DOMUS Seminar Programme

Powerful Learners

Dr Lin Mackenzie (University of Birmingham)

5pm - 6.30pm, Room 423 B, School of Education, Edgbaston

Wednesday 7th February 2007

Languages, Discourses and Society Research Group Research Seminar

"'No she's not - Yes she is - I'm lost.' The use of 'no' in backstage professional talk and its implications for ESP in a global economy".

Keith Richards (University of Warwick)

3.30 - 5.00pm, Room 224, School of Education, Edgbaston

Monday 5th March 2007

DOMUS Seminar Programme

A new consensus in education (TES 18/09/1992): How Thatcherite education policies have been confirmed since 1989

Professor Roy Lowe (Institute of Education)

5pm - 6.30pm, Room 423 B, School of Education, Edgbaston

Wednesday 7th March

Languages, Discourses and Society Research Group

Oral Histories and the Discourse of Self-Representation: A Corpus Analytic Approach

Alison Sealy (University of Birmingham)

3.30 - 5.00pm, Room 224, 2nd Floor, School of Education, Edgbaston

Tuesday 13th March

Languages, Discourses and Society Academic Group

Learning in communities of practice: a journey of the self

Etienne Wenger

4.30 - 6.00pm, Room G39, School of Education, Edgbaston

Thursday 17th May 2007

The Birmingham Conference - 2007

Team working and Patient Safety provided a stimulating focus for presentations and discussions at the 8th Birmingham Conference held on the 17th May at the Lakeside Centre, Aston University and all PowerPoint presentations on the day are available on our website.

Wednesday 23th May 2007

The R Priestley Lecture: Tomorrow's people: what will they need to learn?

Speaker: Baroness Susan Greenfield, CBE

4pm, School of Education, Edgbaston

There will be refreshments on arrival, exhibitions and displays in the Foyer between 4.00pm - 5.00pm. This will be followed, at 5.00pm by the Baroness Susan Greenfield lecture, 'Tomorrow's people: what will they need to learn?'.

Afterwards, there will be wine and a light buffet available.

The event is free, but entry is by ticket only, so please download and complete the booking form if you wish to attend.

Thursday 24 May

Final year students from the English/English/Art, Childhood Studies and Performing and Visual Arts programmes are preparing for their end of year art exhibition. This year we have our biggest ever group of students, and so the exhibition will take place in two venues. PVA and EEA students will show in the art building (SOVAC, or as the new sign says, the 'Library') as usual, and the Childhood Studies will show in the Chapel behind the Rendezvous café.

Opening night is Thursday 24th May, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm (or earlier if you wish), when the students will provide you with a selection of wines, beers and soft drinks with which to enjoy the shows. This is usually a great night, so do come if you are able.

The exhibition will then be open for viewing on Friday 25th, 10:00 - 5:00, and Saturday 26th, 10:00 - 1:00.

Thursday 7 June 2007

Open research seminar

Facilitating Teacher Action Research into ICT Pedagogy: addressing some frequently unasked questions

Andy Convery, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Sunderland

4.30 pm, G3, Ground Floor, School of Education building

Saturday 16 June 2007

Linguistic Ethnography Forum, One-day seminar

Bourdieu and Linguistic Ethnography

This seminar invites discussion of the application of the work of Pierre Bourdieu to the field of linguistic ethnography. The day will be structured around four invited papers, which engage both with the application of Bourdieu’s theoretical principles in understanding language in use and action, and the extent to which ethnography and linguistics feature in Bourdieu’s work. Papers will each be twenty five minutes, allowing fifteen minutes’ discussion.

Programme:

10.30 – 10.45 Arrival and tea/coffee10.45 – 11.00 Introduction (Adrian Blackledge)11.00 – 11.45 Bourdieu, Linguistics and Ethnography (Michael Grenfell)11.45 – 12.30 Translation, politics and the ethics of communication: A Bourdieusian perspective (Moira Inghilleri)

12.30 – 1.30 LUNCH

1.30 – 2.15    Researching Post-Compulsory Education and Training: social narratives, habitus and recursive methodology (Simon Warren)2.15 – 3.00  Negotiating identities in complementary schools: Multilingual habitus in contemporary social spaces (Adrian Blackledge and Shahela Hamid)

3.00 – 3.15 TEA/COFFEE

3.15  - 3.30 Closing discussion

Cost:

BAAL members £20BAAL non-members £30Students £15

To reserve a place, please complete the booking form by 1st June, and send a cheque (payable to University of Birmingham) to:  Maureen Fellows, School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT.

