Department of Education Public Seminars: Recent Episodes
Oxford University
Public seminars from the Department of Education. Oxford has been making a major contribution to the field of education for over 100 years and today this Department has a world class reputation for research, for teacher education and for its Masters and doctoral programmes.
Our aim is to provide an intellectually rich but supportive environment in which to study, to research and to teach and, through our work, to contribute to the improvement of all phases of public education, both in the UK and internationally.
This seminar explores the process of formal and informal exclusion from the macro, meso and micro level to understand some of the complex interactions between policy, school and individual factors. Government statistics indicate that children and young people with special educational needs are five times more likely to be excluded from secondary schools, and account for just under half of excluded pupils. This seminar will explore the process of formal and informal exclusion from the macro, meso and micro level to understand some of the complex interactions between policy, school and individual factors. The significance of these on the lives of young people will be illustrated with reference to data drawn from the topical life histories of autistic girls. These portray the experience of having ones’ needs continually underestimated or misunderstood coupled with a lack of in-school support.
This talk discusses the latest understanding of mental health needs in adolescent populations in the UK and the potential role that mental health services in schools can play. This talk will discuss the latest understanding of mental health needs in adolescent populations in the UK and the potential role that mental health services in schools can play. An example of current research alongside clinical service development will be discussed. The opportunities and challenges of mental health services working in schools will be explored, including how to navigate some of the ethical complexities of working in this areas as well as some of the main unanswered research questions that can be addressed through schools-research. A particular focus will be on how this relates to excluded children- what we know about their mental health needs and the role of services.
This presentation will discuss the place of Alternative Provision (AP) in the process of exclusion in England, with a particular focus on issues related to social justice. This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE). This presentation will discuss the place of Alternative Provision (AP) in the process of exclusion in England, with a particular focus on issues related to social justice. Consideration will be given to some of the reasons why young people find themselves in AP. It will highlight the ways in which AP can serve to further marginalise young people who are already alienated by the education system. However, it will also draw on data from English AP sites to demonstrate how such sites can work to ensure that young people excluded from mainstream schools are retained in education. The choice is sometimes not between AP and the mainstream, but AP or no education. In some AP sites young people suggest that they are far happier than they were in the mainstream and, when it is provided can be engaged in meaningful learning. The presentation will consider why that it is and whether or not there are lessons to be learned from the AP sector which can help to make mainstream schools more inclusive. Throughout the presentation the voices of teachers and students in AP will be foregrounded. There will also be some discussion of international approaches to AP.
This seminar reports on the ongoing work of the multi-disciplinary and multi-site Excluded Lives Group whose work has led to the ESRC funds project The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences. There are great differences in the rates of permanent school exclusion in different parts of the UK with numbers rising rapidly in England but remaining relatively low or falling in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For example, in the last available figures there were 7,900 permanent exclusions in England in 2017/18 compared to just three in Scotland in 2018/19. However, these figures do not account for many informal and illegal forms of exclusion. This seminar will report on the ongoing work of the multi-disciplinary (criminology, disability studies, economics, education, human geography, law, psychiatry, sociology) and multi-site (Oxford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, LSE) Excluded Lives group established in 2014. This work has led to the ESRC funded project The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences (PolESE). In this research, home international comparisons of historical and current policy, practice and legal frameworks relating to school exclusion will be conducted for the first time. Previous research and official statistics show that school exclusions are far more likely to affect pupils with special needs, from low income families, and particular ethnic backgrounds. Exclusions have long and short-term consequences in terms of academic achievement, well-being, mental health, and future economic and employment prospects. PolESE is designed to highlight ways in which fairer and more productive outcomes can be achieved for pupils, their families, and professionals by comparing the ways in which policy and practice around exclusions differ in the four jurisdictions.
Released in May 2019, the Augar report was a result of a 6 person panel chaired by Philip Augar and was the first in England to have a remit for the whole of tertiary education. Parry argues whether its features are the nature of expert panels. The use of expert panels to advise governments is a favoured form of policy inquiry process. In higher education, especially in the UK, they have replaced committees of inquiry in the tradition of Robbins and Dearing. In further education, there were no such independent inquiries in the first place. Although sitting inside a government-led review and observing its no-go areas, the six-person panel chaired by Philip Augar (which reported in May) was the first, at least in England, to have a remit for the whole of tertiary education. In assessing the system of higher and further education in England, and making recommendations about how it might be strengthened, the panel needed to assemble and generate evidence on a wide front. The scope of the task was worthy of a larger and longer inquiry. The result was a report short on policy history and lesson-drawing but with data and analysis marshalled in support of its core contentions. Most of its recommendations were financial and regulatory. None were structural. The present architecture of tertiary education was deemed fit for purpose. Here also was an inquiry process aligned to existing government policy for a two-type system of academic and technical education. That policy was the creation of another government-convened panel (chaired by David Sainsbury). Two of its members subsequently served on the Augar team. Such features, it will be argued, are of the nature of expert panels. The work they accomplish should be judged accordingly.
This lecture explores the different types of artificial intelligence systems in common use in education, before relating this to the covert use of algorithms in influencing educational journeys. The introduction of artificial intelligence in schools is likely to have a profound impact on relationships between teachers and their students. This lecture explores the different types of artificial intelligence systems in common use in education, before relating this to the covert use of algorithms in influencing educational journeys. This in turn is used to highlight data privacy rights issues for children and young people, particularly in relation to the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) introduced in 2018. The lecture then analyses the uncritical adoption of artificial intelligence systems in schools, discussing how this might inform future education policies. Achieving a balance between individual pedagogic rights, data privacy rights and effective use of data is a difficult challenge, and one not easily supported by current regulation. The lecture concludes by proposing a new framework for artificial intelligence use in schools.
With the rising interest in GCE, understanding the current research landscape could be useful for policy-makers, educators and scholars who seek to build upon the existing body of knowledge and develop it in new directions. The global increase of the incorporation of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) related contents in education systems in recent decades has generated a vast body of scholarship, both empirical and theoretical. An explanation for the rise in GCE internationally is often described as a response to economic, social and political changes that have made countries more interconnected through enhanced international mobility and financial interdependency. Globalization is claimed to lead to more diverse societies that require engagement with broader, more inclusive conceptions of citizenship, thus leading to the need of incorporation GCE into national curricula to various extents. As scholarship in this field had developed accordingly, there is a need for a systematic analysis of the topics and sub-fields that emerged and examined within this broad concept.
We performed a systematic review of research dealing with Global Citizenship Education (GCE) between 2006-2017 using Natural Language Processing (NLP) followed by network analysis to record and interpret the development of this field of research and highlight the trajectories of the current academic scholarship within teachers’ education. The analysis showed how studies surrounding GCE being discussed in the scholarship, forming intricate, and encompassing distinct areas such as education for sustainable development and critical thinking. We also highlight some notable omissions in the contemporary research, topics that appear to be under-represented in the research on GCE. Considering the rising interest in GCE, understanding the current research landscape could be useful for policy-makers, educators and scholars who seek to build upon the existing body of knowledge and develop it in new directions.
Naomi Eisenstadt presents evidence that low income itself reduces the chances of good outcomes for children and causes stress in families which exacerbates the risk. Much of the current discussion on children’s outcomes has focused on educational attainment, schools, and parental behaviours. This lecture will provide evidence that low income itself reduces the chances of good outcomes for children and that the stress caused in families by low income exacerbates the risk. While supportive and engaged parents, good early childhood education and good schools all reduce the risk of poor outcomes, money makes at least as much difference as parents and teachers.
This 2019 Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment lecture is delivered by Professor Nancy Perry. She is the Dorothy Lam Chair in Special Education and Professor of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. The talk is followed by a discussion led by OUCEA Director Associate Professor Therese N. Hopfenbeck. Self-regulated Learning (SRL) describes proactive and productive approaches to learning that enable learners to respond flexibly and adaptively to meet personal and social learning goals. Efforts to support students' SRL pair well with 21st Century learning goals and 'assessment for learning' (AfL) goals. In this talk, Prof Perry describes research that both advances knowledge and improves practice concerning SRL. Specifically, she discusses collaborations with primary school teachers to design and implement curriculum-linked, formative assessments that prompt and assess children's use of SRL processes.
Seminar 8 of 8 on teacher education reforms. Alis unpacks the notion of 'capacity' through a historiography of initiatives and a review of attempts at conceptual development. Much has been written about the alleged lack of integration between research and practice in teacher education and also about the perceived fragmentation of teacher education research. The answer to the conundrum is often 'building research capacity': the UK has a decades-long history of publicly-funded initiatives to build capacity to engage with and in research in initial and continuing teacher education and in teaching practice. But questions lurk behind the soundbite: what capacity, whose, and built how, by, and for whom? In this talk, Alis will aim to unpack the notion of 'capacity' through a historiography of initiatives and a review of attempts at conceptual development. She will then use insights from two recent national initiatives, in Wales (see Oancea, Childs, Fancourt, Robson and Thompson, 2018) and in Norway, to sketch out a framework and agenda for a more holistic, equitable, research-informed and practice-oriented notion of capacity building for research in teacher education.
Alis Oancea is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Research Policy and Director of Research at the Department of Education. She specialises in studies of research policy and governance and in philosophy of research – including work on research assessment, impact and knowledge exchange, research funding, research quality, evaluation, open knowledge practices, research ethics, capacity, publication practices, and the cultural value of research in the arts and the humanities. This strand of work is complemented with a strong interest in teacher education research, innovation in teacher education policy and practice, knowledge and values in the teaching profession, and the role of research in teacher education. She has two PhDs, one in policy and governance for research (from the University of Oxford), and one in epistemology and research.
