Huddersfield Centre for Research in Education and Society (HudCRES) newsletter Issue 6 - Dec 18

research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/hudcres

Issue 06 December 2018

At HudCRES, we undertake research that we believe has the potential to make a real difference. But we recognise that this can only happen when it is heard or read about; understood; and ultimately acted upon by policy makers and practitioners.

The newsletter, ‘Ed Space blog, twitter feed @HudCRES, and programme of events are all part of our strategy for enabling this to happen.

Changing the world... one conversation at a time It’s good to talk, and in July we opened our doors for HudCRES … in conversation. Seventy-five people, almost half of whom were external to the university, came together for a full day of exciting and productive conversations about doing, using, and developing research.

Participants included teachers, tutors and lecturers across the full spectrum of education provision; representatives from a wide range of local organisations and departments in local authorities; and academic staff from HudCRES and the wider university.

Making a difference for children and families

The atmosphere was one of collaboration and collegiality; of people working together with purpose; and feedback from the day was incredibly positive, so thank you to everyone who took part!

Research methods

Young people on the margins

Community cohesion and PREVENT

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It has been great to have ‘time’ to think and process, surrounded by inspiring professionals.

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The quality of presentations was fantastic, and it was a privilege to hear such acclaimed academics speak. I leave here today feeling inspired and motivated.

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The range of workshops was fantastic. It was a good opportunity to meet new people.

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Schools and School Leadership

Further, Higher and Vocational education and training

Professor Pete Sanderson welcomes participants to ‘HudCRES... in conversation’

Read more about the event on twitter #HudCRES18, or on the ‘Ed Space blog bit.ly/Ed-Sp66.

If you were there and would like to share any more thoughts or reflections on the day, or developments since, please leave a comment on twitter @HudCRES, on the blog post, or by email hudcres@hud.ac.uk

research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/hudcres

research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/hudcres

Professional Love

Professor Robert MacDonald Robert MacDonald has recently joined HudCRES and the School of Education and Professional Development as Professor of Education and Social Justice.

He has previously worked at the universities of Durham and York and most recently at Teesside University.

Dr Martin Purcell Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Management

‘I am extremely pleased to be joining such a dedicated and successful community of researchers and educators. I have long-standing connections with the School of Education and have been particularly impressed by the research that colleagues have undertaken about youth transitions, unemployment and marginalisation’.

Building on his considerable experience in researching how values inform and shape community development and youth work practice, Dr Martin Purcell is currently exploring the transformational capacity of professionally loving practice in community development and work with children and young people.

Martin’s work seeks to understand the importance of attachment between practitioners and their clients, exploring the importance of ‘love’ as an element of practice, as articulated by Paulo Freire, bell hooks and other key educational theorists. See ‘Ed Space blog posts: Searching for the meaning of ‘Love’(bit.ly/Ed-Sp7) and More on ‘Love’ – ‘Professional Love’ (bit.ly/Ed-Sp17a)

Having presented a joint paper at BERA’s 2017 conference Martin continues to collaborate with Dr Jim Reid and Dr Jools Page (University of Brighton, and previous HudCRES visiting scholar) – who originally coined the term professional love. They are testing new ways of analysing data from interviews with practitioners, to gain a deeper understanding of how they grapple with the complexities of relational work with children in their care.

Professor Robert MacDonald

Robert holds a number of Visiting Professorships and Fellowships, including at the Danish Centre for Youth Research, Aalborg University; the Department of Sociology, Monash University; and the School of Social Policy and Sociology, Nottingham University. Most recently he was awarded a Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professorship at Bristol University where he is currently co-hosting a series of seminars from 2018-19 dedicated to better understanding youth transitions, insecurity and inequality in the UK. He has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2011 and is (joint) editor in chief of the internationally acclaimed Journal of Youth Studies.

The online journal, Radical Community Work (RCW) rcwjournal.org/ojs recently published an article on Martin’s pilot study, capturing the views on professional love of practitioners working in a range of roles with children and young people (Vol 3, no1, 2018). He is currently guest editing a special issue of RCW, focused on professional love in community development, scheduled to be launched at the World Community Development Conference in June 2019.

In his most ambitious research endeavour to date, Martin is starting work on the establishment of a Mass Observation initiative, focusing initially on professional love.

He is seeking to recruit a pool of practitioners willing to respond to enquiries about a variety of aspects of their practice.

Professor MacDonald’s main research interests are young people, youth transitions and inequality.

For further information about his research, including registering your interest in taking part in the Mass Observation initiative, please contact Dr Martin Purcell, m.purcell@hud.ac.uk

At Teesside he helped to develop and lead the well-known and widely influential Teesside Studies of Youth Transitions and Social Exclusion. He has authored, co-authored and edited a series of books on these issues including: Risky Business? Youth and the Enterprise Culture (1991); Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion (1997); Snakes and Ladders: Young People, Transitions and Social Exclusion (2000); Disconnected Youth? Growing up in Britain’s Poor Neighbourhoods (2005); Drugs in Britain (2007); Young People, Class and Place (2010); Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain (2012).

Robert is currently working on research about young adults and the ‘gig economy’; precarity, generation and class; and comparative studies of youth in the UK and the MENA (Middle East and North African) countries.

He will be giving his Professorial Inaugural lecture to the University on 28th March 2019.

Professional love explored through LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®

Professor MacDonald’s recent publications include: An article reporting on Martin’s use of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® to explore professional love with undergraduate Youth & Community Work students was published recently in the Journal of Further & Higher Education.

