Research News

Critical Connections II: Moving Forward with Multilingual Digital Storytelling (Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy, Funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation): A global 2-year project (September 2015 – August 2017) funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation building on the Critical Connections Multilingual Digital Storytelling project. The aim of the project was to boost 21st literacy in schools using digital storytelling as a means to encourage students to engage with language learning and embrace intercultural literacy as well as digital literacy. The Critical Connections II project involved researchers in the Educational Studies department working with over 1,245 students, 44 lead teachers and 31 complementary and mainstream schools in the UK as part of the multilingual programme.

Disappearing Londoners: Monolingual Voices in a Multilingual City (Eve Gregory, (Leverhulme emeritus award, October 2017- March 2019). Researcher: Dr. Olga Barradas, research fellow, CLCL): This research will examine the literacy practices of a rapidly disappearing community; monolingual English speakers in the East London Borough of Newham. It will take place with three families whose roots in the area extend over three generations. Using participatory and visual ethnography, it will explore the range and scope of literacy and learning practices taking place within families and how these are handed down and up across generations. The study aims to question stereotypes of one community whose ideas might not fit comfortably within accepted paradigms of what counts as learning in London today.

Homeless Creative Writing Project (Francis Gilbert, Funded by the Public Engagement Committee and the Department of Education at Goldsmiths): Students on the MA in Creative Writing and Education are working with the homeless charity SHP (Single Homeless People) to develop homeless people’s creative writing and artistic skills generally. An anthology will be published in the New Year, and a mini conference will be held to recognise the achievements of all involved.

Creative Writing Mentoring Project (Francis Gilbert): The Widening Participation Department at Goldsmiths and Patsy Hickman, artist and Goldsmiths alumni, are funding the new Creative Writing Mentoring Project which published an anthology of school students’ work last year. It is running successfully this year (2017-18) with 10+ schools participating across London. The aim is to publish an anthology of London students’ creative writing in July 2018. Students have been invited to write about “Places of Power”: their favourite places, imaginary places and to devise campaigns to make their environment better to live, work and play in.

Battle of Lewisham Creative Writing project (Francis Gilbert): Students on the MA Artist/Teacher and MA in Creative Writing and Education met with John Price, the Head of History, to learn about the Battle of Lewisham, which took place forty years ago near Goldsmiths. They are considering how to respond creatively to the fascinating histories he outlined, subverting the traditional narratives, and getting people to think afresh about this important event.

Nicola Rollock: The Career Experiences & Strategies of the UK's Black Female Professors, (£15,000 funding from UCU, and running from October to March 2018).

Eve Gregory: Leverhulme Emeritus Research Fellowship bid awarded (2017-2019) £21,509 ‘Disappearing Londoners: Monolingual Voices in a Multilingual City’ doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02321-2_32-  This is one of only five in the Social Sciences in the UK for the emeritus awards.

Sheryl Clark: “Girls’ Participation in Sports-based initiatives and the Construction of Sporting Girlhoods” at the Leisure Studies Association Conference, 4-6^th July, 2017 at Leeds Beckett University.

Francis Gilbert: “The Creative Writer’s Toolkit” an extended workshop given at the National Association for Writer’s in Education (NAWE) conference in York, November 2017.

Francis Gilbert: “The Joy of GCSE” Workshop given at the National Association for Teachers of English (NATE) in Nottingham, June 2017.

Francis Gilbert, Julia Hope, Vicky Macleroy, Maggie Pitfield and Michael Rosen: “Michael Rosen’s Reading Revolution” Conference featuring workshops and talks as well as keynotes delivered by Professor Teresa Cremin and the author S.F. Said. Read the blog.

Betty Liebovich: “Educating Children and Empowering Mothers: Margaret McMillan and the Open-Air Nursery”. Paper presented at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Atlanta, Georgia 15-18^th November 2017.

Vally Lytra: 'Ways of knowing, ways of being in and through faith'. Paper presented at Approaches to Migration, Language and Identity. University of Lausanne, 4-6 May, 2017.

