CERS Seminar Series

Hello, my name is Victoria Dureka and today I'm going to be speaking with Jane Osgood, Professor in Childhood Studies, about her research from multispecies, tangle and anthropocene muddles. For example, what can lichen teach us about precarity and indeterminacy in early childhood? 

That's got to be one of the longest titles ever, Jane. Tell us a bit about what the overarching theme is fora series of research projects. Okay, so broadly speaking, my research falls within the paradigm of posthumanist studies of childhood. 

Whilst that might sound terrifying, what it really means is that we decenter the child, but the child is still a large part of research investigations, but what else comes into the frame are the context, but not context only as a backdrop, but context as having meaning and agency. 

So what I'm talking to you about today is what I've termed arboreal methodologies, and I can go on to explain what that is, but really it's about the child's place within the world, multiple worlds, and how they come to know and be and explore and a more expansive view of the child, I guess. 

Okay, and arboreal from the tree? Correct, arboreal methodologies. So really, it's a little bit of humour in response to the very well-known posthumanist theorists, Deleuze and Guattari, who work with the rhizome, and they say that too much knowledge is arboreal, that it is the sole tree with the leaves and the roots and the bottom and that it's this singular idea, and their notion of the rhizome is that everything's connected on a non-hierarchical kind of plane of endless connections, knots and so on. But what I'm suggesting is the arboreal methodologies when we think about trees we can't think about a lone tree we have to think about trees as part of multiple ecosystems so trees are connected to other trees hence the wood-wide web trees are connected to fungi, lichen, beetles, ants, microbes you know it's it's pretty impossible to think of in an arboreal sense of the singular tree so this is what I'm kind of playing with is the idea that arboreal is multiple yeah just as childhood is multiple indeed right so acts as a kind of model got you so tell us a bit about these research projects okay so they're emergent in the spirit of post-humanism you don't necessarily have a starting place you're always in the middle and it draws into question what counts as research and actually what I'm proposing is that every day things that unfold and emerge in the everyday, children's engagements with the world, their curiosity and entanglements with the human and non-human, all constitutes research. And so arboreal methodologies are a way of tapping into that, finding a way to dwell in place with children. 

So thinking with and through arboreal methodologies, if we go to a space where there is wood in inverted commas nature, then we can encounter the world and children's ways of being in the world through their close entanglements with plant life, insect life, weather, emotions, atmospheres, affects, on and on and on. 

So it really is a much more expansive and in many ways microscopic engagement with the ways that children encounter the world. And the premise is that we as adults, we think we're experts, we have the title professor and therefore we know everything and we are the most expert. 

Actually, if you push that aside and say that we can encounter the world again, afresh, anew, with different optics and not just visual optics, if we take up this childing sensibility, ways of being in the world. 

So arboreal methodologies is an attempt to bring all of that together, the kind of nature culture one thing and our immersion and engagement with the world in all its complexities and what that can tell us, not only about childhood, but life in contemporary society. 

Right. Okay, so give us a practical example of what you might actually do. Okay, maybe in the woods. Yeah. Okay, so I'll give you an example. One of the publications that I'm speaking to was an account of a workshop that was undertaken in Sligo in Northwest Ireland. 

And we were invited to go along and share our post-humanist thinking and doing with a group of academics and practitioners. and we found ourselves in a pulley tunnel in a forest school and we invited the participants, the adult participants in that forest school in Northwest rural Ireland in the plastic pulley tunnel in the depths of winter to engage with us in practices of getting lost. 

So taking up a childlike way of being in the world spinning with gay abandon, putting on blindfolds, walking backwards, whatever it is, attuning to the microscopic or the things that we just don't take notice of as adults. 

So this invitation to get lost was really to lose our sense of expertise, to lose a sense of certainty and knowing and to encounter the world again. So in a practical sense the invitation was to to get lost and to be inspired in that getting lost by children's literature and particularly we're thinking about the Moomins where scales of you know the Moomin Valley and the forest and the scales of the Moomin shift depending upon the context and what is drawn into focus also shifts from moment to moment so it's really an invitation to take up a more fantastical way of being in the world but also to take very seriously the context of the Anthropocene you know so there were aeroplanes flying above there was soil erosion there was you know the very real effects of global warming and environmental change and what that means for how we live in the world and the responsibility we have to that world so it's about getting down on the ground and tuning into getting you literally guessing the dirt under your fingernails and taking that dirt very seriously to think about our place in the world in another way. 

Yeah right and what are the sort of key messages you're beginning to feel you can bring back to I guess higher education but also of course through your publication and workshops you're putting back into the world of early childhood and those who work within it. 

I think it's really about our worldly connections and that sounds very grandiose and slightly ridiculous but actually we are connected and we are responsible and some of the key theorists that I draw upon so Donna Haraway, Anna Zing, Kathleen Stewart talk you know they write extensively about our connection to the world and the fact that we're active in world making practices we're not we're never outside that which we research or that which we write about so once you start from that premise that we're in the thick of things and what we do makes a profound difference then there's this sense of ethical responsibility so research becomes not about extracting information to tell a particular narrative about a given phenomenon it becomes a way of living and a way of bringing those ethics into our everyday life. 

Yeah, yeah and a really important factor isn't it when working with young people is that ethical practice which perhaps has been rather superficial for many years in research hasn't it it's just been a kind of safeguarding. 

Well of course ethics and particularly in research protocols is do no harm, do no harm to the human and particularly childhood studies is do no harm to the vulnerable human child who is lesser than. This post-humanist ethics kind of blows that apart actually and says we have ethical responsibility to everything to the microbe to the ant to the snail to the child to the human adult and and the aeroplane and the clouds and everything in between so it becomes a much more rigorous way of being in the world and undertaking research when you are not making these finite divisions between you know, what counts as ethic and ethics and when we have to exercise ethics But actually it's a way of being in everything that we do a bit more like Nell Nodding's ethic of care Indeed for everything. Yes So what are the key messages so far for practitioners who work with the really young children? 

Okay so I think really it's about engaging the practitioners in this speculative not knowing practice and that's a big ask because practitioners like all of us find places of comfort and security in our expertise and what we know and what we're going to impart to others and This is inviting something very very different. 

It's inviting adult practitioners, adult educators to let go of that sense of being an expert and to be open to Unlearning and to be open to relearning through a different optics and a different key and that is a fairly terrifying place to put people but when When I have done that through these various workshops, it is massively transformative Actually, you know to kind of encounter the world again is is just Is really enlightening without sounding evangelical about it I agree. 

It sounds very much like and I know you and I are interested in play It's very much like the transforming that happens through play if we really look at play as the most open phenomenon We can and of course a great many of those practitioners observe play all the time and Perhaps they separate themselves from it a bit too much. 

You know, they see the children doing it, but they're not and Perhaps what you're doing is inviting more playful research methods to more a way of seeing oneself as a player Yeah, absolutely. Actually One of the things that is impressed at the moment is something I've termed the playful archive, which is a look back over my posthumorous research from the last 10, 12 or so years. 

And foraging around in that archive of in a seriously playful way, this is something Haraway talks about serious play, that it isn't the case that anything goes and there are no rules. It's about exercising an ethical responsibility within each moment to tune into the world as it comes into being and to really think quite deeply about the role that we play in the creation of those worlds. 

And Kura Lundberg writes about methodologies without method. So we have frameworks, we have ways in which research look recognizable as research, but It also invites us to push against some of those straight jackets and regulated ways to do research in the pursuit of knowledge otherwise. 

And that's something in Sarah's we're really keen to encourage, isn't it? We'd like to have more doctoral students, all those students out there who are interested in non-methods and playful methods. 

We'd love to hear from you because I think it is one of the most important things we're beginning to realise that the institutions had such a clamp on what counts as research and research methodology, but it's actually as diverse as you can possibly imagine. 

And this is something obviously you and I have spoken about setting up a strand of Sarah's work around creative methodologies in a series of workshops where we come together as a community and explore what's possible and when we loosen some of the very stringent ideas about what counts as research and what counts as an appropriate way to generate knowledge, how else might we do research, what might it look like and what might it potentiate in the process. 

So it might be useful to just say a few ways that you have approached it, what kinds of research methods you've used over that career so far. OK, so one, I did in collaboration with Your Good Self and a child researcher Laura Rosa and our methodology emerged through circumstance being locked in our homes during the pandemic and trying to push against the dominant narrative that was bubbling up everywhere about learning loss and how detrimental the pandemic was and that's not to say that some children didn't suffer, but it was the only narrative and both you and I, your relationship with Laura Rosa and my children locked in our house, was revealing a different narrative and so we then set about pursuing how we might research this in an unconventional creative way and making our starting place the picture book, the story book, and then that led us to contemplating a particular methodology, a scrabbling methodology, a gathering, foraging, not knowing quite what we were going to find a methodology, which had us literally down the back of our chairs pulling out coins and hair and fluff and headlights and bugs and microbes and goodness knows what, and that then set in motion a way to think about our co-researcher Laura Rosa, a child who was positioned in particular ways through this dominant narrative about learning loss, and positioning her in a completely different way and positioning all children in another way when you create space for them to participate in the generation of knowledge through doing, through artistic creative practices, collaging drawing, narrating an alternative worldview. 

