School of Education
Research Seminar Series 2008-2009
Room 7.02 from 12.15 pm to 1.30 pm
Research Seminar Series 2008-2009
23rd Sept 08
Cathy Nutbrown
Arts Based Learning in the Early Years: An evaluation of an arts
intervention project
This seminar reports an evaluation of an arts-based learning project which
took place in six early years setting in a large town in Northern England.
Funded by Creative Partnerships/Arts Council England, two artists worked
with children and practitioners in six early years settings; two Foundation
Stage classes, two Sure Start settings and two independent day nurseries.
Children were aged from six months to five years. The seminar will focus
on use of evaluation methodologies, within an original analytical
framework (ORIM-Arts) to illuminate arts based learning in terms
opportunities, interaction, recognition and a model. Outcomes of the
evaluation
include:
an
analysis
of
children’s
arts-based
learning
experiences and viewpoints of the artists and practitioners. The seminar
will be an opportunity to reflect on the role of the Arts across all areas of
young children's learning and consider how, when artists and early
childhood practitioners combine their roles, something distinctive in terms
of curriculum and pedagogy can occur.
21st October 08
Julia Davies
Dudes, Geeks, Street-art and the City OR Explorations of Identity,
Space and New Literacies
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The convergence of Web 2.0 technologies with everyday life is affecting
our sense of ourselves and the spaces we inhabit. In this seminar I present
data from research investigating the on and offline practices of individuals
and groups who have been active in a photosharing website, Flickr.com. I
reflect on how Web 2.0 activities within Flickr have been transformative in
how participants read the world and present themselves and at how the
boundaries between online and offline spaces become fluid.
I use examples taken from streetart, as well as from the unlikely images
taken of cupcakes (the sugar dudes) in a New York bakery. The
interactions on Flickr are presented as instantiating both learning and
literacy as a social practice (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Lave & Wenger,
1991) within a context that can be conceptualised as simultaneously
global and local. I finally come to
discuss how some of the practices and events I describe in this
presentation might be considered to instantiate what is meant by the
term ‘New Literacies’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006).
Geeks and non-geeks, Dudes and non dudes, all welcome.
References
Barton, D. & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading and w iting in
one community. London: Routledge.
Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) (2nd edition) New Literacies: Everyday
Practices and Classroom Learning. London: Open University Press.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
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18th Nov 08
Tim Corcoran
Heterotopics
The purpose of inquiry is to achieve
agreement among human beings about
what to do, to bring about consensus on
the ends to be achieved and the means to
be used to achieve those ends (Rorty,
1999, p. xxv)
In our ongoing attempts to understand human being, obstacles regularly
present which thwart agreement and consensus. These obstructions are
fundamental to our knowledging practices because they exist in the
language games (Wittgenstein, 1953) through which understanding is
performed and attained.
The aim of this seminar is to canvass an
alternate approach – an approach which creates a way to discuss next
possible actions and consider the most appropriate ways to go on.
Heterotopic inquiry looks to do just this by prying open dialogic space so
that differing viewpoints can be acknowledged and heard in processes of
contestation and negotiation. This discursive move is particularly relevant
for debating the kinds of relationships suggested to exist between
knowledging practices and social action. Whether or not total agreement
is possible or necessary is not at issue here and is more likely to be of
importance to monologic or homotopic orientations. Rather, the crux of
the matter is the provision of and our accessibility to inclusive and
adaptable means through which dialogue can engage the complexities of
human being.
4
16th Dec 08
Mark Payne
An investigation of Japanese communicative language pedagogy
As uncovering of language teachers’ beliefs, personal ideas, and
experiences rather than just their behaviours has become more prominent
in teacher education, so too has a reformulation of our conceptualizations
of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and an increased emphasis
on teaching context (see Sato & Kleinsasser, 1999; Bax, 2003). Taking
stock of language teacher education now involves investigating how
individual teachers interpret the methodologies presented to them in preand in-service training and translate this to their teaching environment.
The aim of this paper is to present recent results of a study documenting
how two teachers of Japanese, one of British origin and one of Japanese
origin, filtered the CLT methodology they encountered on a PGCE course
through their cultural backgrounds and learning experiences and how this
translated to their classroom teaching. Preliminary results indicate that
both teachers held differing, sometimes conflicting views of CLT which
points to the difficulties of defining CLT or offering it as a methodological
choice. Incorporating examples from data in the form of classroom
observation field notes and semi-structured interviews, this presentation
seeks to add to the discussion surrounding the importance of teacher
education programs which prioritize teachers’ background and teaching
context in course content.
Bax, S. (2003). The end of CLT: a context approach to language teaching.
ELT Journal 57(3): 278-287.
Sato, K. & Kleinsasser, R. C. (1999). Communicative language teaching
(CLT): Practical understandings. The Modern Language Journal 83: 494517.
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20th Jan 09
Kate Pahl
Every object tells a story: family learning through artefacts
This presentation describes a series of research projects funded by MLA
Yorkshire and the Knowledge Transfer Opportunities Fund. Following on
from the ‘Every object tells a story’ family learning pack, a project was
funded to work with the World of James Herriott museum in North
Yorkshire. The aim was to work with a group of families to create a family
book of stories. The focus was to look at the relationship between
parental interaction, objects in the home and stories and show how these
activities can support literacy in school. The project involved creating a
family collection of objects, photographing home objects as stimulus for
writing, creating a box of objects and talking about the objects to others,
writing stories collaboratively about home objects and stories and finally
producing a film on CD Rom of family stories. The research aimed to
trace the processes and practices of producing the stories using digital
cameras and also use disposable cameras going home to trace this and
provide a research record of the project. Another project with Shandy
Hall, where Sterne wrote Tristam Shandy, worked with a visual artist to
look at the relationship between place, space and non-linear narratives
with a particular focus on boys writing at KS3. In both project the focus
was on how the museum could stimulate writing and how artefacts can
support literacy learning in informal settings. The presentation will
consider how this kind of work can be developed further in the context of
museum and family education.
