This Year’s Conference Papers Oct 2013 - Sept 2014

CfLaT

For further information:

Research Centre for Learning and Teaching School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences King George VI Building Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU

clt@ncl.ac.uk www.ncl.ac.uk/cflat/

Clark, J., Laing, K., Tiplady, L. and Woolner P. (2014) Making Connections: Theory and Practice of Using Visual Methods to Aid Participation in Research, Visual In-Sights: Theory, Method, Practice International Conference, June 26-27, Newcastle, UK.

Hall, E., Robson, S., Wall, K., Laing K. and Loft-house, R. (2014) Enhancing Research Part-nerships in Education: Methodologies, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Humphrey, R. and Ritchie, E.(2014) ‘RENKEI: Collaborating across cultures between the UK and Japan’. 7th European University Association - Council for Doctoral Education Annual Meeting, 'Doctoral Education: Think-ing globally, acting locally', 19-20 June University of Liverpool, UK.

Jones, H. (2014) The value and complexities of the Community of Enquiry as a tool to teach Social Justice to student teachers, BERA, 23-25 September, London, UK.

Laing, K., Clark, J., Tiplady, L., Todd, L. and Woolner, P. (2014) Using a Theory of Change to Evaluate Complex Initiatives: Theory and practice, ECER, 2 – 5 Septem-ber, Porto, Portugal.

Laing, K., Mazzoli-Smith, L. and Todd, L. (2014) ‘Young people’s views of Fairness in Educa-tion’ Where now for Social Justice? The marginalisation of young people in the UK, 12-13th June, University of Canterbury, UK

Laing, K and Todd L (2014) ‘Methods for Evaluat-ing Complex Interventions: Theory of Change Approaches, 6th ESRC Research Methods Festival, 8-10 July, St Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK

Laing, K. Mazzoli-Smith, L. and Todd, L.(2014) ‘Education: Fair or Foul? An issue for inclu-sive education in an international context’, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Laing, K., Mazzoli-Smith, L. and Todd, L., (2014) ‘Education: Fair or Foul?’ BERA, London, 23-25 September 2014.

Leat, D. (2014) Back to the Future – Curriculum Development in a Digital Age, HEA Seminar Keynote June

Leat, D. and Priestley, M. (2014) Curriculum Regulation in England and Scotland in a symposium on Balancing Curriculum Regula-

tion and Freedom across Europe, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Leat, D., Thomas, U., Comber, R., Lopez Vicent, P. and Olivier, P. (2014) Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth - Exploring Sugata Mitra's concept of a Skype Granny Cloud, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Lofthouse, R. and Thomas, U. (2013), Mentoring student teachers in practice; developing an understanding of the architecture of men-toring, EAPRIL conference, 27th-29th NovBiel/Bienne, Switzerland.

Lofthouse, R. and Thomas, U. (2014) Partner-ships for practice: co-construction, co-operation or coercion? Participants’ per-spectives on collaboration for teaching development, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Por-to, Portugal.

Mroz, M. (2014) Parent, teacher, researcher, judge: multi-vocal reflections on writing a PhD by publication, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Preston, A., Seedhouse, P., Balaam, M., Rafiev, A., Jackson, D. and Olivier, P. (2014) Kitch-en as Classroom: Shifting perspectives in the design and evaluation of new technolo-gies for learning, paper in the symposium 'Putting technology in the frame: The po-tential for change in pedagogic practices', BERA, 23-25 September, London, UK.

Reid, A., Preston, A. Karrufa, A., Heslop, P. and Mellor, C. (2014) Re-thinking thinking: stu-dents' perceptions of learning processes as co-authors of digital tabletop applications, paper in the symposium 'Putting technology in the frame: The potential for change in pedagogic practices', BERA, 23-25 Septem-ber, London, UK.

Robson, S. (2014) Internationalisation: investi-gating the dimensions of a transformative framework for higher education, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Schartner, A. (2014). ‘They are people just like you.’ The effects of study abroad on inter-cultural competence. 47th Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Lin-guistics, 4-6 September, University of War-wick, UK.

Schartner, A. (2014). Are we really communi-cating cross-culturally? The learning and

teaching experiences of international post-graduate students on a MA programme in Cross-cultural Communication. 7th Annual NE Universities (3 Rivers Consortium) Re-gional Learning and Teaching Conference, Durham, UK.