This seminar examines the alignments and tensions between teacher education research, policy and practice. This is the sixth seminar in a series of eight public seminars on 'Future directions in teacher education research, practice and policy'. The seminar series is organised by the Department of Education. Diane will analyse the ways in which teacher education has been conceptualised at various points in time during the past 50 years highlighting the related knowledge bases for teaching and the policies driving accountability regimes during that time. Then she will go on to focus on the current policy moment which is positioning teacher education as a policy problem requiring a national solution and large-scale reform agendas. Diane will also consider future opportunities for teacher education researchers in terms of research in, on and for teacher education.
This lecture explores why efforts to improve teaching too often fail and outlines new research on pedagogy and teacher development, which has been achieving promising signs of real change.
Seminar five of eight in series "Future directions in teacher education research, practice and policy". The significance of teacher education has increased globally over recent decades. From international reports through to political manifestoes in many countries, teacher education is seen as crucial in the development of successful education systems. Within a globalized world, therefore, teacher education has become a key plank of economic and social development. The character and worth of teacher education nevertheless are contested in some contexts resulting in significant variations in how global influences have interacted with specific trajectories in different nation states. Comparative research on teacher education reveals important paradoxes. While the importance of preparing highly qualified teachers is widely recognized, lack of common definitions and prevailing assumptions about what it means to learn to teach affect in significant ways the structure, the curriculum and the pedagogy of teacher education globally. Views on the knowledge, skills and dispositions that teachers need to be effective and how to acquire them are highly variable and result in significant differences in their ability to teach an increasingly complex curriculum to diverse learners. As many nations attempt to increase the supply of qualified teachers as a prerequisite to accomplish UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals, engagement in comparative education research may help to re-imagine the teacher education project and to reconstruct a fragmented professional field.
This public seminar series considers teacher education reforms around the world in order to tease out future directions and possibilities for the relationships between teacher education policy, research and practice. In Wales there is a growing appetite for the country to set out a new and fundamentally different vision for what education is and should be; a vision that puts young people and their learning needs at the centre. What links many of the proposed changes is a fundamentally different conception of what it is to be a teacher in Wales. This in turn has major implications for initial teacher education (ITE). Over the last five years John Furlong has worked closely with the Welsh Government in order to help re-vision the country’s ITE provision. In this seminar he will outline the research underlying the reforms that are taking place and discuss the role of ITE in making change happen.
John Furlong, OBE is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. He was Director of the department from 2003-2009. A former President of the British Educational Research Association, he is currently Chair of the Teacher Education Accreditation Board for Wales. His book, ‘Education – an anatomy of the discipline’, was awarded first prize by the British Society for Educational Studies for the best educational research of 2015 and his most recent book ‘Knowledge and the Study of Education – an international exploration’ was published 2017. John was awarded the OBE for services to research in education in 2017.
This seminar is number four in an eight-part public seminar series on ‘Future directions in teacher education research, practice and policy’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Diane Mayer (Professor of Education (Teacher Education)) and Alis Oancea (Professor of Philosophy of Education and Research Policy and Director of Research).
Seminar two of eight in series "Future directions in teacher education research, practice and policy". This seminar is based on a recent book, which aims to help researchers and practitioners understand how and why interventions can be successful or not. Seminar Abstract: This seminar is based on a recent book, titled ‘Classroom-based Interventions Across Subject Areas’, jointly authored by members of the department’s Subject Pedagogy Research Group and other affiliated researchers and practitioners. Taking as its basis research which has been conducted in actual classrooms with close collaboration between researchers and practitioners, the book aims to help researchers and practitioners understand how and why interventions can be successful or not. The text further considers the broad theoretical and practical issues that derive from intervention studies, including ways of adapting effective classroom-based interventions for use in different contexts. The seminar will start with a brief introduction to the topic of classroom-based interventions, followed by four examples of classroom-based interventions in English, mathematics, science, and history. It will conclude with a commentary drawing across the presentations with a particular focus on implications for teacher education.
About the Series: This public seminar series considers teacher education reforms around the world in order to tease out future directions and possibilities for the relationships between teacher education policy, research and practice. The series marks 100 years since the passing of a statute creating what was known in 1919 as the University Department for the Training of Teachers. Join us this term as we mark the Oxford University Department of Education’s 100th anniversary through this series of public events that pay particular tribute to our contributions in the field of teacher education today.
Seminar led by a panel of heads of colleges and senior tutors to discuss Oxford's student selection process At the University of Oxford first degree student selection is not ultimately determined by central admissions but is handled by the colleges, though the process of application is standardised across the colleges and prospective students must meet the academic requirements for their intended courses. All Oxford colleges are closely committed to student learning and development but there are various policies and procedures concerning selection, with implications for the student mix. The seminar will be led by a panel of heads of college, and senior tutors. After short presentations from each member of the panel and the respondent there will be open discussion.
The ethical case for reducing entry requirements for disadvantaged learners Vikki Boliver: UK universities are increasingly being called upon to reduce academic entry requirements for disadvantaged applicants as a vital means of promoting fairer access to higher education. This contextualised approach to university admission recognises that the school attainment of disadvantaged learners does not necessarily do justice to their academic potential, and that standard entry requirements typically exceed the minimum needed to succeed at degree level. In this lecture, I lay out the ethical case for reducing entry requirements for disadvantaged learners, arguing that fairness is best conceptualised in terms of distributive rather than procedural justice. Drawing on the findings of research projects funded by the Scottish Funding Council, the ESRC and the Nuffield Foundation, I show that entry requirements could be reduced significantly for disadvantaged learners without ‘setting them up to fail’, but that universities are often conflicted about reducing entry requirements given the prestige attached to admitting only high achievers who can be expected to succeed at university as a matter of course. I also discuss the scope for radical reductions in entry requirements, in conjunction with more active support for students’ learning whilst at university. Finally, I argue that contextualised admissions policies must be targeted accurately if they are to be effective, which means using administratively verified individual-level measures of contextual disadvantage, rather than area level measures such as the POLAR measure of low HE participation areas.
Professor Marilyn Cochran-Smith argues why we need to “reclaim” teacher education accountability for the profession and in support of the larger democratic project. During the past two decades in the U.S. and some other countries, there has been a growing consensus that university teacher preparation is failing and that holding teacher education accountable through vigilant public evaluation and monitoring will fix it. Treating the U.S. as a kind of cautionary tale, this presentation exposes “the problem with accountability” by unpacking the assumptions underlying major accountability initiatives, revealing their lack of evidence, and arguing that they have a negative impact on the work of teacher education. Despite these problems, Professor Cochran-Smith does not conclude that accountability is the wrong direction for teacher education. Rather she argues that we need to “reclaim” teacher education accountability for the profession and in support of the larger democratic project.
This seminar will review the evidence on access to postgraduate study, identify what this might mean for funders, universities and their communities, and outline outstanding gaps in our knowledge. Participation in postgraduate study has increased considerably over the last quarter century. Despite this expansion, access to postgraduate study has received relatively little attention from researchers and policymakers. There are concerns that gains in undergraduate participation may be nullified by inequalities in postgraduate access. Postgraduates also comprise the future pool of academic workers. Recent policy attention has focused on loan funding for postgraduate courses – but has this had an impact? This seminar will review the evidence on access to postgraduate study, identify what this might mean for funders, universities and their communities, and outline outstanding gaps in our knowledge. The speakers will include, Paul Wakeling (Professor and Head of Department, Department of Education, University of York) and a response will be given by Paul Martin (Associate Head of Division (Education), Social Science Division, University of Oxford) and Mike Bonsall (Associate Head of Division (Education), Mathematical Physical and Life Sciences Division, University of Oxford). The Chair is Nick Brown (Principal of Linacre College).
The seminar will identify how universities and government have sought to make progress in this area during the last two decades and the patterns of participation arising from this. Access to higher education is a major social issue in the UK as in most countries. Overall participation in the UK is moving towards 50 per cent of the school leaver age group but non-white students, state school students and students from disadvantaged regions of the UK are under-represented in academically elite universities. This pattern affects entry, completion and outcomes in graduate labour markets. Access to the University of Oxford is a persistent debate. Must universities choose between high standards and socially equitable admissions, or can we have both? What is the scope for change? Chris is the first Director of Fair Access and Participation in England’s Office for Students, which is the independent regulator of higher education. This is a statutory role established by the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act, with responsibility for improving equality of opportunity in relation to access to, success in and progression beyond higher education for students from disadvantaged and under-represented groups. The seminar will identify how universities and government have sought to make progress in this area during the last two decades and the patterns of participation arising from this. In doing so, it will consider the extent to which universities and government have been successful in this area, whether current patterns of participation can be considered to be a fair and equal opportunity for all, and the consequences of this. It will conclude by considering the imperatives for progress into the future and the balance of responsibilities between universities and other organisations, including the regulatory approach to be adopted by the Office for Students.
