Born in South Africa, I came to England with my family in 1958, and was educated on the south coast of England. The first in my family to attend university, I graduated from the University of Liverpool with a BA (Hons) in Philosophy. I worked as a journalist in London before traveling extensively, teaching English as a foreign and second language in Istanbul, Spain and South India, where I also worked as the producer of a local radio programme. Later I wrote a weekly column for the women’s page of a local newspaper in Australia, and then, on returning to England, became a foster parent and, for a time, secretary of the Camden Association of Foster Parents.

Engaged to teach ESL in my children’s primary school in the late 1970s, I became committed to finding ways to improve the teaching of minority ethnic group students, and in 1980 gained a Distinction in the Primary PGCE at the University of London Institute of Education. I taught as a primary classteacher in inner London, before returning to the Institute to gain a Diploma in the teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), and was invited to stay on to undertake a PhD. During my studies I became a part-time tutor on the Diploma in ESOL and the PGCE (ESOL) courses at the Institute, as well as being appointed to a part-time research post at the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER). At this time I worked on two major projects, one a national survey of local education authority provision for bilingual pupils, and the second on an evaluation of initial teacher training of ESL teachers, both of these studies having a major impact on national policy development. I then successfully bid for and led a Department of Education study on Partnership Teaching, resulting in a pack of resource materials for developing co-operative teaching strategies for English language support in mainstream classrooms. Following this, I took up a post as lecturer in Primary English at the University College of Wales, Swansea, before moving to the Open University where I led the development of a Primary PGCE by open and distance learning. At the Open University I also bid for and led an influential national study on ‘Teaching and Learning Strategies in Successful Multi-ethnic Schools’.

In 1998 I was appointed to a Chair at the University of Southampton School of Education, where I launched and led a new Primary PGCE. Recent funded research has included a study of pathways into teaching for teaching assistants, an evaluation of a local Sure Start programme, consultancy reports for the Teacher Training Agency on training teachers to work in multiethnic classrooms, and a major ESRC funded project with colleagues in the London Institute of Education and Keele University on ‘The Production of School English’.

Outside the UK, I have been fortunate enough to have worked and/or contributed to conferences in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, USA, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, India, South Africa, as well as, within Europe: Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Turkey. These visits, together with supervision of a number of talented PhD students from around the world, have encouraged an ever growing interest in the analysis of comparative forms of pedagogy and pedagogical discourse.