Vally Lytra: 'Bridging languages, cultures and communities: The linguistic, cultural, social and economic significance of complementary schools in London'. Paper presented at the community symposium 'Giving a voice to heritage language communities: listening and responding to needs in education'.  11 June, 2017 [Invited speaker].

Vally Lytra: 'Researching with children in multilingual settings: Using scrapbooks and the conversations around them to explore children's languages, literacies and identities'. 4th International Conference of Ethnography and Education, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 11-14 July 2017. [Invited speaker, Pre-conference workshop on Visual Ethnographies of Education, Migration and Childhood]

Vally Lytra: 'Negotiating unequal language abilities and shifting classroom roles in Turkish complementary schools in London: A teacher's perspective'. Paper presented at Reforming Education and the Imperative of Constant Change: Ambivalent roles of policy and educational research, European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). Copenhagen, 22-25 August, 2017.

Vally Lytra: 'Faith literacies matter: Reflecting on the role of faith as a force for learning, socialisation and personal and collective identification in young people's lives in a global city'. Paper presented at Languages and spiritual traditions. Linguistic diversity and religious diversity in the city of Barcelona. Linguapax International, Barcelona, 24 November [Invited speaker].

Vally Lytra: 'The multilingual turn in language and education: Lessons from homes and communities' [in Greek] Second International Conference on Literacy and Contemporary Society. Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, Nicosia 28-29 November 2017 [Keynote speaker].

Vally Lytra: '40+ Years Greek School of Lausanne": Some reflections on a community-based commemorative book project'. Paper presented in Developing pathways to impact: A training workshop of early career researchers in bi/multilingualism and education. University of Westminster, 2 December 2017 [Invited speaker].

Maria Charalambous and Vally Lytra: 'Students and teachers in dialogue with the Cypriot dialect. Teaching and learning in Greek complementary schools through the use of the Cypriot dialect'. [In Greek] Seminar and workshop for Greek complementary school teachers on the use of the Cypriot dialect in Greek Complementary schools organised by KEA [Cyprus Education Mission] and the University of Westminster, 1 December 2017 [Invited speakers].

Len Platt: invited keynote at the Journada Seconda de Traducao e Adaptacao, at Sao Paulo, Brazil, November15-17^th.

Nicola Rollock: Keynote Address to the British Educational Research Association Conference, 6 September 2017: 'Exposing the Lie Within: Legitimate Culture, Organisational Protectionism and the Quest for Racial Justice in Higher Education'.

Anna Traianou: ‘Ethical regulation of ethnographic research versus the cultivation of phrónēsis’ paper presented at the European Conference of Educational Research, August 2017. The paper is part of a symposium entitled: ‘Ethics and Research in Educational Ethnography’, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.

Anna Traianou and E. Neumann, ‘Conflicts between EU education policy and the making of national education policy: The cases of Greece and Hungary’, paper which will be presented at the European Conference of Educational Research, August 2017, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.

Conference presentations and workshops in 2017 from the Critical Connections II team: JA – Jim Anderson; VM – Vicky Macleroy; YC – Yu-Chiao Chung; JJ – John Jessel; CC – Chryso Charalambous; AC - Anna Carlile

Carlile, A. (forthcoming) Surveillance, Control and Resistance in UK Schools. In: The Palgrave Handbook of School Discipline: Surveillance, Punishment and Social Control.

Barnes, E. and Carlile, A (forthcoming) How to Transform Your School into an LGBT+ Friendly Place A Practical Guide for Nursery, Primary and Secondary Teachers. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Clark, S. (forthcoming) Responsible girlhood and ‘healthy’ anxieties: girls’ bodily learning in school, sport and peer cultures. In L.Tsaliki (ed.) Discourses of anxiety about childhood and youth across cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gilbert, F. (2017) The Mindful English Teacher, London: FGI Publishing.

Gilbert, F. (2017) The Creative Writers’ Toolkit, Writing in Education, NAWE 2017.

Gregory, E. (2017) Intergenerational Learning. In K. Peppler (ed.) The Sage Encyclopaedia of Out-of-School Learning. Sage Oaks, Caifornia: Sage Publications. 

