Explore the talks and workshops we offer to students interested in the subjects that sit within Education and Society.
When contacting us, please specify your preferred workshop(s) and proposed dates/times. Specific topics may be subject to availability; however, an alternative workshop will be offered if your first choice is unavailable.
"I speak but my words fall away": Capturing Children's and Young People's Voices
In this interactive session, students will explore ways of researching with children and young people, capturing their voices about issues that directly affect them. They’ll work together to come up with creative ways of researching, focusing on themes such as health, education, technology, and the environment.
For the Love of Books: Exploring Reading for Pleasure
Analyse some well-loved picture books, including ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, and ‘Gorilla’ by Anthony Browne. Students will consider how texts work, as well as the role of storytelling in children’s lives with a particular focus on children as storytellers.
Authoring Reading Spaces: Children Designing and Creating Reading Spaces
Explore the design and development of reading spaces that encourage and engage children in reading for pleasure. Children as authors of their own reading spaces will be considered in a range of different contexts, as well as different ways of capturing children’s own ideas and experiences of their everyday reading practices.
Inclusive Practice and SEND Teacher Training
Focusing on pupils with SEND, students will examine how these children are supported effectively to reach their full potential. They’ll analyse legislation and policy, including inclusive pedagogical approaches.
Custody Contexts and Vulnerabilities
What really happens when vulnerable people enter the custody suite? This session shines a light on one of the criminal justice system’s earliest and most critical entry points. Through real-life case studies, students will explore how vulnerability is identified and managed and hear first-hand from a criminology practitioner working locally and nationally in Appropriate Adult provision. The session also introduces an exclusive opportunity for criminology students to train as Appropriate Adults with the Northumbria Local Appropriate Adult Scheme (NLAAS), offering unique, hands-on experience from the very start of their degree.
Crime, Space and Place
Does where crime happens matter as much as why it happens? This workshop examines how space and place shape offending, victimisation, and perceptions of safety. From inner-city streets to digital environments, students will consider how geography, social structures, and community dynamics fuel crime and how rethinking space can open up new paths for prevention and justice.
The Criminology of Black Friday Sales
What can a shopping day teach us about crime and society? This session uses Black Friday as a case study to explore the chaotic meeting point of consumer culture, transgression, and social order. Students will uncover how cultural criminology explains the rise in crime and disorder during these events, and debate whether the blame lies with unruly shoppers or with the commercial forces that fuel the frenzy.
Criminology and the Online Space
Explore how the media may influence public perception of an offender, victim, and criminal justice stereotypes. Students will look at examples of true crime documentaries and/or other media representations and how this impacts criminal justice practices.
Technology-Facilitated Violence: Has Violence Changed?
This session explores how digital technologies have reshaped patterns of violence, from online harassment to cyberstalking. Students will consider whether technology has created new forms of harm or simply extended old ones into new spaces.
Pop Culture Depictions of Violence Against Women and Girls
This session examines how film, television, music, and social media portray violence against women and girls. Students will reflect on how these depictions influence public attitudes, shape cultural norms, and affect understandings of gendered harm.
Violence Against Women and Girls
This session explores the many forms of violence women and girls face, from domestic abuse to harmful practices. Students will examine how culture, power, and inequality shape these harms, and how law, policy, and activism respond to them on both local and global levels.
The Criminology of Witchcraft: Fear, Power and Persecution
Why were so many people accused of witchcraft, and what does this reveal about crime and society? This session uses witch trials and accusations as a way to explore criminological themes of deviance, morality, and social control. Students will examine how fear, gender, and power shaped accusations in the past, and consider how ‘witch-hunts’ continue to appear in modern contexts. By linking history, culture, and criminological theory, this session encourages students to think critically about how societies define crime, and who gets labelled as ‘dangerous.’
Education: A Craft, an Art and a Science
Explore the different sectors within education and discuss the skills and qualities required when working within it. Students will consider education as a science and discuss some basic theories which underpin it.
Education Studies: Addressing Inequalities and Social Justice in the Context of Public Education
In this workshop, students will consider inequalities in education and the impact this can have on achievement, attainment, and progression. They’ll discuss current issues within education and address how these can be overcome.
Every Day is a School Day
Students will gain an understanding of education and learning that takes place outside the classroom and explore the various routes within education. They’ll examine the different options available and consider how they all work collectively to contribute to instilling education across the whole of society.
Influencing Education Outside the Classroom
Examine the different roles within education through practical activities and discussion, many of which are beyond the classroom. Students will explore the many influential roles within the education sector and the key skills that underpin each one.
Health and Inequalities
This workshop will allow students to learn more about sociological ideas and perspectives around health inequalities in the UK. They’ll gain an understanding of social factors within health, wellbeing, and illness by considering a range of social divisions such as class, gender, ethnicity, and age, as well as disadvantaged groups. The role of public policy and practice in tackling these inequalities will also be examined.
Health and Happiness
Students will gain knowledge and understanding of a range of factors relating to people’s health and wellbeing by addressing key areas, with particular emphasis placed on work carried out with vulnerable adults and children. They’ll consider corresponding health problems such as emotional health and/or behavioural problems and explore different approaches to working with children and vulnerable adults, relating the topic to health, education, and health promotion.
Health Research in the Media
Acquire the knowledge and skills to effectively understand, interpret, and critically appraise research findings. Students will learn about the research process in the field of health and consider how it may be reported, learning to recognise how health facts are represented to and understood by the public.
Health and Change
Build upon general psychosocial theories of childhood development with a focus on the often academically neglected areas of middle (7-11) and adolescent (11-18) years development. Students will explore the environmental factors that precede problems both within individuals and the wider society that emerge during these age stages. They’ll analyse up to date research and policy aimed at successfully supporting the needs and upholding the rights of these age groups of children and explore the different contexts within their communities.
Health
Explore how the health and wellbeing of children and young people is conceptualised in the UK and within international policy and practice. Students will gain an overview of the different models of health and the range of physical, psychosocial, sociological, and cultural factors that influence children and young people's health and wellbeing. They'll acknowledge how health is 'produced' and how contested notions of it emerge in policy and practice in a range of health and education settings. Students will also develop critical awareness of health behaviour change interventions and empowerment approaches.
A Day in the Life of a Trainee Teacher
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 1 hour Capacity: N/A
In this workshop, students will find out about what the life of a trainee teacher looks like via a fun and rhythmical journey.
It Started with a Book
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 1.5 hours Capacity: 30 students
Students will delve into the imaginative world of adventure, excitement and learning through the medium of books.
The Pros of Primary Teaching
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 1 hour Capacity: N/A
In this session, students will discover why it’s so amazing becoming a primary school teacher and working in education.
Policing as a Career
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 1 hour
Students will discover more about what a career in policing entails and whether they have what it takes to succeed in this exciting occupation. They’ll examine the various entry route into the police and get advice on what might be the best career option for them.
Missing Persons: A Risky Business
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 1 hour
In this interactive session, students will learn about how the police assess risk when conducting missing person investigations and the subjective nature of decision making.
Trust and Legitimacy
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 45 minutes
Discuss the principles that have underpinned British policing for almost 200 years and assess their relevance today. Using case studies, students will examine whether modern day communities still trust the police and what the consequences are for policing if they are seen to act without legitimacy.
Begging for a Home
Audience: Years 12 and 13 Duration: 45 minutes
In this thought-provoking session, students will examine the police approach to begging and homelessness. They’ll consider how the current police response to this growing issue has been shaped and whether it remains fit for purpose moving forward.