Contact: Maureen Fellows  M.E.Fellows@bham.ac.uk   Tel.: 0121 414 4439

Abstracts

Bourdieu, Linguistics and Ethnography

Michael Grenfell, University of Southampton

This paper initially addresses the extent to which linguistics and ethnography features on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It refers to Bourdieu’s early studies in the Béarn and Algeria as a way of tracing out the routes of his ethnology. It then considers education and culture as a series of studies that offer an ‘anthropology of contemporary France’. It is argued that Bourdieu’s method is inherently a philosophy of language; both in the way language features in this range of field work and the development of a Bourdieusian language as a series of conceptual ‘thinking tools’. The paper contrasts Boudieu’s own theory of language with conventional linguistics; and his ethnology with conventional ethnography. From this discussion, the paper addresses the rise of ‘linguistic ethnography’ itself as an academic field. What it is and the tensions inherent in it are considered in terms of Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a superior methodological approach.

Translation, politics and the ethics of communication: A Bourdieusian perspective

Moira Inghilleri, Goldsmiths College

This paper examines the relationship between the ethical and the political in translators' work in the context of the 'war on terror', based on military translators' accounts of their work in Guantánamo and in Iraq. It discusses the political and legal fields in which translators working in Guantánamo and in Iraq can be situated and the social conditions that contributed to the construction of an 'ethics of the translator' in these contexts. The paper demonstrates how the convergence of distinctive fields and habitus precipitated reflection upon the limitations of the translators' habitus, providing them with greater distance from the process of being produced and spoken by the fields in questions. It discusses how changes to the "objective structure" of the legal and political fields triggered a disturbance, or break with illusio, in the translators' relationship to these fields.  It also introduces a number of relevant philosophical theorisations of human rights, politics and the law to explore the complex nature of the ethical in relation to habitus and field.

Researching Post-Compulsory Education and Training: social narratives, habitus and recursive methodology

Simon Warren, University of Sheffield

This paper explores the question: how can we adequately capture the formation of adult learner identities in a context of rapid social, cultural and economic change?  We are particularly concerned to address one further, and related methodological problem – in researching adult participation in formal education and training how can we move beyond individual decision-making stories and tales to an empirical understanding of the immanence of structure in practice?  In other words, how do we empirically research habitus?  We explore this question in the context of a small empirical study of adults choosing to return to formal education, and more specifically upon the decision-making process of one adult learner.  This case study is used to explore the potential of our methodological and analytical framework in addressing this methodological problem.

Negotiating identities in complementary schools: Multilingual habitus in contemporary social spaces

Adrian Blackledge and Shahela Hamid, University of Birmingham

This paper reports on linguistic ethnographic research which investigates the multilingual practices of young people as they engage discursively in and out of complementary schools and domestic settings (RES-000-23-1180). The paper proposes that the multilingual habitus of the young people enables them to negotiate identities differently in different fields, or social spaces. The young people adopt practices which appear to be at odds with orthodox beliefs about minority languages constructed in political, media, and other public and private discourses. At the same time, the diversity and range of the young people’s linguistic practices is more complex and flexible than the complementary schools’ insistence that knowledge of the standard community language is crucial in the transmission of heritage, nationality and culture. The young people perform a range of linguistic practices in negotiating identities which are multilingual and contemporary, enabling them to inhabit a broad range of subject positions in different social spaces, and to exploit their symbolic capital differently in different fields.

10.30  - 15.30, Room G39, School of Education, University of Birmingham

Saturday 30 June 2007

Research Student Conference 2007 by students for students

Understanding Education Research: Principles and Practice

Keynote speaker: Professor Kathy Sylva , Professor of Educational Psychology, Oxford University.

