Women’s Safety from Male Violence – A Societal Issue With Resonance Across Our Universities

As with many individuals and organisations, SGSSS wished to show our solidarity around the issue of women’s safety from gendered violence and, in particular, to highlight the specific connections to the places where we work and study. To this end, we have commissioned a blog from Professor Michele Burman to reflect on the most pressing priorities for our institutions. With a background in sociology, psychology, criminology and law, Michele Burman is a feminist criminologist, based at the University of Glasgow, with long-standing research interests in women and crime, and responses to gender-based violence.

Mhairi Mackenzie
Deputy Director SGSSS

Recent tragic events have forcefully reminded us once again of the threats posed to women’s safety from male violence, sexual harassment and street harassment. The death of Sarah Everard, abducted as she was walking home, has struck an angry chord with women of all ages and backgrounds, who have been recounting their own stories of harassment, victimisation and violence alongside their strategies of safe-keeping. What these stories tell us is that women’s fear is rational; it is based on our lived experiences and those of people close to us, and reflects our location in a gendered world.

For these reasons, it is vital to ensure that the safety of women and girls is kept high on the agenda in all of our social institutions. Not through knee jerk political posturing, or advising us to self-regulate our behaviour to stay safe. But through close attention to the voices of women and girls and the education of men and boys.

University can be a positive, empowering and enriching experience; a catalyst for intellectual growth and human development, and a place where lifetime friendships are made.  But for students who experience gender-based violence, it can be devastating, with a raft of negative emotional and educational outcomes and disruptions. In a university setting, these consequences are compounded by the unique conditions of campus life. Survivors may face challenges related to living in close proximity to their abusers, may attend the same classes or belong to the same student organisations.  Anonymity may prove impossible and academic performance reduced. Beyond the individual impacts, gender-based violence has damaging effects on the University and its wider campus community.

Universities are under obligation to ensure the safety of their students on campus, to investigate all allegations, and to prevent possible future incidents. Inadequate prevention and responses perpetuate the problem, putting other students at risk.  Safety in and around campus must be a priority for universities, which should be places of safety, support and inspiration.   A comprehensive approach is needed to effectively address gender-based violence, which includes developing strategies and policies that address the attitudes, norms, behaviours, and practices that condone it. Challenging gender-based violence in universities takes commitment and institutional courage, strong leadership and coalition-building between academics, professional services and, crucially, students. These partnerships are key for facilitating and supporting transformation in the complex and risk averse environments of higher education (Burman et al 2020).

There are growing efforts within Scottish universities, many of whom are working to challenge gender-based violence through policies and programmes on and around university campuses, and the introduction of specific initiatives to understand and address the problem within the university context.  But as part of this, it is important to address the full spectrum of gender-based violence, including rape, domestic abuse, stalking, and anti-LGBTQI harassment within this ambit. All of these are features of students’ lives, damaging their opportunities to benefit fully from the transformative effects of higher education. Work is also needed that focuses on staff misconduct to students and to other staff, and the institutional responses to it. Moreover, an intersectional approach to addressing gender-based violence on campuses is needed, in order to understand how sex, race, religion, disability and sexual orientation, among other characteristics, intersect to exacerbate risk of such violence, and how such violence manifests and is experienced by different groups in our diverse campus communities.

References

Burman, M, Dawson, K. McDougall, L., Morton, K. and Nokhbatolfoghahai, F.  (2020) ‘Building authentic partnerships for responding to gender‐based violence in universities’ in R. Lewis and S. Marine (eds.) Collaborating for change: Transforming cultures to end gender based violence in higher education Oxford: Oxford University Press

 

Hitting the Yellow Brick Road! Designing My Happy City: Playground

The government’s road map in controlling the global pandemic, promises easing the restrictions on outdoor activities in spring. I am particularly looking forward to re-bonding with nature without the shadow of currently-necessary restrictions looming over my head. A research project that I led last year before the pandemic, highlights the significance of nature in our happiness, and so this blog is to encourage you to squeeze some time out in the nature in your days whenever you can by recounting some of my findings. Designing My Happy City: Playground [1] was a hands-on workshop tailored for primary school children, providing 54 kids with crafting material to design their favourite playground in groups; and permitted a closer look at patterns of users’ experience in playground settings, that is vital in promoting its spatial quality. Designing My Happy City was generously funded by ESRC to collect the participants’ outputs by exploring the design of a playground, in the hope of enriching it and of expanding the range of children participation. In addition to inspiring further research on the children’s contribution to our understandings of happiness and its spatial narratives. Children used recreational architecture means to draw and model creative solutions for a happier city.

The drawings and models could be gauged as a reflective evidence for what children find imperative to a happy place and more than 40 percent of the workshop’s drawings include natural elements _ the sun, stars, trees, clouds and mountains, as well as water. The current literature landscape has identified the vital role of nature in children’s learning processes. [2] But it seems that children’s fascination with nature is not limited to its ability to stimulate learning; as we get to know the world we are living in, we start bonding with its familiar traits. The daily rise of sun and the appearance of stars at night, anchor us to the world and are entwined with our experience of life. We are also in awe of nature, it never ceases to make us wonder, as we keep “Rediscovering the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” [3] It is no surprise that tourist attraction maps often highlight best points of the city for sunrise or sunset watching and at times, stargazing hotspots. [4] All the natural elements in children’s drawings are indicators of their appetite for nature and therefore the need for intertwining urban and natural environments “As essential a part of the basic infrastructure of a settlement as electricity, water, sewage and paving.” [5]

Children also drew flowers, or fruits on the trees, like a cherry tree. Both empirical and theoretical studies have attributed children’s fascination to the interactive nature of such elements. A case of foundational approach to the study of “active investigation” was concluded by Sue Waite [6] in her article, Memories are made of this, in which Waite investigates outdoor learning benefits by means of 334 survey practitioners with children aged between 2 and 11. Waite argues that active investigation is a form of play that incorporates autonomy and perceptible contact that increases memorability. [7] Waite quotes one of her survey results that draws on “happy hours” of active investigation with plants and animals. [8]