If education policy-making is based strictly on rigorous evidence there is a risk of bias towards simple, discrete, measurable interventions. We present a framework for considering inconclusive evidence. If education policy-making is based strictly on rigorous evidence there is a risk of bias towards simple, discrete, measurable interventions. We present a framework for considering inconclusive evidence – through systematic consideration of the estimated costs, benefits and potential harm of a policy, along with the uncertainty in those estimates. This allows for a rational approach to pursuing or testing policies lacking rigorous evidence. The framework also suggests research methodologies to improve the rigour of evidence for interventions that are complex or highly context-dependent. The aim is to make evidence-based decision making more widely applicable and more effective. Matthew Jukes has two decades of academic and professional experience in evaluating international education projects, particularly in early-grade literacy interventions and the promotion of learning through better health. Dr Jukes’ current research addresses culturally relevant approaches to assessment of social and emotional competencies in Tanzania; improving pedagogy through an understanding of the cultural basis of teacher-child interactions; frameworks to improve evidence-based decision-making; and methods to set reading proficiency benchmarks. Previous roles include Senior Director of Global Research, Monitoring and Evaluation at Room to Read and Associate Professor of International Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
This seminar will focus on the teacher education aspect of the project. It will outline the approaches being implemented to develop the teachers' knowledge and understanding to implement strategies to teach and assess practical science. Project Calibrate addresses a systematic approach to improving practical science at GCSE level. It is a joint project with researchers from Oxford University, AQA and Key Stage 4 teachers and students. This project is striving for curriculum innovation that couples the design of novel assessments, accompanied by teacher engagement to ensure effective implementation of curricular goals worth teaching. This seminar will focus on the teacher education aspect of the project. It will outline the approaches being implemented to develop the teachers' knowledge and understanding to implement strategies to teach and assess practical science which aims to result in a more coherent understanding of how science works.
This seminar is the first of a five-part seminar series on 'Student Access to University'. This seminar discusses the relationships between student characteristics and test performances with Oxford University admissions tests data. Selection to higher education typically includes the use of information about students' attainment, or predicted attainment, in school-leaving examinations such as A-levels. For selective universities and competitive undergraduate degree courses this information provides insufficient scope for discriminating between candidates. Furthermore, candidates are applying increasingly with qualifications from different international educational settings. To help provide a common point of reference across all candidates for a particular course, tests have been introduced as part of the admissions process in many courses at the University of Oxford. This project first explored the relationships between student characteristics and test performance with Oxford University admissions data before turning to study the effects of test preparation on TSA and BMAT for students applying to Oxford. How students prepare for admissions tests and whether this preparation has an impact on their performance in the test is an under-researched area.
An exploration of equity and quality of education in Hong Kong and Singapore. The highest performing education systems across OECD countries exhibit both high quality and equity. Among them are Hong Kong and Singapore. Yet both systems report huge income disparities between rich and poor. How can educational equity and quality co-exist within a highly unequal society? Employing Bourdieu’s logic of practice, I argue that cultural habitus and structural contexts account for this phenomenon. Paradoxically, structural reforms to increase equity and quality simultaneously exacerbate injustices and inequity. The cases of Hong Kong and Singapore may well resonate in other parts of the world.
Maria Manzon teaches in the Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on comparative education history, theory and methods, and on parent engagement in Asia, using philosophical and sociological perspectives. Previously, she worked at the National Institute of Education in Singapore as research scientist. She was Chair of the Admissions and New Societies Standing Committee of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES). Her 2011 book entitled Comparative Education: The Construction of a Field has been acclaimed for its comprehensive approach and path-breaking conceptualisation.
This seminar explores some myths about L2 attainment in instructional contexts, drawing on evidence from a five-year longitudinal study conducted in Switzerland and carried out by the speakers themselves. Despite contrary research findings, many lay people still claim that starting second language (L2) instruction early yields linguistic advantages. This assertion is again undermined by a five-year longitudinal study conducted in Switzerland testing English language skills of 636 secondary-school students, who had all learned Standard German and French at primary school, but only half of whom had had English from age 8, the remainder having started English five years later. The results suggest that age-related attainment effects are overshadowed by other effects, yielding diverse outcomes according to individual differences, and contextual effects mediating L2 outcomes. An earlier age of onset (AO) proved beneficial only for children reared as biliterate simultaneous bilinguals receiving substantial parental support, as opposed to monolinguals and non-biliterate bilinguals (simultaneous or sequential); these latter failed to profit from their earlier AO. These issues require studies which explore what underlies SLA age effects and investigate how learning contexts shape processes of L2 development.
In studies in psychology and education it is essential to think clearly about causal mechanisms. In this seminar Professor Hulme will outline the use of path diagrams as tools for representing, reasoning about, and testing causal models. The examples used will come from studies of children’s reading and language disorders. In studies of such disorders we can probably never practically or ethically manipulate the ultimate causes (genes and environments) of a disorder. Professor Hulme will argue, however, that identifying causes at the Cognitive Level of explanation is crucial for planning effective treatments/interventions for these disorders. Furthermore, if interventions are successful we may, using mediation analyses, get close to identifying the proximal causes for different disorder.
About the speaker: Charles Hulme is Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Oxford and is a William Golding Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Charles has broad research interests in reading, language and memory processes and their development and is an expert on randomized controlled trials in Education. Publications include a number of assessment materials including the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (2009), the Phonological Abilities Test (1997), Sound Linkage (2014) and The Test of Basic Arithmetic and Numeracy Skills (2015) as well as several books dealing with various aspects of reading development. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Scientific Studies of Reading’ (2007-2009) and is currently a Senior Editor of the Association of Psychological Science’s flagship journal, Psychological Science. In 2009 he published “Developmental disorders of language, learning and cognition” (Wiley-Blackwell; co-authored with Maggie Snowling). He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo (2014) and is a member of Academia Europea and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He received the Feitelson Research Award from the International Reading Association (1998) and the Marion Welchman International Award for Contributions to the study of Dyslexia from the British Dyslexia Association (2016). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.
This seminar will provide an assessment of the development of research in subject-based education, and of its future prospects. Using geography education as an exemplar, it will offer a challenging critique of this field of research. The intention of the seminar is to help us further understand the unsteady, sporadic and increasingly insecure development of subject-based education research. However, despite the obvious challenges, the aim is to outline realistic ways forward for geography education, and other subject-based, researchers. Importantly, in a period of radical change for all education research and researchers, the seminar represents a timely appraisal of possible ways forward for subject research in the field.
About the speaker: Graham Butt was, until recently, a Professor in Education, Director of Research and Post Graduate Research Tutor at Oxford Brookes University. He is a founding member of the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo). Graham’s research is predominantly in the field of geography education, although he has also published on assessment, teacher workload, and modernisation of the teaching workforce. His books include Modernising Schools (2007, with Helen Gunter), Lesson Planning (3rd edition) (2008), Making Assessment Matter (2010) and, as editor, Geography, Education and the Future (2011), MasterClass in Geography Education (2015) and The Power of Geographical Thinking (2017) (with Clare Brooks and Mary Fargher). Graham is an invited member of the UK Committee of the International Geographical Union (IGU).
A look at the role of research in developing the work of Ofsted as 'an intelligent inspectorate'. In this seminar Professor Daniel Muijs will look at the role of research in developing the work of Ofsted as 'an intelligent inspectorate', including looking at the way research is done as a co-construction between researchers and inspectors at Ofsted, and at the role of research and evaluation as part of organisational strategy. In particular, he will discuss how research is informing the development of the new Education Inspection Framework, presenting some of their ongoing research projects as examples of Ofsted's approach.
Daniel Muijs is Head of Research at Ofsted, where he leads the research programme, and visiting professor at the University of Southampton. He is an acknowledged expert in the fields of Educational and Teacher Effectiveness and research methods and has published widely in these areas. He is co-editor of the journal 'School Effectiveness and School Improvement', and has held key advisory posts in a range of academic and professional organisations.
This seminar will present findings of an exploratory study of the Intercultural University of Veracruz, one of a number of institutions created in Mexico to ensure access for indigenous populations, promote local development and to provide... In the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, higher education has been given a key role in addressing societal challenges, reducing poverty, ensuring sustainable livelihoods and protecting the natural environment. Yet there has been a singular lack of imagination as regards the institutional forms that might help support this vision. This presentation reports on the findings of an exploratory study of the Intercultural University of Veracruz, one of a number of institutions created in Mexico to ensure access for indigenous populations, to promote local development and to provide a space for intercultural dialogue. The findings show a number of ways in which this innovative institution provides opportunities for supporting the SDGs that go beyond conventional universities. However, it also presents challenges to the global framework, highlighting the lack of attention to culture, language, identity and knowledge traditions. Finally, the presentation reflects more broadly on the relationship between higher education and international development in the contemporary era.
The seminar will explore the transformative potential of 'work' (ranging from paid employment to internships to volunteering) for marginalised young people. With Robbie Gilligan (School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin). Using evidence from the Care to Work Pathways Study and wider literature, the presentation will identify different ways in which early and later positive work experience can benefit the social and/or educational progress of young people in care. It will re-imagine some of our ideas about the sequencing, segregation and linking of 'education' and 'work'. It will also consider how foster carers and other adults can help young people in care engage successfully with the world of work.
Professor Peter Tymms (Durham University) delivers a seminar on the iPIPS project; an international study of children starting school around the world and the progress that they make in their first year at school.
Professor Claire Cameron from UCL Institute of Education gives a talk hosted by the Rees Centre for Fostering and Education
Professor Ewart Keep, Director of SKOPE Department of Education, gives a talk for the public seminar series
Dr Joshua McGrane, Department of Education, gives a talk for the public seminar series hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment
Dr Sonali Nag, Oxford Departmant of Education, gives a talk for the public seminar series hosted by the department's Families, Effecrive Learning and Literacy Research Group
Professor Stephen G Parker, University of Worcester, gives a talk for the public seminar series hosted by Department of Education's Philosophy, Religion and Education Forum.
Professor Art Graesser, Psychology and the Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, gives a talk for the public seminar series hosted by OUCEA, Department of Education.
