Between 2022-23 the UK saw a wave of strike action unprecedented since the 1980s and included action by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - a union that has not taken action in England before. Existing studies of strikes generally distinguish between proximate and underlying causes, but agree that they are multi-causal social phenomena that are not reducible to a single factor. Strikes remain an important subject for study because they are often the 'tip of the iceberg', reflecting underlying tensions and grievances in the workplace, organisation and wider sector. Further, their occurrence may reflect the efficiency (or otherwise) of the machinery for the settlement of grievances at national or organisational level. While it is clear that pay and inflation were the immediate drivers for recent public and private sector industrial action, the narratives of those on strike in the public services pointed to a wider context reflecting the reduced capacity of public services and changes in work and the context of work that pre-dated, but were intensified by COVID-19. This research aims to investigate the 2022-23 public service strikes in three public services, health, education and rail, represented by four trade unions and focussing on teachers, nurses, paramedics, and rail workers. It will utilise first-hand participant accounts that explore the processes, dynamics, meanings and significance of strikes from the bottom-up, but located within their wider institutional, political, economic and social contexts. With a perceived crisis in many areas of the public services marked by chronic staff shortages, the research explores the significance of potential disruptions to professional identity and status related to the erosion of public service service delivery that may affect the relationship between staff and service users as well as organisational commitment. While in the past unions that highlight professional identity have been assumed to be less likely to organise industrial action, the complex dynamics between professionalism and industrial action deserves further attention against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of labour and strikes in UK public services. The research will look at the extent to which these issues were motivators for industrial action across occupations and sectors of the public services, in addition to pay and inflation. Women now comprise a majority of UK trade union members, largely a reflection of the enduring strength of public service trade unionism. This research additionally considers the diversity of participants in recent industrial action in terms of race, gender and age and how these different social identities were or were not reflected or articulated in industrial action. The research will take an intersectional lens to industrial conflict and will thus advance the theorisation of intersectionality within the context of work and employment. The research will have significant social and economic impact with improved understanding of the key issues for public service workers that underpin distal and proximal causes of strikes that may help to reduce future conflict and the negative economic and social impacts of industrial action, including on productivity. It will inform public sector pay setting and the work of pay review bodies by illuminating the wider factors that may need to be addressed beyond pay to allay industrial conflict. Findings will have implications for professional bodies such as the CIPD, refocusing human resources and practices on conflict resolution and informing HR practitioners and unions in their negotiations.

There is currently a teacher retention crisis in the UK and beyond. One in five teachers in the UK plan to leave teaching within the next five years and a third of teachers report experiencing a mental health issue. Worryingly, one in ten teachers and school leaders reported feeling suicidal in 2018-19, and there is evidence that teacher wellbeing has dropped further still post-pandemic. The demands of the profession also have an impact on pupils, with happy productive classrooms depending on happy teachers. Given that teachers will play a key role in supporting children to recover from the impact of the pandemic both academically and emotionally, the need to promote teacher resilience has never been more urgent. This project will adopt a socio-ecological approach to promoting teacher resilience, which views resilience not as something which resides solely within the teacher, but as distributed across the individual, their environment and the interactions between them. The project will bring together interdisciplinary expertise from across education and psychology with professional expertise and experience from teachers, school leaders, policy consultants, the National Education Union (NEU) and the charity, Education Support. These project partners/advisers will come together in a series of Education Innovation Labs to contribute to each stage of the research process. The project will have 4 key phases: 1. Quantitative phase - Survey data will be collected from teachers across England. This will help us to model the relationships between different factors related to teacher resilience (both at the individual and school level) and how they affect key outcomes such as wellbeing, job satisfaction and risk of burnout. 2. Participatory research phase - A range of 'ecology-mapping' methods will be designed and used with teachers to explore how these factors play out in teachers' working lives. This will help us to put the quantitative findings into context as well as generating new understandings about which factors are most significant to teachers working in specific contexts. This mapping phase will take place across 5 primary schools (3 working together within one academy trust) and 3 secondary schools in England. The schools will act as project partners throughout the project, contributing to research design and analysis of the findings as well as collecting data within schools. 3. Developing pathways to resilience - The findings from the previous two phases will be used to develop ways to promote school resilience at both the individual and school level. The research team will work together with project partners and advisers in the Education Innovation Labs to develop 'ecological interventions' (interventions aimed at the school environment as well as individual teachers). A bank of resilience strategies will be generated within the Labs, drawing upon existing research as well as the academic and professional expertise across the project partner team. Participating teachers at the 8 project partner schools will develop interventions tailored to their individual needs and school contexts, which will draw upon and extend this bank of strategies. The schools will implement the interventions and evaluate the impact that they have on teacher resilience using a mixed methods approach. 4. Broadening impact - We will share the findings with schools across the UK as well as researchers within the field. The project partner schools will cascade training to the other schools in their trusts and alliances. A training package, generated by the project, will be made freely available online and will be promoted UK wide through the NEU, Education Support and MMU's teacher education networks. An online course will also be created for student teachers and promoted to UK universities. This work will embedded into the NEU's Value Education, Value Educators strategy and shared with other researchers through conferences and articles.