“Caravan holidays in west Wales, small site with no onsite entertainment so I spent many happy hours catching frogs, playing ball games, picking apples, blackberries. I often went to the beach, rock pool rambles with my brother and parents. I loved looking at nature, freedom to wander around the local fields.” [9]

This was previously discussed by Nicholson in 1971, as the possibility of discovery, and the spatial variables that escalate its likelihood. [10] For instance, where deciduous trees are reportedly popular and more accessible for climbing and swinging, [11]  fruit trees are able to provide distinctive opportunities for children’s engagement with smell, taste, gravity, material and so on. Senses are awakened in nature largely, however the field components, can ignite even more sensations; “Children find flowers necessary for aesthetic (beautiful), atmospheric (nice-smelling) and restorative reasons (making people happy). Alongside aesthetics, being able to explore and interact in and around the flower garden was also important to the children.” [12]  Through this study’s drawings that included plants and animals, (more than 11 percent of drawings was dedicated to animals) an intriguing point is conceived, children are interested in spatial settings that allow and encourage inter-species emotive engagement. Clearly plants, fruit trees and bushes can draw birds, butterfly and bees, while providing routes for cats and dogs; and children are seeing themselves at the linchpin of this interaction. In a radical interpretation it is arguable that children are also implying no one’s happiness would be complete without the happiness of its companions, including other people or animals. 

It is no coincidence that nature is the most highlighted theme in the workshop results. As Richard Louv, the prised author of Vitamin N suggests; for a healthy, happy and fulfilling life, nature can make all the difference. [13] In weathering these challenging times; taking your Vitamin N regularly could be of great help. So, this spring make some time out in the nature, and ask others to do the same. If you are a designer or writer, let it be your muse; if you are in policy making, let us have more green spaces! Whatever field you are in, open the door to the nature and let us build the yellow bricked path together, one brick at a time.

I am currently leading Edinburgh CCC project, see more or join here: https://edinburghccc.eventbrite.com

Footnotes:

  1. The workshop was supported by a grant awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council, ESRC. I was awarded to lead “Designing My Happy City: Playground” workshop in the Festival of Social Science (FOSS) that was held from 2-9 November 2019. For more details, visit: https://esrc.ukri.org/public-engagement/festival-of-social-science/festival-events/ or #esrcfestival.
  2. Alison Clark, ‘Views from inside the Shed: Young Children’s Perspectives of the Outdoor Environment’, Education 3-13, 2007. Also see Harriet Dismore and Richard Bailey, ‘“If Only”: Outdoor and Adventurous Activities and Generalised Academic Development’, Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 2005.
  3. Richard Louv, Vitamin N; The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life (New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2016).
  4. See TripAdvisor’s reviews for sunrise/sunset watching in Edinburgh. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g186525-d190124-r161007770-Calton_Hill-Edinburgh_Scotland.html (Date accessed: 11/11/2020)
  5. Kay Carmichael, ‘Book Review: Growing Up in Cities Edited by Kevin Lynch. London: The MIT Press and UNESCO. 1977. Pp. 177. The Child in the City by Colin Ward. London: The Architectural Press Ltd. 1978. Pp.221. Parents and Children in the Inner City by Harriet’, Urban Studies, 1979.
  6. Sue Waite is Associate Professor (Reader) in Outdoor Learning in Plymouth Institute of Education at Plymouth University. Over the last 20 years, she has conducted and published research on how place, people and pedagogies interact to support positive social effect in play, learning, health and wellbeing through the great outdoors.
  7. Sue Waite, ‘“Memories Are Made of This”: Some Reflections on Outdoor Learning and Recall’, Education 3-13, 2007. See page 339.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Professor Nicholson in 1971 published an article about “The theory of loose parts” in Landscape Architecture No 62, under the title of “How NOT to cheat children”. His works mainly centres on how play in interactive environments _containing loose parts; can serve educational purposes. See more: Ingunn Fjørtoft and Jostein Sageie, ‘The Natural Environment as a Playground for Children. Landscape Description and Analyses of a Natural Playscape’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 2000. Also see: Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods (New York, USA: Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 2008).
  11. Ibid. See page 93-94.
  12. Matluba Khan, ‘Environment, Engagement and Education’ (The Uninversity of Edinburgh, 2017).
  13. Louv, Vitamin N; The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life. See page 3.

 

Planning, Papers and Protective Isolation: The life of a PhD student in 2020

One of the benefits (read: curses) of having to work from home for an extended period of time is that your breakfasts, lunchtimes, mid-morning and afternoon breaks, your post-lunch coffees, your inspiration/exasperation-driven “pauses for thought”, the odd boring meeting etc. can be punctuated with a spot of light-hearted television. (Note to supervisors: That paper is coming along perfectly – all good! No worries…!)

Of late, I’ve taken to rewatching an old favourite of mine: One Foot in the Grave – a 90’s BBC UK television programme about a rather cantankerous gent named Victor Meldrew who has suddenly found himself thrust into the retired life and having to deal with spending long periods of time staying at home, and the ensuing boredom and annoyances that befall him during his unoccupied life, which he bears with as much patience and grace as he can muster. Which is none.

As I was watching one episode the other day, I was struck by a humorously distorted dictum that Victor related to his wife’s friend who had just suffered a somewhat comical tragedy:

One thing you can be sure about in life: just when you think that things are never ever going to get better, they suddenly get worse!

As we now enter the last stretch of this seemingly never-ending and simultaneously frighteningly rapid year 2020 AD (year 1 AC*), and I – like many others, I’m sure – find myself looking back with perplexity over the last twelve months, I find that Meldrew’s words, spoken in jest, have a rather spooky resonance.

