CRE Events 2020/21
The Centre for Research in Education holds research events to showcase the research of its members.
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The Centre for Research in Education holds research events to showcase the research of its members.
'Competing Concepts of Practice' by Professor Maggie Gregson and Associate Professor Trish Spedding
Wednesday 23 June 2021
'Professions-Facing'
Monday 14 June 2021
As the University looks forward to 2025, one of our primary ambitions is to be professions-facing, and our Strategic Plan commits us to developing 'highly-skilled', ready-for-work graduates through career-focused teaching and learning'.
The call to be professions-facing raises many complex questions.
What do the terms such as ‘ready-for-work’ and ‘career-focused’ really mean?
Do employers and academics define such terms in comparable ways?
Do universities and workplaces value skills and attributes such as creativity and criticality in the same ways?
How do academics view the world of work?
How do employers view the academy?
How does the three-year university degree model fit with increasingly complex career patterns that may last 50 years or more?
What are the skills and attributes of workplace readiness and who decides what these are?
What relational tensions or synergies might exist between the university sector and the professions?
How do theory-based disciplines face the professions?
What is the future for disciplines that may have, or may be perceived to have, less obvious connections to the workplace?
How do Universities foster professionalism in their wider operations?
Should Universities be centrally committed to work-place preparation?
What implications does a professions-led strategy have for the long-term future of universities as institutions?
What might popular culture representations of work, workplaces, and professions teach us about our relationship to the world of work?
The Faculty of Education and Society was pleased to host the discussion of such wide-reaching issues in Professions-Facing, its third annual staff research conference.
Abstracts were invited from members of the academic staff on any aspect of the relationship between the university sector and the world of work including but not limited to pedagocical aspects, theoretical aspects, practice-based aspects, technological aspects, relational aspects, and methodological aspects; linguistic, sociological, cultural, political, economic, and philosophical aspects; and aspects related to literary and/or popular culture representations.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, analyses of how new ways of working affected all aspects of our relationships to the professions were also welcome.
‘Rethinking assessment: the catalyst to a cultural revolution’ by Alison Griffiths and Vikki Wynn
Wednesday 12 May 2021
'Lost in translation: Trainee Teachers’ Perspectives on using Maths Mastery Textbooks' by Gillian Parker
Wednesday 14 April 2021
'The Ghost Pupils: From booths to off the books’ by Jo Mcshane
Wednesday 3 March 2021
‘In what way can educators support Year 6 children throughout the SATs process to encourage successful academic and personal outcomes?’ by Vicki Jowett
Wednesday 3 February 2021
This seminar looked to include the voices of children in the overall consideration of how educators can support Year 6 children. Testing is a contentious issue within educational circles with strong feelings around the dangers of high stakes testing on the development of children. However, it is recognised that there is a dearth of studies which directly consider the perspectives of children. This study seeks to utilise a methodological approach that allows children’s voices to be heard to document authentic, timely and subjective responses, rather than relying on teacher or parent interpretations of the children’s experiences. Using data gathered from a ‘draw and tell’ technique alongside individual interviews with Year 6 children, themes emerge which reveal an insight into children’s emotions and experiences around Year 6 SATs. Alongside this, data gathered from a year-long ‘vlog’ where children individually and privately express their feelings at set times throughout Year 6, provides a valuable opportunity to directly interact with the perceptions of the children experiencing the testing phenomenon.
By listening to the voices of children, this study seeks to identify areas that contribute to the prevailing negativity that surrounds testing. Equally, the research aim is to allow the children’s voices to build an awareness of positive pedagogical strategies that can be adopted to help mitigate the negative emotions experienced during this time, and to consider approaches that can build emotional adaptability that helps to combat fear of failure and ensure successful academic and personal outcomes.
‘Moving Beyond Foucault with Linguistic Approaches to Popular Culture in Educational Research: Lessons about Language, Identity, and Inclusion from an Unlikely Place’ - by Associate Professor in Pragmatic Stylistics, Dr Susan Mandala
Wednesday 20 January 2021
Novice researchers in education are in many ways well prepared for research. When it comes to dealing with linguistic approaches and language data, however, they may be poorly served. As Dr Susan Mandala showed in this paper, language and discourse emerge as a minority area in mainstream educational research, and within this minority the ‘dominant discourse’ in discourse is Foucault. Susan demonstrated, with reference to existing research in education, that this tendency to lean on Foucault has some unfortunate side effects for educational research interested in language and then offer a novel alternative analysis from a linguistic perspective. She closed with some thoughts on opening a dialogue between Foucauldian and linguistic approaches to language and discourses, and the implications this may have for future directions in educational research.
As part of her talk, Susan discussed some of the data in the following paper:
• Rodden, B., Prendeville, P., Burke, S., and Kinsella, W. (2019). ‘Framing secondary teachers’ perspectives on the inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder using critical discourse analysis’. Cambridge Journal of Education 49 (2): 235-253.
'Internet Video Calling and Desktop Sharing (VCDS)as an Emerging Research Method for Exploring Pedagogical Reasoning in Lesson Planning' - by Dr Elizabeth Hidson
Wednesday 2 December 2020
'The use of theographs to understand the journeys of children excluded from school' - by Sarah Martin-Denham
Wednesday 11 November 2020
‘If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything’ (Biesta, 2020) - School of Education, online round table discussion
Wednesday 21 October 2020
'Linguistic Approaches and Educational Research: Thinking Seriously About Shifting Paradigms' by Dr Susan Mandala
Wednesday 19 May 2021
'Stories of Supervision' by Trish Spedding
Wednesday 28 April 2021