PRISM: Casting New Light on Learning, Theory and Practice
PRISM is a double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access journal that seeks to foster innovative approaches to the advancement of critical perspectives spanning all domains of teaching and learning. The journal’s remit includes the publication of research that highlights, challenges and augments debates and addresses leading questions in topic areas such as critical and traditional pedagogies, alternative approaches to research and practice, governmental policy, practitioner issues and pedagogic innovation. Necessarily eclectic, the interdisciplinary approach of PRISM is wide-ranging, encouraging submissions from a variety of scholars. PRISM recognises the breadth and scope of learning across diverse locations, involving a range of educators, academics, researchers and thinkers. PRISM supports the development of an expanded field of pedagogy, allowing reflection and critical examination of practice, theory and policy through a spectrum of intra-, cross- and anti-disciplinary methodologies and theoretical approaches to learning. Whilst PRISM is open to submissions from academics of all levels and experience, we hope to provide a space between established and emergent thinkers from formal and informal, marginal and traditional spaces. Theoretical and methodological pluralism is encouraged.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work. The version of the article published as part of this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence and allows others to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full text of the first version of this article, or to use it for any other lawful purpose in accordance with the license. The author maintains copyright for the article published in this journal. This journal provides immediate open access to its content and has no submission or publication fees.
Amplifying the voice of adolescent girls to improve school attendance during menstruation
Menstruation is an inevitable but significant process in the life of adolescent girls that requires the support of both school and family for a successful navigation. Around the age of 12 when girls start menstruating, they are preparing to begin secondary education. Unfortunately, research shows a direct link between the onset of menstruation and absenteeism from school. Actions to transform schools into more enabling spaces for menstruating girls are undeniably critical. This qualitative study involved 7 volunteer girls from grade 7 to find out how they could improve their own situation, develop resilience and cope with menstruation. The girls who were willing to participate were chosen from a primary school in Meru County, Kenya, where the first author has an ongoing relationship with the management. The study employed a participatory action research design. Data was generated using art-based methods and transcriptions of group meetings. In cycle 1 participants explored their experiences of menstruation while attending school, and in cycle 2 they generated ideas on how the school could support them to address the negative aspects they identified. They incorporated their recommendations in a policy brief presented to school management to help them take action to ensure a supportive and enabling environment for menstruating girls. The findings will be of interest to other primary schools who wish to improve the support they provide to adolescent girls to keep them at school.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lilian Mukiri Kirimi, Lesley Wood https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Lego®-based therapy in a Secondary School context: Exploring Practitioner Perspectives
Despite recorded successes of using Lego®-based Therapy (LBT) to support autistic children and young people (CYP) and those with SEMH needs, there is a dearth of research examining the perspectives of secondary school practitioners. Addressing this gap, this paper explores the perspectives of staff (teachers and paraprofessionals) in a secondary setting to elicit their voice and further understand the benefits and challenges of using LBT with adolescents. Informed by the capability approach (Nussbaum, 2011), participants indicated that Lego® -based Therapy (LBT) is a beneficial approach for autistic CYP and those with SEMH needs, yet is constrained by outcomes-driven education policy, mandatory testing regimes, and budgetary constraints. Furthermore, results suggest that LBT can be a valuable approach for schools to implement as part of inclusive practice, it can facilitate sociality and a more connective environment for a range of CYP. However, caution should be exercised when interpreting these results, as the study was limited by its small sample size, and systematised review.