And that is incredibly powerful, I think, and it looks incredibly unrecognisable, but it has such potential to elevate children in a way that maybe the children's rights discourse doesn't. So I think that there's a real potential. 

Yes, and we're, you know, we collected in the end, as you say, we had drawings, we had film, little film clips taken on phones, we had some collages, we had little bits of writing done by us or done by Laura Rosa, but viewing all of that as equally important was important for me too, to sort of learn how research can actually delve really deeply into those different arts practices, for example, children's drawing being something which is, again, seen in most school settings as well, you can do that in your filling time. So it's not seen as a sort of an important form of knowledge making. And yet in that moment, of course, when you're investigating something, it is. 

And their drawings reveal a great deal about how they're thinking and what they're thinking brings to the research project. Another example, if we have time, is I've written a couple of pieces on microplastics and Lego being one and the other being glitter. 

And glitter as an art resource in early childhood context has a particular place, it's seen as innate inert matter that is brought to use in children's artwork. It's since come under lots of attack as being a microplastic polluter, and that there should be an outright ban on glitter in early childhood settings. 

But when we take glitter seriously and think about what it is, what it does, where it goes, where else it goes, how it disperses, and it really calls into question our human exceptionality. We do not have control over glitter. 

We can't stop where it goes when it then degrades and becomes a storm cloud deep in the ocean or goes into waterways and into the air and then back into our lungs. And one of the things that I explore in the paper is this natural alternative mica. 

Right. And actually when you start to excavate, what mica glitter is, it has a very unpleasant underbelly with child mines in India and hideous lung diseases. There's nothing Innocence, you know, so it really is calling to question the non-innocence of matter and how it matters in children's lives So if you'd asked me 20 years ago, you know, would I be researching with glitter? 

I'm not researching glitter I'm researching with glitter or Headlice or Lego or any of the other things that have have come into my research Realm, I would absolutely have said no, they were the insignificant things that had no part to play But the post humanist lens means that you have to take these things seriously and they contribute to The formation of childhoods just as much as the human subject Absolutely. 

I think we probably should stop there, but that was really fascinating. Thank you very much Jane and thank you listeners 

Hello, my name is Victoria Dreiker, and today I'm gonna be talking to Dr. Angela Scollan about her research in dialogic pedagogy in relation to teaching. 

So, Angela, we're gonna start with what is dialogic pedagogy. Can you tell us about it and why you're interested it, in it? Okay. Thank you, Victoria. Uh, dialogic pedagogy, what is it? 

Well, it's, uh, about dialoguing, and it's about, um, your approach and the way that you dialogue and to be conscious of it. So it really draws down from critical pedagogy. 

Um, to be critical, we do need to dialogue either internally or externally, and the more that we dialogue, we're thinking, we're flipping things around, we're turning it upside down and looking at, uh, particular topics differently, either what we're doing or what others are doing. 

So dialogic pedagogy is all about, um, our engagement and really focusing on the following three pillars. So equity, uh, expectations to participate, and also empathy. Mm. 

So the dialogic pedagogy draws them together and builds on those three pillars so that anybody who is involved in dialogue, when it's dialogic pedagogy, has an equal standing. 

There's no hierarchical, uh, positioning. Everybody's positioned as authors of knowledge. Mm-hmm. Right. And how does it differ to dialogic teaching or just classroom talk? Yeah. 

It's interesting because, um, I'm gonna go back to that critical pedagogy aspect of it, where dialogue, uh, draws down from particularly Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy- Mm ... 

and how do you then bring critical pedagogy into the realm, into what we're doing, into teaching? So we do that through dialogic pedagogy. 

Um, and then with dialogic pedagogy, that can be broken down into lots of different things. So when we start to explore dialogic pedagogy, it can get a bit complex and messy. 

So, um, your question regarding how does it differ to teaching is sometimes when we're in the classroom, we can be quite habitual in what we do. 

We've got agenda, we've got objectives, so we kinda learn to talk in a particular way f- in a diff- a particular pattern. Mm-hmm. 

And, um, which is fine because we've got to go in and we've got to do our job. 

But what, um, dialogic pedagogy strives to do is it strives to make us a bit more conscious about our language, the words we're using- Mm ... 

the approach we're using, the expectations that we have from children or learners, and where have those expectations come from. 

So it, we, it, it differs in that you're consciously engaging with dialogic pedagogy. 

You're, you're choosing to, to think, "Well, I'm, I'm moving now from my classroom talk where I've got an agenda, I've got aims and objectives to meet- Mm-hmm ... 

whereas I'm now going to dialogue, maybe free run, no particular agenda," which is a luxury when we're in school. 

So I'm not being Mary Poppins here saying that we're all gonna do this all day long because we've got, you know, our job to do. 

But what dialogic pedagogy does is it really looks at, it strips away the roles, it strips away teacher and pupil, and it looks at person to person, so the adult and the child. Mm. 

So it, it really kind of expects everybody to be an equal participant during the dialogue- Right ... and that kind of changes then from the teaching and the classroom talk. 

And if we look at Alexander's work on classroom talk, they're the kind of points that he would bring out. Absolutely. 

I'm a, a fan of, um, uh, Rupert Wegerif, you know, who works with, uh, Alexander and the Cambridge group, and I think you're absolutely right. 

There's an openness that they're looking for in dialogue, which perhaps is rather closed sometimes in some lessons. You know, partly because the curriculum has got all these demands- Definitely ... 

and teachers are really feeling those demands and feel they have to sort of deliver them- Yeah ... don't you think? It does, and it becomes a performance, and sometimes we're not ... 

We're, we're talking without actually engaging with what we're saying. Mm. We, we ... 'cause we're masters at what we do. We know that- We're listening to children ... 

we've got to get somebody done. Mm. And dialogic pedagogy really is, one, a, a big strand of it is that authentic listening, which again draws back- Yeah ... 

to Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy- Yeah, yeah ... and listening and being authentic rather than unauthentic. Yeah. 

And I don't know about you, Victoria, but sometimes when we've got a big job to do and we've got to get someone to assessment, you know that those levels and depths of what is authentic or not when you've got to get someone to a particular- Sure ... 

you know, uh, tray to drink it or to, to get the- ... assessment done, you, you're not- Sure ... going to always be- No ... 

authentic, but to be aware of that and to know that you can dip in and out of it. So dialogic pedagogy, and then in a minute I'll talk about facilitation, they are kind of tools to support teachers. 

Right. They're not saying, "Stop what you're doing. Do this." They're saying, "Let's complement what you're already doing." Sure, okay. Who or what ... 

We've spoken about a few influencers, who are the key ones for you? Ooh. 

Um, well, on the long journey of exploring dialogic pedagogy, I did fall in love with Paulo Freire, with the critical pedagogy, you know, flipping everything upside down, turning it round, being aware of what you're not aware of and the energy that takes. 

That took me into the realms of reflection with Dewey, Schon, Bolton and, and so on and so forth. But I think, uh, David Bohm really influenced me on dialogic pedagogy- Mm ... 

um, and a lot of his, uh, work on quantum physics, for instance, and on, uh, how language and thinking are fragmented really influenced my thinking about dialogic pedagogy because everything we think, everything we do, everything we know- Mm ... 

as a fact and as a reality is actually a fragment. It's never the whole story that we know, and Bohm's work really seduces you to think of that. Mm. 

And it makes you aware then I don't have the full stop. I don't have the end answer. Right. I have this thinking now. So Bohm was a real influencer for me, and he's got a great book on dialogue. Mm. 

Uh, really thin- ... really loaded, but very provocative. 

So he kind of really made me think about the fragmentation side of, uh, dialogue, um, and then how the words we use influence our thinking and how that then influences our actions. Sure. 

Um, and then from Bohm then, that led me to, uh, Mikhail Bakhtin's work- And he, uh, oh, some of his, his concepts, so he talks about the carnivalesque, turning things upside down, which is during dialogue, when you've got dialogue about a role, you know, you can begin to play with words, play with reality. 

So you can have some quite f- you know, good fun with dialogue, and who's to say that's learning or not? You know? The, that depends on our perspective. Sure. So he also ... 

Bakhtin's work also provoked us to think about, uh, centrifugal and centripetal, where words open up or close down possibilities, and how many times in the classroom, depending on what kind of talk we're using, do we open up or close down? 

Mm-hmm. And do we do that purposefully or not? Um, and why? 

So, and again, you go back to Paolo Freire who then says, "Come on, be a bit more conscious here." So you've got a little conscious kind of bear provoking you and prodding you. 