2020 tells a very unusual, confusing, sometimes tragic, other times amusing story for all of us. It’s been a year of endurance. A year of resilience. A year of mass quantities of toilet roll**. For myself and for my research, it’s been… well… a bit like when you try to make a healthy smoothie for lunch but you realise too late you forgot to put the top of the blender on. Only with masks.

In June this year, I was delighted to have been able to become involved in Lothian Lockdown: The Lothian Diary Project – an incredibly interesting and important interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Edinburgh seeking to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people living in Edinburgh and the Lothians through the medium of self-recorded video and audio diaries. Listening to the stories of so many courageous and unfailingly optimistic individuals has been one of the few bright spots of this dark period for me.

Inspired by them, I thought I would share with you some high/lowlights of my own personal pandemic story (top tip: when choosing a rental property in the future, remember to ask the important questions such as: “Is it gas central heating?”, “Do I need to buy any furniture?”, “How comfortable will I be locked up in here 24 hours a day for about 4 months?”) before telling you a little bit more about the project and how you can get involved.

From fieldwork to home-working

It’s pure coincidence that the area that I focus on in my research is also a popular tourist destination.

Before Covid-19 even had a name, in January 2020, I had recently returned from a three-week long factfinding trip to Perpignan, France, the site of my proposed six-month long ethnographic fieldwork. As a PhD student of linguistics, with a special interest in language policies and ideologies surrounding the minority indigenous languages of France, it was my plan to spend an extended period of time in the region known as Northern Catalonia, to study the policies, beliefs and practices surrounding the Catalan language. As the sociolinguistic situation of this region has received relatively less academic attention than other minority language contexts, and being keenly interested in minority language maintenance, activism and revitalisation, (and not unmotivated by the pleasant aestival Mediterranean climate…), I eagerly awaited the last few weeks in Februrary/first few weeks in March, when I hoped to be granted access to my desired fieldsites and I could begin my research.

Or so I thought.

On 13th March, I received an e-mail from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science, with the rather ominous heading “CANCELLATION OF INTERNATIONAL FIELD TRIPS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENT PLACEMENTS”, officially confirming my and my supervisors’ fears over the previous few weeks: my trip to France was not going to happen, and my PhD hung in the balance. There’s no denying that, after what felt like a year of scrambling around, planning and replanning and replanning again, and staving off a constant stream of impostor syndrome, when I was finally feeling that I was making progress, this was devastating news. And, after a lot of e-mails back and forward, and a few emergency meetings, it was decided that my PhD project as originally planned would be impossible to do without the essential fieldwork element. Alas, therefore, it was truly a case of going back to the drawing board.

*BEGIN PANIC MODE*

Well… usually, yes.

However, one thing the pandemic has taught me is that I have a surprising internal crisis management system. To my complete shock, when faced with the daunting prospect of almost completely redesigning my research from the ground up, I was able to make some very quick decisions:

  • I was going to stick to the same sociolinguistic context as much as possible.
  • I was going to do a social media study, which meant I wouldn’t have to wait around to see if fieldwork became possible later.
  • I was going to do an article-based PhD, instead of the traditional thesis.
  • I was going to keep an open mind, browse the web (as I was already doing excessively and mindlessly anyway) and let myself be guided to the important issues.

And, amazingly, I found that between March and May, I was able to devise an (EXTREMELY rough) action plan for my PhD, with some possible ideas for 3-4 papers that I could write based on my observations of Northern Catalan social media, and an indicative timeline. I began to feel that quiet but visible sense of excitement again. I felt creative, I had ideas. I had a sense of direction, and hope that I could bring everything together. So, after presenting my revised project to the panel of my second year review, and receiving the green light, I walked into the unknown with an unexpected skip in my step.

Locked down or locked in?: The curse of the studio flat

I’m a bit of an introvert at the best of times. There’s something about the idea of having to interact with potentially large numbers of people every day that fills me with dread and apprehension.***

NB: This is not my cat. If it had been, lockdown would have been much more fun. For me, anyway: the cat would have probably tried to run away. 

NB: This is not my cat. If it had been, lockdown would have been much more fun. For me, anyway: the cat would have probably tried to run away.

However, the idea of never meeting anyone for an indefinite period of time, not even friends and family, and having only myself for company (*shudders*) , is not much better. I’m sure you’ll agree, the life of a PhD student is often a solitary one. You’ve got your own project to focus on, you’re in charge of your own schedule and you spend many hours beavering away on your own – even when you’re around other people.

Sometimes those mid-morning coffee meets with colleagues are what get you through the rest of the day!

And, suddenly, with the beginning of the lockdown, I didn’t even have that…

I was stuck in my 20m2 studio flat, during the summer, with a window that only opened 30 degrees, no air-conditioning, intermittent Wi-Fi and a working desk that was only about 70cm away from my bed, and a metre away from the kitchen****. Safe to say: I felt incredibly trapped. And with the stress of resurrecting my fallen PhD before me – as yet with no assurance of an extension or how long it would be – , and the work-life divide effectively eliminated… well, it was a worrying time.

And that’s without even adding in the worry about my family of predominantly healthcare workers and vulnerable people an hour away in Motherwell. (I hope my deposit for that flat is returned before they find the depressions in the floor from my incessant pacing up and down…)

But, as before, I tried to remain resilient. After taking some time off to clear my head, I tried to be patient with myself, and remind myself that the world is currently in a global crisis: this period is not, as a few insensitive tweeps seemed to think, a gift from the god of productivity. I got up whenever I felt rested enough, worked as much as I could every day, unapologetically taking regular breaks, and called my friends and family when I needed to hear the voice of another human being. I was also given tremendous support by my supervisors, colleagues and staff at SGSSS.