Copyright (c) 2025 Chloe Johnson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
COVID-19, weather conditions, and educators’ motives - factors shaping the provision of Forest and Nature School: Outcomes from a French-based study
Forest and Nature School, a form of outdoor nature-based education, has been gaining momentum globally, including in France, where interest in alternative, experiential pedagogies is on the rise. In November 2022, an online survey was conducted to explore the operations and practices of private Forest and Nature School programs within the French context. The study gathered responses from 24 educators representing 21 active programs and two in development. This paper draws on the study’s findings to highlight three key factors influencing the provision of private Forest and Nature School initiatives in France: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and weather-related conditions, as well as the personal motivations of educators to engage in outdoor teaching. These factors are examined through the lens of relevant literature. Finally, the paper offers recommendations for future research and practical considerations for stakeholders interested in advancing nature-based education in France and beyond.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ziad F. Dabaja https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Editorial for the General Issue 6 (number 1) 2024, entitled ' Publishing & the Supporting the Academic'; written by David Allan, Judith Enrioquez, and Craig Hammond
Copyright (c) 2024 Craig Andrew Hammond; David Allan, Judith Enriquez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Pedagogical Prophet? David Hargreaves' 1996 Vision for a Research-Based Profession: A 2024 Reality Check
David Hargreaves' 1996 vision for a research-based teaching profession aimed to integrate robust, evidence-based approaches into educational practice and policy. This critical evaluation examines the extent to which his vision has been realised. In his inaugural lecture for the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), Hargreaves proposed a profession where research directly informs teaching practices, promoting continuous improvement in educational outcomes. This evaluation compares his proposals with the current educational landscape, highlighting both progress and ongoing challenges. While acknowledging Hargreaves' significant influence, the analysis also considers criticisms regarding the types of research that have become prevalent in educational discourse, especially within government policy. The article underscores the need for ongoing development to fully achieve a research-based profession and evaluates the impact of Hargreaves' ideas on contemporary educational policy and practice.
Copyright (c) 2025 Andrew Jones https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
From Academic Judgement to Academic Coaching: Using Video Feed as an Alternative to Written Feedback.
The National Student Satisfaction Survey (NSS) consistency highlights student feedback as a concern across the Higher Education sector. As such there needs to be a re-think in how feedback is provided, not only to justify academic judgement but to allow students to improve future work. This article explores the use of video feedback and the potential impact it can have on how students engage with and value of feedback. This article is supported by data collected from a cohort of second year university students after receiving video feedback for the first time on their academic programme. From the data, several key benefits were discovered that benefits the educational experience. Students demonstrated a greater level of understanding of the feedback, as it was more detailed and personalised, making it feel less intimidating. They also spent more time engaging with the feedback, which suggests that this format helps enhance future work and learning outcomes. Overall, the video feedback approach proved to be an effective method for improving students' comprehension and interaction with feedback. This can lead to more accurate and effective feedback, ultimately resulting in better performance outcomes. This feedback can be both positive and constructive, and it can help individuals to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, and to make improvements in their future performance.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lindsey Gaston, Laura Dixon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Development of a Peer-Teaching Mentoring program using SMART goals
This study reports on a project that adopted a social constructivist approach and SMART goals to develop a successful peer-teaching mentoring program to enhance year ten students' leadership growth and year six students' connectedness to their school and peers. Doran (1981, p. 16) developed the SMART goals approach as a guided process to develop a project's desired goal. The SMART goals, S-Specific, M-Measurable, A-Achievable, R-Relevant, and T-Timely, were used to develop the pedagogical artifacts for the peer-teaching mentoring program and facilitate sharing knowledge, skills, and experience. The study used the SMART goals to map the developing stages. It was divided into three stages: 1. developing the characteristics and pedagogical artifacts, 2. preparing the program with the school, and 3. developing surveys and interview questions for data collection and future program analysis. The paper argues that using the SMART goals can help articulate and develop pedagogical tools on peer-teaching mentoring models that address the essential stages and characteristics for facilitating the sharing of knowledge, skills, and experience.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anita Suleman, Dr Philemon Chigeza, Dr Jo Mensinga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
An investigation into the Social, Academic, and Developmental value of Arts and Humanities Foundation Years
This research paper explores the social, academic, and developmental value of arts and humanities foundation years at university. The research was conducted with students at a post-92 university in the northwest of England and investigates their experiences of undertaking a foundation course in the arts and humanities. It focuses on students’ perception of the course’s value, both in terms of the cost of tuition fees and the educational and personal benefits to them. The research was conducted in the context of the 2019 Review of Post-18 Education conducted by Sir Phillip Augur that recommended funding be withdrawn from university foundation courses. Our research found that most students would not have continued studying had a university foundation course not been available to them, and that the course benefitted them in a number of ways, including by developing their self-confidence and their sense of belonging in a Higher Education (HE) environment. Our findings demonstrate that foundation years at universities continue to play an important role in widening participation in the arts and humanities at a time when these subjects are themselves under threat, and therefore remain valuable in promoting social justice and inclusivity in HE.
