Summary

David Mather is Associate Head of School (Students) in the School of Education, Languages and Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth. He provides operational leadership for student experience, recruitment, retention, and student success, alongside shared oversight of teaching, learning, and assessment across the School.

He is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership and Management whose research focuses on recognition, identity, and transition, with particular interests in Armed Forces education and Armed Forces-connected learners. His work connects educational research with practice across higher education, defence, public service, and civic contexts.

David is the Founder and Academic Lead of #WeSeeYou, an initiative developed to strengthen how education recognises and responds to Armed Forces-connected learners and communities. This work has informed the developing See → Recognise → Respond model, which encourages educators and institutions to see the individual and their experience, recognise the knowledge, strengths, identities, and challenges they bring, and respond appropriately. Through #WeSeeYou, David works with Armed Forces, veteran, and Blue Light communities, schools, universities, and partner organisations to develop research, professional learning, and educational practice.

He is Course Leader for the Postgraduate Certificate in Armed Forces Education, Training and Skills, developed in partnership with the Royal Air Force. The programme supports those who teach, train, and lead learning within Armed Forces contexts and reflects wider engagement with defence education and the recognition of professional learning and experience.

David’s doctoral research explores the experiences of military veterans undertaking Initial Teacher Education. It examines military-to-civilian transition not simply as the acquisition of new skills or movement between occupational settings, but as a process involving the renegotiation of professional identity. His research considers how previous experience, knowledge, and forms of professional capital are recognised, valued, or misrecognised as individuals enter new educational and professional contexts.

The ideas emerging from this work also inform David’s wider research and practice. In particular, he is interested in student transitions, student success, educational leadership, organisational culture, and the experiences of those whose strengths, experiences, or needs may be less immediately visible within educational institutions. Across these areas, his work considers how recognition can help us understand transition differently and how educational institutions can become better at recognising what people already bring with them, rather than beginning with assumptions about what they lack.

His doctoral thesis, Leaders of Learning: The Role of Initial Teacher Education in Armed Forces to Civilian Transition and the Renegotiation of Professional Identity, develops these ideas through an examination of how military experience and professional identity are understood and renegotiated within Initial Teacher Education.