The title page of the gamebook. Image permission: Wendy Wen, Yifan Chen, Yiwei Lu and Yiping Tang.

27 July 2023

By Wendy Wen, Yifan Chen, Yiwei Lu and Yiping Tang, Education Studies BA

*From the 2024/2025 academic year onwards, the Education Studies BA has been renamed the Education, Society and Culture BA.

As part of our assessment in one second-year Education Studies BA module (EDPS0253: Children in Society: Anthropological, Historical and Sociological Perspectives), we created a gamebook. We were given the opportunity to produce engaging materials to show children an underrepresented aspect of their lives.

In the module, we learnt to challenge assumptions about childhood based on our own historically-situated and culturally-constituted ideologies, and we truly got to see how childhoods are wrongly universalised – not from a bird’s eye view – but from a perspective that constructs childhood ‘from below’. Such spirit inspired us to make this gamebook, which explores underrepresented gendered aspects of children’s lives.

Have you ever noticed that girls are often restrictedly described as ‘quiet’ and ‘obedient’, or have you ever had a strange feeling when someone says, ‘girls are just like that’? Do you recall from childhood that your parents made decisions for you without consultation beforehand? Our gamebook about a girl’s experience may lead you to think about these questions and the essence of a girl’s decision.

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Image by Jason Ilagan for IOE

20 December 2022

By Amy Ellis, Music Education MA

The Music Education MA offers a varied view of music education, splitting two of its modules ‘The Disciplines of Music Education’, into three strands, one of which is Sociology. Over the course of term one we have covered many varying topics, including multiculturalism and gender, and a lecture about ‘Community Music’ led by guest lecturer Tim Palmer.

Tim Palmer is Head of Education at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, with 25 years’ experience as an orchestral musician, a community musician, and in outreach work. His passion for community music is inspiring, and Tim describes music education as a tool for ‘communal change.’

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