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Should young children use technology in school? Lessons from South Korea
By IOE Blog Editor, on 17 December 2024
Credit: jamesteohart via Adobe Stock.
17 December 2024
By Rachael Levy and Jennifer Chung
‘Technology is bad for kids!’ This statement has become something of a slogan in recent years with parents, teachers, educationalists and health workers, among others, raising the alarm about the ways in which technology is deemed to be damaging children. You may have seen the recent Channel 4 programme ‘Swiped’, which removed smartphones from children in an attempt to improve child well-being. Recurring themes include concerns about harmful online content, cyberbullying and screen addiction, often resulting in the call for all children, especially young children, to be protected from the digital world as much as possible.
However, the world we live in is digital. To take the example of literacy, we know that learning to read now includes developing skills to make sense of screen texts, and learning to write now includes learning to code using programming languages. This raises challenging questions for the field of early childhood education, particularly in relation to potential tensions between the desire to offer children opportunities to develop the digital literacy skills needed to succeed in the future and the desire for them to avoid the harmful effects of technology. Read the rest of this entry »
Early childhood education in the age of digital platforms and Artificial Intelligence: benefits and challenges
By IOE Blog Editor, on 12 December 2024
Credit: wavebreak3 via Adobe Stock.
12 December 2024
Commercial early childhood education (ECE) digital platforms have expanded rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus far, there has been a lack of critical research on their growth and consequences. The aims of this blog are, firstly, to open a critical space to think about the political economy of commercial education platforms and, secondly, to ask questions about their impacts upon the experiences of educators, families and children. Read the rest of this entry »
UN Genocide Prevention Day: a survivor, teachers and students stand together
By IOE Blog Editor, on 5 December 2024
The stone columns UCL Wilkins building lit in purple to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Credit: Mary Hinkley, UCL Creative Media Services.
5 December 2024
On Monday 9 December, UCL’s Centre for Holocaust Education marks UN Genocide Prevention Day with a special conversation between a survivor, teachers and students. The roundtable discussion will explore the possibilities that genocide education affords as well as the challenges that tackling such sensitive histories brings. Read the rest of this entry »
Applying a political economy lens to evidence-informed policymaking
By IOE Blog Editor, on 26 November 2024
Credit: tonefotografia via Adobe Stock.
26 November 2024
By Veronica Osorio Calderon and Mukdarut Bangpan
The growth of Evidence-Informed Decision-Making (EIDM)
Evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) is the idea that decisions, particularly in policy, should be based on the best available research, along with other factors like public opinion, costs and practicality. As an approach, it aims to make decision-making more systematic and transparent by using a structured way of identifying and applying research evidence in policies.
EIDM has gained significant traction in recent years. This was especially clear at the Global Evidence Summit in Prague in September, which brought together 1,800 attendees to discuss the role of evidence in policymaking. Just shortly afterwards, UK Research and Innovation and the Wellcome Trust committed approximately £56.5 million to further EIDM, globally. This latest example of funding to support EIDM is dedicated to advancing “living evidence” initiatives and, specifically, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance evidence use in policymaking. Read the rest of this entry »
Why we need to democratize Ofsted inspections
By IOE Blog Editor, on 19 November 2024
Credit: Phil Meech for IOE.
19 November 2024
This commentary is adapted from Bernie’s contribution to the ESRC Education Research Programme event, ‘Democratic decision-making in English education: whose voices count?’ You can watch the event recording on UCL Mediacentral.
Imagine for one moment that you are subjected to the visit of a team of inspectors. They will come to your workplace at any time after one to three days of giving notice. When they arrive, they will spend a couple of days collecting information (i.e. observations of your performance, interviews with your colleagues and/or ‘service users’, institutional data, etc.). Then, they will use the evidence they have gathered to rate the quality of your performance, which will first be communicated to you in a meeting with you and your team, and then reiterated in a written report a few weeks later. This report will identify the name of your organisation and, once published, will be publicly available for anyone in the world with access to the Internet.
If the inspectors conclude your organisation is doing a good job, new opportunities may open up for you as its leader, such as taking on more responsibility, career progression, and even training those new in your sector and profession. If, on the contrary, the inspectors conclude the performance of the organisation you lead is poor, a spiral of decline might follow. In the worst-case scenario, your institution might be closed or taken over. Colleagues might move to other jobs, while, for those who remain, there might be fewer resources to work with.
