Semi-live blogging from the Oxford Brookes University School of Education Research Conference at Harcourt Hill, Glasgow Room, Friday 26 June 2015.
hash #soeresearch
Mandy Winter: Pupils conceptions and practices of composing.
Mandy Winter launches the proceedings: the Clangers travel in a boat powered by music. She reports on 3 Studies
- Revisioning compositional pedagogy for adolescents
- use co-creative partnerships as methodology for professional development
- develop deeper cultural engagement
- Young Adults reflecting on music education: cultural disjuncts (why are we in school?)
- Adolescent learning: Year 9 composing in class: 2 classes smart phone voice composing, recording, observatins and reflections. The head was tolerant of kids with “small powerful computers”. Pedagogy (motivational)
- Teachers interviews discussion results of study 1 and 2 Life beyond formal education deeper cultural engagement
Young adults reflecting on music education. Terminology is problematic when making meaning: composing, composition or making stuff up. Routes into music. Reverse engineering. Importance of control and co-creation. Technology is time (context) dependent.
Adolescents learn social learning skills, achieve success as cultural creators, make meaning through movement and address consequences of interrupted flow: what do you get from the occasional lesson (e.g. 45 min once a fortnight). Winter calls for more extensive music lessons, especially if they are infrequent.
Teachers observe that adult modelling cultural engagement is important. The traditional conservatoire model remains dominant. Performing is more important than composing. Teaching composing is more difficult. Belief that you can’t “teach” composing.
Deb McGregor: Teaching creatively or teaching for creativity
What is creativity? There is a range of views:
- Traditional: Einstein, Newton
- Teachers’ view: novelty but not part of “science”; domain of the humanities, art, literature
- Children: performance, gifted expertise in writing, art or music.
Divergent and convergent thinking; originality; cognitive processing. Generating possibilities is at the heart of creativity. Cites various contemporary writers on creativity: deBono, Facione, Swartz, Sternberg, NACCCE, Robinson, Lipman, Stylianidou (any females?) Ken Robinson suggests we all can be creative, that we can plan for creativity and therefore it can be taught. So what do creative teachers do?
- use imagination, develop material, capture attention
- create dynamic active ethos, experience delight
The objective-subjective split remains a problem. Is there a spectrum of creativity little c to big Middle c?
Features of teaching creativity include make the ordinary fascinating, develop a sense of wonder, see things diferently, use metaphors, connect with experience, use unusual approaches and integrate it
Teaching creatively (TC) and teaching creativity (T4C) are different things.
Mary Wild, connecting home and educational play
drawing on Evangelou and Wild, 2014, “Connecting Home and Educational Play: interventions that support children;s learning”, in Brookes, Blaise and Edwards, 2014, Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood. Sage
Linet Arthur & Ian Summerscales, Troubling Knowledge:
In media res. Are Professional Doctorates a result of midlife crises? Doctoral journeys are redolent of mythic journeys. Background of the student is critical. Identity is distributed in multiple selves and contexts, multiple locations and interactions. We contribute as a part of a web of multiple connections. However the academy trumps the profession in the end. Linet argues that identity formation is necessarily part of the EdD journey. EdD helps some to cope with or mediate the solitary experience of traditional PhD study. I am pleased to see that the journey is not presented as a smooth trajectory. Mythic journey again: marginalisation and return.
David Aldridge: Phenomenological description of student engagement
https://prezi.com/nxj6j3_tefcu/engagement-and-subject-matter/
The phenomenon is that which allows itself to be seen. Not trying to effect an outcome. What happens beyond willing and doing.There is a rich phenomenology of experience. Gadamer recapitulated Dewey. The Phenomenological nod: statement of the bleeding obvious that wasn’t bleeding obvious until it was said. There is a tendency to instrumentalise engagement.
Engagement is transformative and transcendent… can it be? Location is engagement in-between. Links mutual understanding with learning.
George Roberts: Teaching into the third space: inclusive learning, active citizenship
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yGlofZ-tzdlPiUQvvp6VOnNHWuEH5f69yASmgkr1qXg/edit?usp=sharing
Claire Fenwick Legacy of a MOOC
https://prezi.com/mvqq5ssvkxz4/lets-teach-comp-mooc-for-soe/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Wow, what a great account of an ooc in the wild.
Gillian Lake, RCT of language acquisition
Randomised Controlled Trial of an intervention involving planned pretend play and group shared storybook on language acquisition.
There was a significant effect of the intervention, but findings are interesting in some areas.
Carolyn Murphy: Physical Education
Teaches us how to do a cartwheel. Competency, autonomy, relatedness. Reports on PCTHE Learning Set project. Observes that low motivation emerges across disciplines. Uses Self Determination Theory
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