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A philosophical inquiry into subject English and creative writingTable of Contents Part I: Aims & Scope of the Book Chapter 1 Writing in, about, & from the Classroom Chapter 2 Mapping the Terrain of Schooled English & Creative Writing Part II: Problems of Knowledge Chapter 3 Problems of Individual Knowledge Chapter 4 Problems of Curricular & Disciplinary Knowledge: The Curious Case of School English Chapter 5 Reading, Writing, & a Very Rough Sketch of Revised English Studies (Coda to Part II) Part III: Writing Beyond the English Studies Classroom Chapter 6 Thinking as a Kind of Writing, Writing as a Kind of Philosophy; or, On Lightbulb Moments
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Review of: Engaging with linguistic diversity: a study of educational inclusion at an Irish primary schoolreview of Engaging with linguistic diversity: a study of educational inclusion at an Irish primary school edited by David Little, Deirdre Kiwan, Victoria Pugh and Daniel Hughes, London, Bloomsbury, 2019, 190 pp., £26.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-350-07203-9
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A tale of two committees: Newbolt illuminated through the Cox modelsThe historical moment of Newbolt, and what gives it enduring significance, is that it defined English as the business of the state and the key to the state of the nation. The Committee had an extraordinary brief, which it developed into a remarkable mission to transform ‘English’ from its pitiful place in education oppressed by ‘The Classics’ to the paramount subject charged with the salvation of the nation. Despite the inevitably elitist nature of its members, it argued for an emancipatory model of English to benefit every class of society. How could anything as bureaucratic as a committee produce such an evangelical and missionary manifesto? Almost 70 years later, the Cox committee, used much more subdued language. However, with a Newbolt legacy that had promoted English to the key subject in schooling, Cox set out a vision of English for ages 5-16 with the same emancipatory principles. The Newbolt and Cox Committees have a remarkable affinity that deserves recognition and analysis, beginning with the notion that the committee phenomenon itself is a remarkable historical agent in the history of the subject English.
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Review of: Teaching PSHE and R(S)HE in primary schools: enhancing the whole curriculumReview of: Teaching PSHE and R(S)HE in primary schools: Enhancing the whole curriculum edited by Victoria Pugh and Daniel Hughes, London, Bloomsbury, 2021, 200 pp., £19.25 (paperback), ISBN: 9781350129887
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Review of: Friedrich Froebel: a critical introduction to key themes and debatesReview of: Friedrich Froebel: a critical introduction to key themes and debates by Tina Bruce, London Bloomsbury, 2021, 167 pp., £19.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781474250429
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Dynamic conversations: using social media in learning and teachingThis conversation aims to consider how social media could be used to support academic practices during and beyond the Covid-19 conditions. It aims to explore some practical approaches to using Social Media in a satisfying and sustainable way. I am looking forward to exploring future opportunities for using social media beyond the covid-19 conditions to support the student experience.
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Multi-disciplinary event for community-based learning and action for the UN SDGsThis practice guide explores a university-wide, immersive learning event from the University of Bedfordshire, which brings together students, academics and representatives from public, private and civic organisations in the community to examine a key global challenge and its local manifestation.
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Transitions to motherhood: young women’s desire for respectability, responsibility and moral worthIn the UK, teenage motherhood is depicted in the media and government policy as highly negative and problematic. Pregnant and mothering young women are constructed as socially excluded members of society who belong to an assumed underclass who lack responsibility and respectability. This article draws on the views and perspectives of pregnant and mothering young women in the east of England to examine how positive and successful subjects are defined and understood. It is illustrated how this group of working class young women negotiated and resisted their positioning as 'unfit' mothers and 'bad' citizens. Central to their narratives was a desire to reassert themselves as respectable and responsible individuals through engaging in education and employment in order to achieve financial independence. It is argued that this notion of respectability provides a limited and limiting understanding of inclusion and moral worth for working class young women.
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Students on screen: shifting representations of the student on British screens since 2010As the number of university students in Britain has expanded so has public interest in them, expressed across a range of media. This talk will explore how the idea of ‘the student’ is conceptualised, constructed, and negotiated in recent British television documentary, drama and comedy genres. Conceiving of television as a space in which people experience and engage with complex social understandings, we examine how the representation of the student on the British television screen has shifted in recent years from positioning students predominantly as fun-loving, promiscuous and irresponsible to emphasising the ways in which they are vulnerable and increasingly politically charged subjects, whilst universities themselves have come to be represented as predatory and profit driven enterprises. Please be aware that this talk includes reference to both fictional and factual televisual coverage of the topics of student suicide and sexual assault.
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Constructing the university student in British documentary televisionAs the number of university students in Britain has expanded so has public interest in them, expressed across a range of media. This chapter investigates how university students are conceptualised and represented in recent British documentary television. Conceiving of television as a space in which people experience and engage with complex social understandings, this chapter explores how these televisual representations reflect and negotiate a range of prominent socio-cultural concerns about students. We examine how excessive, distorted and caricatured notions of the student have led to representations that are often polarised, with students positioned as either ‘at risk’ and in need of protection or as posing ‘a risk’ to themselves, to other students, and to the university sector. In a context of shifting understandings about university students in Britain and when the expansion, cost, ‘worth’ and ‘value’ of higher education are all under scrutiny, this chapter analyses the ways in which media representations can both serve to highlight and evade the complex lived realities of university students. The documentaries examined here offer sometimes contradictory constructions of the higher education student that correspond to broader social and cultural shifts in the ways in which the university student is understood in contemporary Britain.