And Bakhtin also, um, what he talked about is the language and the inherited meaning and the habitual use of words that we use that actually impact on outcomes. 

They open up or close down environments. Yeah. And Bakhtin really provokes the reader to think of, um, what we're reading, how it opens up or closes down, how it offers opportunity or not. 

So all of those things merge together for the, the dialogic pedagogy. So those three would be my main key- Right ... kind of, um, influences. 

But then, um, Jane White has written a lovely book on early years where she uses a lot of Bakhtin's work and talks about how that translates into practice, which was again, really key to read as well- Mm ... 

to look at how that had worked and where she positions herself as an early years expert. But also where she positioned children as, uh, dialogic pedagogy equals partners. Yeah. 

And so that brings us to w- its application in the classroom. So what did you find out that you felt would, would work well, could work well, or does work well? Yeah. 

Um, well it's all about having all these theories, you know, critical pedagogy- Sure ... dialogic pedagogy, a bit of Bakhtin and Freire, you know, all ... but actually, what does that mean- Mm ... 

when theory into practice, practice back into theory? So I used the concept of facilitation- Right ... 

which draws down from critical pedagogy, goes into dialogic pedagogy, and, and enables you to use and manage that if you want to do research. 

So I used facilitation to, uh, engage children with no agenda. The agenda was they brought in an artifact that they wanted to talk about. They then engaged or not. They, they- Right ... 

if you think of those three pillars that I mentioned earlier about the empathy, the expectations, and the equity, you know, when you've got dialogic pedagogy, it doesn't mean somebody has to take part. 

Sure. Otherwise, you're going completely against their rights and your whole idea of, uh, particip- participation and your choice. 

So, um, I use facilitation a- and that's made up of a real complex combination of strategies, techniques, um, that you engage with to open up possibilities for children who might not want to talk about themselves or share a knowledge, a cul- you know, so from their culture, from their family, from something that's not from a safe, expected classroom talk area. 

Right. 

So when you open up spaces using dialogic pedagogy, and then you're using facilitation as a tool to do that, you're treading into new realms with children, and if they're not used to that, if, if, if you and your children are used to classroom talk or dialogic teaching, and it's got these safe boundaries, when you bring in dialogic pedagogy and the use of facilitation, you're handing over, uh, where this conversation's going. 

And that kind of can go against dominant discourse in education. We've got to keep it safe. We've got safeguarding. We've got ethics. 

But are we trusting children if we're not, um, opening up spaces for them- Mm ... to talk about what they want to do? 

You know, culturally, they might want to share a knowledge about something that isn't to do with the curriculum- Sure ... 

in their eyes, but actually it's everything to do with our areas of curriculum. 

Um, and dialogic pedagogy and facilitation, which uses lots of strategies such as sh- the facilitator using techniques like to appreciation tokens, um, minimal actions, formulations, all of these things are where you repeat what children have said. 

You try to make sense of what they've said. You hand over the floor to them, so they then confirm if you're on the right track or not, or if you've gone on back onto your own agenda- Right ... 

if you've been habitual or not. So this can't just happen straight away. 

You can't go in and say, "Right, I'm gonna do facilitation and dialogic pedagogy today." So I've learnt that this is a slow process. Um, you bring it in, and it can only ... 

dialogic pedagogy in the essence that it's not agended only for the pleasure of talking and dialoguing and negotiating, that can only happen if the children are equal partners. 

Because if they choose not to facilitate or be facilitated or facilitators, it won't work. Mm. 

So the agency and the self-determination of children and the consequence they have enriches and enables the environment along with the adult facilitator. Mm. 

And then as this progresses and the children trust this space, and you trust the space, and you kind of all co-construct it together, it opens up massive dimensions. 

But what I've learnt is that takes time- Yes ... and reflection and consciousness. Yes, I can really understand that because every classroom's dynamics and, uh, the tightness of control Mm-hmm ... 

cha- you know, varies. Um, and it, it does mean the teacher needs to be quite brave to step back from being the authority figure, doesn't it? 

To step away from that and to see themselves as equals with the children- Absolutely ... with equal agency. Yeah. Mm. And it could look like mayhem to begin with. Yeah. 

And actually, I was in a classroom once when I did a bit of research. 

This isn't for my own PhD research, but this is for a European project, and one of the sessions went a bit skewey because they changed the classroom at the last moment. 

You know, this happens in real-world research, so we went with it. And, um, the children kind of took over the, the session. The session. And it was really noisy. Excellent. 

They went into big silos, and on reflection afterwards, and I was the facilitator on that one, when I came out, I was like, "Oh gosh, that didn't go so well." And next week when we went back in, we asked the children to reflect on what happened, and it was their favorite session. 

So, so it's about le- you know, dialogic pedagogy's about not your own agenda again, and I'd gone back into my own agenda. 

So I had some conflict being a facilitator, a, a teacher, and thinking I was facilitating, but you can habitually go back into your role again. Absolutely. 

And to be aware of that is really- Uh, powerful and tiring, and you need that dialogue with others to realize that's what you've done. 

Yes Um- And I can see that being something that's important too, the support of other teachers so that you're, as you say, you're co-constructing this, and you can have staff meetings about where it's working best. 

I mean, one of the things ... You know, what would you suggest, for example, for dialogic pedagogy? Where, where might a school start? Yeah. It's a good ... 

Well, I've got lots of online MOOC training that we've done through our European project- Oh, excellent ... so that's going out to schools across Europe and in England. 

So we've, we've written, uh, my colleagues and I wrote from our research- Yeah ... from the Child Up project and the Charm project. 

We actually created an online MOOC platform, and we wrote a handbook on different aspects of facilitation, what it strives to do. Excellent. 

And then we brought in reflection because you just can't facilitate without reflection to be critical, to think about the words you've used, uh, the strategies that you think are amazing, and then when you look at the video or the, you- the transcripts, you think, "Well, no, I've been a bit leading there." Right. 

You know, so you need all that level of time, space, dialogue with others. Um, so yeah, lots of engagement with your peers. 

And what we did with the training actually, particularly for the Child Up training, we learned from the first Charm train- training, we, we didn't want anyone to feel assessed. 

We don't want this training to be something, oh, you're being assessed on- Mm ... because us teachers don't like that. We do not like it at all . And it was about self-assessment- Wow ... 

and it was about how do you think it went? Why do you think it went like that? Do you think the children felt the same way? So we've, we've written some kind of provocative, reflective- Lovely ... 

aspects of the training. Mm. So all that's available on the Charm website and the, and the Child Up website. 

But also what I would say is just being really honest and asking the children, what was that like for you? Because our rose-tinted glasses don't always fit with children's, uh, re- reality. Mm. Mm. 

That's a really good point. Lovely. Well, uh, any further reflections you might have on your research, your publications or, or the training that you've just been talking about? Yeah. 

Um, well, I think just reflecting in, on, on the research as, as a ... 

going in to do research in schools, one thing that I, I kind of got shocked about is how hard it was to get in to do research with schools. Yes. 

And I was really shocked because I've worked in education for over 30 years, and when I did try to get in to do, like, either the European projects or my own research, I, I was kind of, um, daunted at, you know, being at a door trying to get into a buzzer to get to a school to talk to somebody. 

That was quite a shock. 

Um, and actually then when I went in with my great idea of dialogic pedagogy and facilitation, you know, what's great for you isn't great for the school and isn't in tune with what they might be thinking or wanting to do. 

So lots of, um, things to think about and how you, how dialogic pedagogy will be, uh, responded to for those who are at the forefront of practice, who have got the stresses of getting children through to particular outcomes, and have I got time for dialogic pedagogy and to talk to children? 

Mm. That was a big thing that stayed with me. Um- Yes, I can really imagine because, I mean, in our department, we've worked hard on this, haven't we? 

This idea of researching with instead of researching on. Mm-hmm. 

And that co-creation of work and thinking is, is a relationship you've got to build up, and it is going to take time, and you are going to have to be resilient. Absolutely. And, um, just to ... 

I suppose one other thing is I had a nice relationship with the teachers- Yeah ... 

where if we felt that children were opening up a dialogue and it might have been going somewhere that the teacher would've known that particular child well, we had a, you know, something in place to make sure that there was a diversion that would come in i- only if the, the teacher thought that it was l- like a, a particular area not to go to for that specific child, and that was really important. 

And I think as well on reflection, the ethics. The ethics that we use in universities, of course, we've got to engage with them, but they don't always translate to schools. Mm. 

And there were a lot of negotiations and, um, challenges to, to bring in on there as well. So that was another ... 

It's not part of the dialogic pedagogy, but it, I suppose it is because- It's part of research ... it's part of research- Yeah ... and dialoguing with other- Yeah ... to learn from. 