Ernesto Macaro, Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. The exponential growth of English Medium Instruction (EMI) both in Higher and Secondary Education globally has resulted in a similar growth of empirical research on the subject. Of necessity this research to date has been exploratory, single institution-oriented and lacking a clear research agenda that a more established community of practice might have ensured. In this talk I will present some findings from a systematic review of EMI that we have carried out in the EMI Oxford Centre as well as some of our own research. I will conclude with recommendations of what research still needs to be done in order to ensure that decision makers in education are fully informed of its potential dangers as well as its possible benefits. Ernesto Macaro is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford where he is Director of the Centre for Research and Development in English Medium Instruction (EMI Oxford) in the Department of Education
Professor Elizabeth Fernandez, University of New South Wales Sydney, gives a public seminar hosted by the Rees Centre, Department of Education This presentation reports research which examines the in-care and post-care experience of people who lived in Australian child welfare institutions and other substitute care as children between 1930‒1989. This presentation looks specifically at the experience of the former Child Migrant cohort within the study. The study’s key findings indicate that trauma and attachment disruption experienced by children upon removal to long-term placements in the United Kingdom often intensified following forced migration to Australia. The presentation draws on both quantitative findings and voices of research participants. Implications of the findings for redress and reparation, and for policy and practice in contemporary out of home care systems are discussed.
Neil Wade Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) and Stella Paes Formerly AQA, give a seminar for the Department of Education seminar series. This public seminar will be given by representatives from two awarding bodies for A-levels and GCSEs in England: OCR and AQA. Each will give their perspective on the following: - the challenges of assessing practical work, - the opportunities afforded by the current system and some of the remaining difficulties, - how they would choose to assess practical work, and indeed assess science in general, if they could design an assessment system from scratch. This seminar arose from discussions at the Royal Society educational research conference on Assessing experimental science in 11-18 education October 2016, and will endeavour to engage with some of the principles and intellectual challenges of assessment, as well as the pragmatics. A response will be given by Dr Sean Page, Head of Science at Lord Williams’s School, Thame, Oxon.
This seminar will present recent research on the relationship between economic inequality and educational achievement as measured by large scale assessments. We begin by identifying a debate within the literature between those who advocate a "skills premium" for achievement and those who warn against the harmful consequences of inequality for achievement. We use a more extensive empirical dataset and more robust statistical models to show that the relationship between achievement and inequality is moderated by income: in other words, the relationship is different in high-income and low-income countries. The former demonstrates a relationship consistent with the “skills premium” literature, while the latter suggest that inequality has negative consequences for achievement. We then evaluate possible models of the causal relationships involved, looking at varieties of capitalism and capabilities as two alternative explanatory framework.
This seminar is convened by Dr Maia Chankseliani on behalf of the Centre for Comparative and International Education Research.
Professor Julie Selwyn, University of Bristol, gives a talk for the Education Department public seminar series. It is increasingly recognised that understanding subjective wellbeing (SWB) – or asking people how they feel about their own lives is key to developing policy that supports our quality of life. The Measuring What Matters programme (Office of National Statistics, 2011) concluded that people’s objective circumstances can improve but this does not necessarily translate into feeling that life is improving. For example, crime can go down, but people do not report feeling more secure. The ONS and the Children's Society have done a great deal of work on the SWB of children in the general population but little is known about the SWB of children in care. Currently only objective measures are collected by the DfE such as educational results, number of teen pregnancies and we do not know how children themselves feel about their own lives in care. Do they identify the same elements as important to their wellbeing as do children in general population and how might their wellbeing be measured? What is important to children in care? This seminar focuses on the development of an online survey Our Lives Our Care to measure the SWB of children in care and the findings from the first 611 children to complete it. Eighteen focus groups were held involving 140 children and young people to understand their perceptions of what was important to their well being. Although there were domains of wellbeing that were held in common with children in the general population, looked after children identified other domains and their emphasis differed. The work is the product of the Bright Spots Programme, a long standing partnership between the Children’s Rights charity Coram Voice and the University of Bristol with the generous support of the Hadley Trust.The programme aims to improve the care experiences of young people by enabling local authorities to find out directly from young people about how they are doing in the areas that are important to them and what needs to change for the better. During 2016. 611 children and young people completed the surveys with some surprising results.
Jo Anne Baird, Director of Department of Education, University of Oxford and Dennis Opposs, Ofqual, give a seminar for the Department of Education public seminar series. Processes of standard setting and maintaining within curriculum related assessments form a key strand of educational assessment policies and programmes, and debates about standards are often at the heart of educational reform. Many countries use curriculum related examinations to select learners for higher education, work and other study options. Some countries also use these examinations as tools to measure school system performance.
Given the high stakes nature of these examinations, it is surprising that the ways in which examination standards are conceptualised and operationalised differently across nations has not been given sufficient attention. This is an interesting area because globalisation has begun to impinge on examination systems, but public examination standards are still largely a bastion of the local. The meaning of standards varies between countries and the stated value positions and processes relating to examination standards differ markedly. Additionally, the processes used to set examination standards vary greatly between countries. The public seminar will present some of the findings from a joint project on Setting and Maintaining standards in national examinations. As part of the project, a three day symposium was held in Brasenose College, Oxford in March of this year. Experts from around the world came together to discuss the setting and maintaining of standards in national examinations. The project aims to illuminate similarities and differences in conceptual bases and operational approaches to examination standards. In this presentation, we will focus upon the different ways in which examination standards have been defined and outline current work on an ecological model that shows promise in making the current literature more coherent.
Professor Elaine Kempson, University of Bristol, gives a talk for the Department of Education seminar series on 24th April 2017. There has been a gradual shift in responsibility for social protection of individual citizens from the state to the individuals themselves, who must now operate in an increasingly complex financial marketplace to meet their own social protection needs and those of their household. This has raised concerns about the extent to which they are equipped to do so and a large body of research relating to financial literacy, financial capability and financial wellbeing. as well as a burgeoning financial education sector Elaine will explore the conceptual and practical differences between these three areas of research and how they relate to one another. To do this she will be referring to qualitative and quantitative research that will be published next month and drawing out what this means for educators and other policy makers.
Professor Florence Myles, University of Essex, gives a talk for the Education department seminar series. Young instructed learners of a second language are known to rely extensively in the early stages on rotelearning and formulaic language; the relationship between this formulaic knowledge, and the eventual emergence of productive morphosyntax, is still poorly understood. This paper draws on data from a longitudinal study of 73 classroom beginner learners of French, aged 5, 7 and 11. Divided by age, each group received 38 hours of instruction by the same teacher over a period of 19 weeks. All lessons were captured on video and transcribed, providing complete documentation of all L2 French classroom input and interaction. Children’s developing knowledge of French was regularly tested using a variety of receptive and productive tasks, including an elicited imitation test, a receptive vocabulary test, and a role play task. Previous analyses have shown that the 11 year old beginners made faster overall progress in morphosyntax than the younger children. Here, we explore the relationship between use of formulaic language and the emergence of productive morphosyntax, for the different age groups, in order to explain the apparent advantage of the older group. We analyse children’s French oral productions in two datasets: a) the group role play tasks, and b) the elicited imitation test. We depart from established practice in the scoring of EI tests, which is primarily meaning-based and provides information on test-takers’ overall proficiency (Tracy-Ventura et al 2014), and instead focus on formal features of children’s production (the reproduction of NPs and VPs: McCormick and Zach, 2016). We explore the relative abilities of the different age groups in use of formulaic expressions and in the (re)production of non- formulaic morphosyntax, and discuss the implications for young learner pedagogy.
Professor Gary McCulloch, UCL Institute of Education, gives a talk for the Education Public seminar series on 27th February 2017. Conservative policies in education have often been analysed in terms of their neoliberal characteristics. In the early years of the 21st century, the neoconservative themes of education policy are also highly visible, in particular social wellbeing, national character, and British values, strongly influenced by broader contemporary issues but also by longer-term historical legacies. In this seminar we will review briefly the key themes of Conservative policies in education in the 20th century before examining the emergence of neoconservative themes over the past decade, continuities and changes in education policy since the 1980s, and current prospects for new and alternative themes. Dr Liam Gearon, Philosophy, Religion and Education Research Forum
This lecture explores findings from a SKOPE research project (funded by the FE Trust for Leadership) on the implications of the devolution from central government to localities of certain aspects of post-19 further and adult education. For the last 30 years English education has been subject to a process of delocalisation, centralisation and nationalisation. Since 2010 there has been a revival of interest in devolution of power back to localities, and in education this means control over the adult skills budget for those aged 19+ and engaged in learning outside universities. The project explored the implications of these developments, with research conducted in a number of locations, and via interviews, focus groups, conference sessions and other meetings, with further education (FE) college staff, governors, local stakeholders and national government and agencies. The lecture will locate debates about the localisation of education within broader academic and policy discourses concerning devolution, governance and economic development. It will explore how actors make sense of localism, and how they identify and develop strategies to support more devolved governance and funding. The conceptual backbone of the project was the concept of 'metis' or localised, practice-based knowledge. One of the key research questions was whether devolution allows metis to be deployed in conditions of trust between central government and localities, and between local actors and stakeholders, and the lecture will explore the considerable tensions between: rhetoric and reality concerning the scale and meaning attached to devolution by different parties; what central government was willing to contemplate and what localities aspired to; different localities’ capacity to assume new responsibilities; the levels of resources available and the potential scale of calls on these funds; and models based on systems and markets. How these tensions and divergences will be resolved is as yet unclear. The lecture discusses what actors can do to develop a compelling vision for localisation, and help metis to flourish. Professor Ewart Keep holds a chair in Education, Training and Skills at the Department of Education, Oxford University.
