Sally Dennehy

Sally is an experienced teacher and leader, with over 13 years working in schools. She started out in education as an English and media teacher, predominantly working in the South West of England. These days, she is particularly interested in issues of engagement and class; she is also interested in the importance of 'cultural capital' and how this is being interpreted and employed in schools.

 

Currently, she is beginning an initiative at her home school in Somerset, exploring ways to use student voice to investigate aspiration and engagement. She is coordinating and guiding the initiative, while the students themselves design the individual projects, choosing topics and outcomes. There are currently three podcasts in production and they will hopefully be published shortly.

 

Before this, Sally took a sabbatical to conduct research for an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology with UCL. Her thesis explored the social and cultural impact of the marketisation of education. She endeavours to make this research useful to educators, and continues to find ways to transform her findings into resources that are useful to schools. So far, Sally has delivered CPD on her findings through WomenEd in the South East, and with schools in the South West. 

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While researching, Sally also collaborated with Dr Alison Macdonald and Lasse Johansson on a funded project for UCL Grand Challenges. Their project, 'Beyond The Engagement Paradigm', investigated life after permanent exclusion. More can be found about this project at: 

 

http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/2018/10/31/thrown-away-or-fresh-start-life-after-permanent-school-exclusion/ 

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Also while at UCL, Sally won the Bright Ideas 2017 competition with an education app design that provides a way to improve school-parent communication and engagement. Sally is looking to continue developing this idea in the future.