Starting the research

It's been quite some time since I have blogged- the summer flew by and now I am already half way through the first phase of my research. I started to contact schools in August and also met the teachers at the first teacher training event. Unfortunately it turned out that the classes were actually Year 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (instead of only Year 5), but on the other hand there are almost 30 schools who are part of the scheme this year. It has been challenging to get in touch with them and organise a day at school with the teachers but whenever I have met students it has been very interesting and rewarding. So far, 200 students have taken questionnaires on writing and film.

On a none-PhD note, I have joined a group of people who are trying to apply for a Steiner Free School in Leeds. Have a look at the website if you are interested :-)

I passed my transfer a few weeks ago, too, so there is one thing I can tick off! Hurray! Chapter-wise, I am now done with film, literacy and motivation and also hope to submit the section on emotion at the end of the week. Unfortunately I still haven't got a second supervisors but I have got my fingers crossed that the paperwork is finally going to come through before Christmas.

Last Saturday I attended the Media Education Association conference in London and spoke about the ways in which the scheme uses film to teach literacy. I only spoke to a small group of people, but I think that most of them found it interesting and helpful. One of the attendees turned out to be Paul Reeve, the new head of Film Nation UK. I had another quick chat with him at the end of the day and he told me to 'get on with my PhD quickly' as it was needed by the film education community and that it would be 'dynamite' once it was published. That was pretty great feedback from someone so important!

In three weeks time I am off to my first international conference the Media and Learning Conference in Brussels. You can find the programme here. It looks like a very interesting event and I look forward to sharing my research with the international film and media education community. I have also been accepted to speak at the Meccsa conference in Bournemouth in January and will be presenting a paper on how Bradford introduces film to people on the margins of society.