Young people navigating uncertainty in contemporary Britain. This paper explores the emerging findings of the UrbanRural Youth Transitions Project, an 18 month ethnographic inquiry into how young people imagine and experience life immediately after finishing secondary education. The project seeks to interrogate the temporal and spatial dimensions of how young people interpret ‘the future’ as a context for imagining and enacting social identity. Here we focus in on the theme of uncertainty as an important but complex quality of the imagined futures of young people transitioning into early adulthood in 2016, under the looming shadow of recent political, social, and economic upheaval. The project entails participant observation and interviews with young people in their final year of schooling in Oxfordshire and London, looking forward to the future, as well as with individuals that we have followed from their final months in school through to their first months in Higher Education, employment, both, or neither. A third and final cohort includes young people whose stories we join in their first term at university as they make sense of new lives and new futures in London. As their imaginings of life after school are reconciled with the rapidly shifting realities of life in early adulthood, these diverse groups of young people navigate uncertainty with a complex mix of enthusiasm, ambivalence, and profound anxiety. Drawing on theoretical perspectives of ‘the future’ and youth transitions from across the social sciences, we argue that the resulting multiplicity of future imagined selves suggests new directions for research into the spatial and temporal figuring of youth and social identity.
The Sutton Trust’s Chief Executive, Dr Lee Elliot Major, will argue that Britain has failed to address its problem of low social mobility, drawing on a range of international evidence. This ‘stickiness’ is particularly persistent at both the top and bottom of society: the privately educated continue to dominate the leading professions and the proportion of children leaving school without basic numeracy and literacy skills remains stubbornly high. Education has largely failed to be the great social leveller; and widening inequality has limited social mobility. Failure to tackle immobility in modern Britain will not only cost the country economically, but lead to ever deeper divisions in society.
Anna Vignoles, Professor of Education and Director of Research at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series. Whilst much attention has been paid to the socioeconomic gap in higher education participation, far less research has investigated the extent to which graduate earnings vary by their socioeconomic background. In this research, we present results from an analysis that uses large scale administrative data from both the education and the tax systems to document the trajectories taken by different pupils through the school system into HE and beyond into the labour market. We then measure how the earnings of English graduates around 10 years into the labour market vary with the socioeconomic background of the graduate. Based on a simple measure of parental income, we see that graduates from higher income families (from the top fifth of the income distribution of those enrolled in university) have median earnings which are around 25% more than those from lower income families. This partly reflects the different subject and institution choices of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Once we control for institution attended and subject chosen, this premium falls to around 10%. We discuss the interpretation of these findings for policy on fair access to universities whose graduates tend to have higher earnings.
Keri Facer, Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, gives the 6th Annual Lecture of the Oxford Education Society, the alumni and friends association of the Department of Education. As private sector providers begin to enter the marketplace with tailored, ‘work-ready’ courses; as industrial research labs and think tanks claim the research space; as the internet provides informal learning on any subject from plumbing to patriarchy, the natural ‘terrain’ of the university seems under threat. In this context, the continued existence of the university as a multi-disciplinary civic institution is being questioned.
In her lecture Professor Facer will argue that such contemporary challenges to the university should not be met simply with defense and resistance or by a passive acceptance of the march of the market. Instead, we require a clear-eyed examination of what it is that universities uniquely offer to contemporary society. She will argue that the features of the university as a multi-disciplinary institution, in which research and teaching, and scholarship and service combine, create a unique form of ‘lively’ knowledge that cannot be achieved in any other way; a form of knowledge that will be essential to our survival in a rapidly changing world.
Understanding this unique function of the institution, however, does not mean that universities should simply be left alone to ‘do their thing’, rather, it requires substantial and in many ways revolutionary changes to the way that we run universities today.
Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, UK. Her work is concerned with understanding the future role of universities and schools in the context of environmental, economic and technological disruptions. Since 2012 she has been Leadership Fellow for the UK Research Council’s ‘Connected Communities’ Programme, a unique £30m + experiment in bringing together academics and civil society groups to share expertise and knowledge in areas ranging from health and wellbeing to sustainability and cultural heritage. This programme comprises over 300 projects across the UK and is a global flagship for critical and reflexive collaborative research activity.
Prior to this, she was Research Director at Futurelab, and led the Beyond Current Horizons project for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In recent years, her focus has shifted away from technologies toward a particular concern with the ways we imagine the future, and the alternative futures that might be envisaged and used as a resource for creativity and social change. In this area she has been working with UNESCO amongst others, to encourage the exploration of the role of universities as a social resource for anticipatory practices in conditions of uncertainty. Her recent books include ‘Learning Futures’ (2011) and ‘Towards a Critical Politics of Education and Technology’ (2013).
Professor Jane Bryson, Victoria University of Wellington, gives a talk for the department of education public seminar series. Arguably schools are a uniquely challenging type of organisation to manage, particularly in contemporary times. Schools are at the centre of societal change shaping the skills, expectations and mores of the next generation. The work of teachers is important and meaningful but has become increasingly stressful as they face massive occupational change combined with increasing levels of individual accountability to multiple stakeholders and questionable valuing of their work. Consequently, the management of schools as workplaces presents difficult challenges due not only to the pressures their teachers face but also because of a range of educational governance and labour market issues. Thus it is surprising that schools (and the teaching occupation) rarely feature in the human resource management (HRM) literature. This seminar will report ongoing research (New Zealand based) into what makes a school a good place to work and in particular the challenges of HRM in schools.
Matthew van Poortvliet, Grants Manager, Education Endowment Foundation, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar on 21st November 2016. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) was established in 2011 and has so far committed over £75 million to education research projects involving over 7,000 schools. It is perhaps best known for the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, a synthesis of research used by two thirds of schools in England, and for the use of RCTs in education. As EEF passes its 5th anniversary, and the publication of over 60 trial evaluations, this presentation will discuss findings from that research and lessons learnt to date. It will first highlight emerging areas of promise and some examples of projects that have been more and less effective. It will then discuss the challenges of translating these findings into practice, and how approaches can be taken to scale. Finally, it will look at priorities for EEF’s work in the future, including the challenges of conducting trials in new areas.
With Dr Neil Harrison University of the West of England. This seminar will synthesise the findings of four recent research projects focused on contemporary students’ opinions and behaviours around money. The analysis spans both quantitative and qualitative approaches, across a mixture of single institution, multiple institution and international settings. It will aim towards a coherent understanding of the ways in which students view debts, bursaries and their investment in higher education, problematising some of the dominant discourses of students and demonstrating a rich diversity of student experiences where personal and psychological factors contribute as much as socio-economic ones. This will be contextualised against current policy developments and the accelerating marketisation of higher education.
Dr Edward Kessler, University of Cambridge, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series on 7th November 2016. Religion and belief are driving forces in society today. Although there is some divergence of opinion over the extent, there is unanimity that the UK is becoming less Christian, less religious and more diverse. Dr Ed Kessler, Vice Chairman of the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, will discuss the implications of the dramatic changes in the religious landscape in less than two generations. The Commission’s report, ‘Living with Difference’, was published in December 2016 and generated a fierce debate about UK public policy related to religion and belief. Dr Kessler will reflect on the reaction to the report as well as its impact in the areas of education, the media, law, dialogue and social action. Understanding religion and belief is not an option but a necessity that the Government needs to factor into their approaches. The pattern of religious affiliation has changed and continues to change. Policymakers and politicians need to catch up with events, to enhance their capacity to read a most potent sign of our times - religion and belief.
Professor Simon Marginson, ULC Institute of Education, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series. This seminar returns to a long-standing issue in the literature on higher education systems, that of the relationship, if any, between diversity (horizontal differentiation based on variation in HEI mission, organisational cultures, educational practices etc), the growth of participation levels, and marketisation. The classical American literature suggested that diversity, participation and competition all tended to advance together but more recent empirical studies in the English-speaking world suggest that markets foster vertical differentiation rather than horizontal variety and encourage imitating behaviour which reduces diversity, while the growth of participation is neutral in relation to horizontal diversity. States have contrary implications for diversity: sometimes they regulate greater homogenisation, sometimes they deliberately foster variety in the form of specialist institutions or sectors. The paper surveys the world wide terrain, in which participation is rapidly advancing—in 56 countries more than 50% of the young age cohort enters higher education. It finds that the principal features of the present period, in association with growth, are (1) the advance of the multi-purpose multi-disciplinary research multiversity as the main institutional form, (2) a secular decline in the role of non-university sectors and specialist institutions, (3) an increase in internal diversity in the large multiversities, (4) an increase in vertical stratification in many systems, (5) no increase in horizontal diversity overall and a probable decline in diversity, except for the rise of for-profit colleges in some countries.
Professor Tony Gallagher, University of Belfast, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series on 24th October 2016. Mass education has traditionally been used as an integrating force, perhaps most notably in the role of the public school in the United States. In the latter part of the 20th century overt assimilation through education was increasingly critiqued and attention shifted towards the incorporation of various forms of multiculturalism in schools. In some societies separate schools operated in recognition of different identities: in some contexts separate schools were used to maintain patterns of dominationoppression, but in others it was an attempt to allow minorities to maintain their own identities. Northern Ireland has operated separate schools for over a century, and many pointed to this as a factor in social division and political violence: various interventions were applied during the years of the violence, but few showed evidence of creating positive systemic change. For the last decade a new approach, based on promoting collaborative networks of Protestant and Catholic schools, has been put in place. ‘Shared education’ seeks to create dialogic processes between communities, at all levels, by using network effects to change the nature of the relationship between schools and communities in local areas while focusing on social, educational and economic goals. This presentation outlines the background to the development of shared education in Northern Ireland and traces how it has developed. The paper also will examine briefly how the idea has been adopted in other contexts, most notably in Israel.