And listeners might be glad to hear that we have a section on our Sayers website, don't we, on ethics- Mm ... 

so that we can try and support people in filling in these difficult forms as you've just outlined. Absolutely. But, um, the children tell you what's ethical. You know, they, they- They do ... 

they're, they're great, uh, gatekeepers for themselves. Yes. They know what they're happy to talk about. And, uh, it was really insightful. 

We learned about, uh, so many different areas of, um, children's knowledges and their culture, which maybe wouldn't have had the space within a planned session to, to kind of be aired and shared. 

And children, one thing that link- links to literacy and reading was that children were self-editing their identities and their s- and theirselves through these dialogic pedagogy engagements. 

So they were saying a story, and then they might link it to somebody else, like with a interlacement, and they might come up with a whole new aspect of their identity, which was huge to see. 

It was exciting. Yes. Um- That's very exciting ... uh, to watch them doing that. So there was like, you know, you're editing on the page for your work- Yes ... 

but they're editing verbally, and I think they need to be able- Beautiful ... to do that before you can go and write something. You know, we all need that space. Oh, yes. Oracy comes first. Mm. 

Absolutely agree. So thank you very much, Dr. Angela Scollan, for that fascinating conversation on dialogic pedagogy, and don't forget to go to the MDX repository to check out all Angela's publications and read them all. 

See you at the next one.

My name's Lee Jerome, and in this episode of the CIRS podcast, I'm talking to Dr. Abele Longo. Welcome, Abele. 

I wonder if you can start by telling us a little bit about the research project you're going to talk about. Yes. Thank you, Lee. 

So it's a book titled School Children as Agents of Change: Raising Up Critical Thinking and Judgment in the Early Years that I'm a co-editor together with Emmanuella Guarcello from the Department of Philosophy and Education of the University of Turin. 

The book will be published in September 2023 by Routledge. 

It promotes the capacity for critical thinking and judgment in primary school-aged children in the face of the challenges that schools encounters in today's society, focusing on, uh, innovative, uh, educational practices. 

Each chapter offers a space for reflection on the formation of the ability to think and judge in primary school. The book, uh, comprises three parts. 

The first focuses on the foundational reasons for the promotion of critical thinking and judgment, aiming to reconstruct the meaning and the sense of the faculty of critical thought and judgment in the education of new generations. 

It looks, for instance, at the meaning of thinking and its relationship with creativity, the development of the person and the citizen, uh, the challenges children will encounter as adults in their future. 

There's a second part that looks at, uh, different formative fields of critical thinking and judgment. 

Attention, for instance, is paid to the areas of the relationship between school and community, to the experience of the school itself as a community space, social relationships, social plurality, children's voices, skills in digital education, wellbeing, and health, as well as matters of inequalities, discrimination, ecology and sustainability, global economy, and the decolonizing of education. 

Thanks for that, Abele. Uh, I mean, it sounds like a fascinating range of topics to challenge. 

Um, and, and everyone who's listening will pick out something from your list of topics that they consider to be important. 

I wonder if you can say what, what you felt was particularly important about engaging with this project. 

Well, most renowned pedagogical theories and practices have, let's say, from different perspective, sought to de- develop the capacity for critical thinking and judgment in primary school. 

These aspirations has represented the key educational objective of the school experience precisely because of the school stacks and vocation of working on the culture and human of development of children and their ability to respond to the challenges raised by society. 

This vocation of the school, however, has been obscured by the direction that the school itself has taken, especially since the 1970s, towards an education that favours an intellectual, behavioural, and notional approach. 

Therefore, a rethinking of the means of achieving the objectives of the development of critical think and judgment is vital so that, uh, the primary school can regain its traditional educational objectives. 

These new challenges necessitate a rethinking of the meaning and the sense of the ability to think and judge since they are vital capacities in a world never before so deeply marked by complexity, nebulosity, ambiguity, and risk, and the spectre of planetary catastrophe, uh, even. 

So this rethinking also entails a critical review of the practices developed for the promotion of critical thinking and judgment, so that they are exercised in every instance for the protection and promotion of the individual, thus enabling children to discern, evaluate, decide, and act in relation to problems that manifest themselves in a volatile, never fully knowable form. 

A critical review of the practices developed around this challenge is therefore necessary so that new generations are initiated into a process of leavening or raising up of the human consciousness. 

It is a process of leavening that is completely free in its forms and ways, and at the same time bound with the bond of love and authentic human interest to the destiny of the world, the safeguarding of its survival, and the commitment to seeing it flourish. 

Thanks for that. 

Uh, as you said, people have been talking about critical thinking for a very long time, and at, at the end of that last answer, you used words like love and authentic human interest, so that might give us a bit of a glimpse as to what you're adding to the mix. 

Yeah. I wonder if you can just say what you think's original about your revisiting of this concept. What are you adding? Yeah. 

Well, while critical thinking has been, uh, a recurring theme at the level of study and research, the approach that our book provide is innovative, placing critical thinking as it does alongside critical judgment. 

Judgment and the ability to judge represent, in fact, a thorny issue, often rejected or marginalized in pedagogical discourse, despite the fact that they are always been, uh, consider... 

It has always been considered an expression of the highest human faculty. I mean, we just, uh, can mention, you know, from a philosophical perspective, Aristotle, uh, Aquinas, Kant, Han Arendt. 

So furthermore, the same high level pedagogical research indicates the formation of the capacity of critical judgment as a primary aim of the school, even if it does not clarify in a precise way the meaning and educational practices significant for its promotion. 

Also important, I think, as far as the originality of the book is concerned, is that it offers a broader range of perspective in its interdisciplinarity. 

Is there any area that you cover in particular in the book? Uh, yes, ecology and sustainability. 

My chapter focuses on the work of Danilo Dolci as a model and inspiration for today's teaching practices. 

I discuss Dolci's work within the context of Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy, and the work of Hannah Arendt, as they all hold great importance with regard to the development of theories relating to the promotion of critical thinking and judgment in children's education. 

Ecopedagogy is transformative teaching in which educators dialectically propose the politics of socio-enviro-mental, uh, connections through local, global, and planetary lenses. 

It is therefore not only based on experiential education composed of activities in contact with nature, but aims as well to develop tools to change and subvert the system of domination. 

Its main purpose is to educate children to face real everyday problems with action, creativity, and dialogue, to move towards sustainable growth based on respect for nature, the rights of all, justice, and the culture of peace. 

The defining characteristic of Dolci's work as an educator is that he developed his ideas and thinking through practical application and activism, demonstrating one of his core principle of learning by doing. 

This led him to directly engage with a society that he hoped would move towards a transformation, the impoverished Sicily of the aftermath of the Second World War. 

Dolci is known for his method called reciprocal mayutics, which is a dialectic method of inquiry that aims to stimulate the growth of consciousness by guiding the participants to listen to different points of view and focus on any contradictions that emerge. 

The core principle of Dolci's pedagogy is that the first phase is divergence of opinion, and the second phase is the coming together of ideas without compromising points of difference. 

To sum up, ecopedagogy is a particular focus of mine, and, um, I'm hopeful it will attract the interest of potential PhD students. Thanks, uh, uh, Veli. 

Uh, it, it's, it's really interesting, but I think sometimes academics don't help themselves when they use words like reciprocal mayutics, and you started to unpack it a bit, but I wonder if you can say something about what that might look like in practice in the classroom. 

Yes. Uh, first of all, I would like to say that, uh, rec-i-i, reciprocal mayutics and not just mayutics because for Dolci it's something that, uh, is mutual. 

So in other words, it's not just the, the teacher that teach students that, uh, and students that let's say learn from the teacher, but, uh, teacher themselves learn from students, so reciprocal in that sense. 

So in terms of practical application in school means, for instance, first of all, uh, creating an, an atmosphere of mutual trust. 

I mean, uh, uh, just to give an example of the way that, uh, uh, Dolci's organized these, uh, sessions, you know, with children in his school, because he founded this school, uh, known as Mirto Experimental Center in Sicily. 

So in Mirto, Dolci was used t-uh, to ask children to, first of all, to sit in circles, so there wasn't any sort of idea of hierarchy. 

So the m-teacher more than, uh, you know, the, I mean, wasn't representing the sort of traditional figure, you know, someone that was, uh, of course, uh, passing, uh, uh, addressing a, a issue with the, with the idea then, uh, you know, of, uh, transmitting, you know, uh, information, knowledge, and expecting then, then the children to absorb, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, such knowledge and the info, but was more a sort of mutual interactions. 

So in other words, uh, Dolci used to a-ask questions to all of them individually, and then that to open in the discussion in which, uh, the facilitator, uh, very often was Dolci himself, but for instance could be even one of the children, was then, uh, taking notes. 

And then, uh, uh, in the second stage, all of the points emerged from the discussion were again discussed together with the idea of coming then to a sort of shared views, um, or, and focus in particular on com-on what actually could perhaps, uh, seen as, um, in terms of, uh, uh, contrast, uh, very often. 