You know you’re in Scotland when the first aisle to clear is the biscuit aisle

It’s a good job I’m not big on fish fingers…

It wasn’t easy. I was depressed at times. I was bored. I felt my research was going nowhere. I felt isolated. I was scared of going out, even to the shops, even at times to meet the delivery driver who brought food. Yet I missed people. I missed the things I took for granted. Like taking the bus or having a coffee in Costa or going to a restaurant. At one point when I summoned enough courage to go to Lidl to buy some food, the scene there of empty shelves and falling fixtures almost brought me to tears. It was like something from The Walking Dead (another TV programme I may have watched…)

When life gives you lemons, go and buy oranges

Still, like many of the participants who have taken part in the Lothian Diary Project have told us, there were some undeniable bright spots. During the lockdown, I gave myself the permission to begin reading for pleasure again for the first time in a long time, and found that I had really missed it. I easily met my Goodreads reading challenge by about August this year, and even started up my own virtual book club: we’re now onto our fifth book*****. Later, on the few occasions where I did venture out, I – like many others – had the chance to really see Edinburgh, almost for the first time. I went for walks down to The Shore area in Leith with one of my closest friends, and staggered pantingly up the hills in Holyrood park. I even went on a day trip to Cramond Island, and managed to get off again without getting stuck there – which with my sense of direction and timekeeping, was a very real concern.

And, crucially, I feel that I made some progress in my research – qualitatively if not quantitatively. While I may not have been exceedingly productive, I managed to think and read more than I had done for months, and my research journal, started in May 2020, now stands at almost 22,000 words. And as we approach the end of the year, and I’ve now moved to a larger flat (with more than one room!) that I share with said friend above, and been granted a much-needed and generous extension to my research funding******, there are many reasons to be thankful and optimistic.

Don’t take that mask off just yet…

Unfortunately, however, the truth is that we’re still not out of this. I may have got down to two coffees and only four chocolate digestives a day, and have finally settled on my favourite Teams virtual background, but the pandemic – and, indeed, the lockdown – is still upon us. 

There is still much to grieve: hundreds dying every day, families being kept – if not torn – apart, and many elderly and vulnerable people who may not see their loved ones over the festive season. Many, too, bear the scars of the first lockdown, and suffer – sometimes in silence – in their own personal ways.

 

Lothian Lockdown: The Lothian Diary Project’s Homepage

That’s why I have truly loved being part of the Lothian Diary Project. While its aims are simple, and its capacity to have immediate, direct impact may seem small, the project gives people in our community a rare opportunity to let their voices be heard. It allows them the space to tell their own personal story of what living through this pandemic has been like, in their own way and in their own time. And, importantly, it gives them the opportunity to help others too.

With their consent, their audio diaries will be passed onto Museum and Galleries Edinburgh in order to construct an oral history archive – meaning that future generations can know what it was like for ordinary people to live during this period. In addition, at the conclusion of the project, we hope to submit a report to the Scottish Parliament’s Covid-19 committee, in order to provide rich insight into the effects of the pandemic. Moreover, in our second phase of recruitment, we have established collaborative partnerships with charities in order to uncover the hidden stories of more vulnerable and marginalised members of our community, and make sure that policymakers and others hear their voices too.

Check out some of our diaries at: lothianlockdown.org/lockdown-diaries

We welcome video and audio diaries from anyone residing in Edinburgh and the Lothians, regardless of nationality or language background, and we would be delighted to hear from you. Tell us about how the pandemic impacted upon your studies, how you coped during lockdown, new places you visited, new skills you learned… tell us what this strange period in our collective history has meant for you.

To find out more, or to get involved, visit our website at https://lothianlockdown.org/ or e-mail us at lothiandiaries@gmail.com.

 

A final thought

2020 has been disastrous for so many reasons, and beyond the tragedies it has brought to those who have had the misfortune of contracting or even succumbing to the virus itself, it has laid waste to the plans of a great many more.

Fieldwork or not, none of us as researchers have been spared, and mitigation has become the new order of the day. But the two positive things I hope that we can all take away from all of this is a greater clarity about what really matters to us in life, when push comes to shove, and the certainty that we are all a lot stronger and more resourceful than we used to give ourselves credit for. If we can get through this, we can get through anything.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Family Guy is just starting…

_____________________________________

*Anno Covidi

** This blog post is sponsored by Cushelle 4 ply. 

*** Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the act of meeting people – it’s the idea that scares me.

**** And the many snacks therein, staring at me all day every day, and me with nowhere to run.

***** Misery by Stephen King. We’re not quite ready for The Stand…

****** For which I will never be able to thank the SGSSS enough.

It’s not, but it wouldn’t have surprised you, right?

Photo credits: First photo by Sudmedimmo on pixabay.com; Second photo by Manja Vitolic on unsplash.com. Other photos and screenshots by the author.

Turnitin Does Not Detect Plagiarism

Using Turnitin as a Positive Tool for Formative Assessment

Ref: https://acdev.orgdev.coventry.domains/application/files/2715/6293/3552/J282-19_The-Coventry-Way-eBook_V7.pdf [accessed 26.10.20]

Aims and rationale:

The use of Turnitin as a tool within Higher Education has been growing for many years. Alongside this, however, a culture of fear has been growing among students that they will somehow be caught out by the software and vilified as a cheat. This case study aims to challenge that culture and offer some insight into how Turnitin can be used as a positive tool for both staff and students. Through proper understanding of Turnitin and its intended use, staff and students can begin to use Turnitin to self-assess, to make academic improvements, and to send and receive appropriate formative feedback throughout modules and courses.

Implementation:

Turnitin for staff is a tool that we often only use to mark electronically. It is the GradeMark software that allows us to do just that, and not Turnitin itself. There is, as with most software, a period of training and practice that is required for us to fully understand the enormous capabilities of Turnitin and just how positive a tool it can become when embedded as part of our formative assessment processes. As there is some training needed, there is a requirement for us to set aside time to practice. However, that training need be no more than a few hours or a couple of working lunches; it is the practise that counts most. The implementation of Turnitin only requires a little extra planning and nothing more. No additional materials are required, and logistically, Turnitin will save time in the long run, improving tutorials and supervisions as well as the academic work that is submitted as part of the summative assessments. Turnitin in the right hands is a win-win for staff and students.

