hud.ac.uk/research/education
Issue 07 July 2019
Spreading the word – community reporting of involvement in extremism Research collaborations between HudCRES researchers and international colleagues are supporting more effective policy and practice efforts to prevent terrorism. How to prevent domestic terrorism is a challenge facing governments internationally. Many terrorists give some indication of their intentions to those around them yet few reports to the Police come from ‘intimates’, family or close friends of potential attackers. Ground-breaking research on this vital issue was developed in Australia by HudCRES Visiting Professor Michele Grossman (Deakin University, Melbourne), leading to a subsequent collaboration with Professor Paul Thomas and Dr Shamim Miah in a high-profile UK replication study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council through the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST). The resulting ‘Community Reporting Thresholds’ report (download from crestresearch.ac.uk/projects/ reporting-violent-extremism) received significant policy interest, with the research team providing a number of briefings on the implications of the findings to officials at the Home Office and the National Counter-Terrorism Police Head Quarters.
The Community Reporting work is part of a portfolio of HudCRES research and publications supporting more effective efforts to prevent terrorism and extremism. This includes ongoing collaborations with local authorities in the region, and in the first national study on how English Schools and Colleges were understanding and implementing the counter-terrorism ‘Prevent duty’ (Busher et al.,2017) with Coventry and Durham Universities. Professor Thomas’s analysis of the effectiveness of Britain’s Prevent strategy has also featured in books commissioned by the German Federal and Flemish regional governments.
The international gravity of this topic has now been demonstrated by further international research collaborations. Professors Thomas and Grossman have joined with colleagues from the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Illinois at Chicago in a US ‘Community Reporting’ replication study scheduled to start in September 2019, funded by the US Government Department of Justice. We are also awaiting final confirmation of funding from Public Safety Canada for a Canadian replication study in collaboration with Ryerson University of Toronto. In each national case, the aim is to develop evidence-based insights and recommendations on how revised policy and practice approaches can support community members to take the very difficult decision to report someone close to them, as well as developing a research data set to guide recommendations to governments on an international basis.
hud.ac.uk/research/education
Improving reading in Kirklees schools The West Yorkshire Teaching Alliance, Pennine Teaching School Alliance, Yorkshire Anglican Teaching School Alliance, Mirfield Free Grammar Academies Trust and Kirklees Local Authority have delivered a project funded by the DfE Strategic School Improvement Fund (SSIF) which aimed to narrow the gap in attainment in reading for disadvantaged pupils in 22 Kirklees schools.
A team from HudCRES, led by Jayne Price, has been asked to undertake research focusing on the impact and sustainability of the reading interventions. Other members of the research team include Dr Fiona Ellam (Woodhouse) and colleagues Dr Emma Salter, Audrey Wood and Liz Zsargo. The research, due to be completed by the end of July 2019, aims to analyse factors impacting on the sustainability of targeted interventions beyond the scope of the initial SSIF-funded project. It will analyse the impact of the interventions on pupil progress towards meeting age-related-expectations in reading; analyse the impact on key staff involved in delivering the intervention; identify intervention-specific, leadership, financial and organisational factors affecting impact and sustainability and identify good practice in planning for and meeting sustainability objectives.
Education, inequality and social class Access to education has expanded massively over the last 50 years, and more people than ever go on to higher education. At the same time, inequalities of income, wealth and power have persisted or even increased, and family background still greatly influences our chances of educational success. This new book, written by HudCRES researcher Dr Ron Thompson, focuses on two main issues: the nature and extent of educational inequalities in the 21st century, and the question of how these inequalities are related to the class structure of society. Based on a comprehensive review of international literature as well as the author’s own research, it will be of value to anyone who wishes to understand the processes leading to unequal educational outcomes.
This book provides detailed discussion of the work of influential thinkers on class in education such as Pierre Bourdieu, as well as examining the concepts used to understand patterns of educational inequality. Questions such as the meaning of social justice, how inequality in education is measured, and the interaction of class, gender and race are all critically examined. The book also considers specific policy issues and their impact on inequality, such as the grammar schools debate and the relationship between education and social mobility.
