As summer shone its brightest in the weeks before term started, RE staff from Edge Hill were busy sharing the findings of their research.
Prof. Vini Lander along with Dr Francis Farrell organised a Day conference for Edge Hill staff on Fundamental British Values – a key part of the government’s education agenda. The day, which took a critical look at the topic included contributions from our friends Lynn Revell, David Aldridge and Waqaus Ali as well as Francis’ own research with teenagers about their perceptions of British Values.
Meanwhile Maggie Webster led a workshop at the European Educational Research Conference 2015 which was held at Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary. The workshop explored the benefits and challenges of utilising digital technologies to gather data using, for example, email interviewing, synchronous and asynchronous focus groups on closed social networking sites and participant observation in second life communities. Francis Farrell’s paper on Practitioner Subjectivity Within Urban Free Schools was also presented at the same conference.
The following week saw the British Educational Research Association conference in Belfast. Here Maggie presented on her research into A Transitional Integrated Approach to Teacher
Career Paths. Paul Smalley was also at the BERA conference and presented papers on his research into Lesson Study in England.
These contributions along with recent publications by Francis in Gender and Education and Journal of Education & Training and Paul in the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality demonstrate the growing research reputation of the RE team at Edge Hill.