School of Education

Viva congratulations

Congratulations to Dr Rachel Lehner-Mear who successfully defended her PhD thesis on the 1 December.

Rachel was supervised by Dr Jane Medwell and Professor Pat Thomson. Dr Medwell said that Rachel's PhD thesis "is one of the best I have ever supervised." 

Rachel's research has been funded by the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre and she has been studying full-time, while also parenting through the Covid pandemic. 

Director of Postgraduate Research, Professor Dalene Swanson says "This is fabulous news. It is fantastic to see PhD colleagues thrive and succeed like this when they have had to sacrifice so much and deal with difficult (Covid) times! It is especially good to see them achieving at such a high level too."

Research title

Mothers Constructing Narratives of Primary School Homework

Research summary

Primary homework is commonplace in the UK. Support for it in the home setting is a gendered activity, with mothers the main parent involved. Rachel's PhD research takes a narrative approach to explore mothers' experiences of homework. It seeks to explore how mothers construct their understandings of homework and their homework role, and reveals their resulting homework narratives.

Rachel Lehner-Mear with her two thesis examiners, Dr Kerryn Dixon and Professor Janet Goodall

Left: Examiner,  Professor Janet Goodall, University of Swansea
Centre: Dr Rachel Lehner-Mear
Right: Examiner, Dr Kerryn Dixon, University of Nottingham

Posted on Tuesday 6th December 2022

School of Education

University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham, NG8 1BB

Contact us