980 research outputs found
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Solertia: (vol: 1 issue: 1)
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Challenging Victorian Heteropatriarchy: Reclaiming Muted Voices in Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith
In what ways can concrete resources support the learning and progress of children in maths, who are lower ability
or have SEN?
In what ways have primary school teachers used technology differently to support children’s learning during remote education and how might this inform their future practice?
McMindfulness or elixir to life’s ills: What are the implications of practicing mindfulness in a secular
context?
Describe how atheism is under threat from postmodernism
Decolonising the secondary drama curriculum: an investigation into the effects and barriers of diversifying the play texts used in the classroom of a predominantly white school. What are the first steps for drama teachers in beginning this process of change
More Human Than Human? Transformational habitus, capital, field and the implanting of memories in school curricula
No full textBlade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 dystopian imagining of the Earth has, at its centre, the tension of what it means to be human and the concept of identity. Where previous and contemporaneous imaginings of the future had clear delineations between humans and ‘other’, be they species from other planets, such as the alien lifeform in The Thing (1982), or the development of artificial consciousness, such as Skynet in The Terminator (1984), there was always a clear boundary. But in Blade Runner that delineation disappears. Replicants, unlike other inventions of humans, are organic, self-directed tools (Norris, 2013).
The crux of this self-direction is consciousness, the memories which come with it, and ultimately the identities and place in society that this affords. Indeed, Blade Runner has memory as a central theme, what it is, what it means and how it gives us our identity. These issues are reflected in the focused shot of an eye at the very start of the film, perhaps prompting us to consider the ‘windows of the soul’ metaphor. By giving replicants memories, they are given the notion of a past, to give them a coherent view of how they fit within society.
The notion of ‘planted memories’ within Blade Runner reflects the social theory of Bourdieu. Is it memories, the resultant identity and by association learning which indicate our habitus and cultural capital? Are the memories of the replicants meant to aid them in identity formation and taking their designated roles in society? Do implanted memories prevent replicants rejecting their roles in society? Does having the correct experiences, memories and learning foster a given cultural capital, aiding replicants to flourish and foster a habitus which allows them to successfully navigate fields as humans rather than as a lower form of consciousness.
We reflect on the ways in which these issues relate to the implementation of the current government National Curriculum (2013) in England. It is a curriculum designed to create experiences and memories within young people to foster particular cultural capital and identity formation, to accept a given view of the world; to ‘introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said, an appreciation of human creativity and achievement’ (DfE, 2013). It can be argued that this has a particularly important role in ensuring that working-class children do not reject their programming by ensuring they accept that certain fields and habitus have value, and to prepare them well for their designated positions in society. As Reay notes, on consideration of the curriculum and associated inspection requirements for schools, ’The key elements of cultural capital are entwined with privileged lifestyles rather than qualities you can separate off and then teach the poor and working classes’ (Reay, 2019, para. 11)
Power imbalances: Inequality in international exchange: The UK and Thailand as example
No full textStudent mobility through bilateral exchange agreements between institutions plays an increasing role in university internationalization agendas, but what this means in practice varies across institution types and around the world. These agreements, most often between a university in a ‘developed’ English speaking country, and one in a ‘developing’ non-English speaking country highlight disparities in funding, access, and responsibility, leading to concerns about their place and their impact on not just higher education, but global systems.
This chapter will explore these realities by taking a case-study approach looking at two partner institutions, one in the UK and one in Thailand, and considering their internationalization programs, similarities and differences between them and their subsequent impact. We investigate to what extent arrangements such as these are ethical, and we will conclude our chapter with a summary of the implications and pitfalls of such programs, with particular focus on the responsibilities of Western universities to contribute to having meaningful, equal collaborations to support the internationalization of higher education
Teacher evaluation of the impact of the imagineerium learning experience on the creativity of individual students: The trowsdale index of teacher observation of student creativity (TITOSC)
No full textIn order to evaluate the impact of The Imagineerium, a 10-week educational project, teachers were asked to observe and rate the behaviour of a pilot sample of 135 participating students both at the beginning and at the end of the 10-week period. Scores recorded on the seven-item Trowsdale Index of Teacher Observation of Student Creativity (TITOSC) showed a significant increase between time one and time two. In order to test the reproducibility of these findings the same index was employed a year later in a replication study among 139 students. On this occasion also, scores recorded on the seven-item Trowsdale Index of Teacher Observation of Student Creativity showed a significant increase between time one and time two. These data support the effectiveness of educational experience in enhancing teacher perception of creativity displayed by individual students.
