Black History Month
Tuesday 6 October
Last week marked the start of this year's Black History Month. To celebrate the Faculty of Education's commitment to diversity, we have been featured in an online profile on the Black History Month website's Diversity Dashboard , and will also be featured in their brochure.
The feature highlights the PGCE programmes' encouragement of applications from sections of communities that are under-represented in the teaching profession.
The Faculty of Education at the Festival of Ideas 2015
Tuesday 6 October
Our Faculty has been taking part in the Festival of Ideas for a number of years and this year is no exception. We will be running two events:
A home in the hills: Indian Summers and the making of India's Little England - Thursday 29th October, 6 - 7.30pm, by Siddharth Pandey. Free of charge (no booking required).
Channel 4's recently concluded, critically acclaimed 'Indian Summers' showed the Himalayan hill station of Simla, brimming with the power politics of the Empire and the Indian National Movement.
Full details pdf.
Find your own superpower! - Friday 30th October 10.30am - 2.30pm (Free of charge, no booking required, drop-in).
Imagination and creativity are all that is required to find your own special superpower. Children are invited to play and learn with art, poetry, games and much more. Why not come dressed as your favourite superhero?
Full details pdf.
We would be delighted to see as many people as possible at this year's events, both of which look set to be hugely enjoyable.
For more information, or if you are interested in volunteering to help at either of the events, please contact Eve Berwin (Faculty Schools Liaison Coordinator) on [email protected]
Festival of Ideas Video.
R is for Rabbit
Friday 2 October
The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society.
"The interest in rabbits, and anthropomorphising them as characters, is perhaps rather a curious phenomenon in British culture"
Dr Zoe Jaques is a lecturer in children’s literature. Her research spans fiction for children from 1800 to the present, and in particular how children’s fantasy participates in questions of what it means to be human. Here she answers questions about rabbits in children’s fiction.
Read the full report.
New - Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Assessment & Examinations
Tuesday 29 September
This month, nearly 50 students will be embarking on a new Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Assessment and Examinations, a joint offering from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and Cambridge Assessment. The students are drawn from a range of backgrounds, including staff from UK assessment organisations including Cambridge Assessment, NCFE, NEBOSH and SQA and teachers of a variety of subjects, from across the country and Europe.
Part of the Faculty’s Practitioner Professional Development programme, the course incorporates online study and regular Saturday day schools in Cambridge.
Tim Oates, Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment, said:'This course is a notable achievement, arising from the clear and strong support of both University organisations. I wish all the students well as they embark on the course'.
Enrolments will open soon for next year, so look at the information and the sample online taster course on the Cambridge Assessment website.
5 steps to achieving the goal of educating every child in the world
Tuesday 22 September
Professor Pauline Rose and Dr Benjamin Alcott of the REAL Centre write in The Guardian on Sustainable development goals. The Sustainable development goals to be agreed by world leaders this week include a commitment to ensure that all young people have access to good quality primary and lower secondary education by 2030.
"Five steps to achieving the goal of educating every child in the world" outlines how for all young people to have a good education by 2030, we must focus on greatly improving the learning opportunities of disadvantaged children.
Peace Education Seminar - first of its kind in Cambridge
Tuesday 22 September
The Cambridge Peace Education Research Group (CPERG) peace education seminar is the first of its kind in Cambridge. It gathers 50 peace education scholars and practitioners together in an intimate setting to foster dialogue on cutting-edge research, practice and theory for the field.
It is envisioned as an interdisciplinary, intercultural, intergenerational and transnational encounter. Participants represent all inhabited continents, including those who have come from as near as Cambridge and Bradford, UK, Northern Ireland, Austria and Cyprus to those who have come from as far as Argentina, Burundi, Costa Rica and Australia. This includes well-established, leading experts in the field as well as young emerging researchers who tackle the challenging questions of peace education in diverse contexts, including those directly affected by war and conflict.
The participants will discuss citizenship learning and values in peace education; peace, democracy and sustainability in local contexts; peace education in schools and universities; and the role of arts in promoting cultures of peace.
The aim of the week is to inspire global dialogue on the intersections between education, conflict and peace, and to promote international collaboration to push peace education research, theory and practice forward in the 21st century.
Cambridge Schools Leadership for Learning Community
Monday 14 September
LfL are delighted to be welcoming 16 Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) schools from around the world to the Faculty of Education for a launch conference this week.
Participants are travelling from Australia, Canada, Cyprus, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, UAE and the USA as well as within the UK. After this week the group will be working together remotely on the CIE professional development platform and researching together how knowledge can be created in this way.
In Memoriam Dr. Peter John Huckstep
Thursday 10 September
It is with sadness that we announce the death of our former colleague, Peter Huckstep.
University of Cambridge Primary School OPENS
Tuesday 8 September
The University of Cambridge Primary School has opened its doors today on the North West Cambridge Development, as planned, with an initial intake of pupils for Reception, Years 1 and 2.
Work on the iconic circular design of the three-form entry school started in November 2014 and has a phased completion. The first phase was completed and opened for the start of the academic year in September 2015. The second phase of the building is expected to be handed over in December 2015. When completed, the school is expected to accommodate 630 pupils from a local catchment.
The building is the first operational facility to be delivered as part of the North West Cambridge Development.
Further information.
Year 12 Students explore our Education Tripos
Tuesday 25 August
Once again, the Faculty of Education hosted a group of Year 12 students from across the country as part of the University’s Sutton Trust Summer Schools, introducing them to the academic disciplines of education and encouraging them to apply for the undergraduate Education Tripos at Cambridge.
Read full article.
