More conferences and publications

Last week I had some brilliant news: I have been accepted for this year's Kaleidoscope conference in Cambridge and the Future of Education conference in Florence! The latter even includes a publication and I am chuffed to bits that the University of Bradford is paying for me to go. Here is the submitted abstract:

Ros McLellan, my new second supervisor from Cambridge, came to see me last month and together we discussed many questions I have had for a long time. She also encouraged me to do get involved in some additional research and to potentially apply for a postdoc position for next year. It was really wonderful to talk to someone who has so much experience in the academic education community and I am looking forward to working with her over the next year. Our next meeting is at the end of the month at the Kaleidoscope conference.

In the last month, I also re-submitted an article for the Kaleidoscope journal and hope to hear back from them soon. It would be great to go into my second research summer knowing that I have two publications under my belt already.

My research is currently focused on observing as many media literacy lessons as I can. I am working closely with one particular teacher and I think her school might become a case study for the scheme. I am also planning my questionnaires and interviews for the end of the year. The project evaluation day is not actually until the beginning of July, but I am hoping to see a couple more classes until then. I am particular looking forward to evaluating the data about students' emotions about writing. It's going to be fascinating!

A common framework for literacy assessment

A lot of the best things that happen at conferences take place between the talks: no matter whether it’s receiving feedback for your presentation or meeting someone who feels passionately about an interesting area of research, these conversations are really the human backbone of why I enjoy taking part in conferences.

This lunchtime, I met Kamakshi Rajjagopal from the Open University in the Netherlands and we had a very interesting chat about literacy frameworks. Something that almost everyone at the conference seems to struggle with is ‘assessing’ media competencies. How do we know whether someone is media literate?

On a holistic and more general level this is easy to determine: I would expect the person to be able to access and evaluate the media and then, possibly, to be able to produce it, too. In the case of film education for example, there should be an understanding about how meaning is constructed (shots, editing, lighting, …) and what effect these techniques have. However, as soon as we move into the categorisation of these skills at different levels, things become more difficult. I have always found the AQA and WJEC marking criteria for practical coursework pretty limiting.

Kamakshi suggested that we should look at the common aspects between old and new literacy and consider the common frameworks for literacy competence across Europe. Here, competencies are described with positive statements such as ‘I can write a paragraph without errors’. Where I think this comparison falls short in terms of film is that very little attention is paid to creativity (just like in writing)! Students are rewarded for ‘imaginative’ work but it is much more difficult to define ‘imaginative’ than it is to say that there are no grammatical errors in a sentence.

In a way, however, the comparison is an appropriate one if we remember that written language has many things in common with film making: there are parts (sentences and shots, paragraphs and scenes), there is a framework of rules (grammar and editing rules such as the construction of shot-reverse-shot) and there is the same consideration of fiction vs non-fiction (reports and documentaries). In the end, both forms include a degree of creativity no matter how ‘objective’ they are, too.

There are some examples of frameworks (done by the European Commission and UNESCO), however many definitions are basic and vague. On the other hand: would it really be possible to develop specific frameworks for every 'part' of media (film, radio, newspapers, blogs, ...) and where does that list end? Also, as we have seen with the development of film and media as subjects on their own right, just because something is assessed does not mean it gets taken more seriously. 

Yesterday, I was writing about how surprised I was that even after years and years of discussion, media literacy still did not have a common framework- surely by this point we should have long left definitions behind and moved on to making a united move towards implementation? An assessment scheme like the ones that exist for traditional literacy might potentially have a lot to contribute- whether Europe or communities beyond will be able to agree on one framework is a different topic! 

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. 

Mixed methods

Today I am writing the blog from my new hometown: Leeds. I moved last week and look forward to taking part in lots of events and exciting things around my new favourite place in Yorkshire!

This morning, I attended the White Rose research conference on Mixed Methods and, for the first time in a few months, actually started to think about my research design and methodology again. I am hoping to use qualitative research to gather the writing scores as well as the students' perception of how their emotions change because of the film watching. Through qualitative interviews I am going to find out about the students' individual responses to the films. Overall, I am hoping to see (1) whether there is an emotional change when students watch films and (2) whether there is a correlation between this possible change and their motivation for writing.