Dr Therese N Hopfenbeck, Department of Education, Oxford, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series on 17th October 2016. Co-written with Dr Jenny Lenkeit More information is available here; http://oucea.education.ox.ac.uk/research/recent-research-projects/pirls-for-teachers/ There is a knowledge gap between information provided by international large-scale assessments (ILSA) such as PIRLS, PISA, and TIMSS, the publically available research results and what is of interest and use to teachers in England. Considering the public costs needed to participate in international studies, the link between this form of assessment and its impact on classroom pedagogy is alarmingly low and questions about the use of this data and related research grow more urgent. But, the understanding of how to engage the users of research is still developing and the use and impact of research on practice is as yet minimal. One reason for this is seen in excluding practitioners from research activities that concern their professional field. The PIRLS for Teachers project (ESRC IAA funded) first engaged with teachers to increase their knowledge about PIRLS and their capacity to use data and information provided by the survey. Second, it aimed to increase researchers’ understanding of the challenges teachers face in dealing with PIRLS findings and identifying their specific needs and interests. Third, teachers and researchers acted as co-producers of relevant new knowledge by jointly interpreting the PIRLS findings, addressing new research questions and finding ways in which results can be used to improve teaching practice. We will outline the rationale of our project, discuss the challenges for us as researchers and for the teachers, present the materials developed in collaboration with teachers and discuss the impact and dissemination strategy. We expect the outcomes of the project to enhance not only teachers’ professional learning about PIRLS and its use for improving classroom practice but also that of researchers about practitioners’ needs for understanding and using findings provided in ILSA. We also expect teachers to wrestle with the possible contradicting evidence from their own classrooms and from PIRLS. Overall, outcomes of this research will contribute to strengthening the link between ILSA, teachers’ understanding of its findings and the improvement of classroom practices, partly through possible new research collaborations.
This lecture discusses the development of various measures of students experiences and views of their secondary schools based on self report questionnaires taken at ages 14 & 16.
Professor Leonidas Kyriakides, Department of Education, University of Cyprus, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. This lecture refers to the dynamic approach to school improvement (DASI) which attempts to contribute to the merging of educational effectiveness research and school improvement. The main underlying assumptions and the implementation phases of DASI are presented. The recommended approach gives emphasis to school policies and actions taken to improve teaching and the school learning environment. Moreover, the importance of establishing school evaluation mechanisms and collecting data to identify improvement priorities is stressed. Furthermore, DASI emphasizes the use of the available knowledge base in relation to the main aims of the efforts made by schools to deal with the different challenges/problems being faced. Therefore, an advisory and research team is expected to support school stakeholders develop, implement, and evaluate their own school improvement strategies and action plans. Five group- randomization studies investigating the impact of DASI on promoting quality in education are also presented. These studies reveal the conditions in which DASI can promote student learning outcomes. Finally, suggestions for research, policy and practice are provided.
Dr Ann Childs, Dr Nigel Fancourt, Dr Roger Firth, Professor Ian Menter and Dr Ian Thompson, Department of Education, Oxford, give a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar series. Abstract: During 2012, the National College for Teaching and Leadership, working in collaboration with a number of partners, designed a major research and development initiative entitled Closing the Gap - Test and Learn. The contract to run the project was awarded to CfBT who worked in partnership with CUREE and the Universities of Durham and Oxford to deliver the scheme from 2012-2015. They invited lead teaching schools in teaching school alliances to apply to take part in a national trial of seven particular intervention programmes, each of which had been identified as having significant potential in 'closing the attainment gap'. That is, they were programmes designed to improve the attainment of children who were low achievers. A total of more than 700 Schools joined the programme in its first year and bid to work with one or more of the interventions. Half of the schools went into the trial group and commenced the programme during 2014. The other half of the schools went into a control group and waited until the next academic year to undertake the programme. In all schools, a sample of pupils was identified for participation in the scheme and were given pre- and post-tests before and at the end of the Year 1 trial period. The scheme was thus designated as a form of Randomised Control Trial. In this seminar the Oxford team offer an analysis of the project as a whole, drawing not only on data gathered during its implementation but also on additional data derived from interviews with a number of participants. In particular we look at: • the 'policy origins' of the entire scheme, the ways in which it emerged out of: the development of teaching schools, the 'closing the gap' objective of the Coalition government; the desire to increase research capacity within the teaching workforce; as well as other elements; • the extent to which the overall methodology can indeed be described as a Randomised Control Trial. Although this was a very large scale initiative, the actual interventions were each carried out with relatively small numbers of pupils in a very diverse range of contexts; • the extent to which evidence emerged from the project to suggest that teachers in schools were becoming increasingly research-literate and that the 'school-led system' was developing research capacity through engagement in a scheme such as this; • the research ethics issues raised by such a large scale randomised controlled trial, and in particular the decisions around which interventions to include and continue, which leads on to an argument for a principle of educational equipoise.
Dr Heath Rose, Department of Education, Oxford, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. The spread of English from the language of an island nation to today’s global lingua franca has clear ramifications for society, and for English language education. This presentation aims to provide an overview of research emerging from the field of Global Englishes, which is a growing research paradigm that aims to embrace issues surrounding the diversification and use of the English language. Global Englishes incorporates World Englishes and English as a lingua franca research—both of which have implications for society and pedagogy. World Englishes research (e.g. Kachru et al. 2009), the study of variation in English in geographical regions around the world, has been instrumental in widening our understanding of variation and change in language and challenging the notion of ‘standard’ English. English as a lingua franca research (e.g. Seidlhofer 2011), which examines how English is used within and across linguistic communities, has been instrumental in showcasing current uses of English as a contact language in a range of fluid contexts. This presentation aims to first explore the impact on society of the spread of English as a global language. It will then outline the implications of this spread on societal attitudes towards variation in the English language. Finally, it will summarize recent proposals (e.g. Galloway & Rose 2015) to make the English classroom more relevant to learners who are likely to use English in global contexts.
Dr Jim King, University of Leicester, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public seminar series on 15th February 2016. Silence is an area of study that receives relatively little attention from second language (L2) researchers, who in the past have tended to concentrate more on the spoken aspects of discourse within classrooms. Far from being merely communicative voids in which nothing of interest happen, moments of silence during educational encounters are actually rich in form, function and meaning. This talk will report on a large-scale, multi- site investigation into the silent behaviour of L2 learners attending English classes within Japanese universities. Using a complexity perspective as its conceptual background, the investigation moves away from traditional, reductionist, single-cause explanations for learner reticence to suggest that silence actually emerges through multiple, concurrent routes. These routes are so abundant, and appear to be so well supported both educationally and culturally in the Japanese context, that silence appears to have fossilised into a semi-permanent attractor state within university language classrooms. Jim King is Lecturer in Education within the University of Leicester’s School of Education.
Daniel Muijs, Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. While dealing with bullying when it occurs in schools is extremely important, we are increasingly finding that prevention is better than cure. Ensuring that schools create a culture in which all pupils develop empathy and social skills, especially among so-called ‘bystanders’ (those pupils who are neither the bully or the bullied but whose behaviour can strongly influence both) may therefore help to prevent future bullying behaviours. The Social and Emotional Early Development (SEED) programme was developed as an intervention to improve the social and emotional skills of primary school age children and build their resilience and empathy, resulting in more positive social interactions. The programme is based on principles of social and emotional learning, teaching thinking skills and gamification, and consists of ten discreet activities which encourage reflection through collaborative group work, prompted by a scenario depicted through a cartoon. In this presentation we will present the programme which was initially run in three local authorities in England, and look at its impact on pupils’ behaviours and personal and social development. To do this we used a quasi-experimental design in which schools were randomly assigned to receive the intervention at different times.
Professor Hanan Alexander, Haifa University, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series. Drawing on my new book Reimagining Liberal Education, I argue in this talk for a form of education in open, diverse, liberal democracies that eschews neutrality. Instead, educators need to enable students to embark on a quest for intelligent spirituality grounded in thick traditions with roots in strong transcendent values, while paying heed to pedagogies of difference that engage a variety of alternative perspectives in dialogue. To understand one's self requires engaging those whose views are different from one's own. But to genuinely encounter difference one must also acquire a deep understanding of the traditions to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate. This philosophical position offers an account of school curriculum and moral and religious instruction that throws new light on the possibilities of a nuanced, rounded education for citizenship devoted to a modus vivendi for living together across deep difference in peace.
Professor Peter Barrett, University of Salford, gies a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series on 25th January 2016. Convener: Professor Harry Daniels Oxford Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (OSAT) Based on an empirical study of 3766 primary school pupils and the 153 classrooms they occupied the EPSRC-funded HEAD (Holistic Evidence and Design) Project has successfully isolated the impact of design features on the learning progress of those pupils over a year. This was based on multi-disciplinary collaboration over several years that resulted in a radical new conceptual model of the holistic physical learning environment, taken from a child’s sensory perspective. This increased scope of consideration was then twinned with multilevel modelling of the data to identify the classroom level impacts. These model out at explaining 16% of the overall variation in the learning progress of the pupils in the spaces studied. The findings support detailed practical suggestions for teachers, designers and policy-makers. There are surprises in relation to some aspects that do not appear. Sub-analyses of the data are being carried out and raise interesting issues around subject-specific design and design for particular groupings of pupils.
Dr Annamaria Pinter, Warwick University, gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. Convener: Professor Victoria Murphy Applied Linguistics Research Group. Interview data conducted at regular intervals during the study has been analysed to make tentative links between working with children as co-researchers and teachers’ professional development. This talk will address children’s status in applied linguistics research more broadly, and then discuss the conceptual and practical issues around children as co-researchers/ researchers. The talk will also report on an ongoing study with Indian primary English teachers who have been working with children as co-researchers in their classrooms.