Uh, or so in other words, it was a, it wasn't, it was a sort of very inclusive, let's say, approach. 

Uh, so that, um, uh, of course meant that children really felt that, uh- Uh, were empowered, you know, uh, through this process, and they, uh, really, uh, can feel that, you know, that they are, to some extent, uh, responsible even, you know, for their education. 

Hmm. Thanks for that. I really love that idea, not only that we sit students down and listen to them, but we take their ideas and, and reuse them- Yeah ... 

as the objects or the of learning or learning resources for- Yeah ... round two of thinking these through. Yeah. That sounds really interesting. And so that's your chapter in the book. 

Um, what, what else have you learned from pulling this book together with your co-authors? 

Well, I find the experience of collaborating with other academics who are similarly excited and passionate, you know, about this new sort of emerging field very enriching. 

Prior to this project, I had limited experience of working on collaborative research, so this has been a very exciting and stimulating period of personal and professional growth for me. 

I have found it, uh, immensely satisfying to learn from and with others through the various exchanges and collaborative experience, including a conference held in preparation for the book. 

So it sounds in a way as though writing the book has almost followed the Dolci method, that people have brought their ideas- Yeah. Exactly, exactly. 

So- Then you've had the opportunity to fraction out. Yes, I was thinking the same thing while I was saying that. 

In the end, you know, I, I finally managed to apply uh, Dolci's method to my own research as well. Fantastic. And so, and so what's been enjoyable about this project? 

I'm sure writing all these chapters and editing- Yes ... was good. Definitely. 

I mean, the, the professional relationships formed, uh, and, uh, uh, was fantastic, and also, of course, the opportunity to extend and develop, uh, uh, those relationships through, uh, also research and teaching visit to the University of Turin. 

So I had the opportunity to go to Turin, and, uh, uh, actually the partner investment, uh, of education is the, the top university in Italy, so I mean, it was quite, uh, you know, flattered and also excited, you know, about that. 

It was a, a really great experience. I, I found a very proactive and, um, enriching, you know, environment, so that was definitely great. 

If nothing else, that should inspire other people to engage- Exactly. Yeah ... in research. Trips to Turin. Yeah. Definitely. I recommend it as a place as well to visit. 

Now, if someone wants to follow this up and find out a bit more about the work, where can they go? 

Well, uh, uh, for the time being, I mean, it'd be enough to go on, uh, the Routledge website, uh, and look for the book in their, uh, in their Research in Early Childhood Education series. 

So they'll find it on the, uh, on the Routledge website. And if they were interested in the Dolci method, I believe you also have a sole authored book. Oh, thank you for mentioning that. 

So I actually published a book, uh, on Danilo Dolci and his method called the, you know, Danilo Dolci Environmental Education Empowerment, published in 2020 by Springer. Okay. 

So you've worked hard to bring all of these people together to share related ideas and tease out what this critical judgment might look like. Does this lead somewhere else? 

What are you gonna do next? Yes. 

So, uh, I'm working as a partner representing Middlesex University on a project called Child AI Technologies Relationship: Educating to a Reflective and Critical Relationship with AI Technologies in Primary School. 

So this project is funded by Grant for Internationalization, GFI, University of Turin, and Alleanza Unita Universita Monzium, and is led, as the one on critical thinking judgment, by Professor Manuela Guarcello, in collaboration as well with the West University of Timisoara. 

The project targets primary school children and focuses on aesthetic experience, experiences conducted with AI-generated visual arts. 

So the increasing use of AI in primary education present the specter of a dystopian future. 

There is much debate as to the concern that AI solutions could incorporate educational ideas reflecting the biases of the develop- uh, developers or be distorted by dysfunctional algorithms. 

Furthermore, the immense amount of energy required to power the world's hunger for technology can only increase the threat to the planet caused by overconsumption. 

The deep understanding of both the, the critical issues and of its potentialities, understanding, uh, necessary to focus on the training men- uh, training needs of the new generations, finds an interpretive lens of excellence in the ecopedagogical study of the human, uh, technical relationship. 

My focus, uh, here is on a sort of utopian post-digital ecopedagogy as I, I define it, and drawing on authors again, like Paulo Freire and Danilo Dolci. 

I think that kind of, uh, in my own opinion, a remedy to the dystopian threat. 

So Freire's Utopia conceived as a path to an open future, the awareness of the imperfection of the unfinished human that result in his, uh, educability and the perfectibility, and Dolci's vision of the realizable utopia, which means enabling children to discover the strength to respect themselves and find the intuition for the new to be designed can represent part of the solution. 

That sounds like a really interesting kind of overarching framework for a project, and great to be looking at AI And thinking about what it can contribute to a positive future rather than all the kind of fears that have been- Exactly ... 

stoked up. Again, just thinking in practical terms, what kinds of things are you doing with young children in the primary setting to explore these big ideas? Yeah. 

For example, we are running a series of activities, uh, in, uh, schools in Italy. There will be also, uh... Oh, yeah, we're already done this, uh, in Romania as well. 

But yeah, there will be this possibility in a London school as well. Uh, the idea is, for instance, to work with children on, uh, artistic activity. 

For instance, uh, I mean, just to give an example, th- there's, uh, a platform, you know, that children can use which gives a, an application which gives them the possibility to, let's say, to add to their own pictures some videos that they can make, uh, you know, themselves or with, uh, with the help of their parents or with their teachers. 

And, um, uh, I mean, one thing that we are working on, for instance, is the idea of asking children to draw their inner faces. 

And they c- m- we ca- we, you know, we come, came with this sort of very, uh, exciting, uh, uh, artworks. 

For instance, uh, in some school, children were, um, uh, asked even to close their eyes and to draw with their left hand, you know. 

So, I mean, and, um, it's incredible what they come, they, what they managed to draw, you know, in this condition. Then, of course, they add colours and all of that. 

And then they try, um, basically worked on a video that, uh, uh, in, in their opinion was very much related, representative, you know, of their painting. 

And then with these, uh, apps, um, um, of, uh, augmented reality, they manage themselves in a very easy and straightforward way to pass the, the pictures, to transfer, let's say, the pictures, uh, into the video. 

And, uh, the, uh, you know, the artworks that they produced were just amazing. We're actually thinking of, uh, presenting them in a virtual exhibition, which will be part of the project. 

My- this is just, uh, a, an idea. 

Uh, but also of, for instance, uh, another activity was working together with an artist that produced, uh, an artwork with, uh, augmented reality, and then we asked students to comment on that, uh, to write their own reflections as well. 

And they had the opportunity to discuss that with the artist that show to them actually how the, uh, work was conceived. 

So they had a sort of, um, uh, discussions, you know, on the possibility of, uh, artificial intelligence and, uh, on these apps. And, um, yeah, they focused together on, uh, on their products. 

And also, and this is quite important, we'll also ask children at the end to reflect on, uh, what they think, you know, they are the risks, the problems, the advantages of, uh, uh, artificial intelligence so that they come, they can come again with the chart with their own, uh, thoughts, you know, on the, uh, on these issues, which of course, uh, as I said before, quite thorny and quite important as well. 

Mm. So that they, you know, can address that from, uh, a very beginning, from a very early age. Yeah. Okay. 

So y- you've talked about engaging with some really big, scary ideas, the end of the world through AI- Yeah ... 

through global meltdown, all of those fear, fearful factors, but, uh, you're also describing really hopeful, artistic, enjoyable work. Exactly. Yeah. What do you think... 

If you were going to advise a teacher who's dealing with eco-anxiety or thinking about what they might practically do, what one piece of advice might you give a primary practitioner that they could do to nurture this capacity for critical judgment or to engage with these big issues? 

Well, I think it's very important indeed, first of all, not to hide the problem, the issue. 

And in a very serene, uh, of course, not in catastrophic terms, as maybe we do, uh, you know, to discuss that with the children. Uh, it's very important for them to become aware of that. 

But of course, the, then the trust, the inspiration, uh, this utopia that was mentioned before can come only through the enthusiasm that it is, these, uh, these things, this, uh, activity. 

And of course, it's something very difficult, very hard, uh, you know, to, uh, to teach. 

Uh, I mean, uh, I read, for instance, the result of a study that was carried out in Italy just, um, a few months ago saying that, uh, children interviewed, and they was basically saying they didn't have any sort of real... 

At least half of them, they didn't have any sort of aspiration or dream for their future. And that was, I think, it, I think it's something quite sad, you know, to think about. 

So there's definitely the need to, yeah, to just meet hope, possibility, and to, for children to really believe, uh, uh, in, uh, in dreams. 

And, uh, as, uh, always been, but unfortunately seems to be, not to be anymore, or at least to some extent. Thanks. 

I think that last answer really kind of brings us back to some core themes about how we can nurture hope and optimism about the future. 

And seems to me what you're talking about is teachers building relationships and using their space in the classroom as a space for the children to think deeply, feel deeply, nurture relationships with each other. 