Watch the keynote speech from Professor Kathy Silva

Watch pictures from the Student Conference

9am - 5.15pm, School of Education, Edgbaston

This is an initial announcement of the sixth annual conference to be held by the School of Education to enable research students to present a paper and to encourage other students to give papers for the first time.

Professor Marilyn Martin-Jones will chair the expert panel on the specific theme of getting published.

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Inclusive Learning and Diversity in the City - Conference [pdf doc]

Keynote Speakers:

Keith Ajegbo - Diversity and Citizenship in the Curriculum

Peter Wanless - (DfES) ‘Getting it. Getting it right’

John Brown - (QCA) Inclusive Learning across the Curriculum

Tony Howell - Birmingham City Council, Strategic Director of Children,Young People and Families Directorate

Ian Grosvenor - Professor of Urban Education History, University of Birmingham

The theme of the Inclusive Learning and Diversity in the City Conference is how practitioners and communities in the city and the region can begin to set new agendas for learning that take account of the possibilities and tensions inherent in the rapidly changing field of urban education.

The broad themes of the day are:

Inclusive education in mainstream schools

race equality and diversity in urban contexts

local and regional partnerships in research and practice

To secure your place at the conference, please download and complete the booking form. The fee is £115 and includes lunch, teas and coffees.

Tuesday 3 July 2007 - Thursday 5 July

The School of Education welcomes Dr Mick Randall, Director of the Institute of Education, British University in Dubai, for discussions on the EdD  and PGCE programmes.

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

RIPS

Understanding of epilepsy by children with, or without, epilepsy

Ann Lewis and Sarah Parsons

12.30-1.30, Room 408, School of Education, Edgbaston

RIPS (Research in Progress seminars) – all academics and students welcome. Reminder: these are deliberately informal – please bring ideas, humour + lunch!

Thursday 4 October 2007

Launch of the AUTISM CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION (ACER)

The School of Education at the University of Birmingham will launch the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) on 4 October 2007.

ACER strengthens and unites the different research and teaching components of the Autism Team and enhances its research profile, income and activities. ACER will provide clear and accessible information on the range and depth of activities and highlight the significant expertise in ASD within the Team.

ACER will be unique in the UK, as the only Centre which has extensive research expertise on educational interventions, and knowledge and experience of provision across health, social services, education and the voluntary and independent sectors for both children and adults with ASD. It is the only Centre that offers such a wide range of teaching in terms of modes of delivery, student numbers and academic level.  ACER is also the only Centre worldwide to set up a Research Advisory Group comprised of adults with autistic spectrum disorders as well as consulting carers and other stakeholders.

Thursday 4 October 2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

Professor Ron Gulliford Memorial Lecture

Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Challenge and a Model for Inclusion in Education

Rita Jordan

6.00-7.00, Room tbc, School of Education, Edgbaston

All welcome.

Wednesday 10th October 2007

Educational Review Guest Lecture

The Persistence of the Black/White Gap: Time to think the  unthinkable

Speaker: Professor David Gillborn

Professor of Education, Institute of Education, University of London, founding editor of the journal ‘Race Ethnicity & Education’, and recipient of the award for ‘meritorious service promoting multicultural education’ by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) special interest group ‘Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Education’.

200 years after the formal abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain, Black people have yet to enjoy equal social justice: the education system is one of the most potent means by which inequality is recreated and legitimized. Education policy is deeply implicated in the persistence of race inequality. Practitioners also carry a responsibility to act against racism in the system.

Unfortunately, the majority have a vested interest in looking the other way and accepting comforting myths that absolve white people of responsibility. This lecture presents a radical new analysis of the situation and the lengths necessary to produce real change.

Respondent: Dr Maud Blair

Senior Adviser on Minority Ethnic Achievement to the Learning Trust in the London Borough of Hackney. Former lecturer in education at the Open University. Also former Adviser on ethnicity to the DfES where she initiated and managed the Black Caribbean Achievement Pilot programme which has now been rolled out nationally as the Black Pupils Achievement Programme. Joint author of the DfES Report ‘Making the Difference: teaching and learning in successful multi-ethnic schools' (1998). Also author of ‘Why Pick on Me? School Exclusions and Black Youth’ (2001).