Sir Kevan Collins, Education Endowment Foundation, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminar Series on 23rd Novemner 2015. This seminar will consider the emerging influence of ‘disciplined innovation’ and the rise of randomized controlled trials in education. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is supporting over 100 research studies involving 1:4 schools in England and over 700,000 pupils. Kevan will introduce the work of the EEF and share some of the emerging findings. He will position this work against the current context of the English education system and suggest that better access to high quality evidence will build capacity for development and support schools to improve outcomes for all pupils. Reflecting on the first four years of the EEF, Kevan will set out the challenges for the next phase of its work focusing on the ambition to address social and emotional skills, learning and development in the early years and the wider use and adoption of evidence to inform practice.
Professor David Putwain (Edge Hill University) gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series. A relatively common motivational strategy used by teachers, and others, prior to high-stakes examinations (such as the GCSE), is to communicate to students the negative consequence of failure for one’s subsequent life trajectory. This could include access to subsequent forms of education and training, entry to the labour market, and the impact on one’s sense of self-worth. When used in this way, to highlight the negative consequences of failure, and how these can be avoided, these communications are referred to as fear appeals. In this seminar, I will attempt to unpick the use of fear appeals as a motivational strategy and address the fundamental question of whether they are effective or not. Drawing on some of the studies conducted with colleagues I will focus on two key aspects: How fear appeals are understood by students and how they relate to key educational outcomes (including motivation, engagement and achievement).
Seminar looking at education in Sudan and other North African countries. This seminar examines the development of a National Learning Assessment in Sudan and reports on the findings of its first study. We know that National Learning Assessments can play an important role in demonstrating the efficiency of investments in education, help governments to monitor the effectiveness of educational interventions and policies, and address issues related to equity and to provision. It is largely through frequently repeated assessments of learning achievement that policy makers can tell the extent to which investments in education do in fact result in educational progress. Without such repeated measures there can be little understanding of trends in student learning outcomes and as such, robust evidence to guide policy and investment in education will remain elusive. The first study sought to establish how well students had been taught to read and to carry out basic mathematical operations in the early years of schooling in Sudan. The achievements of Grade 3 students in Sudan are compared with children of a similar age and stage of schooling in 5 other Arabic speaking countries. The findings point to deep and worrying learning deficits across the region.
Professor Neil Selwyn, Professor in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminars series. This seminar explores the ways in which digital technologies are now implicated in teachers’ work and labour. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic studies of three Australian high schools, Neil will detail the ways in which teachers’ work is now enacted along digital lines – often in notably intensified, standardized and evidenced ways. However, these research findings also raise questions regarding the extent to which these digitisations can be said to constitute wholly ‘new’ labour conditions – pointing to continuities and disjunctures between teachers’ work with and without digital technology. As such, Neil will also consider the differentiated experiences of these conditions across teaching workforces. We conclude by considering how more equitable and/or empowering working conditions might be achievable through alternate uses of digital technology.
Professor Geoff Lindsay, University of Warwick, gives a talk for the department of education public seminar series. Abstract: 'In this talk I shall draw upon two large scale studies of parenting programmes to explore two issues: evidence for their effectiveness, and implications for policy and practice. The Parenting Early Intervention Programme (2006-11) examined targeted parenting programmes, aimed at parents of children exhibiting or at risk of behavioural difficulties; the CANparent trial (2012-14) explored the effectiveness of universal parenting classes aimed at all parents. Each was funded by the Department for Education but represented different policy agendas of Labour and Coalition governments respectively. Finally, I shall consider the implications for future policy and practice.'
Professor Jo-Anne Baird, Department of Education, gives a talk for the Department of Education Seminar series on 19th October 2015. Co-written by Professor David Andrich. Introduced by Dr Therese Hopfenbeck. Educational assessments define what it means to have learned and therefore have a huge impact upon teaching and learning. However, there is remarkably little connection between research and theory on learning and on educational assessment. Given the voluminous assessment that takes place annually in systematic ways in most nations it is surprising that more has not been gained from assessments in the development of theories of learning and vice versa. In this presentation, we look at the relationship between learning and assessment, consider theories of learning and theories of assessment and draw the conclusion that they should be developing more closely if assessment is in service of the goals of education. We consider fundamental aspects of assessment theory, such as constructs (what is being assessed), unidimensionality, invariance and quantifiability. We distinguish educational assessment from psychological assessment. The impact of high-stakes tests for teaching and learning is normally considered in the literature. We show how less traditional cases of international tests affect student learning. The main message is that assessment’s effects upon teaching and learning need to be at the forefront to a larger extent in assessment research and practice to ensure systemic validity.
Prof. Harry Daniels & Hau Ming Tse present an account of ways in which the discourses and practices of school design produce educational spaces which mediate and shape the discourses and practices of teaching and learning when the building is occupied.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, given by Dr Susan James Relly, Assistant Director of SKOPE. Over recent years UK governments have expanded higher education and with it the supply of graduates. This expansion is linked to social mobility through meritocracy. However, the number of traditionally graduate jobs has not increased in line with higher education expansion. One result of this policy is graduates entering not just graduate jobs but non-graduate jobs. Using qualitative and quantitative data from research on the occupation of real estate agents selling residential properties in the UK – a traditionally non-graduate occupation being ‘graduatised’ – this presentation asks: Is this trickle down the occupational hierarchy really what the government envisioned in terms of social mobility when expanding higher education and widening access?
How can we help students move from being novices to proficient apprentices to experts in the domain? Emeritis Professor of Education, Professor Gordon Stobart, lectures on the international policy rhetoric surrounding the need for 21st century learning. In this the learner is seen as flexible, self regulating and able to work collaboratively solve problems - the skills needed to meet the demands of a an ever changing labour market. At the same time we have standards and accountability agendas which define learning in relation to performance by unaided individuals on conventional tests. These tests are explored and a different model is offered, that of the expert learner.
This study investigated the predictability of the Leaving Certificate examination in Ireland, where public accusations of predictable exams are of serious concern. The data combined survey responses of students' views of the examination, learning strategies, and learning support with examination results.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, given by Professor Janet Boddy, University of Sussex and Professor Donald Forrester, University of Bedfordshire. Professor Janet Boddy will talk about the European Perspectives on Outcomes and Everyday Lives for Young People in Care project. Transitions to adulthood for young people in and after care are a priority in child welfare research internationally, not least because of concern across countries about poor outcomes relative to the general population. But young people in care comprise a diverse group. To support them into adulthood, it is not sufficient to focus on risk factors. At the same time, definition of ‘outcomes’ is neither neutral nor objective, and what we come to understand about ‘outcomes’ for young people in care inevitably depends on our theoretical and methodological approach. This paper draws on two studies which are concerned with the experiences of young people who are currently, or have previously been, in care. Professor Donald Forrester will explore the specific impact of care through a review of British research since 1991 that provides data on changes in child welfare over time. The outcomes for children in public care are generally considered to be poor, leading to a focus on reducing the number of children in care. Yet while children in care do less well than most children on a range of measures, such comparisons do not disentangle the extent to which these difficulties predated care and the specific impact of care on child welfare. Internationally, studies consistently have found that children entering care tended to have serious problems but that in general their welfare improved over time suggesting that attempts to reduce the use of public care may place more children at risk of serious harm.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, given by Dr Neil Mercer, University of Cambridge. In recent years, researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology have proposed that we have evolved with “social brains” that enable us to manage complex social relationships. Research in neuroscience also encourages the view that humans have a distinctively social form of intelligence. I suggest that the concept of the social brain is potentially useful for understanding the dynamic, iterative relationship between individual thinking and social activity, and the role of language in mediating that relationship. This gives the concept educational relevance. However, I argue that its current conceptualization is too individualistic; it needs to be redefined to take account of the distinctive human capacity for thinking collectively. Vygotskian sociocultural theory and empirical research derived from it offer a useful basis for this reconceptualization, enabling a better understanding of the relationship between “intermental” activity and “intramental’ and hence the processes of teaching and learning. Finally, I consider the implications of this reconceptualization of the social brain for educational theory, research and practice.
Niall discusses emerging findings from the ESRC/DFIDfunded project "mCHW: a mobile learning intervention for community health workers”. The talk will present the background to the project and position his research at the intersection of education, health, technology and social justice. Niall will present his joint research with Anne Geniets on the framing of global health training with technology from a social justice perspective (Winters & Geniets, in submission). Critiquing ICT for development, he will set out to show how the design, development and implementation of training projects are radically altered when centred on a preferential option for the poor. He will then discuss the social justice framing in the context of the mCHW project’s empirical work in Kenya, drawing out three key implications: (1) Designing and evaluation applications for the needs of the poor; (2) Redefining the nature of ‘appropriate technologies’ and (3) Implementing pragmatic solidarity, which means developing common cause with those in need in a very practical and realistic manner.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, given by Dr Melanie Ehren, senior lecturer at the London Centre for Leadership and Learning. School inspections are assumed to have a great impact on what students learn and how they learn it but the intermediate steps between inspection and eventual student learning outcomes are vague. It remains largely unclear how these various levers of change employed by inspectorates interact with each other to influence schools and whether particular approaches and methods are more effective than others. This seminar summarizes findings from two recent literature reviews and addresses the results of a three year longitudinal comparative study which aimed to identify and analyze the causal mechanisms intended to link school inspections to their desired outcomes, particularly improved teaching and learning. The keynote will also briefly reflect on the changing landscape in England and how school inspections can adapt to a ‘self improving school system’.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, given by Professor Hugh Lauder, University of Bath. Human capital theory has dominated the understanding of the relationship of education to work. It has retained plausibility until now due to the social context in which it was articulated. But that context has now changed, radically. It is now exposed as a fundamentally flawed account of the education-economy relationship, theoretically and empirically. This seminar will explain why that is the case and how we move forward with a new account.
