Dr Rachel Helme
PhD, MSc, PGCE, BSc
Current positions
Lecturer
School of Education
Contact
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Research interests
Rachel worked as a secondary school mathematics teacher for 10 years in a school in the greater Bristol area, before studying for her Masters in Mathematics Education at the University of Bristol in 2018. In 2023, she completed her PhD researching students' mathematical identity work in the context of the low attainment label. This research focused on the student experience in a post-16 college, seeking to challenge the negative discourse around low attainment in the UK. Rachel is particularly interested in investigating creative ways of data collection and analysis, especially in relation to poetic inquiry.
Publications
Recent publications
01/07/2022Challenging discourses of low attainment: Using THEY poems to reveal positioning stories and shifting identities.
Teaching for Mastery in Primary Mathematics
Review of Education
Learning to listen in new ways: Using a Social Identity Map to examine the impact of my positionality when working with the narrative of a student from a mathematics resit classroom.
Proceeding of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics
Listening to Claire: Analysing one student's story told in the context of resitting mathematics in a post-16 college.
Proceedings of BSRLM day conference
I and THEY poetic voices in learning to listen to a student labelled as low attaining in mathematics
For the Learning of Mathematics
Thesis
A meta-theory analysis of teachers’ beliefs and practice with regard to low prior attaining students in mathematics
Supervisors
Award date
05/12/2018