Yeah. And that's the basis of- Yeah ... hope and education. Yeah. Thank you very much, Dr. Abele Longo, for sharing your research, and tune in for the next podcast. Many thanks to you. 

Welcome to series two of the CERS podcast. 

CERS is the Centre for Educational Research and Scholarship at Middlesex University, and our focus in series two is to speak to some researchers at the university who are doing work in the field of education and childhood, and to try and distill some lessons for our partnership and stakeholders, including schools, early years providers, universities, and other people working in the field of education. 

My name's Lee Jerome, and today I'm speaking with Dr Paula McKeever Nottingham, who's here representing an area of work and learning in the university. Welcome, Paula. 

Thank you for having me today, Lee. And I wonder if you can start by telling me a little bit about your area of work, and give me some examples of research that you've been involved with. Yes. 

Well, I'm a, a part of one of the special interest groups for CERS, but we work a- a- as a continuum, and I mainly work in higher education research. 

But I also study lifelong learning, so I think there's a continuum with any research done in education. 

So, uh, you asked me to talk about some of the projects I've been involved in, and, uh, there's more than one, so I'll go over them very briefly. 

And again, I think you ask later where to find out about this information. Do come to our CERS website, because it's all there. 

Um, one of the things I've been doing just recently is a, um, knowledge exchange project called the Apprenticeship Workforce Development Project. 

And we're, uh, working on a title that's Mobilizing Provider Insights for Degree Apprenticeships: Comparing Theoretical Models to Deliver Effective Integration for On-the-Job and Off-the-Job Learning. 

I know it sounds exciting, and actually it is really exciting. And we have a, a host mentor with the University Vocational Awards Council, and they've been helping us through this project. 

But it's a collaborative with ourselves, um, Middlesex University, Consalia, and the Open University, and what we're doing is looking at best practice and l- doing a literature review, and then we're putting that out for the government to, um, share with everyone. 

And that's, um, hosted by the Educational Training Foundation. So that's ongoing right now. 

Uh, recently I had a journal article accepted with my, uh, colleague and co-writer, Dr Yen Mao, and that was about understanding the role of learning communities, um, of practice within a d- degree apprenticeship to enhance inclusive engagement. 

And that, uh, funnily enough, was connected to an enhancing engagement project that I had here that CAPE sponsored. 

So it was an internal Middlesex University project that paid for a little of our, um, research that we did, which was fantastic, and it's also linked to other research ongoing at the university with apprenticeships. 

Uh, one of which I would mention, um, a project called Move On Up, social mobility, um, research that a doctor, uh, Professor Dar- Daryl Bravenbauer is doing with others. 

Uh, and just a third one I would mention, which... 

'cause it's a collaborative one, sorry just to go on and on, but, um, we had a really nice project that was, uh, a co-writing project internally, and it's called... 

The, the final, um, journal article was called The Pivotal Role of Student Assessment of Work-Integrated Learning, and, uh, that was really interesting. 

We wrote that, and it was about placements and internships within the university, and student perceptions of how, uh, the learning a- a- aligned to assessment. 

So some really, um, powerful work going on, and really interesting work. Thanks, Paula. So the, it sounds like there's lots of research happening in your area. 

I wonder if you could distill for me some key messages that emerge from all of that work for stakeholders in education, particularly thinking about practitioners. Exactly, Lee. 

I think that's r- my real, um, focus now, is to work with other practitioners to get the word out. 

It's really difficult when you're working in higher education or other fields of education to have the time to do research and then to write about it, and write about it really well. 

Uh, so I'm taking some advice from Dave Boud to look for the trends and the cutting edge, look for things that are upcoming that might be of interest. 

Um, you yourself mentioned degree apprenticeships, and it's one of the, the, um, areas that people are looking into now and doing a lot of work with. 

Um, and I'd like to say I'm a real advocate for practitioner research. 

I'm a founding member with UVAC of a writing group that we're getting together, and in fact, I'm meeting someone today about it to, um, make sure that we have that voice in the research that we have, um, in our journals, but a- but also in our universities and just, again, with our collaborators who are out there t- uh, to do exchanges. 

So I'm a real advocate for trying to find the time and looking ahead. What, what's gonna be of interest? What do we need research in? Okay. Thanks, Paula. 

So it sounds like there's lots of research activity going on in your network. 

Could you try and tease out for us one or two key themes or key things that you've noted that might be useful for other practitioners? Well, exactly, Lee. 

That is so important to look at those key things. Um, one of the things I would mention is something that Dave Boud mentioned to, to the rest of us, which is to look for trends in the cutting edge. 

Look at what's gonna happen in the near future. I mean, one of those, uh, areas is degree apprenticeships, for example, something that our university is very active in. 

But they're very active in, in the UK, and there's wider fields of apprenticeship and vocational learning that we want to, to know about and get involved in. 

Um, we also work with a professional doctorate and practitioner, um, degrees at level eight, so that's something that is of great interest. 

Um, so- Looking for the cutting edge, what's gonna happen next, and trying to think about what research we actually need doing for education. Thanks for that, Paula. 

I'm, I'm, I mean, imagining that some of our partners and stakeholders will know about apprenticeships from the, the end of the employer, so they'll understand how to employ an apprentice and how to secure training services from external partners. 

We have lots of apprenticeships running through and with the university and lots of research. 

Could you just tell us one key conclusion that you think you're drawing from all of that activity that might give people an insight into the challenge of running apprenticeships? 

Uh, it's a, it's a great question, a big question. Um, I'm gonna attempt to answer it just looking at my smaller project. What we're... 

What we've been asked to do is look at best practice and the integration of some of these elements, especially for newer providers, so that means training providers, but also employers. 

Employers are very interested in, in working with training providers, education providers. 

So this research has to do with looking at those various elements, looking to see how they're integrated and again, making some deliverables that are really easy to access about how to get the equation right, how to have really successful degree apprenticeships. 

And here at Middlesex University, we have been doing large projects, for example, with the police, with nursing, with education. Uh, the public services have all been doing degree apprenticeships. 

So my project's a rather small one, and we're looking at business school providers. But it's an important one to get out there and again, what we're looking at are people who are... 

who kind of know how to provide and looking for research that, that again, the government has funded to enable us to get that information out i-in a, in a way that people will understand. Okay. 

So Paula, back to you. What's the most important thing you've learned through engaging with this research? Well, doing research is so important for practitioners. 

It really lets them see what's going on and then step back and think about it and again, theorize what they're doing conceptually because we go into it with all those theories, but when we're actually doing it, sometimes we lose that, that focus. 

So I would think about, um, the range for practitioners, and not just practitioners, uh, other researchers as well. 

Generally, I've worked at a smaller scale, so you know, if you think of a classroom or a cohort module level, um, it's rather small scale. 

So that's something that is, is really useful about teaching facilitation and working with employers and working with other providers. 

But I think where I'd like to see the field go is that we work a little bit larger scale, more collaboratively, and include partnerships, uh, in what we do, and these would include, um, universities, but also outside of universities. 

So I think that's kind of where it's going and, um, I'm a part of some, um, informal networks sort of doing that, uh, to have that sort of interaction and to collaborate in order to bring that back into the work that you do. 

And you mentioned the phrase practitioner research earlier on. Do you want to say a little bit about how that features in the way that you're working in your networks? 

It's just the difference between, uh, someone who teaches or facilitates or works as a practitioner, uh, in for, for example, a degree apprenticeship, so they can talk about what they actually do, the learning resources that they make, you know, the interaction with the apprentices or students, um, as opposed to someone coming in and from the outside who's a formal researcher, which is again, very valuable, but it's a bit different. 

So they're not an insider researcher. They, they look at things a bit differently. And sometimes there's a bias with insider researchers that the information is not clear. 

But at Middlesex University, we actually respect the fact that some people who are doing the job may know something that others don't. 

So their, their research is also very valuable to have out there in the field. Hmm. And I guess even more urgent if you think apprenticeships are relatively new. 

So if practitioners don't research it, waiting for external people is gonna take a lot longer to organize and get the publications out. That's right. Great. Thank you. 

So tell us a little bit about why you're involved in this area and this kind of research. 

Again, another very interesting question that we could spend a lot of time with, but, uh, I think generally people who, uh, do research and work in learning have had other disciplinary studies previously. 

It may not have been that they started in education. They probably did something else. 

I actually studied fine arts originally, and then I returned to doing project work within the university, and that was in the creative industries. 

So I was doing European Social Fund projects and got very interested in knowledge exchange, and that led to going back to university lifelong learning and eventually led to work-based learning, which in the day was the term that was an umbrella term that covered a lot of these areas. 

Uh, there's some people who, for example, come to this direction through workforce development, through labor, through, um, working in, um, the business school, and really what this area kind of combines education and organizational studies a-as it were. 