Department of Education Public Seminar delivered by Professor Theodoros Marinis on sequential bilingual children. The seminar will look at the acquisition of definiteness in sequential bilingual (L2) children, children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and agematched typically developing (TD) children across three languages: English, Dutch, and Greek. Accurate use of definiteness requires the acquisition of syntax, semantics, and discoursepragmatics. Previous studies on the acquisition of definiteness have shown that L2 children and children with SLI are less accurate than TD children in the use of definite and indefinite articles and show errors of omission and/or substitution (e.g., Chondrogianni, 2008; Polite, Leonard, & Roberts, 2011; Zdorenko & Paradis, 2011). However, it is unclear whether the two groups of children have the same underlying difficulties in the acquisition of definiteness because different tasks have been used in each study and there is a lack of studies comparing the groups directly. Moreover, most studies have focused on production and very fewhave addressed the children’s comprehension. To address the acquisition of definiteness in these groups we used the same tasks in all groups: an online production task, involving short stories based on Schafer & de Villiers (2000), examined the use of definite and indefinite articles in different semantic and discoursepragmatic contexts. A selfpaced listening experiment with grammatical violations tested the children’s subconscious reflex to grammatical violations caused by the online comprehension of sentences with article omission. The results reveal important betweengroup differences and shed light to their specific underlying difficulties. Moreover, they demonstrate that production data underestimate the children’s grammatical abilities.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, delivered by Dr Jaakko Kauko, University of Helsinki. The presentation aims to understand and contrast the dynamics in English and Finnish education policymaking. Dynamics are understood as patterns of interaction between the main policy actors embedded in the sociohistorical contexts in the two countries. Data is drawn from 16 theme interviews with key policymakers in England complemented with a body of official documents. The Finnish data is based on earlier research projects, their results and policymaker theme interview data used in them. The English education policymaking on the surface level reflects a rather reactionary dynamics, following earlier theories of policy entrepreneurs seizing opportunities. On a deeper level, policymaking is guided by an institutional structure created over the course of history: centralisation of power to the Department for Education and a shift of balance in consulting from formal or professional organisations to think tanks and political advisors, and the ascendancy of Ofsted as a political actor in education policy. Finnish education policymaking dynamics is restricted by radical municipal autonomy, consensus supporting decision making system, and a bureaucratic tradition all which buffer against rapid changes and result in a continuity of the comprehensive school. In policy-making, the relations of the English actors are conflictual whereas in Finland they are consensual. In both context there seemed to be a governance gap between the central and local administration. The difference in the processes of centralisation seemed to explain change potential. The main difference in dynamics is the fluidity of the education institutions, particularly school types. In England, the changing political emphasis has changed thebasic organisation of schooling, while in Finland changes took place inside the comprehensive school institution.
A public seminar from the Department of Education, delivered by Dr Roger Barnard. This presentation discusses a number of current issues and concerns relating to English Language policies with particular attention to educational contexts in Asia. It begins with identifying the goals of a language policy. It is then suggested that, to be effective, a language policy needs to take into consideration the contexts in which the implementation is intended. There follow examples of language policies in specific contexts, each of which begins with a brief sociolinguistic sketch and ends with some questions about the wisdom of current policies: the choice of official languages (Timor Leste); the curricular aims of English as a Foreign Language (Vietnam); the early introduction of English as a foreign language (Korea); ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ English speaking teachers (Japan); English as the medium of instruction in primary schools (Malaysia) and in universities (Thailand). The presentation concludes by emphasising the need for further research that takes into account the influence of sociocultural factors in the specific contexts where policies are to be implemented. It also argues for a reconsideration of the tendency of educational language policies to be imposed on, rather than negotiated with, key stakeholders, chief among which are the teachers who have to interpret and implement the policies.
This talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics, reflects on a recent ethnographic study of a year 9 class – researched at school and at home over an academic year. We have been particularly interested in asking how young people perceive and respond to the demands made of them by school and family. How do they conceive of the place and purpose of learning, and the value of home or community? Do digitally mediated activities and networks enable or impede young people’s connected learning or opportunities in society? And what difference does or could the digital make to extending or deepening or otherwise underpinning such connections?
This seminar presentation traces the emergence of postmodernist models of higher education institutions (HEIs) from Clark Kerr’s 1963 idea of the American multiversity to Zygmunt Bauman’s more recent notion of the postmodern university.
Prof. Kenneth Ruthven gives a talk for the Department of Education public seminar series The Effecting Principled Improvement in STEM Education (epiSTEMe) project designed and trialled a research-informed intervention which sought to incorporate a dialogic component within the teaching of early-secondary science and mathematics. This talk discusses the design and trialling of the intervention, particularly the crafting of a dialogic approach, and reports findings from a large-scale evaluation of the intervention.
A talk from the Department of Education Public Seminar series given by Prof. Roumyana Slabakova (Universities of Southampton and Iowa) and Prof. Lydia White (McGill University). A much-studied phenomenon in first language (L1) acquisition concerns the fact that children have greater difficulty in interpreting sentences with pronouns than with reflexives, the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE).
To investigate this issue, we look at the performance of adult learners of English (L1s French and Spanish) on sentences with reduced and full pronouns bound by referential and quantified antecedents. We will demonstrate that advanced learners are as accurate as native speakers, and will speculate on pedagogical implications of our findings.
Dr Vicky Murphy talks on research examining figurative vocabulary knowledge in primary school children with EAL, examining collocations (multiword phrases) and idioms and the relative contribution this type of word knowledge makes to literacy development. Dr Vicki Murphy is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at the Department of Education, University of Oxford.
In this talk, Prof. Klassen, University of York, considers how psychological research can inform how teachers are selected for training and practice, leading to new selection approaches that can strengthen the quality of schools in the UK and elsewhere.
Professor Jason Rothman presents a survey of experimental research examining the grammatical knowledge and performances of heritage speaker bilinguals, most of which demonstrate that as a group they differ significantly from monolingual counterparts.
Patrick Dunleavy, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains how the impacts of university social science have been under-researched, and their effectiveness often decried.
A public seminar given by Dr Christian Ydesen who is a researcher at Aalborg University, Denmark In this presentation Dr Ydesen will reveal perspectives based on experiences from twentieth-century Danish educational history by outlining contemporary, test-based accountability regime characteristics and their implications for education policy.
Dr Parvaneh Tavakoli is Lecturer in TESOL & Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. In this presentation the existing models of task difficulty will be introduced and their applicability to L2 writing and speaking modes will be examined.
Harry Daniels is Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. He previously held Chairs at the Universities of Bath and Birmingham. He is co-convener and Research Director of the Oxford Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (OSAT). It has often been claimed that the notion of mediation lies at the heart of Vygotsky's contribution to social science. However developments of his account of the social formation of mind have tended to have been empirically constrained by limitations in attempts to capture aspects of the 'social' which lie beyond the interactional.
In this session Prof. Daniels draws on a number of studies which provide glimpses of the need to nuance further the notion of mediation as part of the response to these limitations."
Prof. Leung (King's College London) has worked for many years in the field of second/additional language education. His academic and research interests include classroom pedagogy, content and language-integrated curriculum development, language assessment
Paul Smeyers is Research Professor for Philosophy of Education at Ghent University, Extraordinary Professor at K.U.Leuven, and Honorary Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University.
Professor Herb Marsh is a world-leading researcher in Educational Psychology. He is the author of internationally recognised psychological tests that measure self-concept, motivation and university students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness. Although SETs have a solid research base stemming largely from research conducted in the 1980s, it is surprising that research conducted in the last decade has not done more to address critical limitations previously identified and incorporate exciting methodological advances that are relevant to SET research. Why do universities continue to collect and disseminate potentially demoralising feedback to academics without more fully implementing programs to improve teaching effectiveness? Why is there not more SET research on how to enhance the usefulness of SETs as part of a program to improve university teaching? These, and other issues, are addressed in this presentation.
A public seminar given by Professor Walter Doyle, University of Arizona, at the Oxford University Department of Education. A basic tension exists in education between ideas and reform proposals, on the one hand, and practical work in classrooms, on the other. Teacher educators are often disappointed that their graduates do not use what they have been taught in their preparation programs. Similarly, designers of new curricula or reform teaching approaches are disheartened that teachers often ignore these innovations or translate them into the familiar patterns of normal practice. Conventional attempts to resolve this tension focus on modifying teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and skills with respect to the recommended practices. Recent analyses of the nature of practical work suggest that greater focus needs to be placed on understanding the goal systems and tools embedded in the work teachers actually do. This presentation will review some recent work on practical rationality and heuristics that is focused on bridging ideas and practice in teaching.
In this seminar Paul E Newton, Professor of Education Assessment University of London, Institute of Education talks about how scholars have been trying to agree on a meaning of validity.
Public Seminar delivered by Professor Barry O'Sullivan from the British Council on 11/02/2013. Prof. Sullivan argues that the success of any learning system hinges on the quality of the original performance standards, the manner in which the standards are delivered in the classroom and the degree to which assessment is integrated into the whole system.
Public Seminar delivered by Prof. Martin Bygate, University of Lancaster on 28/01/2013. A focus for Task Based Language Teaching research which might help the development of TBLT.