Thomas, U., Leat, D., Comber, R., Finnigan, S., McHugh, A., Olivier, P. and Vicent-Lopez, P. (2014) New voices in the classroom: An exploration of the impact of Skype Seniors on curriculum and pedagogy, paper in the symposium 'Putting technology in the frame: The potential for change in peda-gogic practices', BERA, 23-25 September, London, UK.

Tiplady, L., Woolner, P., Clark, J. and Laing, K. (2014) Theory and Practice of Using Visual Methods to Aid Participation in Educational Research, paper in the symposium 'Mediating encounters: Theory and practice of using visual methods to aid participation in educational research', BERA, 23-25 Sep-tember, London, UK.

Tiplady, L. and Laing, K. (2014) Using a ‘toolbox' approach to facilitate participation in re-search, paper in the symposium 'Mediating encounters: Theory and practice of using visual methods to aid participation in edu-cational research', BERA, 23-25 September, London, UK.

Woolner, P. Thomas, U. and Tiplady, L. (2014) The role of the physical environment in enacting school change, BERA, 23-25 Sep-tember, London, UK.

Woolner, P. and Tiplady, L. (2014)Adapting School Premises as Part of a Complex Peda-gogical Change Programme, ECER, 2 – 5 September, Porto, Portugal.

Young, T., & Schartner, A. (2014). Sojourner Adjustment, Adaptation and Performance and the Study of Intercultural Communica-tion. Annual seminar of the Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group of the British Association for Applied Linguis-tics, May 22-23, Edinburgh University, UK.

Young, T. & Schartner, A. (2014). Student retro-spectives on ‘internationalised’ postgradu-ate education. 14th International Confer-ence on Language and Social Psychology (ICLASP), June 19-22, Honolulu, USA.

CfLaT Headlines

David Leat and Sugata Mitra presented a joint Keynote Lecture at BERA this month. Their talks were entitled Bringing the School in the Cloud Down to Earth: Skype Grannies Meets the English School System and The Future of Learn-ing

Robin Humphrey’s RENKEI project has just been shortlisted for a Times Higher Award for 'Outstanding Support to Early Career Re-searchers'. He is looking forward to the Awards night in November.

Sue Robson was funded as a consultant to work with the HEA to develop an Internationalisa-tion Framework for Higher Education. The framework is designed to recognise, build on and enhance the quality and variety of inter-nationalisation policy and practice in HE. It is intended as a resource for organisational, curriculum or individual development and re-view, and is available on the HEA website: http://tinyurl.com/lch8vmr. Sue also applied successfully for an Erasmus grant of EU299k which will enable CfLAT and North Leadership Centre to work with schools across Europe over the next two years to develop Entrepre-neurial Leadership.

Anna Reid (Visiting Lecturer, 2013-14) has now joined the university as a full-time member of staff. Based in the North Leadership Centre and CfLaT, she will be Deputy Programme Director for the North East Teaching Schools Partnership and Teaching Fellow in Leadership for the coming academic year.

Prof. Melanie Nind from Southampton will be coming to CfLaT as a Visiting Professor this semester

NEWSLETTER

Students enrolling on the Doctorate of Education (EdD) from this September will benefit from a re-structured and improved programme. The EdD is a professional doctorate that it is specially designed for education practi-tioners and leaders, who usually study either part-time or while on secondment from their day jobs. They are intent on researching issues that have arisen from their professional practices, often working within their own contexts. The research de-gree, equivalent in credit value and intellectual demand to a traditional PhD, begins with a taught stage before students embark on their research. The big change from this year is a reduction in the number of taught module credits that have to be accumulated before the student starts their doctoral research. Yet, thanks to the development of a clear backbone of doctoral research methods mod-ules, students should be better prepared than ever for the research stage. The re-vised taught stage consists of 120 credits of taught material, which will include the sequence of three compulsory modules (worth a total of 40 credits) plus another 20 credits of research methods training to suit the student’s circumstances. The remain-ing 60 credits are gained by choosing modules from across ECLS to fit with a stu-dent’s particular research and professional interests.

For more information contact Pamela.Woolner@ncl.ac.uk

September 2014 Issue 19

CONSULTANCY TO RESEARCH 2

RESEARCH ACCESS 2

SUMMER OF RESEARCH 2

SCHOOL SPACE & DIAMONDS 3

In this issue:

FaSMEd PARTNER SCHOOLS 3

COMING RESEARCH TEAS 3

CONFERENCE PAPERS 4

New look EdD

NEW LOOK EdD 1

SOLE CENTRE LAUNCH 1

SOLE CENTRE LAUNCH

The SOLE Centre launched in July as a new research centre with con-

siderable links to CfLaT.

The new centre has been initiated by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Chris Brink, and will be jointly funded over the next three years by central strategic

and HASS faculty funds. Professor Sugata Mitra has been appointed Director

and he will be supported by two Assistant Directors, Professor Liz Todd and Professor David Leat. A launch event is planned for 10 November in the

Courtyard, Newcastle University.

The concept of Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) developed from

Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ experi-

ments carried out between 1999 and 2006. This research demonstrated chil-

dren’s ability to learn independently us-ing computers in groups. After joining

ECLS in 2006 as Professor of Education-

al Technology, Sugata has worked alongside colleagues within and beyond

CfLaT on a number of different projects. It is through this work that the concept of SOLE has emerged.

For more information contact David.Leat@ncl.ac.uk or

Liz.Todd@ncl.ac.uk

A busy summer of research It has been a particularly busy summer for CfLaT members involved in research about supporting children and young people in and around school. Liz Todd and Karen Laing have spent the summer in the West End of Newcastle inter-viewing practitioners from a range of profes-sional fields (including education, NHS, social care and voluntary sectors) about the poten-tial to come together to form a ‘Children’s Community’ (otherwise known as a Chil-dren’s Zone). This work is ongoing through-out the autumn as big public sector changes are taking place, and there are plans for an event later in the year to explore the find-ings and work out a way forward. For more information about Children’s Zones, please visit http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/docs/Developing-Childrens-Zones-summary.pdf or contact Karen by email.

Karen Laing has also been working with

James Law and Cristina McKean and col-leagues in North Tyneside Council to under-stand how schools work with other profes-sionals to address the speech, language and communication needs of children. This work has involved interviews with school staff, speech therapists, health visitors, children’s centres, educational psychologists and oth-ers to understand how people work together to address these needs. In addition, Karen has been commissioned by Comic Relief and the Royal Foundation to work alongside colleagues at Mentor UK to evaluate M-PACT+ (Moving Parents and

Children Together). M-PACT+ is an interven-tion devised by Action on Addiction who are now working with Place2Be to offer help through schools for families struggling with the effects of substance abuse. M-PACT+ is being offered in four areas of the country

(including the North East) and Karen has been talking to family members, including children and young people about the impact of the course on them. This work will contin-ue through-out 2015. Also continu-ing through-out 2015 is the evalua-tion of Think-ing Different-ly in Scotland, a project looking at h a r n e s s i n g the skills of young people to address issues of al-cohol misuse, involving Ka-ren Laing, Liz Todd and Jill Clark from CfLaT, Dorothy Newbury-Birch from IHS and Ivy Papps from Tecis Ltd. Liz Todd and Karen Laing have also recently been commissioned by the Nuffield Founda-tion, alongside NatCen, to look at the link between out of school activities and attain-ment. This work is in the planning stages, and schools will be recruited over the au-tumn to take part. Karen and Liz will be in-terviewing school staff, providers, parents

and primary aged children in the North East to explore their experiences. This work will complement quantitative and qualitative work being carried out by NatCen in the South of England. This study is due to report in 2016. From a busy summer, follows a busy and exciting year of research ahead! For further information about any of these studies please contact Karen at k.j.c.laing@ncl.ac.uk

FINE-TUNING CLASS-

ROOM PRACTICES:

FROM CONSULTANCY

TO RESEARCH

Rachel Lofthouse has successfully turned two consultancy projects into research opportunities. Her work on developing bespoke coach-ing with CLARITY (speech and language therapists) in multi-lingual nursery and primary schools in Derby, and in training for teacher peer-coaching at Hermitage Academy Teaching School in Chester-le-Street has now yielded evidence. While the contexts are very different and the organisation of the coaching process is unique to each school the roles of both specialist and peer coaching in enabling professional learning and in fine-tuning classroom practices is clear. There is also good evidence of the importance of strategic leadership and planning in cre-ating the infrastructure and opportunities for coaching to support teacher develop-ment. Papers based on the research are being presented at European conferences in 2014. For more information, contact Rachel.Lofthouse@ncl.ac.uk

Good news for CfLaT friends who aren’t currently studying or working at Newcastle University: you now have access to academic journals from public libraries. The Access to Research service is a new initiative to give free, walk-in access to a wide range of academic articles and re-search in public libraries across the UK. A two year pilot began in February 2014 and enables you to access digital content

from designated library terminal in your local public library.

