Dr Simon Edwards
Biography
I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and and senior lecturer School of Education and Sociology and leader for the Childhood and Youth Studies with Social Pedagogy undergraduate pathway degree.
I am also module leader on the MA Education degree and PhD supervisor. I am departmental ethics representative and member of the faculty ethics committe. My research and innovation projects include developing Beyond the School Gates, a youth work informed charity that trains former excluded students to draw on their own lived experiences in order to mentor current excluded students and their parents to re-engage their education.
Research interests
- Youth work and Alternative Education
- Youth voice and advocacy
- Social Justice
- Social networking and social media
- Democratic citizenship
- Qualititative research including PAR methods
- Social Pedagogy
Research outputs
2025
Youth Work rediscovered in a school context: understanding the needs of excluded young people and their families by seeing beyond the professional
Evea, R., Edwards, S.
7 May 2025, In: The Buckingham Journal of Education
Research output: Article
Resisting the professional turn: revisiting youth work as a covenantal process
Edwards, S., Evea, R.
26 Mar 2025, In: International Journal of Social Pedagogy
Research output: Article
2024
Why school suspensions and exclusions have risen dramatically in England: and what could be done
Edwards, S.
25 Jul 2024, In: The Conversation
Research output: Article
2023
Capturing young people’s voices and lived experiences at the margins
Edwards, S.
16 Oct 2023,
Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Freire for 21st Century, austerity driven schools: creating positive educational relations with and among students at the margins
Edwards, S.
28 Jun 2023, In: International Journal of Social Pedagogy . 12, 1, 17p.
Research output: Article
14 lessons from youthwork
Edwards, S., Evea, R., McCabe, G., McCarrick, A.
1 Feb 2023,
Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)
2021
Voices from beyond the school gates: students’ and their parents’ lived experience of school exclusion
Edwards, S., Bakkali, Y., Kirk, A., Cobb, C., Salanson, B., Walls, N., Kimmins, V.
17 Nov 2021, In: The Buckingham Journal of Education. 2, 2, p. 77-98, 22p.
Research output: Article
2020
Close-to-practice research: the need for student voice and the strange case of Academy x
Edwards, S., Brown, C.
13 Nov 2020, In: London Review of Education. 18, 3, p. 480–494, 15p., 18.3
Research output: Article
Teaching the ‘unteachable’ with Dr Simon Edwards
Edwards, S.
20 Sep 2020,
Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Does absence makes the heart grow fonder? Students' perspectives of curriculum, absenteeism and their pursuit of the good life
Edwards, S., Parmar, E.
23 Jun 2020, In: The Buckingham Journal of Education. 1, 1, p. 133-150, 18p., 9
Research output: Article