Faculty signs MoU with the National Institute of Education, Singapore
Thursday 20 August
Professor Tan Oon Seng, the Director of the National Institute of Education, Singapore, and Professor Geoff Hayward, Head of the Faculty of Education, on 13th August signed a memorandum of understanding between the two organisations.
The MoU will facilitate student and staff exchanges, and the development of a programme of collaborative research between two world leading educational organisations. Student exchanges will start in September 2016.
Prestigious Masters Award in 2 Successive Years
Tuesday 18 August
Congratulations to Alvin Leung (Politics, Democracy and Education Programme, PDDE 2013-14) who has recently been announced as the recipient of the 2015 British Educational Research Association's Masters Dissertation Award, presented for the most outstanding thesis or dissertation produced as part of a Masters course in Education issued by a British university.
Alvin's success marks a notable distinction for our PDDE programme, with students from the course now having won this prestigious national award in two successive years.
Full report.
IBBY International Award for PhD Student
Tuesday 4 August
Xioafei Shi, second-year PhD student, has been awarded the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) UK Bursary.
It is a highly competitive and prestigious award that enables a graduate student to attend the 35th IBBY World Congress in Auckland, New Zealand, 2016. IBBY is a renowned international alliance of those interested in children’s literature across different professions. It has over seventy national sections all over the world, and the biennial World Congress is one of its largest and most famous events.
IBBY UK offers two bursaries to IBBY UK members, one of which is intended for graduate students. The overarching theme of the Congress, “The multiplicity of language, literacy and literature in the world today”, is at the very heart of Xiaofei's PhD project, which focuses on crossover picturebooks and explores how young readers are positioned in this increasingly multimodal world. At the Congress, Xiaofei will present the early findings of her project: the crosscultural adaptation and reception of Jimmy Liao’s When the Moon Forgot, which gives a glimpse into the place of local literature in a global context, and the tricky position of young readers in the world today.
Men, Masculinities and Teaching in Early Childhood Education
Thursday 30 July
A new book, lead edited by Dr. Simon Brownhill (a Senior Teaching Associate in the Faculty of Education), sets out to critically explore the notion of men, masculinities and teaching in early childhood education. It addresses the global pattern of gender, teaching and care where men are in the minority, and explores the notion that the greater involvement of men within teaching and associated professions has the potential to transform gender relations for future generations.
International contributors from the UK, Sweden, Japan, the USA and Indonesia raise critical questions about the construction of masculinities, the continuing reluctance of men to engage in this type of work, and the influence of political and public debates on the issue.
Published by Routledge, the Foreword has been written by Mike Younger, Director of Central Asia Projects in the Faculty of Education. Further details and purchasing information are available at:
https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138797727
Two of our doctoral students receive United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) awards 2015
Monday 27 July
Debbie Pullinger and Veronica Hanke both received awards at this year’s UKLA International Conference in Nottingham.
Debbie Pullinger, a research associate at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, has won the prestigious 2015 United Kingdom Literacy Association Student Research Prize for her PhD thesis 'The hidden child: orality, textuality and children's poetry'.
Completed in 2013-14, it was supervised by Professor Morag Styles and David Whitley. Debbie is currently a full-time researcher working with David Whitley on the Poetry and Memory Project, a three-year interdisciplinary project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, investigating experiences of poetry learning, and examining the relationships between memorisation, recitation and understanding. This is the second year running that the UKLA Student Research Prize has been won by a Cambridge Faculty of Education PhD student.
Veronica Hanke, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, supervised by Professor Neil Mercer, was also awarded a Special Commendation for the important UKLA Wiley-Blackwell Research in Literacy Education Prize. The Special Commendation was for Veronica’s article published in 2014 in the UKLA’s journal, Literacy, 48 (3), entitled 'Guided reading: young pupils’ perspectives on classroom practice'.
Research Capacity Building Programme
Wednesday 15 July
The recently created NIS research team spent a week at the Faculty brushing up their research methods knowledge before returning to Astana to embark on a country wide research programme. Dr Elaine Wilson worked with a team of Faculty researchers to develop the skills and knowledge of the young Kazakhstani team.
A first - forming the Cambridge Education Alumni Group (CEAG)
Tuesday 30 June
We are delighted to announce the formation of the Cambridge Education Alumni Group (CEAG).
This group is the first of its kind, and will bring together alumni who have graduated from the Faculty of Education in any degree and from other disciplines but who are working in the field of education.
The aim is to create a network of researchers, academics, educators and social entrepreneurs based in the UK and across the world.
The First One Day EdD Conference
Wednesday 24 June
The Faculty is delighted to host the first EdD One-Day Conference
"Generating Impact Through Practice-based Doctoral Research Designed for Educational Professionals"
5th Cambridge Student Voice Seminar: looking back, looking forward!
Monday 22 June
Under the leadership of Professor Alison Cook-Sather, the Jean Rudduck Visiting Scholar, Homerton College, for a 5th successive year the Faculty is hosting the Cambridge Student Voice Seminar Monday 22nd - 24th June.
Around 60 participants are attending from many countries, including Australia, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Holland, USA, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
Participants will take part in an interactive and collaborative programme of keynotes, presentations, workshops, ‘unconference’ sessions and networking on themes related to student voice in diverse contexts.
#camstuvoice2015
Cambridge gets REAL about overcoming obstacles to global education
Monday 22 June
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz noted that the 'REAL centre builds on the Faculty of Education�s strong expertise in research of the highest quality that aims to address real problems and influence policy on the ground'.
Read full article.
Live Launch of the REAL Centre - 16th June
Tuesday 16 June
The launch of the REAL Centre took place at 1430 on June 16th at the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK.
A video of the live stream will be made available later.
Further information will be on the REAL Centre pages: