD by the University of Stirling in 2015. Research areas of interest include educational policy analysis, generation, reception and enactment; critical leadership theories, with a particular interest in educational leadership, especially distributed forms; school networks and educational reform; teacher education; teacher leadership; power relations; Foucauldian theory; Actor-Network theory, as well as qualitative research methods, with a particular focus on narrative, as well as creative and unconventional modes of data representation. She is a member of several professional organizations, in addition to being an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is an elected member of the BELMAS Council, as well as co-convenor of the Critical Educational Leadership & Policy Studies BELMAS RIG, and also co-convenor of the Social Theory and Education BERA SIG. She has published in several international top-rated journals, in addition to monographs and edited volumes. She has won awards by the AERA, EERA and SERA for her publications.

Dr Stephen Day is the Head of Division of Education at the University of the West of Scotland. He has a background in biomedical sciences and science education, where he publishes on aspects of science teacher education and curriculum policy. Dr Day was the president of the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) from 2017 to 2019 and continues to be an active member of the SERA Executive. He currently sits on the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and is one of three Universities Scotland representatives on the governing council of the General Teaching Council for Scotland. His research interests are varied and range across areas of teacher education such as teacher induction, the handling of socio-scientific discussion; constructivist approaches to learning for sustainability; the learning and teaching of ideas that challenge pupils in the sciences; and models of coaching and mentoring for beginning science teachers and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Tutors. His recent interests have taken him on a tangent in terms of the application of social theory in education where he has recently focused on the datafication of education, with a specific interest in school improvement. His recent publications are an eclectic mix of a Foucauldian exploration of student satisfaction, educational leadership, the qualitative characteristics of accounting standards and reflective practice in initial teacher education. He is a member of several professional association such as the British Educational Research Association, the Association of Science Education and the European Educational Research Association and has presented his research at several educational Research Conferences such as the European Conference for Educational Research, the Children’s Identity and Citizenship European Association and the Educational Studies Association Ireland conferences. He actively supports doctoral students in areas of his research interest and professional practice