So there's a lot of interesting people working in this field who have a lot of, a, a, a wide array of talent and approaches to the research. 

But I got very interested in, in doing this type of learning and, um, my own interests goes from level four to level eight, so from degree apprenticeships to practitioner research, and I think the people who learn in the workplace are very fascinating. 

The way that we, we do that in higher education is very fascinating and of course, learning doesn't just happen with higher education. 

So our finding out how learning happens in the workplace then can be brought back to some of our programs that we do, if you're thinking of placements, internships. 

So it's a really interesting area. A lot of, uh, people in it, um, who bring in different approaches, and that is, again, very eclectic, but, um, a, a nice place to be in terms of the area. 

So to bring this right down to practicalities, Paula, can you tell us a little bit about how you actually go about doing your research? Thanks, Lee. 

There's always a structure to research, and there's usually ethical considerations. Um, the AWD project is... 

Are their case studies that we have some senior practitioners getting together, thinking about what they do in their practice, and we also have a literature review of the area, which I'm calling a scoping report. 

So it's not a systematic, huge kind of dissertation type thing. 

It's actually, um, for others in the field looking at some primary sources that might be of interest and will help them do their job in this very important field. 

Uh, for other projects, I do things like student questionnaires. 

Uh, so looking at a program and asking for the perceptions and experiences of the people actually going through that program, uh, what Dr. Yen Mal calls the employee learners, so the apprentices. 

And that's been extremely helpful too. So there are... It's a little bit of, uh, both. There's, um, any, uh... 

When you have a research question, you develop a project, a research project around that research question, and you think about the best way to go about finding out and, um, going into that. 

Uh, my, my latest project has to do with, um, writing about the, uh, literature reviews that happen in professional doctorates. 

And I was just on the British, uh, Library Ethos site thinking about those. 

Um, so I can use some examples, uh, from those, uh, published theses about how people approach doing literature reviews for professional doctorates, which might be a little bit different than the way they would approach PhD, uh, literature reviews. 

So many fascinating things. Each project might be a little bit different. 

And you mentioned a couple of times there the power of a literature review, and I think it's kind of u-undervalued sometimes, that we're all encouraging practitioners to be more research informed. 

But getting it, reading it is in, you know, very time-consuming, and you don't always have access. 

So, um, I wonder if you can just say a little bit about how you go about doing a literature review and how you write it up so that it's accessible for practitioners. 

What kind of outputs are you gonna have that people might be able to download or write to you and get hold of? I-- And we're calling it a literature review. 

It's a review of, of resources, sources 'cause it's slightly different for practitioners who are looking for pract... to, to provide solutions to practical problems. 

So the way that we go about it would be a little bit differently than a disciplinary subject area that's just looking for published things in a, you know, five or six journals. 

And, and those are very powerful, by the way, and the sciences, um, require that type of rigor. Uh, what we do is we require something else. We require a much more active stance to gathering things. 

You know, people are working in organizations or businesses, and they have access to internal research that others don't, but that can be used. 

And introducing practitioner researchers to policy and looking at policy is quite important. 

So there are lots of different ways to go about it, but I think the, um, uh, the mainstream there is to have flexibility for the projects, and I've, I've recently been getting into this idea of scoping reports. 

So the idea is that you choose the, the sources that are needed for the project that you're doing and then investigate them. 

But that does include academic goal standard, um, research that you want to have in your, in your project as a, as a way to bring up that, um, continuity in the theoretical propositions that you have. 

Mm. No, I like that. Throw the net wide and, and keep your eye on what would actually be useful if you were picking this up as a job in the real world- Mm ... 

as opposed to researching it for six months in a library. That sounds great. Thank you. 

Now, I know you're also very busy teaching, so there must be something enjoyable about this extra work that you take on. So wh-why do you do it? 

What do you find enjoyable about this aspect of your work? Well, inquiry and research is so basic, trying to find out what's going on, and the ability to investigate is, is, is very powerful. 

So I think most of us, most practitioners want to do something more. You know, you don't just want to be given things and, and to do it. 

And the turnaround for finding out what would be appropriate, what, what are the next steps again, you know? So we can't just... 

In our world, in higher education, we need to be future casting what we do. What's gonna happen next? 

It's not gonna help anyone to, to be teaching something that's not gonna help people when they go out in the workplace. Okay. So I, I think one thing often leads to the next thing on the horizon. 

So w-what's next for you? Well, I'll definitely do some more work with the deg-degree apprenticeships. I think they're something that are important to do in the next five years, really important. 

I'll also be focused on professional doctorates. 

I mentioned the literature review, but there are other things that I'm really interested in, in finding out about them and to get them really fit for purpose for the next, again, five years. 

What, what's ki- what's happening next? 

And now I'm on the editorial advisory board for the Higher Education Skills and Work-Based Learning journal, and I hope in that positioning to work with other academic practitioners to do this research that we're talking about, the practitioner research, and I review for a lot of other journals as well. 

So it's something that I'm Excited about doing and getting external to the university, making more connections, and working collaboratively Okay. 

So a very practical question, Paula, where can people go if they want to find out about the work you've been talking about in relation to work and learning? 

Actually, I think the best place to go is probably the CIRS website. It has all the connections to other things that we do, these journals that we've been talking about. 

Uh, we actually do a work-based learning eJournal international that people might be interested in, in looking at. 

So if you go to the CIRS site, you'll have all the links there, and people are also invited to connect with me personally. 

I'm here at Middlesex University, as we all are, and if you want to, um, find out something more, just let me know. That's great, thank you. Okay, so we're coming towards the end. 

I just want to ask you to think about what are the main implications of your work for practitioners out there working in various education institutions, do you think? 

I would j- just like to encourage everyone to have a go. 

There are a lot of framings for starting to do research if you haven't done research before, and for those of us who've been working little bits now and again every 10 years, it's great to come together to get some ideas, to collaborate, and do some work for the future because I think it's needed. 

Uh, we need to think about what we've done and to pass it on to the next generation and for people who've entered the field who don't really know as much of the history. 

So the time is now to get involved and to write something, to publish, and to join with others and collaborate. 

That's a great message, that don't wait for someone else to come and do the research and tell you the answers. You know what the questions are. 

You can crack on and do even a small piece of practitioner research to get the ball rolling. 

So to help people do that, if you were reflecting on your experience and you were gonna offer one piece of advice about something you might do differently or better, what piece of advice might you pass on to colleagues? 

Well, obviously it's about the time. Put the time in your schedule to do this. Connect with people. Value what you say. 

There are so many theories in use that we as ac- academic practitioners need to get out there. So spend the time, get connected, and celebrate what you know. Okay. So thanks very much to Dr. Paula McKeever Nottingham. 

If you want to find out more about her work in relation to work-based learning or work and learning, then, uh, Google her name and work and learning and find her page on the CIRS website. 

Hi, everyone. I'm Dr Nikki Spalls, and today I'm talking to Dr Lee Jerome about his research in citizenship education. Thanks for joining us, Lee. 

To start with, just could you tell us a bit about what research project you're talking about today? Thanks, Nikki. 

Um, I, I'm gonna talk about a systematic literature review that I've just completed. 

Uh, mostly because it's the first time that I've done one of those, and so it's kind of sticking in my mind as a bit of a learning curve for me. 

Um, the Association for Citizenship Teaching asked me to review the literature that exists about the impact of citizenship education, and they're interested in particular on the impact on young people's active citizenship and their attitudes towards being active citizens in the future. 

So that was what the focus of the project was. What we had to do was try to find all the evidence that we could reasonably lay our hands on that was relevant to that question. 

So we had to technically go through constructing a literature search protocol that we c- kind of use on a whole variety of databases to try and trawl through all that information. 

W- we ended up finding thousands of things that were, uh, were, uh, empirical, so not just theoretical arguments or arguments about policy but had collected data from students that were relevant to secondary schooling, so lots of stuff happens in universities. 

We had to exclude all of that. And which had measured in some way the impact on young people in terms of civic outcomes, civic participation, attitudes, knowledge and those kinds of things. 

So we found thousands of research reports, and then you go through this sifting process to find the most relevant, the most focused, and we ended up finding 133 published, um, bits of academic research in-- mostly in peer review journals that were particularly kind of relevant to the questions that ACT were interested in. 

And then, so the first part of being systematic is that you do a systematic trawl through the evidence, and then the next part is that you read every word of every article and try and extract all of the relevant information, both about what research questions were being answered, what measures were being used to try and construct an answer, and what methodology was used, you know, what sampling, so that we could come up with some idea of relative kind of robustness of the, of the findings. 

Thanks for that, Lee. So it sounds as if this systematic literature review yielded a great quantity of data. What do you think are the key messages from that data that you've found so far? 

Well, I, I've been working in citizenship education for over 20 years, and one of the things that stood out for me in some of the large scale work was just the importance of teacher-student relationships and how students felt about the institution of the school. 