Keywords: The Imagineerium, teacher observation, student creativity, learning, primary schoo
Assessing the ethos of Anglican primary schools in Wales: The student voice project
No full textSince the Anglican Church in England and Wales began to build schools long before the state developed machinery to do so, around a quarter of all primary schools remain connected with the Anglican Church. The church school inspection system maintains that Anglican schools have a distinctive ethos. The Student Voice Project argues that school ethos is generated by the implicit collective values, beliefs and behaviours of the students, and was designed to give explicit voice to the students in response to six specific areas of school life identified by the Anglican school inspection criteria as relevant to school ethos. Drawing on data provide by 8,111 year-five and year-six students attending Church in Wales primary schools, the present study reports on the six ethos measures and on significant differences reported by female and male students, and by year-five and year-six students
Remembering professional commitments: Trusting in teachers
No full textIn England statutory expectations for literacy education place little emphasis on contemporary modes and media of communication and, as such, are out of step with contemporary life. We explore how open-ended, collaborative pedagogies can provide rich contexts for authentic everyday communication even in the context of such reductionist curriculum and assessment frameworks. This leads us to claim that the success of such approaches depends on the enthusiasm, experience and creativity of teachers and that remembering longstanding professional commitments in language and literacy teaching is at least as important as rethinking the curriculum when advocating for literacy provision more suited to current times
Assessing the Church of England’s leadership response to the Covid-19 pandemic: Listening to the voice of rural lay people
No full textThe aim of the present study is to analyse the qualitative text written on the back page of a quantitative survey concerned with the Church of England’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the 1460 rural lay people in England who took part in the Coronavirus, Church & You survey, 501 wrote further (sometimes detailed) comments on the back page (34 per cent participation rate). This study analyses the comments made by a subsection of these 501 rural lay people, specifically the 52 participants who voiced their views on how the Church of England’s leadership responded during the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Analysis identified a number of issues and concerns, including: a lack of quality leadership, comparing with other Churches, becoming irrelevant, centralizing action, closing rural churches, neglecting rural people, neglecting rural clergy, marginalizing rural communities, using the kitchen table, and looking to the future. Overall, rural lay people were disappointed with the response of church leadership to the first national lockdown. If these churchgoers are to be fruitfully reconnected with their churches after the pandemic, then leadership of the Church of England may need to hear and to take seriously their concerns
Digital Impostor Syndrome: Feeling Fake
No full textOnline learning has become a firm component of teaching during the pandemic, but a greater reliance on technology has also increased the risk of teachers and learners struggling with Digital Impostor Syndrome. Drawing on her own research, Dr Theresa Marriott explores some coping strategies
"Save my soul from the poisons of this world": straight edge punk and religious re-enchantment
No full textReligion and punk (of any iteration) are not often words found in sympatico and yet, although implicit, religion is a key component in identity construction and performance of Straight Edge punk identity. It is a form of religiosity that is predicated upon notions of individuality and authenticity rather than meta-narratives and future gain. It is deeply enmeshed within popular culture, analogous with the rise of the ordinary within religion. (Taylor 2007: 539 - 556) As such, Straight Edge culture can embody a wider social approach to religion and spirituality that has taken root within modern western societies for a myriad of reasons, some of which will be explored in this chapter. The focus of this chapter will be on demonstrating that Straight Edge punks have, through their musical subculture, found a way to re-enchant their world that enables them to articulate notions of the divine, the ineffable, the sublime and salvation within both themselves and their Straight Edge scene, in a way that marks them as different from other, more well-known iterations of punk. This chapter will argue that religion in Straight Edge is more than the appearance of a religious metaphor within the lingua franca or a sublimation of worship into fandom as is often argued about appearances of religion within aspects of popular culture. (Doss, 1999; Forbes & Mahan, 2017, p9) Rather, this chapter will demonstrate that this Straight Edge engagement with religion is part of a wider approach that necessitates or desires a relocation and re-articulation of religion as a concept and in praxis