Within England’s schools system, these latter risks are very real following a poor outcome from an inspection by Ofsted. Read the rest of this entry »
World Prematurity Day: an opportunity to rethink childhood, children’s rights and wellbeing beyond survival
By IOE Blog Editor, on 14 November 2024
Credit: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash.
14 November 2024
By Rosa Mendizabal and Viviana Ramirez, UDLAP (Universidad de las Américas Puebla, México)
World Prematurity Day, marked every 17 November, unites families and professionals to raise awareness about the challenges of preterm birth. Global landmarks are lit in purple, symbolising hope, compassion and support, while sock lines with nine full-sized pairs of socks and one tiny one represent the one in ten babies born prematurely. Addressing this issue through improved, holistic neonatal care remains crucial for reducing preventable deaths and adverse outcomes at birth. Despite the various challenges posed by preterm births, it is important to recognise that much has been achieved so far in improving care – in part through allowing children, including the most vulnerable neonates, a voice. Read the rest of this entry »
Opportunity for all? Which pupils are studying languages in England and why?
By IOE Blog Editor, on 7 November 2024
Credit: Drazen via Adobe Stock.
7 November 2024
By Ann-Marie Hunter, Elin Arfon, and Zhu Hua
Overview
One of the aims of the UK government’s current curriculum and assessment review is to ‘break down barriers to education’. Our research within the NCLE Language Hubs programme contributes to this discussion by exploring pupils’ access to languages.
We found that policy decisions made at the school level can significantly boost the uptake of languages at GCSE – but this can come at the expense of inclusion. We suggest that this tension is driven by accountability measures and other constraints that shape schools’ approaches, leading them to select pupils to study a language who have high achievement in other subjects like maths and English. We hope our research can contribute to positive action at the national and school level to address this concerning dynamic. Read the rest of this entry »
Top tips for accessible live content delivery: supporting students with hearing needs
By IOE Blog Editor, on 29 October 2024
UCL speaker presenting with a microphone. Credit: Mary Hinkley for UCL.
29 October 2024
Synchronous accessibility can be challenging
In a previous IOE blog, I wrote about accessibility as a right and not an option, and I summarised key actions for creating accessible digital content, such as Word and PowerPoint documents. These resources, however, are almost always created asynchronously. In this post, I consider how to make sure live teaching delivery is accessible, focusing in this instance on the needs of students with hearing impairment. I list best practices that I recommend as an expert on inclusive education and sensory accessibility, and as a programme leader for UCL’s Special and Inclusive Education MA, experienced in putting reasonable adjustments in place for our students. Read the rest of this entry »
If owt’s been dunn ‘ere, Miss Punnett’s dunnit: The Punnett Hall
By IOE Blog Editor, on 22 October 2024
Li Wei, Director and Dean of IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, at the launch event for Punnett Hall. He stands in front of a slide with a picture of Margaret Punnett and the text “IOE Events”. Credit: IOE Communications.
22 October 2024
As IOE celebrates one of its founding leaders, Margaret Punnett, in the naming of its space, Georgina Brewis, Professor of Social History, reflects on the path of pioneering women in the early 1900s and their recognition in the fabric of university campuses today.
Margaret Punnett (1867–1946) was born in Lincolnshire in 1867. She was born just at the right time for middle-class women to receive a better education than their mothers – she was educated at South Hampstead High School and went on to take a University of London BA in German and Mathematics in 1889. Again, this was good timing, as the University had only opened its degrees to women in 1878. Read the rest of this entry »
Whatever happened to Labour’s agenda for children?
By IOE Blog Editor, on 17 October 2024
Credit: Phil Meech for UCL
17 October 2024
By Peter Moss and Pat Petrie
Imagine an IOE academic in the 2000s, committed to policy-relevant research and absorbed by the Labour government’s policy agenda for children and young people. Imagine they fall into a deep sleep in May 2010, only to awaken in October 2024. As when they’d fallen into oblivion, they find Labour in government, and expectantly ask an old friend what news of their field. Whatever happened to the Department for Children, Schools and Families? To Children’s Centres and Extended Schools? To that interesting work on social pedagogy at IOE, much of it government funded and with so much promise for children in care? Above all, whatever happened to ‘Every Child Matters’? The old friend pauses, noticing the expectancy in the questioner’s voice, then breaks the difficult news: all gone and forgotten. Our academic Rip Van Winkle is left shaken and speechless. Read the rest of this entry »