It is essential to remember a few golden rules when working with Turnitin within any module. For example, ignore the numerical score: this is the percentage shown at the top of the report (see Image.1 below). Turnitin isn’t, and never has been a tool for detecting plagiarism.

 

Image.1: Percentage of matched text found by Turnitin

‘The rapid growth in the market for such software is premised on the misconception that it identifies plagiarism’ (Mphahlele and McKenna 2019: 2).

Turnitin simply matches text found in an assignment to text found electronically. It does not recognise in-text citations or direct quotation marks.

When you start to look into the history of Turnitin, you realise that it does not detect plagiarism and this is something that is noted throughout the resources on the Turnitin webpage itself. Turnitin is a text-matching software, and the score tells us what percentage of the writing has been matched to other sources online/electronically. This is very important to understand.

‘The Turnitin originality report shows the paper’s text highlighted with any text that matches sources found in the Turnitin databases containing vast amounts of web content, previously submitted papers, and subscription-based journals and publications’(turnitin.com/resources2019)

Understanding that Turnitin does not detect plagiarism and that a student can have a very high score but equally has referenced everything correctly (very often found in research modules) leads us towards being able to integrate Turnitin into the inner workings of our modules. We get to a place where it can become a positive tool for students and staff.

‘So does Turnitin detect plagiarism? No — Turnitin offers a tool that helps educators (and their students) make informed evaluations of student work rapidly and move on to the important task of discerning what their students need in the way of instruction, correction or judicial action,’ (turnitin.com/resources 2019)

Tutorials/Supervision:

1. Create your Turnitin links before the start of your module and hide them from students’ view.

2. Create another two draft Turnitin links for say, Coursework 1 and Coursework 2, which are visible to your students before the start of your module.

3. Before any supervision or tutorials (at CU Scarborough this is usually week 3 and week 6 of a module) ensure that your student has submitted their draft work and that you have taken a few minutes to scan the work. You may want to add some comments in-text, or at the top of the page.

4. Your tutorial should then focus on how the student might use your formative feedback to make improvements. This is where you save time – you should be able to talk with a specific focus rather than sit reading a student’s draft during the tutorial. Essentially your student receives double the amount of formative feedback (written and verbal).

‘…our results demonstrated that using Turnitin as a formative writing tool, allows students to prepare an assignment in an academically acceptable way… with less plagiarism’ (Halgamuge 2017: 895).

Feedback from students:

‘It is so much easier to see where I miss citations when Turnitin highlights them.’

‘I wish every tutor gave us formative feedback through Turnitin.’

Reading the Turnitin Report – before final submission:

1. Your students should have been taught how to read their report (this may be done in addition to class time or during a module induction).

2. The score (percentage shown at the top of the report) is arbitrary and should be ignored when using the report to improve academic writing and referencing.

3. Diligently check each of the matched text sources that are highlighted by Turnitin. This is something that students should be taught to do as part of their self-assessment and as part of the editing process for their summative assessments. Staff may consider a spot-check approach to this task by randomly selecting the sources, either as part of the formative or summative assessment.

4. Turnitin will highlight any matched text, and so students should be able to identify where quotation marks are expected to be and where citations should be included.

Paraphrasing – an unexpected improvement:Poor paraphrasing is often where students fall, and where, in some institutions, students race through the academic integrity disciplinary procedures. At CU Scarborough, our graduates go on to other institutions for their postgraduate study and so it is imperative that we are confident in their ability to use Turnitin effectively.

Poor paraphrasing is usually an issue in the first year of undergraduate study, primarily down to schools accepting loosely paraphrased work without any citations needed. It can be tricky for students to break the habits they have been forming over the past 10-12 years in other areas of education, and so Turnitin can become irreplaceable.

Through the active and regular use of Turnitin, students can learn to improve their paraphrasing skills by following these simple steps, followed by submission through the draft Turnitin link on their module:

• Read the section of the textbook/article and make notes.

• Close the book or cover the article and paraphrase the notes that were taken.

• Take a break – go for a walk – make a coffee – change the music…

• Now paraphrase the first paraphrase

• Now paraphrase your paraphrase

Students should be submitting a paraphrase that was written three times. Their Turnitin report will highlight any sentences or sections that are matched against online electronic sources, and they can continue to work on the paragraph until they have expertly written a paraphrased paragraph. It is this paragraph that the students should be citing.

Advantage = citations are accurate, and the paragraph is not plagiarised (or a direct quotation)

Disadvantage = students must break the habit of relying on the original text and therefore, must begin to understand what they have read

Clearly, as academic staff, we can see the advantages of following the advice above; in fact, we may wish all of our students would undertake this use of Turnitin as they are drafting work. We are reliant on students seeing the benefit of this process, and so it is often down to how enthusiastic the staff are and just how embedded Turnitin is within our modules.

Student feedback:

‘I wish we had been taught how to paraphrase this way from the start [of the course].’

‘It seems so easy when you break it all down to [the] steps [listed above].’

Positive outcomes: Benefits to using Turnitin throughout a Module:

1. Improved academic writing grades after students use Turnitin to draft summative assessments.

2. Improved paraphrasing.

3. Better use of time during tutorials, with more open discussion and improved focus.

4. Opportunity for tutors to give targeted formative feedback electronically.

5. Students’ ability to self-assess before submission and target weaker areas such as paraphrasing and citation.

6. Reduced marking time for staff, as students will have effectively used their Turnitin report.

Plagiarism is a topic that is discussed repeatedly throughout modules and courses, across each phase and level and throughout a student’s academic career. Detecting plagiarism is the responsibility of a tutor and a keen eye can detect plagiarism in its most complicated form without the help of any type of software. It is unfortunate that Turnitin has become synonymous with plagiarism detection because as we know, Turnitin only matches text – it does not recognise quotation marks or accurate citations.