Copyright (c) 2025 Christinna Hazzard, Feather Daniel, J., Ludvigsen Jan, Silvia Cont https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
On Mesoamerican Literacies: Two Examples of How the Ayöök Read the World
This article reflects upon literacies that are encoded in the landscape and in natural forms, and which describe a different relation between humans and the environment. It criticises the Eurocentric biases that have equated literacy to writing and promoted the opposition of literate vs. oral societies. Although there has been a turn toward considering literacies to be multi-diverse social practices, education policies worldwide still push for a functional literacy that favours written languages, alienation from nature, and bureaucratisation. The focus of this work is on the Mesoamerican territory, which has experienced systemic dismantling of Indigenous literacies and implemented models that are functional to the rhetoric of modernity and coloniality. Two examples from the Ayöök people are described. These are presages, which are experienced through seeing, hearing, and sensing outside in nature, and maize reading, which is a divinatory practice using seeds. These examples show that the natural world can provide clearly defined signs that are read with consequent affects and effects on bodies and future actions. By acknowledging these literacies and becoming aware that this is a politically sensitive issue for Indigenous peoples, this paper argues for a possible way to change our present harmful relation with nature.
Copyright (c) 2024 Araceli Rojas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Exploring the impact of Visual Impairment Awareness Training: Phenomenographic Research with PGCE Secondary Art & Design Trainees
Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) secondary art and design trainees participated in visual impairment awareness training (VIAT), prior to facilitating an art education project for visually impaired (VI) pupils. This was designed to better prepare them for working with a range of learners. A phenomenographic methodology and research approach was adopted – to capture key data relevant to learning, gaining knowledge and understanding in education settings. This contributed to knowledge in the field, highlighting the shift in trainees perspectives towards working with VI pupils, as a consequence of participation in VIAT. Existing literature recognises that VIAT provides an understanding of VI but cannot replicate everyday experiences. The findings as part of this study indicate that initially an empathy response was evoked, as trainees were apprehensive about working with VI pupils. Following VIAT, trainees gained a superficial overview of VI. Having gained experience, an advocacy response was evoked as trainees felt more comfortable asking pupils how their needs could be met.
Copyright (c) 2024 Harriet Dunn https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Effective Teaching in a Humanities and Languages Foundation Year: Lessons Learned from Teaching During a Pandemic.
This paper will explore key research around Foundation year entry at a large Northwest university in England, UK and explore what makes effective provision. It will share lessons learned during Covid-19 from student feedback from a Humanities, and Languages foundation year. There is some research around what makes for a successful foundation year. This has not had the attention it deserves, and there are still only a few papers based in the UK context. The paper explores and discusses key aspects that make a foundation entry programme successful. Furthermore, the paper explores the experiences of students from non-traditional backgrounds, (or with non-standard qualifications), and how they can underperform in comparison to students with more traditional academic backgrounds, i.e., those that have successfully passed standard Advanced Levels. In relation to non-traditional students, a good Foundation Year can help improve the outcomes for these students, and offer them opportunities to be as successful – or indeed more successful – than traditional entry students.
Copyright (c) 2024 Helen Hewertson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Editorial: From Social Justice to Educational Justice: Challenging Practice, and Finding Hope
The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore, expose and energise issues around the concepts of social justice and education. We recognise that the notion of ‘social justice’ is not static, and is not shaped in a vacuum; it is iterative by nature, and flows across generations and contexts. The multiple historical and ideological perspectives that arise from this flow include education theory, research, and practice. These positionings offer deep insights into the purpose of education; they also raise important questions: are the social and ideological dynamics a force for challenging the status quo, and for rupturing cycles of inequity or perpetuating inequality? Do they interrupt the relations of dominance and subordination?