And I think teachers always think relationships are important. 

But, but I hadn't-- somehow I'd managed to work in this field without actually reading this literature that tried to quantify how important that relationship was. 

And the takeaway from reading that bit of the evidence base is really that students are more likely to feel well disposed towards democracy and more likely to want to participate in citizenship engagement type activities if they like their teachers and they feel their school can be bothered to listen to them. 

And I think that's just a really important take home message. 

We also found lots of schools do lots of active citizenship projects and spend a lot of time and effort on kind of constructing those pedagogic strategies and projects. 

And, um, what I took away from that was the full on project from, you know, c- constructing an idea, doing research, planning a project, coming up with a political strategy to achieve change, implementing it, working in groups, evaluating it. 

That's really great but actually lots of the research shows that you can get some benefit from doing bits of that as well. 

So there were-- we'd found evidence that just selecting an issue and planning what you could do about it yields some positive benefits. 

Or finding out what someone else is doing and just joining them in the action bit of it can also yield benefits. 

And also something we don't do very much of in secondary schools, uh, doing simulated activities can come up with some really or can lead to some really positive outcomes. 

So it was really useful for me to be able to think about how you can offer practical advice to citizenship teachers who instead of scratching their heads and saying, "I don't-- I can't spare a whole term to do a full on project." You can say, "Well, just spend three or four weeks doing a simulation." It won't have the same benefits, but it will have smaller benefits of pushing the students in the same direction in terms of positive outcomes. 

So those were kind of some refreshing findings I think. That sounds really interesting, and I think there's some important and powerful messages there for schools and teachers. 

What do you think is the most important thing you've learned through this research? 

I think in terms of schools, it seems like you need to get things aligned, or there would be a benefit in aligning things. 

So lots of individual projects can have small outcomes, but there is some evidence that suggests the more positive things you do, there is a kind of cumulative overall effect. 

And there's also evidence that says the longer you do those things through schooling, the longer live the effect. 

So I, I've always been an advocate of citizenship education, but I feel now like I've got a much firmer grip on the evidence to suggest you should simply do more of it and do it for longer over a more sustained period of time. 

And not only will you secure a bigger positive effect, but you will also secure that effect for longer into young adulthood. 

There aren't many, uh, bits of work that have followed people out of schools into adulthood, but the one or two pieces we found were really quite positive about having a kind of lingering effect. 

So you clearly have a background in citizenship education, but why did you decide to do this work and, and why did you consider it to be important? 

Over the years, lots of the work I've done in this area has been free or done on, on a shoestring budget be- just because I share a passion with, with people in the field. 

This is the first time where we managed to get some money, and the Association for Citizenship Teaching secured some funding over a four-year period. 

And so this was the, the, the first year of the four-year contract. 

So while they were setting up the project, which we'll be evaluating for the next three years, we had a year to kind of clear the decks and get things prepared. 

So we were developing the questionnaires and surveys for the evaluation, but we also had some time to beetle around to schools, collect some case studies of, of how schools were implementing citizenship education in their context, and do this literature review. 

So it was partly just establishing what do we already know in the field before ACT launches into doing some new things. So this sounds like a really big project you've undertaken. 

How did you go about it, and why did you choose that approach? 

Well, I think we-- if you don't do a systematic review, you tend to just look for things that are interesting or that fit the topic of the next paper you're writing. 

And so it was a really good opportunity to take a step back and think about the evidence base as a whole. 

And we had found a couple of other people who'd done literature reviews, but one of the problems with a systematic literature review is if you set your search terms too narrowly... 

So there was a brilliant paper that only looked at randomized control trials. 

Well, I know before I read that paper that there aren't many randomized control trials in citizenship education, and that's what they found. 

So they ended up reviewing like four things and that-- so it was systematic in that it found the only four things that existed, but reviewing four things isn't massively interesting. 

It's not very challenging, and it, and it will reflect the kind of partial focus of the researchers who happen to embark on those projects. 

So we wanted to do something that was fairly broad, even knowing that you're compromising on the quality somewhat. But, but I think that's important. 

In a field like ours where there aren't millions of pounds being sunk into research, lots of the evidence base is actually people writing up their project, doing a case study, doing an end-of-year evaluation for their students. 

And I really wanted to acknowledge that that is an important source of information and insight. 

So we've, we've included the b- the huge studies with tens of thousands of people, and we've included the small studies with a couple of dozen people in a school setting. 

We've always tried to acknowledge the s- you know, the weight of the evidence. 

But nevertheless, if, you know, if 20 case studies all point in the same direction, that's a fairly good reason for think there's something compelling in the way they're, you know, identifying good practice. 

As long as the reader knows that that's the, you know, that's the foundation or the claim to knowledge, then we felt that was fair. Thanks for that. That was really interesting. 

I really like the idea that there's value to be had in those big projects that are undertaken but also in those small, like you said, end of term evaluations of, you know, how this year went for my students in this subject. 

They are all equally valid types of research. What did you find most enjoyable about working on this project? I think I slightly identified with my inner nerd. 

What I really found satisfying was having a spreadsheet with 133 rows and 25 columns where we extracted all the relevant information. 

And if I'm being really honest, it's the first time I've worked with research assistants, and it was really nice being able to ask them to do most of the reading on my behalf before we sat down and worked out what it all meant. 

So what's next for this project? Where will it be published, and where can we read it? And does this lead to anything else for you, or should it lead to other work? Yeah. 

Well, because this was the first piece of work we did in the first year of a longer project that there's one practical output which is a report aimed at teachers that tries to pull out the kind of so what. 

So here's the evidence base across 133 research papers, a million words of data and analysis. So what? 

And the so what is boiled down to seven practical themes and insights for teachers where we offer some advice, offer some questions to help them evaluate their own practice and then, y- you know, highlight their way back to the literature if they wanna read the evidence for themselves. 

But it also has a very practical application for us. 

We've used it in, um, continuing professional training workshops for teachers at ACT, and w- we also used it to construct our own survey instruments for the evaluation. 

So as we were reading through all these reports, we were very interested to look at how did they measure citizenship education outcomes so that we could borrow some of the best measures and redeploy that in our field work over the next few years. 

So some of those measures and instruments and ideas have been incorporated in our ongoing work. So where can people go to find out more about this work? 

So the report is published on the Association for Citizenship Teaching website, which is teachingcitizenship.org.uk. 

Uh, you can read a summary of the evidence of impact, which is aimed at senior leaders to try and convince them that it's worth making time in the curriculum to do this kind of work 'cause it secures positive outcomes. 

And then the report for teachers is a bit longer and more detailed, and it's about what you might actually do to yield the best benefits. 

And there's also an opportunity for schools and teachers to participate in our surveys each year. 

So we're trying to look at what do teachers do in practice and what do their children experience through their citizenship education, and what kind of impact does that have. 

That work is particularly focused on what we call the civic gap, which is one of the things we discovered in the literature review that, like there's an attainment gap in GCSE outcomes between middle class and relatively deprived children, there's a kind of a similar gap in terms of civic knowledge, attitudes towards participation, and experience of participation. 

And the evidence suggested the kinds of things that might work to close the gap, and so we're trying to collect some data from schools, particularly deprived schools, to look at whether what they're doing works in the way that they hope. 

Finally, Lee, what do you think are the main implications of your work? If someone did something differently as a result of this, who might that be and what might they do? 

I suppose there are two main audiences that we're trying to influence. The first is school leaders. 

Over the last few years, citizenship has rather kind of fallen out of favor, and we want to remind them that citizenship is a really good vehicle for delivering some very positive outcomes in terms of a rounded education, what Ofsted would call personal development. 

You know, we want children to identify as the kind of people that can make a difference in their lives and affect other people's lives for the better. We want them to have a stake in society. 

We want them to be respectful towards other people, to develop tolerance. We need them to support democracy, otherwise it will crumble. 

And, um, schools say they're committed to these things but often hide it away in pastoral time, in tutor time, or bits of PSHE. 

And what we're saying is, if you wanna achieve those outcomes, they're really important, and there's loads of evidence to suggest that if you use citizenship education wisely, you can secure those kinds of positive outcomes. 

So we wanna encourage schools to do more of it. And then the second pe- group of people we're trying to influence are the citizenship teachers themselves. 

And what we're really trying to do is to, to reflect back to them the evidence from around the world, and not to tell them what to do, 'cause I'm a great believer that what you do in your context really must reflect what is needed in your context. 

But to ask them some difficult soul-searching questions about their practice so that they're really making their work as effective as it can be, and avoiding the temptation just to fill the time with busywork because the exam board needs it or because that's what the headteacher's asked you to do. 

But to really think about what would a very effective, progressive citizenship education program look like that actually built over time to have a bigger impact on young people's lives. 

So we're trying to be upbeat and positive and focus on what schools can do to make a difference. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Lee. 

It's been really interesting to hear about this project, and I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks, Nikki.