Gregory, E. (2017) Learning to read: A third perspective, Prospects. (Comparative Journal of Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment). September 2017. 

Habib, S. (2017) Learning and Teaching British Values: Policies and Perspectives on British Identities. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hope, J.  (2017) Children’s Literature about Refugees A catalyst in the classroom. London: Trentham / UCL Institute of Education Press.

Jessel, J. (forthcoming) “School Settings” in Volume VI The Community. In S. Hupp and J. Jewell (eds.) The Encyclopaedia of Child and Adolescent Development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Kipling, A. (2017) The Praxis of Dorothy Heathcote: A Paradigm in its own Right? Andragogical Studies (Journal for the Study of Adult Education and Learning) Issue 2, 79-88.

Liebovich, B. (2018). The MacMillan sisters, the roots of the open-nursery, and breaking the cycle of poverty. Social and Education History, 7(1), 78-96. ]

Lytra, V. (2017) “Playful talk, learners’ play frames and the construction of identities”. In: S. Wortham, Kim, D. and S. May (eds.) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Vol.3: Discourse and Education. Springer. 3rd edition. Online-First

Lytra, V., Gregory, E. and A. Ilankuberan (2017) “Researching children's literacy practices and identities in faith settings: Multimodal text-making and talk about text as resources for knowledge building”. In: M. Martin-Jones and D. Martin (eds.) Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, 215-228

Lytra, V., Gregory, E. and A. Ilankuberan (Summer 2017) 'Faith matters: Rethinking home learning of children from different faiths' EAL Journal (Summer), 30-31

Matthews, M. (forthcoming) "Agency and social construction: practice of the self in art and design" The International Journal of Art & Design Education.

Page, T. (forthcoming) Place-making: Art, practice, pedagogy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Platt, L. (2017) Writing London and the Thames Estuary: 1576-2016. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi.

Rollock, N. (2017) Theresa May’s racial disparity audit lacks historical context, Financial Times, 12 October

Ryf, V. (2018) Including Bilingual Learners and Children with English as an Additional Language. Chapter 4 in G. Knowles (ed.) Supporting Inclusive Practice and Ensuring Opportunity is Equal for all. Abingdon: Routledge.

Stanger, C, (2017). ‘The challenges of a white feminist teacher-researcher developing emancipatory research praxis with young black women’. SAGE Research Methods Cases.10.4135/9781473992924

Scrine, E. and Stanger, C. (forthcoming). ‘Thinking Critically, Working Creatively: dancing, songwriting and re-writing sexualities with young people ‘at the margins’ ’. In: C. Hean and N. Boyd Webb (Eds.) Creative Arts-Based Group Therapy with Adolescents: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge.

Teague, L. (forthcoming) The curriculum as a site of counter politics: theorising 'the domain of the sayable’ British Journal of Sociology of Education.

Adams, J., Bailey, R. & Walton, N. (2017). The National Arts Education Archive: Ideas and Imaginings. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 36(2), pp. 176-187. (This article provides an overview of the work of the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Park and explores possibilities for creating an accessible online multi-location archive that would help to consolidate a powerful community of arts educators in the UK.)

Jones , K. & Traianou, A. (Eds) (forthcoming) Globalisation, Austerity and the Remaking of European Education, London: Bloomsbury.

Traianou, A. (2018) Ethical Regulation of Social Research versus the cultivation of phrónēsis, in Ron Iphofen (Ed.) Virtue Ethics, Emerald (this is an invited contribution to the third volume in a series on Social Research Ethics, Academy of Social Sciences).

Recent publications arising from the Critical Connections II Project:

Anderson, J. (2017) Engagement, multiliteracies and identity: developing pedagogies for heritage/community language learners within the UK school context. In O. Kagan, M.Carreira and C.Chik (eds) A Handbook on Heritage Language Education: From Innovation to Program Building (248-262). New York: Routledge.

Anderson, J. & Macleroy, V. (2017) Connecting worlds: Interculturality, identity and multilingual digital stories in the making. Language and Intercultural Communication, 17(4), 1-24.