The most interesting part of the morning was to hear Professor Stephen Gorard from Durham uni speak about the importance of a holistic point of view with regards to research methods. He argues against a division between qualitative and quantitative research, as one should always gather as much evidence as possible, no matter which method. He complained that people make informed decisions in their everyday lives based on all information they have access to, rather than just looking at numbers or 'the rest'. I am looking forward to reading more of his work.

On Friday morning I visited Chris Mayoh at the Innovation Centre in Bradford. Last week, the different schools involved in the literacy scheme I am researching visited the centre to train 'film literacy ambassadors', year 5 students who would then go back to their schools and help other students engage with film. I spent the morning with Wibsey School, who looked at the Pixar short film For the Birds (one of my favourites!). The students came up with some great ideas about the theme of the film and how emotion was illicited.

Last week was also the launch of the new BBC3 production of Carmen, which will take place in the Bradford city centre in June. City of Film are actively involved in the project and I was invited to the press launch. Just a few minutes after the actors, who had introduced the opera, had left the stage we were atcually able to see the BBC coverage at a big screen outside. Very exciting! You can read more about the project here. 

Events and ways forward

As part of the Bradford Film Festival, the brilliant Dodge Brothers played at the Bradford Film Festival last Sunday. One of the members of the band is an old lecturer of mine (Mike Hammond from Southampton Uni) who taught us all about the origins of cinema seven (!) years ago. It was amazing to see him again and I just love the band. Have a look here if you wanted to listen to some ace Americana and Skiffle music!

On Friday I also attended the last training session of the UNESCO film literacy training scheme which sparked my PhD. Philip Webb was, as always, really inspirational and it's great to see how he uses film in such creative ways. This time the focus was on how to combine books, technology and film music to get the students to write.

I was especially taken by his idea to break up stories in boxes (or rather bags) and show them to the students in an much more 3D way than just on a piece of paper. This way they can write a paragraph each about characters, settings, conflicts and resolutions.

Last but not least, Bradford City of Film also put on a day entitled Opportunities for Women in Film and Television. Unfortunately it clashed with the Film Literacy day and as such I was only able to go for the first half an hour, but it really inspiring to see all these amazing women who came together to exchange experiences and help each other. Women are seriously underrepresented in the film industry and events like these are really important I think.

After all these events (and my consultancy work for the Bradford Film School) it has been hard to get back into the swing of the PhD. I have now been reading and researching for almost seven months and my original document includes 31,000 words of notes! After speaking to my supervisor, we have now agreed that I am going to start writing up most of it in order to prepare for my transfer at the beginning of July. Wish me luck!

Focus of the PhD and Bradford Film Festival

I had always heard that the topic of a PhD bounces around a bit before being set in stone but boy did I not expect to go through so many changes of topics in my first six months. In the time since January alone, my research focus has moved from the sociological context of children's culture and their media consumption to the cognitive impact of emotions on motivation for learning and more specific writing. By now, my bibliography includes more than 300 items, half of which I have read whole.

The outline of the thesis has grown to 30,000 words and includes
- definitions of film and media literacy
- an introduction to writing and the teaching of writing
- the connection of emotions and motivation and
- the connection between emotion, motivation and film

I'm pretty sure I'll have to cut down things pretty soon!!

On a separate note, I had the honour of being part of the Bradford Film Festival jury to choose the winner of the Shine short film competition. The experience was really interesting and very different from the student short film festivals I have attended so far. On the jury was also Carol Mei Barker, the other City of Film PhD student at the University of Bradford. You can find a link to her work here.

Oxford STORIES and UKLA

This week I attended two conferences: The Oxford STORIES conference, which allows postgrads researchers to present their work to peers and the UKLA (UK Literacy Association) conference on digital literacies.

The weather is Oxford was beautiful and although the coach journey there almost killed me (4,5h!), it was great to meet other young researchers who are involved in education. It's really interesting that when you go to an education conference of this kind most of the people who attend are international women in their late 20s/ early 30s.

In Oxford I learned two very useful things. Although most of the sessions did not feel particularly relevant to my research, this was the first time that I went to a conference which was put on for research students by research students and it taught me a lot about how to structure a conference presentation. I have got my first own presentation in London in two weeks time and I am glad I had this experience before I went. Secondly, the Department for Education at Oxford uni also had some brilliant posters on display and they showed me that posters at conferences are not at all second class to presentations.

Where STORIES looked at all kinds of educational topics, the UKLA conference was much more focused on research which is connected to my work. I finally met the Media Literacy heroes Jackie Marsh and Guy Merchant and also encountered a very interesting project by Petula Bhojwani, who also wrote her PhD about using films to motivate boys to write.