Copyright (c) 2023 Amanda Fulford, Victoria Jamieson, Vicky Duckworth https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Understanding Social Justice: Why it matters
Social justice as a concept is both widely used and widely misunderstood. It is also, increasingly, a term of derision. In this Think Piece I explain why it is important to have a clear sense of what we mean by social justice, but to do so without tying it to a precise definition. Rather we need to work with broad understandings of social justice that we share with our fellow scholars and our readers. We also need to make efforts to understand other conceptualisations of social justice, even those with which we disagree. A commitment to social justice can be both a firm belief in key principles, and an openness to hear and understand other perspectives. I contrast the procedural social contract approach to social justice, most famously associated with the work of John Rawls, and more outcomes-focussed approaches such as the capabilities approach and critical theory. My own work is based in a critical theory understanding of social justice which looks at hidden and unseen forms of oppression in an historical context. And yet, I also acknowledge the terrible neglect of issues of race and colonialism in early critical theory. This neglect has become more apparent as we respond to the welcome need to decolonialise education and philosophy. This Think Piece finishes with a reflection on how to engage with indigenous understandings of social justice without appropriation. I advocate an open and forgiving approach to social justice that sits firmly with a deep and thoughtful commitment.
Copyright (c) 2023 Jan McArthur https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Catch it, drop it, leave it there: Writing for Wellbeing as a tool for compassionate practice in Higher Education
This is the story of a series of writing workshops with four undergraduate final year students, in a non-formal, non-graded, non-curriculum space. Students were introduced to ‘writing for wellbeing’ (WfW), using expressive writing strategies adapted from poetry/bibliotherapy practice. Initially intended as a research method for their dissertation projects, the writing workshops evolved into a significant creative space for the students’ own personal development. Shared reflections about our experience of writing together sheds light on the broader potential of WfW as a participatory research method, and as a compassionate approach for writing the self in higher education.
Copyright (c) 2024 Anne-Marie Smith, Sharon Padt, Kirsty Jones https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Reimagining adult learning in community-based contexts: A framework for social justice education in Australia
In Australia, there is no one cohesive program design or curriculum which provides a framework for adult learning in Adult Community Education (ACE) organisations, with the two major states New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria leading the most developed systems. Many adult learners who learn in these education settings return to study to find pathways to employment, or to re-train for a new role after losing their job. In addition, later-life learners may attend because they want to remain healthy, participate in leisure activities, build friendships and remain active and engaged in their later years. Many of the learners are ‘second chance learners’ who have had prior negative experiences with the neoliberal system which assesses, ranks, and categorises learners according to their academic abilities. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for the delivery of pre-accredited training in Australia, founded on social constructivist theory, learner-centred pedagogy, and course design enhanced by Nussbaum’s Capability Framework. We commence the article by delivering a context for adult education policy and social justice education in the development of the ACE system. What we mean by a socially just education is one in which all people access a critical and democratic curriculum with equity and access to resources at its core. In this paper, we argue for the importance of adult learning, which is holistic, flexible, and nimble to cater for diverse learners and learning needs. Social justice education of this kind, delivered to diverse learners, requires a comprehensive epistemological and theoretical framework for practice that considers learners’ prior experiences of learning, one which accounts for learners’ existing knowledge, skills and experiences and education that provides well-developed pathways to further education and training.
Copyright (c) 2023 Tracey Ollis and Annette Foley https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Creative Universities : Reimagining Education for Global Challenges and Alternative Futures (2021)
The book ‘Creative Universities’ by Anke Schwittay (2021) is unlike any other academic text I have read about teaching; the pages buzz with hope, creative vision and radical possibilities, and it left me wanting to do my teaching differently, to shake up our learning spaces, and to keep asking questions. This book is a call to arms in which Schwittay invites us to have courage, take risks, cause disturbance, be creative, and alongside our students reshape the way we engage in education via a critical-creative pedagogy (hereafter C-CP). The words and ideas laid on the pages nudge us into reflections about our identity as academics, asking us difficult questions: how courageous can we be? What risks are we willing to take?