Anderson, J., Chung, Y. & Macleroy, V. (Forthcoming) Creative and critical approaches to language learning and digital technology: Findings from a multilingual digital storytelling project. Language and Education.

Budach, G., Chapman, B., Charalambous, C., Dumić, M., Flynn, Z., Macleroy, V. & Smith, M. (2017)  Exploring Digital Creation. EAL Journal. Spring 2017. NALDIC.

Macleroy, V. (2017) Multilingual representation in children’s literature. EAL Journal. Summer 2017. NALDIC

Vicky Macleroy: Appointed to the Academic Review Board for the peer-reviewed international journal English in Education.

Vicky Macleroy: Appointed as Associate Editor for the professional journal EAl Journal.

Nicola Rollock has been appointed to the Wellcome Trust's Diversity & Inclusion Steering Group

Nicola Rollock has also been invited by the Artistic Director of the Southbank to sit on the Women of the World (WoW) Steering Committee 2018. This is small committee of women to think through WOW and the next phase for the coming year in London and internationally. Last year’s members included Cathy Newman, Sandhini Poddar, Pinky Lilani, Jane Fae, Elif Shafak and Livia Firth.

Esther Sayers has been invited as guest editor for a special edition on ‘Art, Space and Place’ for the Journal of Place Management and Development. They have come across her previous writing and are interested in her  ArtScapers research project in Cambridge. Esther and Tara Page will co-edit and they will put a call for papers out this summer for publication in 2019.

Centre for the Arts and Learning

So They Call You Pisher!

Michael Rosen 29^th November 2017

In this humorous and moving memoir, Michael Rosen recalls the first twenty-three years of his life. Born in the North London suburbs, his parents, Harold and Connie, both teachers, first met as teenage Communists in the 1930s Jewish East End. The family home was filled with stories of relatives in London, the United States and France and of those who had disappeared in Europe. Unlike the children around them, Rosen and his brother Brian grew up dreaming of a socialist revolution; Party meetings were held in the front room, summers were for communist camping holidays, till it all changed after a trip to East Germany, when in 1957 his parents decided to leave “the Party.” Michael followed his own journey of radical self-discovery: running away to the Aldermaston March to ban the bomb, writing and performing in experimental political theatre, getting arrested during the 1968 movements.

Centre for Identities and Social Justice

Discourses of Britishness: Young people’s local and global identities.

Sadia Habib, 19^th October 2017

Dr Sadia Habib presents her findings and analysis on how students in SE London perceive Britishness and belonging. Young people are deeply concerned about social divisions and inequalities impacting upon their sense of belonging to SE London. Student identity is found to be inextricably bound up with their intersectional experiences of multiple categories such as social class and race. Students are keen to explore the complexities of race and social class; therefore it is important they critically engage in open discussions about identities and racisms as they negotiate ways of belonging to Britain. When discussing national identity, home and belonging, youth often affirm local place attachments and a local sense of citizenship. Students’ sense of national identity is dwarfed by their sense of local identity, and transnational postcolonial identities impact upon ways of belonging to Britain.

What’s race got to do with it: The role of race in the educational strategies of Black middle class families.

Nicola Rollock, 5:00-7:00 p.m., 7^th December, MMB, Top Floor.

In this session, I draw on the findings of a two-year ESRC study examining the educational strategies of Black British middle-class families.  The study reveals how class position brings certain advantages in terms of access to and deployment of cultural capital but that the mere fact of being middle class does not automatically erase the problem of race and racism.

Centre for Language, Culture and Learning

Investigating Kurdish children’s Turkish language and literacy practices in a nursery in Turkey.

Iskender Gelir, 11^th November 2017

My presentation draws on my doctoral research which is an ethnographic investigation of how Kurdish (Kurmanji-speaking) preschool children in Turkey learn Turkish upon entering nursery. I focus on teacher-led language and literacy activities, illustrating how the teacher models Turkish language-use as well as the values and expectations of the curriculum. I argue that while actively supporting Turkish language and literacy learning upon entering nursery the teacher (a Kurmanji speaker herself) allows for a limited institutional space for the use of Kurmanji which is not officially recognised in the nursery school setting. The presentation interrogates the possibilities and limitations of teacher and pupil agency in a nursery context which associates speaking Turkish with Turkish national identity.