4:30 for 5pm, Conference Room, School of Education

Followed by drinks and canapés 6-7pm

Thursday 11th October 2007

Languages, Discourses & Society Academic Group

“The digital divide: early reading in homes and schools”

Speaker: Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield

In this paper, I draw from an analysis of the material culture of early reading in two Foundation Stage classrooms (for children aged 4 to 5) in England in order to explore the way in which reading and the novice reader are constituted within these educational institutions through the resources provided. This is contrasted with the material culture of early reading in homes, which is analysed through data arising from a number of studies of young children’s engagement with media and new technologies in the home. In addition to an examination of the reading resources and artefacts physically present in homes, the analysis pays attention to increasingly popular virtual worlds for young children, such as ‘Club Penguin’ and ‘Barbie Girl’. Drawing from a theoretical framework that attends to the relationship between material culture, ideologies and social practices, it is argued that both the offline and online worlds of homes and schools offer very different spaces for young readers.

3:30 – 5:00pm, Frank Price Building, Room 12, School of Education, Selly Oak

Monday 22 October 2007

Social & Cultural Research in Pedagogy and Organisations Seminar Series

Theorising 'knowledge creating' organisations - tensions in Nonaka and Giddens.

Speaker: Dr Zhichang Zhu, Reader in Strategy & Management, Business School, University of Hull

5.15pm, Room G3, School of Education, Edgbaston

For further details contact Joan Lloyd (j.v.lloyd@bham.ac.uk) Tel: 0121 414 7446

Wednesday 7 November 2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

RIPS

Diversity and Difference - what students tell us about learning and teaching

Sandra Cooke and Marion Bowl

12.30-1.30, Room 224, School of Education, Edgbaston

RIPS (Research in Progress seminars) – all academics and students welcome. Reminder: these are deliberately informal – please bring ideas, humour + lunch!

Thursday 8 November 2007

'Race' Equality Diversity Seminar Series (RED)

Race and the City: a university's role in addressing inequality

Speaker: Asif Afridi (Birmingham Race Action Partnership)

4.00 - 5.30pm, Room 125, School of Education, Edgbaston

For further details contact Paul Warmington (p.c.warmington@bham.ac.uk)

Thursday 8 November 2007

Education and Global Justice Seminar Series

Centre for International Education and Research

Action Research for Educational Change  in Post-conflict Angola

Speaker: Professor Lynn Davies

5.15 pm, Room 423B, 4th Floor, School of Education building

Refreshments provided.

To confirm a place, please reply to Sue Gallagher on S.Gallagher@bham.ac.uk or 0121 414 4823

Monday 12 November 2007

DOMUS

Reappraising the growth and functions of higher education: some historical insights

Speaker: Professor Roy Lowe, Institute of Education

5.00 - 6.30pm, Room 423B, School of Education, Edgbaston

For further information contact Ruth Watts (r.e.watts@bham.ac.uk)

Wednesday 14 November  2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

Dangerous Ideas

Individual differences in gratitude

Alex Wood, University of Warwick

5.00- 6.15pm, Room 524, School of Education, Edgbaston

Dangerous Ideas- semi-formal seminar series with invited external speaker; all academics and research students welcome

Wednesday 21 November  2007

Languages, Discourses and Society Academic Group

Gender and Discourses in Primary Schools

Speaker: Christine Skelton

It is almost 30 years since the publication of Eileen Byrne’s (1978) Women and Education, one of the first UK books on gender and education. The chapter in Byrne’s book ‘Pre-school and primary – the formative years’ made two related arguments. The first was theoretical where she set out the reasons why gender differences were more likely due to socialisation than genetics or innate abilities. The second argument was that stereotypical differences pervaded classroom materials, organisation, and teacher attitudes and expectations; and it was the perpetuation of these that accounted for the differences between girls and boys. These, and other markers of gender inequalities experienced by pupils in schools were dubbed ‘the schooling scandal’ by Dale Spender (1982). In the thirty years that have elapsed since second wave feminists in the UK started to research schooling there has appeared a rich literature on gender, inequality and education; policies have been developed and, more recently, the government has produced guidance materials on gender and the teaching and learning of boys and girls. The question this session sets out to consider is ‘to what extent has “the schooling scandal” of gender inequities been resolved for girls and boys in today’s primary schools?’