If academic staff can be trained in the proper use of Turnitin they can then share that knowledge with their students early on in the students’ academic journey, enabling them to assess their own strengths and weaknesses, identify areas of good academic writing, and areas that they need to work on before submission. Students can prepare for tutorials effectively and therefore conversations can be targeted and developed.

‘…about half of the participating students who had used (Turnitin) reported that this software helped them improve their referencing skills, and quite a few of them talked about improved writing skills in general. What is interesting about this study was the adoption of (Turnitin) not only as a plagiarism-detection tool but as a teaching tool to help students avoid plagiarism. By sharing originality reports with students and discussing with them ways to avoid plagiarism, students were able to improve their writing in general and referencing skills in particular.’ (Ayon 2017: 2)

With the correct knowledge and training Turnitin can be a positive tool for improved academic success and for staff, Turnitin can improve opportunities for formative assessment and change attitudes towards this outstanding piece of software.

https://www.turnitin.com/

References:

Ayon, N.S. (2017) ‘Students’ and Instructors’ Perceptions of Turnitin: A Plagiarism Deterrent?’. Creative Education 8(13), 2091 -2108

Halgamuge, M.N. (2017) ‘The use and analysis of anti‐plagiarism software: Turnitin tool for formative assessment and feedback’. Computer Applications in Engineering Education 25(6), 895-909

Mphahlele, A. and McKenna, S. (2019) ‘The use of Turnitin in the Higher Education sector: Decoding the myth’. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 1-11. DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2019.1573971

Turnitin.com (2019) Higher Education [online] available from <https://www.turnitin.com/divisions/higher-education>%5B1 May 2019]

Turnitin.com (2019) Resources [online] available from <https://www.turnitin.com/resources&gt; [1 May 2019]

Additional resources

Bruton, S. and Childers, D. (2016) ‘The Ethics and Politics of Policing Plagiarism: A Qualitative Study of Faculty Views on Student Plagiarism And Turnitin®’. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 41(2), 316-330

Jameson, S. (2016) ‘Leeds Beckett University’s Holistic, Institutional Approach to Academic Integrity’. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 4(2), 71-72

Khoza, S.B. (2015) ‘Can Turnitin Come to the Rescue: From Teachers’ Reflections?’, South African Journal of Education 35(4)

Ransome, J. and Newton, P.M. (2018) ‘Are we Educating Educators about Academic Integrity? A Study of UK Higher Education Textbooks’. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 43(1), 126-13

About the author:

Chelle Oldham is a tutor in Early Years, ITE, Education and Childhood Studies. Currently supporting supervision for number of Higher Education Institutions whilst completing a PhD. Before this, she was Head of Department for Teacher Education at Cumbria University. She spent five years at Leeds Met (now Leeds Beckett) University where she was Course Director, Teacher Fellow and one of the first Academic Integrity Officers trained to support faculties across the institution with cases of plagiarism and implementing the university regulatory process. It was whilst in this post that Chelle began to run professional development activities for staff in how, Turnitin could be promoted to students as a positive tool for improved academic success.

Key words: Turnitin, referencing, GradeMark, academic integrity, academic ethics, plagiarism

279 Days & Counting; Im 10yrs old and these are my words

We are not going to lose

We fight you on the streets

We fight you everywhere we go

We have our masks, we have our bleach

We are not afraid of you, unseen enemy

You’re not the only one who can hide

You can hide in plain sight

We can hide in our homes

We have our traitors who party at night

Who have a broken shield

Traitors to the shielding

Murderers to the people you pass on the street

You will be dead

We will be the living!

Disrupting hierarchies in school-based reading: a conference paper

Presentation to the Educational Inequalities Conference, Erasmus MaCE, University of Cumbria, 4&5 June, 2020

Introduction

My name is Jess Anderson and I am doing a Collaborative ESRC-funded PhD with Renfrewshire Council, in Scotland. I’m based in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde. I’ve worked in education, particularly literacy education, for the last 25 years, as a Primary teacher, teacher-educator and researcher. And all of it led me to doing this PhD, which explores the experience of children who are placed in what is commonly referred to as “the bottom reading group” in Primary school. All names I use here for children and groups are not their real names, but pseudonyms chosen by the children.

The Study

The research took place in three Scottish Primary classes, across two schools. The children were between six and nine-years old. Both schools have a high number of children who live in SIMD 1 and 2, on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. The index goes from 1 to 9, with SIMD 1 being the most socioeconomically deprived. Most were of White-Scottish heritage, and a small number were of Polish, Pakistani, and Nigerian heritage.

This is a study that foregrounds children’s voices, all be it mediated through the researcher’s lens. I am interested in how they experience reading and learning in hierarchical reading groups The study is ethnographic, which means I hung out in the classrooms over a sustained period of time, listening, observing, interacting, keeping field notes, doing activities and conducting audio-taped conversations with children.

The researcher questions posed in the study included:

· Does ‘ability’ grouping for reading affect children’s identities, as human beings, learners and readers, and if so, in what ways?

– How do structural inequalities, particularly around class and race, intersect with the practice of ‘ability-grouping’ for reading development?

Another question that formulated in the course of the research, on noticing different ways that reading hierarchies formed and were maintained through organisation, through pedagogy, through the reading resources that were available, and through the children’s perpetuation of hierarchies, and the question I think holds most radical potential for challenging educational inequality is:

– How might literacy pedagogy change if it is driven by a commitment to disrupting hierarchies that limit some children’s literacy experiences and futures?

And this is the one I would ask you to keep in mind when you listen to this presentation, particularly if you are a teacher or other kind of literacy practitioner or theorist, what does it or might it mean for you if literacy pedagogy is driven by a commitment to disrupting hierarchies that limit some children’s literacy experiences and futures? And it would be great have that discussion on Paddle.

Personal and Political Origins of Study

We know, through extensive research into ability-grouping, from the work of people like Diane Reay and Becky Francis, that ability-grouping reinforces educational inequalities around class and race. And yet, there has been virtually no research over the past 20 years that specifically examines ability-grouping in the context of reading in Primary schools. And I think there are historical reasons for that.

With the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy in England, in 1998, and to an extent similar developments in Scotland, listening to children read in groups (called guided reading groups) became the norm. From my experience as a teacher, it was and is a method that aims to do valuable work in terms of developing children’s response and comprehension through group discussion. And a lot of the rich research into reading over this period, like that of Hobsbaum, Reedy and Gamble (2010), has been focussed on exactly that.

Yet, it seems to me, that this research and the practice of guided reading fails to engage with an elephant in the room…. and that is that guided reading is a form of ability grouping that separates children based on their reading material, and as such it may suffer from all the limitations we know ability-grouping has in challenging social inequity. But reading instruction does pose specific challenges to mixed-attainment learning. We know from the work of Marie Clay, among others, that a key support in learning to read is to read books at, what Clay calls, the level of ‘easy difficulty’. If each child is reading books at the optimum level for them, then there will be others in the class reading at the same level and this easily translates into hierarchical reading groups.

Although as a teacher I was aware of the tension between guided reading and my commitment to mixed-attainment learning I couldn’t see a way of teaching reading that didn’t rely on grouping by levels of reading fluency. And it was years later, working on a research project led by Professor Sue Ellis at Strathclyde, that I heard of a way of doing group reading that allowed children to come together in mixed-attainment reading groups.

The method is simple, and in its essence it is this: children choose or are given a reading book that they can read at a level of easy difficulty. The teacher then randomly invites children who are reading different books to come together in a mixed-attainment group. The instruction takes the form of discussing strategies that help decipher words and make sense of what you read. Everyone in the group gets to contribute and to learn from each other. Then the children read aloud to themselves while the teacher moves round, listening to and coaching each child. Then in a plenary, the teacher and children share instances, for example of when they were stuck and how they worked out it out.

Now, it’s not possible in this model to discuss layers of comprehension and response, because they’re reading different books, so it is a practice that needs to work in conjunction, I would say, with really good quality whole class shared reading, response and discussion.

Hearing about this method made me think a lot about children who, as a teacher, I’d placed in ‘the bottom reading group’ and how little I’d known of how they experienced that. And it was from here the idea for the study developed.

The Pandemic Pause

So after seven months of exploring experiences of ability-grouped reading, the teachers and I had recently moved on to explore mixed-attainment reading and other ways to disrupt reading hierarchies that we had noticed, when the schools closed because of the pandemic. And it’s not clear at this point if it’s going to be possible to complete this part of the fieldwork.

I moved on-line with the research, recording stories to share with the children and keeping in touch with the teachers. But I know that not all children will be able to access the stories because of lack of devices and connection. And this is against a wider background of distress that some parents feel they lack the educational resources to support their children as they desperately want to do. And this is coming through from what the teachers are telling me.

Two Stories: part one

But coming back to the project and what has been learned so far, there are many stories that I could choose to tell of the children’s experience of ability-grouped reading. I chose two, juxtaposed for the complexities they convey of ability-grouped reading from the children’s perspective.

Before the study, many people had spoken to me of the negative effect on their self-belief and life trajectories of been seen as a poor reader in hierarchical reading groups, and I expected to hear this, loud and clear, from the children in the study. But most children that I got to know in the lowest attaining reading groups didn’t express dissatisfaction about their position or a sense of stigmatisation. Although some expressed a lack of confidence in reading, many talked of their positive trajectory in learning to read. One such story is Millie’s, that I think suggests a more agentic experience than those recalled from the hindsight of adulthood in studies like Vicky Duckworth’s (2014) study of adult basic skills learners.

I will share a short extract from a vignette that I think captures her agency, her confidence but also I think a fragility in her self-view as a reader, without these things cancelling each other out.

The vignette

Millie is 7 years old and in the lowest-attaining reading group. She remembers the first word she learnt to read, she tells me. The word was the and she learnt it between the ages of four and five. She says,

When I was in P1 that was ma first word because I was really close to finishing it. And then I was a wee bit older, in P1, and then I was, em, I tried the again and I got it (her voice becomes stronger, these words punched out).

When I ask her how she feels about her group she whispers “good”. Her group, she says, is the smallest group and she likes this. If she could be in any group she would choose the group she’s in. It gives her practice with easier books and through this she will be able to read harder books next year. Yet, I also notice that these reasons are expressed with a stillness in her body and a quietness of voice, often whispered, that could still suggest a fragility in her self-perception as a reader in class. In contrast, when she talks of other things, like her family life, her voice projects, she elaborates and her body is animated.

Reading is not the bee all and end all of Millie’s rich life. In my conversation with her and her friend Ellie, I can hear how reading fits into the matrix of her life as a daughter, a sister, a reader and a future adult self. Reading is neither stressful, absent or singularly defining in the way she talks about her life. She has a few books at home, some got from trips to McDonalds, the fast-food restaurant, and she reads them, she tells me, mainly by herself. If she is not reading it is because there are other things that she wants to do, things she sees others do in her family. When her sisters come over at the weekend she would rather play with them than read a book. I ask whether she thinks she will read a lot when she is an adult and her response again illustrates the comfortable non-dominant place that reading occupies in her life. She says,

Em, maybe not because when you’re older … you would have something else that you really like. And like you might want to go out and all that and you like to go places … When you’re older you can, you’ll have a car… I don’t think I want to drive when… I’m really bigger so I want to when I’m a teenager because my sister did.

