Blog

Multi-Dimensional Approaches to Well-Being: A Call to Afford Individuals the Dignity They Deserve

We all already know all the rhetoric regarding the importance of educating girls: educate a girl, educate the nation; an educated girl will delay marriage and have fewer children; an educated girl will be less likely to live in poverty. These are important findings, which I do not refute, and, indeed, I came to focus my attention on the isolated and marginalised Karamoja, Uganda, because of instructive findings. But statistical findings are only the beginning; researchers must also display a, too often absent, level of humility regarding our own importance and that of our research.

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Studying Not-Quite-Education in the EdFac: Your Summer Playlist

For one paper, I watched Mulan and Moana about 50 times each in two or three weeks. For another, I ran through several series-worth of multiple Disney Channel television shows. For a different one, I read a book series most often found sold in W.H. Smith clearance houses and ASDA checkout lanes. All of this simply to try to determine where the different intersections of hegemonic messaging to different levels of society might lay, and to garner a better understanding of how damaging messages encoded in media, especially those that harm minority communities, might be addressed by the groups being harmed in ways that encourage media corporations to change. But again, in practical terms, what this really means is that I have at my finger tips and in my head the ultimate summer playlist to get through the dog-days of dissertation writing. And of course, maybe a couple of subversive ways to think about everyone’s favorite earworms, too. So, without further ado, a song for every writing mood.

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Feeling secure in myself within my reality

The PhD journey is also not always fair or objective.Some people have money, some people have creativity, some have great social support, some have romance, some have their family around, some have familiarity with British society, some don’t look like outsiders, some never have problems with their supervisors, some have charisma, some have native English, some have peace, and some have good health.It is not fair, but everyone has something valuable.

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Blog

‘Creepers in the Classroom’: Emphasising the Poetic Power of Videogames

Videogames can occupy the same space in classrooms as novels and poems do, but this is rarely reflected in the critical literature. Instead, videogames are positioned as a means to an end – a trojan horse to trick students into accepting something they would otherwise resist. Well-intentioned educators debate the merits of running Fortnite-themed exercise camps or whether Minecraft might be used to re-engage readers with Swallows and Amazons, which is proving amazonly hard for modern children to swallow (considering this text’s picnic-hamper-colonialism, maybe this isn’t a bad thing). However, if researchers could entertain the possibility that playing Fortnite has autotelic value, they could explore the aesthetic experiences elicited by Fortnite and illuminate how the text works on the player.

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Blog Research tools

Embracing Open Science

Openness is becoming an integral part of the research process as more and more researchers are adopting its principles and practices. Our research group, INSTRUCT, led by Dr Michelle Ellefson, has been increasingly interested in the idea of Open Science this year. Nearly all of our group members are attending lectures and training sessions across the university with the aim to understand Open Science and create strategies to practice its principles in current and future research projects. In this blog, we will share an overview of what we have learned so far, and encourage those who are interested in learning more about openness in research.

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