Austin Griffiths is a Senior Teaching Fellow on the MA in Music Education and a Teach First Subject Tutor for secondary music. In 1980 he graduated from St Chad’s College Durham with a degree in Church History and Theology. He began teaching in 1983, when whiteboards (non-electronic) were cutting edge. After twelve years in Lambeth primary schools, he became head of music, first at a middle school and then at a secondary school, in the London Borough of Merton. Following this he led the ICT Faculty at Bishopsford Community School, before moving to Coventry in 2005 to launch and manage Playing for Success study centres in Coventry City FC and Coventry Rugby Club.
In 2008 he moved back into schools to run the Inclusion Centre at Grace Academy in Coventry, while at the same time beginning an academic career with an MA in Education at Birmingham City University, followed by a PhD from Warwick University in 2015. His doctoral thesis, a single school study in the tradition of Hargreaves, Lacey, Willis, and Ball, used quantitative methods to demonstrate the underlining persistence of historical inequalities in English schooling. The use of Exploratory Factor Analysis to operationalise capitals (such as cultural capital and socio-economic capital) was a key element in the analysis. In 2013 Austin was awarded a Giving to Warwick Prize for innovative and high quality research.
Austin spent six years as a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University where he was Programme Leader for both the BA in Education Studies and the MA in Education Practice. His specialist teaching areas at De Montfort included the History of English Education, Special Educational Needs and Inclusion, and Research Methods. During this time he began to develop his interests in Music Education research alongside his colleagues Dr Ross Purves and Dr Motje Wolf. He left De Montfort in 2019 to pursue other interests including independent music research and composition. He was also keen to reacquaint himself with the reality of the classroom by spending six months as a supply teacher.
special interests
His interests in Music Education research include elite school music education, gender and race in the repertoire, and resistance to change. He is particularly interested in applying Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and illusio in exploring the continued what male hierarchy in the teaching repertoire. Originally a trombonist, Austin’s main musical activity these days is composition. He is particularly interested in integrating the traditional classical forms and sounds into contemporary electronic environments. He also plays the tenor recorder.
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