The best speaker of the day was David Mitchell, who spoke about the use of blogs in classrooms and how using internet technology had transformed his students and the school as a whole. His presentation style was really entertaining and reminded me a lot of Ken Robinson. It's always refreshing to have a very academic conference broken up by a few laughs! Thanks to David, I have finally started to tweet a bit more about my PhD and I am hoping to update this blog more frequently, too!

Cambridge Oxford Exchange

After long months of reading, changing my topic and feeling pretty isolated in Bradford, I came down to Cambridge on Friday to mingle with other education posgrads at the Faculty of Education. I am still pretty connected to the uni here due to my PGCE and MEd and the fact that I am only graduating in March. I am still hoping to come back one day as a researcher or for a postdoc.

A couple of months ago I wrote about Ken Robinson and that you need to connect to the people of your 'tribe' to become good at what you are doing. Meeting all these lovely education postdocs and hearing from some really inspiring people was great- it really reminded me of the joys of studying and sharing practice!

While I was here, I also popped into the brilliant faculty library and worked for a few hours. I wish we had such a wonderful place to read and write up north! I am spending more and more time in one of the two libraries of Leeds uni, but working in front of a beautiful garden is something different all together!

London and Bournemouth

After more than a week of travelling I am finally back at my desk and can report back on all of the amazing things which I have experienced in the last days!

Friday and Saturday I spent at the MEA conference at the BFI. It was absolutely brilliant to meet so many likely minded people and walk away with lots of new ideas and contacts. It was especially interesting to finally see David Buckingham speak, about whom I had heard many great things in the last weeks! He started off the conference on Saturday with a key note talk on the state of media education today, which looks pretty gloomy! Although it was very entertaining to hear him speak, I wish he would have offered some solutions, too!

In my fist chosen session of the day, I listened to Julian McDougall speak about a research project in which he observed A-Level and undergraduate classes as they used a computer game instead of a book as part of English literature lessons. The approach was fascinating and showed how excited the students were about the change of medium. In my project,we are trying to move being 'using films instead of books' but I am pleased that computer games are now getting into this first stage, too!

The second chosen session of the morning was my favourite! I discovered that there is somebody else out there who is focusing on reading levels and use of films in primary schools- Carrie Virginvie. Carrie is the English subject leader in her school and created a project in which teachers used films in different ways to improve writing levels. She then compared this work with another unit in which the teachers had used books and found that motivation and levels increased! 

After the MEA conference, I also went down to Bournemouth University to give a lecture on student film distribution and attend their new student film festival BUtiful. The festival was inspired by the Watersprite Festival which I founded in Cambridge more than three years ago and it was great to see that more than 280 young people submitted work! 

On Wednesday afternoon I was finally back in Bradford and met my supervisors to discuss our plan for the next months. In the past weeks I have felt a little bit stressed by researching, writing, meeting the team members and planning the methodology so hopefully a little 'break' will do me some good!

Meeting Cary

On Friday I went to London to meet the lovely Cary Bazalgette.

I was a little bit nervous because Cary is an absolute guru in media education. To appreciate all the things she has done, have a look at this description from childrenyouthandmedia.org

'Cary Bazalgette worked at the British Film Institute from 1979 to 2007, having previously been a teacher of English and filmmaking in London secondary schools. She has written and edited a number of classroom resources for media education and has published and spoken widely on this topic in the UK and around the world. 

She was Head of BFI Education from 1999-2006, leading the BFI’s commitment to developing new approaches to teaching and learning about the moving image media, particularly for the 3-14 age group, and gaining a higher profile for this area of education at policy level, nationally and internationally. Following 18 months as the BFI’s Education Policy Adviser, she is now working as a freelance researcher, writer and consultant specializing in media literacy. 

She was General Secretary of the Steering Group for the European Charter for Media Literacy from 2005 to 2007; she is now Chair of the Media Education Association (MEA) and is a member of the European Commission’s Media Literacy Experts’ Group.  She has two children and three grandchildren, and lives in London.'

We had a great, three hour long chat about her career in the sector and her experience of 'fighting for the cause'. Two of those hours were taped so I am hoping to release a bit of our interview as soon as things are transcribed. I am very grateful that she took the time to meet me and hope that many exciting things will come out of our tea date!