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Under pressure: representations of student suicide in higher educationThis article examines what the representation of university student suicide in three British television documentaries reveals about media constructions of suicide and the pressures young people experience at university. Within these documentaries, student suicide is positioned as a risk endemic in a high pressure, high-cost performance culture. Young students are depicted as stressed and ‘on the edge’, either as a consequence of the academic pressure of university or the coalescence of academic, financial and social pressures. Debates about the responsibility of individuals and the accountability of institutions come to the fore as depictions of students as fully fledged and responsible adults jostle with the notion of students as ‘adults in transition’, at risk and in need of institutions to actively monitor and intervene in their lives. The documentaries offer insight into shifting media constructions of the student from ‘fun loving’ and ‘carefree’ to ‘under pressure’ and ‘at risk’. Within them, student suicide is positioned not only as a profound personal loss, but as an economic loss to a society neglecting its young people.
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Evaluating and assessing student oral presentations: a limited but effective role for employers in the geography curriculumEmployers were involved in assessing students’ presentations, giving feedback and in the development of staff skills for providing feedback. The curriculum context to the oral presentations is described and the problems and benefits of employer involvement are considered. It is argued that it is possible to develop an effective small‐scale approach to employer involvement as an alternative to major schemes.
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Research leadership for the community-engaged university: key challengesIn Great Britain, attempts to broaden university-community engagement have taken significant steps in recent years. A wide variety of community-engagement structures and activities are now emerging. This paper uses one innovative example-University of Brighton's Community-University Partnership Programme-to describe the opportunities and probe the dilemmas. The paper shows how leadership is at the heart of arrangements whereby diverse groups come together with different goals and motives to take part in a collective process. The complex leadership needed to succeed at such efforts is considered. Recommendations for institutional change and growth are made.
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The use of objects to enhance online social research interviewsThe ongoing COVID-19 health emergency, and the restrictions that it has placed on research, led many researchers to the re-evaluation of how social research interviews need to go online and how these can be enhanced. The online space presents a platform that brings participants and researchers together in an environment owned by both regardless of who hosts the online session. Online methods are likely to continue through emergencies and crises in general and beyond, and this calls for innovative ways to enhance online research interviews. This chapter discusses a study of a series of online interviews where interviewees were invited to bring an object of personal value with the aim to facilitate a discussion on ‘happiness in lockdown.’ The selected topic served as a vehicle to explore this approach to online interviews while contextualising it in a crisis situation. It also helped to anchor the discussion around a positive theme in the middle of a global crisis. The study aimed at exploring the dynamics observed and the type of thematic materials gathered in this research context. The focus is to investigate the research technique and explore the benefits and challenges of using objects in social research interviews online. As participants select objects related to the research, they are given some control to steer the discussion. Hennigar (1997) discussed the shift in thinking when artefacts are placed at the center of the conversation, and the participant’s own values, beliefs and views about the world could be explored in more depth resulting in what Rubin and Rubin (2012: 95) call an ‘extended conversation.’ The purpose of such a conversation is to explore in depth some themes of relevance to the interviewee through their choice of objects. Using Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), we explored the richness, depth and genuineness of the materials gathered in object-based online research interviews. The chapter details the research process, discussing the benefits and challenges of using objects as enhancing tools in social research interviews conducted online. It considers how participants chose their items, how the tool compares with other enhancing tools, and some methodological implications. The chapter concludes with our reflection as interviewers offering advice to researchers who may choose to use this enhancing technique in their online interviews.
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Perception of studying dental law and ethics among postgraduate dental students in the UKLaw and ethics is an integral part of medical and dental professional practice. The subject is touched upon in the undergraduate curriculum. Historically, dentists interested in postgraduate study in this subject have accessed courses on medical law and ethics. While there are areas of shared interest (for example, consent, confidentiality) there are differences in emphasis and content (for example, end of life care, organ transplants, etc) which are not relevant to dentistry. A new postgraduate certificate (PgCert) course was approved by the University of Bedfordshire designed specifically for dental practitioners, making it the only university accredited course in the UK that is specific to dental staff. Students' perception of the subject of dental law and ethics at a postgraduate level was not known. The first PgCert student cohort was assessed at the start and the end of the course using two questionnaires. Sixteen students, all qualified dental practitioners working in the UK, took part. The perception toward the subject of dental law and ethics was in-line with the current guideline and regulations governing the dental profession. Perception of dental law was clearer at the end of the course compared to the beginning while dental ethics remained a challenging subject.
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Race and educational leadership: the influence of research methods and critical theorising in understanding representation, roles and ethnic disparitiesEditorial. The special issue offers new knowledge about racialised educational experiences by shedding light on racialised leadership in school and higher education in diverse geographical and educational contexts in England, Canada, America and South Africa through a mix of research methods (phenomenological, longitudinal, documentary, semi-structured interviews), analytical (content and textual analysis) and theoretical approaches (critical race theory [CRT], critical ecological). This special issue prioritises the centring of educational leaders’ lived experiences and their voices alongside the research methods used to illuminate the nuances associated with race and educational leadership in schools and higher education. The prism of race enables us to add new educational leadership insights to the field associated with ethnicity, gender, culturally constructed notions of leadership, intersectionality and/or geographical location. The findings highlight implications for researching race and educational leadership.
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Book review: Your booksmart, school- savvy, stress-busting primary teacher training companionreview of: Your booksmart, school- savvy, stress-busting primary teacher training companion by Elizabeth Malone, 2020, London, Sage, 178 pp., £16.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-5264-9419-1
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Review of: Building systems that work for young children: international insights from innovative early childhood systemsBook review of: Building systems that work for young children: international insights from innovative early childhood systems, edited by Sharon Lynn Kagan, 2019, Columbia University: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 248 pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-8077-6129-8