Copyright (c) 2022 Anne-Marie Smith https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Leaving the chasm behind: Autoethnography, creativity and the search for identity in academia
This paper examines visual narratology as a way of presenting qualitative primary data. The paper is an autoethnographic study with the overall goal of helping educators understand their digital literacies in a time of uncertainty and flux. The researcher deployed thematic analysis as the organising methodological framework. This performative autoethnographic method provided creative freedom and the satisfaction of a renewed perspective for the author (Jay and Johnson 2002). This primary qualitative data was given legitimacy and structure by the use of thematic analysis as a methodology. The findings support Bochner’s (1994) idea that social science research can benefit from deliberately value-laden stories alongside empirical data and theories. The findings also developed the author’s previous autoethnographic paper, which drew on his own social media posts as qualitative and quantitative data Atherton (2020b).
Copyright (c) 2022 Pete Frederick Atherton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Beyond binaries and before becoming: Reconsidering resistance in UK higher education
Drawing from the tensions within non-representational and human practice perspectives on affect, this paper continues the task of re-conceptualising academic-level resistance in the context of UK higher education. Such re-conceptualisation is underpinned by the belief that illustrating the breadth of resistant possibility within and between universities can assist in the development of action against the competitive and for-profit imperatives currently overwhelming this educational sphere. Indeed, while resistance research is increasingly interested in the (dis)connections between overt and “everyday” (Scott, 1985) forms of action (e.g. Contu, 2008; Zembylas, 2019), HE researchers have paid little attention to the latter. Consequently, academic-level resistance remains normatively portrayed as exceptional, novel and less influential than that it rejects. For the sake of contributing a counternarrative, this paper employs a diffractive methodology to examine the affective roles of emotion, meaning making practices and pre-personal factors. By speculating how academic-level resistance derives from not only consciously undertaken cost-benefit analyses but from the entanglement of material and non-material elements, this discussion emphasises the notion of “becoming” and so problematises reductive binaries of overt/covert, high-cost/low-cost, resister/complier. Irrespective of the resounding difficulties that accompany efforts to exploit the affective dimensions of resistance, this emphasis nevertheless situates possibility at the heart of UK higher education and the actions pushing against its neoliberal form.
Copyright (c) 2021 Mollie Baker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
‘Care-less whispers’ in the academy during COVID-19: A collaborative autoethnography
This collaborative autoethnography (Bochner and Ellis, 2016) has created a space for three women academics from working-class heritage, navigating the liminal and temporal space of the COVID-19 pandemic within a post-1992 Higher Education Institution, to explore the social relations of one Higher Education Institution and confront their lived experiences. The stories shared in this paper are analysed through a ‘care-less’ (Rogers, 2017) lens, which asks the academy to recognise and confront the duplicity and self-glorification of policy and practice, that might be viewed as acts of normalising and supporting care-less cultures and behaviours. The paper raises questions about social justice, diversity and inclusion, the intersectionality of class and gender, and the inequity of the lived experiences from those who sit on the margins. The paper is the first collaborative writing project from a newly formed staff network of academics who come from working-class backgrounds, and we are intentional in our commitment to support each other as new researchers, giving agency in support of the other to find their voice.
Copyright (c) 2022 Paula Natalie Stone, Adele Phillips, Kerry Jordan-Daus https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
‘Silence is the sentence’: adult learners’ experiences of a co-created curriculum constructed through free writing tasks
This paper outlines the pedagogical approaches taken on a University Access course, teaching predominantly mature students on a 12-week ‘inclusion in education’ module. The methods aimed to validate and develop literacy and academic skills for students undertaking undergraduate courses. Practice on the programme of study, replicated over three years, is informed by transformative learning theories. We outline how our developing praxis situates students’ self-concepts in confronting past biographical experiences of education and empowers them to improved literacy and purpose. We further propose that such andragogical approaches to teaching and learning can potentially serve as a model for improved literacy practices in post-compulsory education in England – a curriculum and qualification regime in radical need of overhaul and replacement.