Education, Inequality and Social Class: Expansion and stratification in educational opportunity Ron Thompson Routledge ISBN: 978-1138306370
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Pursuing fairness in Education Researchers from HudCRES recently visited Kingston, Jamaica to attend the International Conference on Educational Leadership (IEAL-J). The theme of the conference was ‘Educational Leadership for Social Justice: Policy, Practice, and Community’. With representatives from eight different countries across the globe including school leaders; classroom teachers; parents; policymakers; academics and members of civil society – participants joined to discuss leadership for social justice and how to ensure equal educational opportunities for all.
From left to right: Rehena Shanks – Chair of the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS), Ian Potter – Vice-Chair of BELMAS, Professor Paul Miller – HudCRES, The Honourable Alando Terrelonge – MP, State Minister in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, Jamaica, and Kadia Hylton-Fraser – current president of IEAL-J.
HudCRES Professor Paul Miller, president of the Commonwealth Council for Education Administration and Management, gave a keynote address to the conference on ‘The political dichotomy of school leadership: policy, practice and social justice’. Susan Timmins presented findings of the international collaborative research she is undertaking with Eleanor Blair (Western Carolina University, USA) and Carmel Roofe-Bowen (University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica and HudCRES Visiting Scholar). They are currently writing a book together entitled ‘A Cross-Cultural Consideration of Teachers’ Narratives of Power, Agency and School Culture: England, Jamaica and The United States’ due for publication later this year. Dr Lisa Russell presented a paper, co-authored with Professor Christine Jarvis, on the importance of undergraduate and postgraduate feelings of a ‘sense of belonging’ – in order to aid HEI’s (Higher Education Institutes) form support structures to help retain their students. Students leave university for multiple reasons – some internal to the university related to support mechanisms, assessment feedback and quality of teaching; and others external including critical life moments such as bereavement, ill health, financial constraint and domestic responsibilities. For many students it is the complex interaction of these factors that shape their ‘sense of belonging’, identification with and experience of a higher education learner identity.
From left to right: Dr Lisa Russell and Susan Timmins with Dr Hope Mayne, Associate Professor, University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech).
Whilst in Jamaica Lisa also taught Masters students at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, delivering a workshop ‘Doing Ethnography with NEET Young People’. She outlined her ethnographic expertise when working with young people Not in Employment Education and Training (NEET) and shared her use of participatory research methods using multi-modal map techniques. By encouraging the students to walk in the shoes of NEET young people, they were able to understand the nuances and challenges these young people face in their everyday lives, while simultaneously learning about how to do qualitative participant-led research.
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Learning to teach - Learning to ‘look’ How trainee teachers learn to teach has long been dominated by the idea that “knowledge of teaching is acquired and developed by the personal experience of teaching” (Munby et al., 2001, p.897). Dr David Powell, Director of the Education and Training Consortium at the University of Huddersfield and HudCRES researcher, is interested in the contribution made by teacher educators’ use of modelling teaching strategies and behaviour. Influenced by the painter David Hockney’s (2014) claim that “teaching people to draw is teaching people to look”, David suggests that learning to teach starts with ‘learning to look’. In their book ‘Learning to Teach’ published in 2014, Dr Jonathan Glazzard, Dr Neil Denby and Jayne Price (colleagues from the School of Education and Professional Development at the time) also recognised the potential of learning by looking:
“One of the best ways [for trainee teachers] to learn effective teaching and skills is to see others apply such skills competently and professionally.” (p.10) However, implicit in this statement is the assumption that trainee teachers know how to observe their teacher educator, or another teacher, at the start of their course – an assumption largely fed by Dan C. Lortie’s claim that by watching almost 13,000 hours of teaching by the age of 18 all student teachers have undergone an “apprenticeship of observation” (1975, ‘Schoolteacher: a sociological study’, p.61). However, these ‘observations’ were as learners – they were not, at that time, ‘apprentice teachers’. David said: My doctoral research involved working with a team of further education-based teacher educators to explore their use of modelling within their practice. Early on it became clear that their trainees did not always notice the modelling of teaching strategies or behaviours and we discussed how we might address this.
