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Centre for Global Learning (GLEA)
Welcome to the December 2020 edition of Coventry University's
Centre for Global Learning (GLEA) Newsletter
This edition will focus on project activity from the Development, Engagement and Attainment theme. We'll be sharing the latest news from across the centre, including highlights from our recent online GLEA Week 2020 conference 'Reconstructing education through a global lens'.
As we move towards the end of 2020, we would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our colleagues, collaborators and friends the very best of wishes for 2021. Season’s greetings to you all.
GLEA Week 2020
The beginning of the UK’s second lockdown also coincided with GLEA’s first showcase: Reconstructing Education through a Global Lens. Originally intended to be a one day showcase, face to face in Coventry, it was transformed into a series of online pick and mix seminars, workshops and panel discussions to talk about some of the work of GLEA’s research community, and topics related to equality and international dimensions of education, particularly in today’s world. The programme sessions were spaced across the week to allow participants to ‘dip in’ where work or personal commitments would allow.
GLEA week opened with a keynote session with colleagues from across the globe, including Dr Yaliwe Clarke (Interim Director of the African Gender Institute and Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, South Africa); Dr Srila Roy (Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa); Dr Kyria Finardi (Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo, Brazil); and Dr Stephanie Doscher (Director, Office of Global Learning Initiatives, Florida International University). The panelists described the impact that the recent pandemic had on education in South Africa, India, Brazil and the United States, and included issues such as not being able to rely on physical contact and facial feedback from colleagues and students, disrupted pedagogical approaches, women spending more time in the home and less time working, issues of student vulnerability, technology issues, and the concept of ‘borders’ in relation to global learning.
Another session highlight was 'Trading places in Higher Education: from prohibition to emancipation', facilitated by Coventry University’s BME staff network lead member Annette Hay, and panel members Nomusa Okorie, Professor Gus John and Dr Gurnam Singh, who discussed issues surrounding decolonising higher education and what changes mean for the future.
Throughout the week, issues of the pandemic underpinned many sessions, whether related to how it has impacted teaching and learning, the delivery of research, or staff and student experience. Participants particularly liked the student involvement in sessions, which included a panel of GLEA postgraduate researchers all on different doctoral routes and stages of their research who gave an account of their experiences. This is something which we are hoping to build on for next year.
Although intended to be face to face, moving online has had some benefits (as well as its challenges!), however ultimately, it has meant that we have been able to engage with an audience far more reaching than we would have been able to on campus.
The GLEA team, and its collaborators delivered 17 online seminars over the course of the week where sessions were accessed over 530 times, attracting 155 new, unique visitors from the UK, Europe, the USA, South East Asia, Canada and Australia. There are too many names to mention here, but a big thank you to everyone who presented, participated, attended, and helped to make the week a success!
Development, Engagement and Attainment Projects
The Development, Engagement and Attainment theme have been busy working on a variety of projects, a few of which are outlined below.
Evaluating the effectiveness of Peer Assisted Learning Strategies to support reading (PALS-UK)
Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a well-established manualised paired reading intervention that was developed in the United States. The programme aims to develop reading comprehension and oral fluency, by training pupils to support one another to complete a series of structured activities. PALS-UK is an adapted programme for the UK context which has been rolled out for evaluation in England, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation.
Dr Emma Vardy (GLEA Visiting Researcher from Nottingham Trent University), and Co-Investigator Dr Helen Breadmore (Associate Professor, GLEA) form the delivery team in a two-armed randomized control trial of the programme with Year 5 pupils across 89 primary schools in the Midlands and North East of England. The project began in April 2019. In September 2019 we successfully pre-tested 2176 pupils and trained 90 primary school teachers to deliver the intervention. GLEA researchers ensured that the intervention was successfully delivered for 20 weeks. We are currently awaiting evaluation and outcome data to examine the effectiveness of the programme, which is being independently evaluated by RAND Europe.
Systematic review of measures of attainment in literacy, mathematics and science.
GLEA researchers, Dr Helen Breadmore and Professor Julia Carroll, have been commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to conduct a systematic review of measures of attainment in literacy, mathematics and science suitable for use with children in the UK aged 6-18 years.