This work also features in a forthcoming book on Play in Higher Education.

Hubris, revelations and creative pedagogy: transformation, dialogue and modelling ‘professional love’ with LEGO® Journal of Further and Higher Education, 2018 doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2018.1490948

The Power of Play in Higher Education: Creativity in Tertiary Learning Alison James and Chrissi Nerantzi (eds) Palgrave MacMillan ISBN: 978-3-319-95779-1

Marginalization, Young People in the South and East Mediterranean, and Policy

‘Voodoo sociology, unemployment and ‘the low-pay, no-pay cycle’

Working Paper No. 35 – May 2017 ISSN: 2283-5792

blogs.lse.ac.uk/imimpactofsocialscienes/2018/02/26/

the-sarf.org.uk/voodoo-sociology/

Resist? Welcome? Co-opt? Ignore?

The pressures and possibilities of the REF and impact

The power of stupid ideas: ‘three generations that have never worked’ workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/

research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/hudcres

research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/hudcres

Improving subject-specialist pedagogy in vocational teaching Directed by Professor Kevin Orr, researchers at HudCRES are currently completing a three-year project to better understand and enhance subject-specialist pedagogy for teachers of vocational science, engineering and technology in Further Education (FE) colleges, focusing on initial teacher education.

The project was funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation (gatsby.org.uk), which has long had a commitment to developing technical education.

England’s FE sector is characterised by flux and uncertainty, into which the government’s Post-16 Skills Plan is soon to arrive. A significant element of this is the implementation of new T Level qualifications – 2-year technical programmes designed with employers to give young people the skills that industry needs.

One challenge that has been largely overlooked, however, is the availability and expertise of technical teachers:

College principals have told us that recruiting technical education teachers with well-developed pedagogical skills, mastery of their field, and up-to-date industry experience can be a significant challenge in the competitive labour market. (Sainsbury Report, 2016, p66)

This research project has found that while even the term pedagogy is controversial in FE, using ‘subject-specialist knowledge’ provides an entry into a discussion of pedagogical decision-making among those who might otherwise be sceptical.

Emphasising specialist knowledge also challenges reductive understandings of the technical skills that people have, including teachers. Using abstractions like ‘Pedagogical Content Knowledge’ and ‘occupational identity’ can be sustainable and productive in developing teachers’ expertise in making good teaching decisions as their careers grow.

One outcome of the project is a collection of freely available online resources available at improvingtechnicaleducation.org.uk including videos of teachers in the classroom/workshop followed by interviews about what influences their decisions. There are also activities and presentations of the concepts used, illustrated by animations.

These resources are currently aimed at supporting traineeteachers, but routes for teacher educators, experienced teachers and those with responsibility for staff development are coming soon. If you would like to provide feedback on these resources, please contact Professor Kevin Orr, k.orr@hud.ac.uk

The project has produced a literature review on subject-specialist pedagogy and the evaluation of pedagogical interventions. It is free to download from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, gatsby.org.uk/uploads/education/ literature-review-of-subject-specialist-pedagogy.pdf The project will eventually provide a body of evidence on which to base an evaluation of a subject-specialist approach to pedagogy in teacher education.

The final report of the project will be produced in the spring.

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Upcoming events HudCRES organises a range of public lectures, seminars and events. If you would like to be notified of upcoming events by email, please join our mailing list. (Dates are occasionally subject to change).

• W ar, militarism, and the everyday: Using fiction and found poems to explore museums as gendered pedagogical institutions

22 January 2019

Dr Nancy Taber, Faculty of Education Brock University, Ontario, Canada.

• E ducation policy, the European Union and the European Semester. ‘Elite reform’ or the rediscovery of social Europe?

12 February 2019

Professor Howard Stevenson, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, University of Nottingham.

• Paulo Freire: experience, reminiscence and reflection

14-15 February 2019

Two ‘in conversation’ events with Professor Budd Hall, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; Secretary of the Global Alliance for Community-Engaged Research; and UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. Co-hosted by HudCRES and SCUTREA.

• Youth work, professional standards and 3rd sector provision.

12 March 2019

Part of the Youth and Community Work Seminar Series, 2018-19 • Fitting them in: The role of vocational and further education in responding to the

13 March 2019

challenges of migration and migrants Dr Volker Wedekind, Associate Professor in Vocational Education in the Centre for International Education Research, University of Nottingham.

• Not under conditions of their own choosing’: youth transitions, place and history

28 March 2019

Professor Robert MacDonald, Professorial Inaugural Lecture.

• Doctor Who/Professor What: Shape-shifting cultural identity and education

8 April 2019

Professor Ann Harris, Professorial Inaugural Lecture.

• P arenting high achieving white working class boys in poverty – problematizing ‘active cultivation’ as an explanation for ‘beating the odds’

23 May 2019

Dr Donald Simpson, School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law, Teesside University.

• Education and working-class youth

25 June 2019

Day symposium with Dr Jo Bishop, Professor Robin Simmons, Kat Simpson and Professor John Smyth.

• The toxic university

27 June 2019

Professor John Smyth, Visiting Professor of Education and Social Justice.

‘Ed Space, the HudCRES blog ‘Ed Space, the HudCRES blog, now has a new design. It still features regular posts exploring issues around undertaking educational research, and its use in policy, practice and wider society.

Each post provides an opportunity to comment and engage in discussion with the author. Receive an email whenever a new post is published by joining our mailing list.

‘Ed Space can now be found at blogs.hud.ac.uk/hudcres/

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