Copyright (c) 2022 Howard Scott, Dr, Pete Bennett, Craig A Hammond https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Researching in prison education-spaces: Thinking-with Posthuman, Post Qualitative, Feminist Materialism ‘beings’ to disentangle methodology.
In this process-article, I have considered what complexities might affect research of prison education when using Posthuman, Post Qualitative, Feminist (New) Materialism thinking. Through an imagined conversation with these 3 concepts as abstract ‘beings’, I have answered provocative questions about my research methods, apparatus, and ethics. Working at the intersections of abstractness (imagined conversations) and materialisms (creative, stitched outcomes and physical prison spaces), we think and feel-through the use of walking interviews, a visual matrix, and diffractive analysis to research the experiences of teachers working in prisons. Research of prison education is messy, and in embracing the discomfort, this process-article will enable others to traverse the knots using creative, affective approaches to research in prisons. In being-with these concepts, I trace the influences of philosophers and theorists in these practices, including the work of Deleuze & Guattari, Braidotti, Barad, Haraway, Manning, St. Pierre, Springgay, Truman, and others. The outcomes are unknown except for the benefit of opening new ways of thinking and feeling with inquiry and the writing of that process.
Copyright (c) 2023 Lucy Harding https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This is the editorial article for the PRISM General Issue: Volume 5, Issue 1 (2023)
Copyright (c) 2023 Craig Andrew Hammond; Judith Enriquez, David Allan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Constructions of Space: Exploring Photographic Images in Forest School
This research builds on the recently published paper (Garden, 2022c), which explored through interviews the use of iPads as cameras to enhance Forest School practice. Children’s perspectives of the Forest School space captured what was important to them on camera (Garden, 2022c). Working with the same group of 32 Key Stage 2 children selected from two UK primary schools, the research explored the images captured on iPad cameras during the follow-on session. The unstructured interviews explored the children’s feelings and meanings associated with the images captured in the Forest School space using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The photographs can be understood within the themes of ‘play with technology’, ‘soft fascination’ and ‘place attachment’, all of which are inherent in the Forest School ethos. Suggestions for future research include reflections on the ways the capturing of images of Forest School can encourage peer collaboration whilst considering the relative influence of space.
Copyright (c) 2023 Ange Garden https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
A Tale of Two Objectives: The challenge of meeting diverse targets in UK Business Schools
Business Schools in Great Britain are currently facing a number of major challenge due to the conflicting objectives that need to be met. The movement towards a metric-driven, performative approach that has occurred in the last decade has meant that the need to meet set measures that focus on the outcomes of students’ study have become imperative. However, focusing solely on these outcomes neglects a second set of objectives that relate to the journey students take during their studies. The need to ensure that both the process and the outcome of students’ studies are stressed is particularly challenging in British Business Schools which are often characterised by a large and diverse student and staff population. This think piece posits that by using a loose/tight cultural approach alongside a Schrödinger's leadership style, leaders can mitigate some of the challenges that are currently faced in the sector.
Copyright (c) 2023 Peter Wolstencroft, Elizabeth Whitfield, Track Dinning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Confusion and Consequences: The power of 'We'
Business education is still driven by individualistic cultures (the ‘I’), which provides the sociocultural container for what education is and can be. Paradoxically, the pandemic’s drive towards online collaborative working is a stark reminder of alternatives (the ‘we’). This thought piece calls for a deeper re-examination and emphasis on the ‘we’ as a basis for educational development.