Outputs will include a written synthesis and a searchable database summarising the assessments subject to review. The database will be publicly available on the EEF website, similarly to the SPECTRUM database and Early Years Measures Database These resources will inform future EEF evaluations and provide a valuable resource for practitioners and researchers to shortlist assessments that suit their needs. The review team are currently evaluating the assessments that have been shortlisted through the systematic review process and aim to publish the outputs in Spring 2021.
Access to Attainment: What are the Responsibilities of Universities towards their Diverse Student Communities?
In this project Dr Sian Alsop (Assistant Professor) aims to address the social problem of student outcome inequality in order to help teachers and Higher Education leaders to fulfil their responsibilities towards the students they serve. Not all student groups achieve the outcomes they might reasonably expect, which makes the shared challenge of designing curricula that are conducive to the attainment of all students a central focus of Higher Education research. Our objective is to deploy multilevel regression to create a tool for measuring the ‘inclusivity factors’ of programme design. Using programme data and student information that is typically collected by UK universities (such as course descriptors and assessments, students’ socio-economic data and academic outcomes), we will investigate whether curricula design factors can predict differences in attainment between specific student groups.
Based on our findings, we will produce recommendations to support equitable curriculum design. Our work shifts the research focus from a deficit model of students’ academic capacity, towards a method for evaluating the impacts of curricula design on differing student groups. Project outcomes will empower policy makers and educators to design curricula with equality built-in, and thus to help all learners to attain the academic outcomes they merit.
Postgraduate Researcher in the Spotlight
Sara Whylie: Why I chose to study my subject area
My interest in Developmental Psychology started years ago, when as a teenager, I was always the cousin babysitting the younger ones. To me, children are refreshing: They say what they mean and mean what they say. To be honest, I had toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in international relations. My parents quickly put holes in that boat. How many people with such degrees actually get jobs?
Admittedly, as an idealistic and relatively sheltered 18-year old, I hadn’t yet known the pressures of bills needing to be paid (sidebar, I do now). My main priority was having a career where I could help people. Then I started thinking about Developmental Psychology. To me, the most vulnerable people on the planet are kids. Maybe I can have a career which helps kids, and assuages my parents’ fears that I end up on their sofa in 10 years’ time. They agreed and it was settled: Off I went to the University of York to study Psychology.
Fast-forward 12 years and I have degrees in Psychology and Developmental Psychology, and I am currently pursuing a PhD in the area at Coventry University . Specifically, I am investigating literacy development in children who have just started school. I love my research area because I feel that I am researching a topic that just might have some impact. That’s saying a lot because as a PhD student, you sometimes feel that the only people who really care about your work are you and your supervisors! One of my favourite parts of my studies was going into school to collect data. The kids made me laugh every day. I realised that despite their differences in literacy ability, they all have their own unique sets of skills that make them amazing.
Parminder Khela: A day in the life of a PhD student
So, I’m in the final stages of my PhD, I’m in my write up year and you can probably guess what I spend most of my time doing… yes, writing. I’ve been there, I’ve done it. I’ve read countless articles and books. I’ve planned my experiments. I’ve recruited my participants. I’ve collected my data. I’ve analysed the majority of my data and now it all comes down to writing.
For me writing has always been something that I’ve found difficult, but as advised by my supervisors I’ve been sure to write as I go along. For my this is key advice that I would recommend to anyone doing a PhD, as when it comes to writing up your methods for example, it’s best whilst they are fresh in your mind. This way you’ll be sure to include small, but important details and having chunks of writing that will stand you in good stead as you approach the end of your PhD and begin to fully flesh out your thesis.
My “perfect” day consists of my waking up in the morning and having a nice, filling breakfast and a cup of tea. I’ll begin the day by writing a list of tasks I need to complete. A new thing that I have begun is adding smaller and simpler asks to this list because, ticking them off gives me a sense of accomplishment and encourages me to continue on and complete the more difficult tasks. A list is a great motivator. Despite the shift from more reading focused days to more writing focused days, there is still always some reading to do. This will usually be what I do next. I read up on relevant articles, check scientific research databases for new articles and go over my notes in Mendeley for articles relevant to what I will be writing about on that given day. My PhD is about the effects of digital technology on children’s attention and reading skills, therefore there is always new relevant research being published. Now, with COVID-19 the impact technology has on children is even more significant as many classes were moved online, children were encouraged to use digital devices and a variety of apps and websites for classwork, homework and socialising.