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24th Feb 09
Bob Toynton
I am what I think: The pitfalls, the pratfalls and the point of autoethnography"
What tempts, leads or even forces a researcher to ‘indulge’ in autoethnography; to put out in the literature not only evidence of scholarship
(hopefully), but also core aspects of the self and of the very personal? The
aim of the research was to bring out into the literature the issues raised
in teaching and learning with people who identify themselves as being
different, but where the difference is secret: The invisible Other.
Justifying to the self the need for auto-ethnography and the validity of
the approach became just as important as the approach itself. Here the
concept of case study as artefact (as opposed to artifice) was central.
True to the topic, this seminar explores the experience of an individual
recognising the necessity for auto-ethnography, and exploring ways of
ensuring the emotional and the objective, the individual and the general,
the lived and the theoretical all co-exist and survive from first thoughts to
post-publication. Here the focus is on methodology rather than outcome,
and the process through which the particular approach adopted, gradually
evolved.
24th March 09
Jackie Marsh
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Parents as co-researchers of children’s multimodal communicative
practices
This paper outlines a study (conducted by Peter Hannon, Jackie Marsh,
Margaret Lewis and Louise Ritchie) in which four parents played an active
part in data collection for a project in which their young children’s
multimodal, multimedia practices in the home were the focus. The
project’s aims were to identify the range and nature of young children’s
engagement in multimodal practices mediated by new technologies and
to identify ways in which parents/carers could be involved as coresearchers in the research process. The study involved the development
of in-depth case studies of four children, two girls and two boys, aged
from two to four years. Parents were involved in the collection of data
relating to children’s digital literacy practices over the period of one
month and were interviewed a number of times about the data they
collected This paper draws on the visual data collected by parents, their
diary entries, the interview data and the reflections of the researchers who
visited the parents in an analysis of the opportunities and challenges
presented by engaging with participants in the research process in this
way. The paper reflects on the various roles and responsibilities
embedded within research projects, such as initial conceptualisation,
identification of research questions, research design, data collection, data
analysis, writing up and dissemination and reflects critically on the
different roles played by researchers and parents in this project. The
notion of ‘co-researchers’, it is argued, signals active participation in the
research process by parents but the differential levels of involvement and
engagement in the research need to be recognised. The implications for
future collaborative projects with parents/ carers are identified.
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21st April 09
Jason Sparks
Transnationalizing Professional Identity
This seminar reports on my research of five Vietnamese university
teacher-educators working in the area of Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages (TESOL) who did MA and PhD degrees in Englishspeaking countries, namely Australia, the United States, and New Zealand.
All five educators reported that their overseas experiences, facilitated by
national educational policies aimed at adopting “key global achievements
and international approaches,” resulted in dramatic professional identity
transformation around the practices of teaching and doing academic
research in a ‘Western’ academic context. Using primarily interviews and
participant observation, and drawing on Aihwa Ong, Anthony Giddens and
James Paul Gee as theoretical resources, this research explored the ways
the professional identities of these five educators were forged and
sustained through their engagement with the spaces and practices of
what
I
am
calling
the
‘emerging
transnational
academic
TESOL
community.’ Significant to the discussion are the ways these educators
navigated a range of critical obstacles to sustaining and developing their
identities as teachers and academic researchers upon return to Vietnam,
as well as the tensions that emerged working simultaneously in
transnational and national academic contexts. This presentation may
suggest a range of issues of interest to us in the School as we consider
what it means to ‘internationalize’ our practice, and specifically, what it
means to develop researchers from the UK and abroad to work in the
emerging transnational academic communities we
share.
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19th May 09
Gareth Parry
Why do the English value sectors?
At the same time that England abandoned a binary division in higher
education, it legislated for a two-sector system of further education and
higher education. Such arrangements assume that higher and further
education stand for different levels of learning and, for this reason, should
be provided by separate types of tertiary organisation. However,
government policy in recent years has looked to expand higher education
in further education colleges and support mergers between universities
and colleges that widen participation and enhance progression. These
measures form part of a larger policy experiment to change the pattern of
future demand for undergraduate education, with implications for the
significance and survival of sectors. In analysing and discussing these
developments, the seminar will draw on the findings of a two-year ESRCfunded study of Universal Access and Dual Regimes of Further and Higher
Education (the FurtherHigher Project).
23rd June 09
Jools Page
Who’s crying now? : Life-stories of six mothers of young babies
Key policies in England (DCSF, 2008) are beginning to embrace the notion
of strong attachments with significant adults (key persons, Elfer et el.
2003) to support the personal, social and emotional development of
babies and children in day care settings. But what is it really like for a
mother to leave her young baby in the arms of a practitioner in a
childcare setting and return to work? Even if she wants there to be a
strong bond between the practitioner and the child how can she be sure
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that her relationship with her baby is not threatened, moreover that she is
not replaced by the practitioner? This seminar presents some findings of
life-historical research with six mothers who took decisions about
returning to work after the birth of their first baby. As well as outlining
the complexity of a research design to learn about these issues the
seminar will highlight the complex issues of attachment faced by them
when their babies (all under a year old) were cared for outside of the
family.
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