Copyright (c) 2024 Maureen Royce https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Employability and Assessment: How ’blogs’ can diversify the assessment diet and enhance transferable skills
Shifts in the Higher Education sector over the past decade have seen greater numbers of applicants than ever before entering university. As undergraduate cohorts have expanded, a diverse student body has emerged, with a rich and complex array of learning needs, desires and expectations. At the same time, public discourse around higher education has changed significantly, and particularly following the introduction and increase of tuition fees, this has led to an emphasis on programmes being seen to provide value for money; a value for money that is being increasingly measured via the metric of graduate employment outcomes. As a result, universities are being pushed to find new ways to ensure that students leave their degree programmes with the kinds of transferable skills necessary to succeed in a contemporary job market that, following shifts in working patterns introduced during the Covid 19 pandemic, values flexibility, and adaptation. This case study – using blogging as a summative assessment at Level 6 of an ‘Events’ Management programme – illustrates that engagement, criticality, and relevance can be successfully incorporated, providing students with a key skill directly relevant to industry.
Copyright (c) 2023 Laura Dixon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
When inclusion leads to exclusion: A consideration of the impact of inclusive policy on school leaders working within a pupil referral unit
My research investigates the experiences of a range of professionals tasked with the role of enacting a policy aimed at achieving social justice. In a drive where one of the priorities was aimed at reducing exclusions from mainstream schools, some participants report feelings of being marginalised and excluded from the policy process. This paper offers a valuable insight into the permeations of the policy process, and the experiences of senior leaders working within education, health and social care, and who feel excluded from the decision-making process. This raises fundamental questions around the planning and implementation of policy aimed at inclusive practice, and a move towards achieving social justice. It raises the question of if it ever justified to exclude the voices of professionals who are directly impacted by a policy? This is particularly pertinent given that the purpose of the policy itself is concerned with inclusion and social justice.
Copyright (c) 2023 Glenn Thomas Millington https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
An examination into the origins of rights’ discourse and contemporary debates around child labour in developing countries, illustrates some of the problems with the discursive uses that children’s rights is put to, and its weakness as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Addressing the discourse around child labour, and how this is related to wider conceptions of the individual in post-European Enlightenment thought, enables some enquiry into the nature of these problems. Arce (2015) reveals the scale of child labour as a social issue, and that it occurs predominantly in developing countries, with almost a fifth of the global total of child labourers residing in Africa. Whilst it has a global impact that transcends national borders, the framing of the discourse around it occurs within parameters set by European actors. In this paper we argue that, if children’s rights campaigns wish to do more than reinforce existing global systems of domination and subordination, there needs to be a focus on children’s place in a nexus of social relations that themselves need radical rethinking. Such a project, we argue, could more usefully provide a starting place for conceptions of social justice that pay adequate attention to the needs of childhood.
Copyright (c) 2023 Ewan Ingleby, Dr, Clive Hedges, Dr, Mervyn Gerard Martin, Dr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Book review: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons on Intellectual Emancipation. (1991)
Copyright (c) 2023 Daniel van Dijk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Playing social justice: How do early childhood teachers enact the right to play through resistance and subversion?
In this paper we narrate how two teachers enact playful pedagogies by resisting the single story of formalised learning discourses in early childhood education and care. Playful learning is well established in international literature and children have the right to play. Yet in contemporary outcomes-driven policy, adult-led formalised teaching has become normalised at the expense of child-initiated play. Play is thus marginalised; positioned as a privilege rather than as a right and dependent on views of children as capable holders of rights. Here, we position play in relation to democracy, equity and social justice by storying how teachers’ circumvent scrutiny to facilitate the right to play and we argue this as a fruitful sub-context for resistance. From this perspective, teachers’ resistances do not just enable play, they embody and enact representative and democratic justice. Firstly, teachers story representative forms of social justice as ‘being the right thing’ in making play happen. Secondly, teachers enact democratic forms of social justice through resistance actions of ‘doing the right thing’ that entangle an emotional vulnerability to scrutiny. Adopting alternative resistance positions shifts play beyond a privilege and creates transformational spaces for social justice where time, space and materiality have a role to play. We call on teachers and educators to deepen their critical awareness of the narrowness of a single story of learning and the rich relationships between rights and play agendas. We assert that teachers’ resistances can enable playful pedagogies and act as hopeful storytelling of social justice as serious play.
Keywords: Right to play; social justice; early childhood education and care; resistance and subversion
Copyright (c) 2023 Jo Albin-Clark, Dr, Nathan Archer, Dr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0