This session will identify current discourses on gender in primary schools, specifically, policy discourses, professional discourses and the personal discourses of primary teachers. Data used to illustrate the discussion will be drawn from an ESRC study involving interviews with and observations of fifty one teachers and three hundred 7-8 year old pupils in schools in England. The findings of this project, together with conclusions drawn from other recent studies of primary schools, indicate that the focus on ‘achievement’ and ‘experience’ remain the same but the influence of neoliberalism has masked the ways in which gender inequalities continue.

3:30 – 5:00p.m, Room 224, School of Education, Edgbaston

All are welcome.

Wednesday 28 November 2007

Postgraduate Open Day

Postgraduate programmes for research and further study can widen your skill base, further your knowledge in your chosen field or change your career direction and greatly improve your career prospects. Whatever stage you are at with your career, a visit to the Postgraduate Open Day will clarify your options and help you plan your next step.

The University of Birmingham Postgraduate Open Day is one of the UK’s biggest postgraduate events attracting students and graduates of all disciplines from across the UK.  Whatever stage you are at with your career, a visit to the Postgraduate Open Day will clarify your options and help you plan your next step.

Barbara Pavey from the School of Education will hold a talk on Dyslexia Studies in room 125, Edgbaston building at 2pm.

11.00am–4.00pm, Great Hall, Aston Webb building, University of Birmingham

To find the Great Hall please see the Edgbaston campus map: The Aston Webb building is marked R6 in the Red Zone of the Edgbaston Campus map.

Thursday 29 November 2007

Race’ Equality Diversity Seminar

‘Nothing but the same old story’: Schooling (British) Black Youth

Speakers: Kehinde Andrews & Professor Mairtin Mac an Ghaill (Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, University of Birmingham)

4.00 – 5.30pm, Room 125, School of Education, Edgbaston

The second in a series of sessions designed to explore learning in and for a culturally diverse society from a range of perspectives.

Wednesday 5 Dec 2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

RIPS

Consulting with children with ASD

David Preece

12.30-1.30, Room 224 , School of Education, Edgbaston

RIPS (Research in Progress seminars) – all academics and students welcome. Reminder: these are deliberately informal – please bring ideas, humour + lunch!

Wednesday 5 December 2007

CROP (Centre for Research into Organisations and Pedagogy) seminar

Education policy, distributed leadership and socio-cultural theory

Professor David Hartley

In schools, bureaucracy and behaviourism have long endured, but now an array of intellectual, political, cultural and economic trends are converging so as to question - yet again - the bureaucratic heritage of schooling.  New structures are emerging: for example, extended schools, workforce reform and inter-agency working. At issue here is a related trend, one that is being advocated strongly by the National College for School Leadership in England (NCSL), namely distributed leadership. The seminar explores the theoretical and methodological basis of distributed leadership, and considers why distributed leadership studies in education might be regarded as conceptually confused and empirically reticent.

5.00 – 7.00pm, Room 410, School of Education

All are welcome.

Friday 7 December - Sunday 9 December 2007

Annual History of Education Conference

Education and Globalisation

Hosted by Ruth Watts, Kevin Myers, Ian Grosvenor and Malcolm Dick

Keynote speakers: Dr Marcelo Caruso, Professor Catherine Hall and Professor Pablo Pineau

Details and registration forms can be found at: www.historyofeducation.org.uk

Participants, including Research Students (for whom bursaries are possible), from the School are very welcome.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Professional Learning and Pedagogy (PLP) open seminar

Why the school mix matters

Professor Stephen Gorard

3.30 – 5.00 pm, Room 408, School of Education Building

Please contact:  Bev Burke on 0121 414 4812 or b.a.burke@bham.ac.uk if you wish to attend this seminar

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs  (DISN) Group

Dangerous Ideas

Happiness, madness and creativity

Daniel Nettle, University of Newcastle

Dangerous Ideas- semi-formal seminar series with invited external speaker; all academics and research students welcome