Professorial Lectures 

Young children and objects: affection and infection

With Professor Liz Jones

Tuesday 27 March 2012

This lecture considers young children’s (aged 3–5 years) relations with objects, and in particular objects that are brought from home to school.

Professor Liz Jones leads our Centre for Cultural Studies of Children and Childhood at the Education and Social Research Institute. She has over 20 years experience teaching in both mainstream and special education. Her research interests include poststructuralist theory; feminist theory; social constructions and deconstructions of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’.

Presentation 

Q&A

 

Maladjusted School Revisited: a time to re-imagine 21st Century Education?

With Professor John Schostak

June 15, 2012

Professor John Schostak has been involved with over 70 funded research projects, including ethnographies of schools, evaluation of on-line learning, studies of nursing, midwifery and medical practice, and the processes of change in communities, public and private sector organisations.

Published in 1983 (republished in 2012), his ‘Maladjusted Schooling’, describes a school that, despite its best efforts, was ‘maladjusted’ to the needs of young people, their communities and the teachers who worked with them. The lecture will explore whether anything has changed over 30 years?

 

Whatever happened to theory in teacher education?

With Professor Tony Brown

February 12, 2013

Tony Brown is Professor of Mathematics Education for the University’s Education and Social Research Institute. He leads the Building Research in Teacher Education research group, and co-leads the Centre for Research in Mathematics and Science Education with Yvette Solomon.

University provides us with an opportunity to build our critical capability, and in education this involves enabling the next generation of teachers to enliven their own students in turn. Or is working in universities about behaving ourselves and following the remit of the latest set of regulations where we are beholden to agencies assessing our compliance?

School practice is increasingly understood in terms of meeting bureaucratic demands. Initial teacher education is achieved through ever-greater immersion of student teachers in schools. Masters and doctoral study by teachers is more often directed at addressing externally defined requirements. As a result, the role of university based teacher education has shifted. Responsiveness to the official dimensions of school practice has become a bigger part of the challenge faced by universities.

 

 

Adding or Taking Away: how “Doing Mathematics” defines us.

With Professor Yvette Solomon

22 May 2013

Yvette Solomon is Professor of Education for the University’s Education and Social Research Institute. She co-leads the Centre for Research in Mathematics and Science Education with Tony Brown.

Many of us, even after our school years are long gone, are quick to define ourselves in terms of whether we can or cannot ‘do maths’. Why is this? Does mathematics somehow have a greater power to do this than other subjects?

As learners we develop complex relationships with school subjects which build on experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Beginning with a focus on the primary school years, and then moving on to secondary school and undergraduate learners, this talk will examine the role of classroom interaction patterns, gender discourses, and popular culture in the development of learner identities in mathematics.

Using a variety of data, it discusses how research can understand the nature of school trajectories and perhaps influence practice in ways which might interrupt the development of a widespread negativity towards mathematics.