One of the teacher educators suggested that trainees needed the visual equivalent of a writing frame, to scaffold their observation in a class. Based on this suggestion, I developed and piloted what is now the Viewing Frame in my own teaching and have shared it with others to gain feedback on its effectiveness as a pedagogical resource. When using the Viewing Frame, I also share my lesson plan with my trainees to help them see into my pedagogical planning and decision making before and during the class. The Viewing Frame comprises a grid of five columns. The first column lists, in chronological order, the activities of the class. The four remaining columns offer a series of guiding questions, based on four forms of modelling identified by Lunenberg et al. (2007, ‘The teacher educator as a role model’. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, (5) pp.586601) for observers to consider. The Viewing Frame has proven particularly popular with teacher educators in the Netherlands. David has recently had a paper on the role of ‘learning to look’ within a pedagogy of teacher education, co-authored with HudCRES Visiting Scholar Anja Swennen from VU University, Amsterdam, published in Dutch in Kennisbasis (Knowledge Base) the journal of VELON – the professional association for teacher educators in the Netherlands. He has also been invited to contribute to the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development blog info-ted.eu/
Why not try it for yourself? The viewing frame, including supporting references and suggestions for its use are available to download from hud.ac/hudcres-viewing-frame
hud.ac.uk/research/education
A fabulous year for Thuy Thai The 2018-2019 academic year has been a very successful one for Thuy Thai, one of our postgraduate researchers. Thuy Thai Postgraduate researcher
In November Thuy won the best poster prize at the Language Testing Forum – the annual conference of the UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment and the UK’s most important conference for language assessment research. More recently, she has been awarded a prestigious Assessment Research Award by the British Council – the United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. It provides awards which recognise achievement and innovation and support research activities across the world. Proposals for this award are reviewed and judged by the Assessment Research Group, whose team members are internationally recognised experts in the field.
Thuy said “Receiving this prestigious award is an honour to me personally as an international PhD student since it represents international recognition of my research project which tries to extend understanding of factors that may affect examiners’ scoring decisions in a highstakes test in Vietnam. Moreover, the funds received will provide a significant boost for my work. I hope with this financial support I can complete my research plan on time. I would like to thank the Assessment Research Group for this award and thank my supervisor, Susan Sheehan, for her kind support in the application preparation stage.”
TESOL, and language assessment in particular, is an important area of research growth for HudCRES. In the past five years, colleagues in the team, including Dr Susan Sheehan and Sonia Munro, have been awarded three British Council research grants for projects relating to language assessment and have presented at research conferences around the world, including the Language Testing Research Colloquium, the most prestigious international conference in the field. Their most recent publication, ‘What does language assessment literacy mean to teachers?’ is available in the English Language Teaching Journal (doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccy055) and you can follow their work on twitter @HuddsTesol
hud.ac.uk/research/education
Upcoming events HudCRES organises a programme of public lectures, seminars, practitioner research events and international symposia. Events are advertised on the University of Huddersfield events page hud.ac.uk/events (type ‘HudCRES’ in the search) and also on our own website hud.ac.uk/research/education
Please check back regularly – details are occasionally subject to change and events are added to the programme throughout the year. If you would like to be notified of upcoming events by email, please join our mailing list. Our events are open to all and free to attend unless otherwise stated, but tickets are usually limited so booking is essential.
• S eminar: The massification of higher education and the changing idea of a degree Dr Elizabeth Knight, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
9 Sept 2019
• P ublic Lecture Professor Gus John, Visiting Professor and consultant on Equity and Attainment to the Senior Leadership Team, Coventry University
5 Dec 2019
• P ublic Lecture Dr Nicola Rollock, Reader (Associate Professor) in Equity and Education at Goldsmiths, University of London
12 Feb 2020
• P ublic Lecture Professor Gary McCulloch, Professor of the History of Education and director of the International Centre for Historical research in Education at UCL Institute of Education
20 May 2020
‘Ed Space, the HudCRES blog The ‘Ed Space blog features regular posts exploring issues around being a researcher, undertaking research, the findings of research and the use of research in policy, practice and wider society. Each post provides an opportunity to comment and engage in discussion with the author. The blog can be found at blogs.hud.ac.uk/hudcres but if you would like to be notified of new posts by email, please join our mailing list.
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Contact us HudCRES@hud.ac.uk +44 (0)1484 478249 hud.ac.uk/research/education Follow us on Twitter: @HudCRES 19081