RESEARCH ACCESS

FOR NON-ACADEMICS

More information: http://www.accesstoresearch.org.uk/

SCHOOL SPACE

AND DIAMOND

RANKING IN GERMANY

RESEARCH TEA TIMETABLE (Autumn 2014)

The FaSMEd project has announced that three local comprehensive schools will be working with the project team: St Thomas More RC Academy (http://

vle.stmacademy.org.uk/) in North Shields has about 1700 students. It has Specialist School Status in Mathematics and Computing and the mathematics department has been a research partner for many years with Newcastle Univer-sity using TI hand held and networking tech-nology. P a r k V i e w S c h o o l (www.parkviewonline.org.uk) has approxi-mately 1400 students in Chester le Street, County Durham. The school was designated a Language College in 1997 and is a holder

of the full International Schools Award with curriculum links to schools in France, Ger-many, the Nether-lands, Bangladesh and China. George S tephenson H igh Schoo l (www.gshs.org.uk) in Killingworth has about 950 students. It is named after ‘the father of the railways’, George Stephenson, who came from the area and was an engineer who de-signed and built the first passenger steam locomotive and the first railway in Britain (and the world). The school is one of the first in Britain to house the ‘school in the cloud’ devel-oped by Professor Sugata Mitra at Newcastle University. We are very pleased that there has been a great deal of interest from schools across the partner countries wanting to become involved in the research process that will take place between teachers, students and academic partners. For more inf ormat i on contact Jill.Clark@ncl.ac.uk

FaSMEd

partner

schools

Research teas are an opportunity for staff, postgraduate students and other interested parties from outside of the University to get together to discuss current research, whilst also enjoying a cup of tea and a biscuit. Sessions are intentionally informal, with pre-senters introducing an aspect of their research to be discussed by the group. This year we have decided to experiment with a slightly later slot. We will be providing tea/coffee, biscuits and chit chat in room 2.50 King George VI building from 3.45pm, with the research discussion running from 4-5pm. We hope this new time will suit the majority but welcome feedback. Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Rachel Lofthouse (CfLaT), Jo Flanagan and Bibiana Wigley (www.claritytec.co.uk ) - Bridging the gap: coaching tools for learning conversations between Speech and Lan-guage Therapists and Teachers. Wednesday 19th November 2014 Wednesday 17th December 2014 For further information on CfLaT research teas and/or if you are interested in discussing some of your own research at a tea please contact Lucy Tiplady: Lucy.Tiplady@ncl.ac.uk

Pam Woolner and Ulrike Thomas trav-elled to Koblenz, Germany, in July to take part in a symposium about school

space. Entitled Schools for the Future, this symposium was the second in a series focusing on the impact of school architecture

on learning processes. The intention was to continue dialogue between education re-searchers, architects and teachers. Prof Ulrike Stadler-Altmann of Koblenz Uni-versity gave the opening lecture Constructed envi-ronment as a learning environment and CfLaT partner Anna Kristín Sig-urðardóttir presented on School buildings and class-room environment in Ice-land. In between these two talks, Pam and Ulrike introduced the audience to Diamond Rank-ing as a way to facilitate discussion and build understanding of the elements of a ‘good place for learning’. We talked through the theory and practice, drawing on our

published research investigating learning environments in the UK. Then participants had the opportunity for to complete collabo-rative diamond rankings to explore their own ideas about learning space and experi-ence directly the diamond ranking activity. This also provided the mainly German-speaking audience with a welcome chance to talk together in their first language! For more information, contact Pamela.Woolner@ncl.ac.uk Pam’s book about participatory school design has just been published. School Design To-gether is a cross–discipline edited collection with contribu-tors from education and archi-tecture. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415840767/