Foreign languages as Cultural Capital: Empowering UK students from disadvantaged backgrounds through the learning of Chinese.

Yangguang Chen, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m., 6^th December 2017, MMB, Top Floor

In the UK, Chinese language teaching has begun to thrive in both independent and state schools as a modern foreign language. Chinese potentially represents a new source of cultural capital due to its economic value in the global market. Such cultural capital is particularly important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is therefore crucial that provision and pedagogies for teaching Chinese in state schools are well-researched to ensure equal opportunities and high achievement. The study presented here aims to investigate, through classroom ethnography, whether and how teachers and students consider Chinese to be cultural capital, and what pedagogies would support successful Chinese learning. The study builds on previous research on bilingual pedagogy for learners of Chinese from diverse backgrounds across mainstream and community contexts (Chen, 2010). The findings will serve as a reference for potential developments in policy and practice to support the achievement of disadvantaged students in language learning.

Book launch event: Two Goldsmiths alumni, one a freelance writer and the other a lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, are holding a joint book launch. You are invited to join the authors for the launch of their two new books: Learning and Teaching British Values by Dr Sadia Habib, and Children’s Literature about Refugees by Dr Julia Hope. (30 Nov 2017, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. Rooms 109 & 110, Ground Floor, MMB.)

In Children’s Literature about Refugees: A catalyst in the classroom, Julia Hope explores ways of engaging in class with children’s books about refugees. Using Beverley Naidoo's novel 'The Other Side of Truth' along with Mary Hoffman's 'The Colour of Home' - Hope offers concrete case studies on how children's literature about refugees can be used productively in the classroom.

Learning and Teaching British Values. In this book, Sadia Habib uses empirical case studies to explore experiences of teaching and learning about Britishness and  engages with important debates about multicultural British identities at a time when schools are expected to promote Fundamental British Values. It provides valuable insight into the need to investigate fluid and evolving identities in the classroom.

Betty Liebovich: “Goldsmiths Research Questions: How did Margaret McMillan change early years education?” Presentation for renaming the Education Building as the Margaret McMillan Building on 25th September 2017. This was accompanied by a video about Betty’s research that was broadcast campus-wide for 6 weeks.

Nicola Rollock: Interviewed the award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge about her new book 'Why I'm not Longer talking to white people about race' at sold out event at Waterstones, Birmingham. Follow this link for press coverage: 

Maggie Pitfield is a Committee member of the Remembering James Britton group with colleagues from UCL Institute of Education and the Education Department of King’s College. Initiatives planned include a lecture programme, archival work, a website and an annual James Britton Memorial Prize to be awarded for excellent academic work submitted for assessment by a student on a PGCE or MA programme at the UCL Institute of Education, Goldsmiths, or King’s College London. These initiatives will recognise the work of James Britton who, in a distinguished academic career, was Head of the English Department at the IoE from 1954-70 and Professor of Education at Goldsmiths from 1970-75 (subsequently Emeritus). He was widely credited as principal architect of the influential Bullock Report, HM’s Government Committee of Enquiry into Reading and the Use of English (1972-74). Britton is remembered and celebrated, in the UK and internationally, for the intellectual leadership he offered to post-war English teaching. The inaugural James Britton lecture will be given by Dr Gabrielle Cliff Hodges on 15th March 2018 at the UCL Institute of Education.

Esther Sayers has been developing public engagement with research at Goldsmiths with a new Public Engagement strategy for 2017-18 in progress. A survey is being developed to understand public engagement practice in each department and this will be followed by workshops linking this to impact and the REF. The Centre for Arts and Learning will contribute to a workshop around Public Engagement and Pop-up shops on 17 January at 310 New Cross Rd.

Francis Gilbert is the Widening Participation member for Goldsmiths on the Realising Opportunities Board, which oversees the development of widening participation opportunities for students from challenging backgrounds throughout the UK.