The rest of my day is spent writing. I synthesise past and present information, analyse my work and I aim to articulate my results with reference to prior research. Some days are more successful than others and I write many words, but it ebbs and flows. I try not to get bogged down by my not so great days as from prior experience I know this just results in a cycle of not so great days. Some days, the writing will just flow, and I’ll be in the zone not knowing how many hours have passed. Other days it can be more of a struggle and that’s when it’s best to do the least mentally strenuous tasks, for example get my references in order or checking my formatting. I will always make sure I eat lunch; good nutrition is an important part of leading a healthy lifestyle. Occasionally, I’ll do some exercise. Well, that’s pretty much as day in my life. Not the most interesting day, but a pleasant one.
Welcome
A warm welcome to our new Postgraduate Researchers
Mark Dawson How can collaborative online international learning enable education-industry-community partnerships to enhance global citizenship and sustainable development education required in a post-COVID world?
Jodie Enderby Learning from lockdown: a project to understand changes in self-concept and self-efficacy during the pandemic in students with disabilities to promote future inclusivity
Holly Gilbert Mathematics and statistics support in the new normal
Luke Tibbits How does the Social Work Apprenticeship programme achieve a compromise between traditional degrees and new fast-track routes of work-based learning?
Online PhD in Global Education
Amela Bogdanovic Maximising benefits of the innovation and exchange of good practices on the output of strategic partnerships projects for vocational education and training
Janet Campbell A comparison of the necessary factors in the design and delivery of experiential learning in a semi immersive virtual reality (VR) environment in the UK and Australia
Joseph Davis What is the role of leadership in tackling issues of diversity in a higher education institution under representation of ethnic minority staff at senior management level
Leanne Hunt Linking social / experiential and curriculum learning for greater risk knowledge: lessons for the UK education system from Italy
Aisha Labefo Audu Experiences of mature black female students in a Post 92 UK University. What is your story?
Darlington Onyewuchi Njere Development of resilient pedagogy in engineering education to enhance student satisfaction and industrial engagement for sustainability
Sabine Schaebitz European architectural education, Heritage and public engagement: A comparison of theory and practice in the UK and Germany
Tanya Vidanagama Maintaining academic integrity using assessment in a post COVID HE environment case study of Sri Lankan State universities
Recent News
New Faculty Research Associate
We are pleased to announce that Dr Dimitar Angelov has joined GLEA as a Research Associate. Dimitar is an experienced academic writer and valued member of the Course Team for GLEA’s structured PhD in Global Education. Dimitar will now be working with GLEA to contribute research writing, knowledge sharing and mentoring in the theme Global Learning: Education without Boundaries.
New fully funded studentships available
GLEA are pleased to announce two new fully funded studentships to start in 2021. Further details on the opportunities can be found below:
Recent Publications
Articles
Lawson, D, Grove, M and Croft, T (2020) The evolution of mathematics support: a literature review, International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 51(8), 1224-1254, DOI: 10.1080/0020739X.2019.1662120
Tramontano, C., Nocentini, A., Palmerio, L., Losito, B., Menesini, E. (2020). Mapping community, social, and economic risks to investigate the association with school violence and bullying in Italy. Child Abuse and Neglect.
Carroll, J., Holliman, A., Weir, F. & Baroody, A., (2019) Literacy interest, home literacy environment and emergent literacy skills in pre-schoolers In : Journal of Research in Reading. 42, 1, p. 150-161 12 p.
Wimpenny, K., Beelen, J. & King, V., (2020) Academic development to support the internationalization of the curriculum (IoC): A qualitative research synthesis In : International Journal for Academic Development. 25, 3, p. 218-231 14 p.
Fida, R., Ghezzi, V., Paciello, M., Tramontano, C. (Joint first authors), Dentale, F., Barbaranelli, C. (2020). The Implicit Component of Moral Disengagement: Applying the Relational Responding Task to investigate its relationship with Cheating Behaviour. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Book / Chapters
Dang, Q. A. & Kamibeppu, T., Aug 2020, Curbing university autonomy and academic freedom in the name of quality assurance, accountability and internationalisation in East Asia Academic Freedom, Institutional Autonomy, and the Future of Democracy. Bergan, S., Gallagher, T. & Harkavy, I. (eds.). Council of Europe Publishing, Vol. 24. p. 103-120 8 p.