It is easy for literacy researchers, like myself, who bring to their research an almost religious belief in the emotionally, intellectually and economically transformative power of reading books, to perceive a deficit in Millie’s story that is not there, to focus on what I think she might be missing out on rather than what she actually says. Millie talks of a rich life, full of people, activities and things she values and enjoys. She gives convincing agentic reasons for being happy in her reading group. Learning to read fits in with her rich life but does not dominate. Yet, her quietness and stillness of body when she speaks of reading in school suggest to me that there may be more tension in her relationship with reading and how she is positioned than her words might convey. To understand more of how she is positioned I think we need to hear from those who are in what is commonly referred to as the ‘top reading group’. And this brings me to my second story.

Two Stories: part two

Kayla, Claudia and Alexa are friends. They are 8 years old and in the ‘top’ reading group. Speaking to them I see the fault lines that maroon readers in ability-groups that wasn’t so evident in Millie’s words. In the extract that I’ll read out the three friends talk about their position in Purple Group, the highest-attaining reading group and how they see those in Yellow Group, the lowest attaining group in their class.

Kayla says “So the Yellow Group are like very nice and kind and thoughtful boys and girls but like…we did the books they’re on in P1 and P2. In P3 we started to move onto like chapter books …”

Alexa chips in, “Yeh, big ones, half as thick as that” ,pointing to a novel sitting in front of us.

Kayla, with the sound of a smile in her words, as the other two quietly giggle, says, “So like our group is like the more confident people…we feel like sometimes …the children in Yellow are like, aww, sometimes they look a bit sad and we feel a bit bad for that.”

I ask why they feel sad.

And Kayla says “Cos like we are in the other group and I think they really want to get to our level.”

Claudia says “They just, any time they do read they like, they don’t show their confidence. It’s like they’re shy.”

I ask them to imagine how children in the different reading groups might be when they are adults.

Claudia says “So I think they would be like more like, they would be better but like they would still need quite a lot of, like not help, but like sometimes they would still need help.”

And Alexa says “because not all adults are that smart enough to know everything.”

I think here we can see more how children in the lowest-attaining groups are fixed in place by how others position them, a position that at this point in their lives they may resist. And it also points up how personal characteristics, unrelated to reading, get attached to children in different groups, characteristics like maturity and immaturity, shyness and confidence, and in other conversations there were frequent connections made between intelligence and being a good reader.

I think the extract also points to the long tail this positioning may have, the idea that children in the bottom reading group will become unconfident adult readers. And what concerns me aboutthe psychological coupling of children in the lower attaining reading groups with qualities like immaturity and shyness is how strongly it’s echoed in the words of adults who have been positioned as poor writer and readers at school, again like the participants in Duckworth’s study.So this stigmatisation in the early encounters with literacy for children in the bottom reading group may play out for a very long time.

What might literacy pedagogy look like if driven by a commitment to disrupt hierarchies?

So to come back to my original question of how literacy pedagogy might change if it is driven by a commitment to disrupt the hierarchies that limit some children’s literacy experiences and futures, and how radical this could be, I would love to hear your thoughts and stories. Does it chime with action you are already engaged in? Can you envisage making any changes after hearing some of the children’s perspectives in this study?

For my part, I have talked of one of them here, that of mixed-attainment reading. I think the biggest thing is finding a way that works to teach reading in non-hierarchical groups, that allows children to develop as readers at their own pace, with books that match their fluency, that allow children to learn from each other regardless of where they are on the reading journey, that don’t fix them in place as ‘unconfident readers’. And I think this could hold radical promise in challenging educational inequities.

jess.anderson@strath.ac.uk.

The Blogging Learning Curve

Hey, if you are reaching this first sentence you must want to learn more about blogging; or you’ve read my writing before and I just spark something you enjoy. It occurred to me this week, people may actually read my material because they absolutely hate the things I write about and/or the way that I write about those things.

Things I learned this month, (1) use a title that tells the readership what your blog is about. It may help to avoid hours of anguish. I often forget to remain in the present rather than being taken back to high school memories I would rather forget existed. (2) People will comment. The good, the bad and the down-right ugly. It can be difficult to send the inner voice out into this very public arena, only to have negative comments added in a relatively short space of time. Prepare oneself mentally and emotionally. A like is a like, and a red heart is love, so I am trying hard to ignore my own insecurities around an anonymous, minority who like to play bash-the-author.

It genuinely never occurred to me that anyone would read an article or blog because they didn’t like it/me. In my evidently rose tinted psyche, my readership is filled with like-minded individuals who click the like/love buttons and write comments that sound very much like “I agree wholeheartedly” and read “I love reading your blog”. I feel a little naive to the blogging world if I’m honest. I mean, back in the day, I wrote prolifically on MySpace about pink planets and metaphorically living like an alien on planet earth; very dramatic I hear you utter. I know. For whatever reason my blogging caught people’s attention and resonated with large sections of society. So why am I failing so significantly as I write about my research topics? That was a rhetorical question by the way.

Still with me? Then I’ll let you hear about my rather steep learning curve some more. This week I learned that (3) there are two (at least) types of blog; the factual, analytical, serious blog and the inflammatory, opinion filled, shock-factor blog. Apparently, never should the two meet. I did not know this. Blogging now has categories of blogging. Yep, I was a little confused too. I had thought that all blogging was opinion (of the author/s) and that any facts or statistics found within would need verification. Grammarly has a light and fluffy article to assist newbie bloggers – everything from how to choose an interesting topic to how to make an impact with your opening paragraph (Hey there is probably weak in the world of Grammarly. OOoops). I didn’t find Grammarly when I started to look into the best way to write a blog, I came across 201digital who told me “The problem with opinions is that sometimes, they can be rude, exclude certain groups, be offensive or just mildly annoying (think UK pro-toll Katie Hopkins)” Eeek!! I really shouldn’t have looked into the technicalities of good blogging on a day when I had deleted almost everything I’d written up to that point; to throw Katie Hopkins into the mix….my blogging days were numbered. I learned (4) don’t post everything on the day that you write it because you may feel differently another day, and editing may help improve your blog, as well as keep the negative comments to a minimum.

I’ve yet to work out if my blogging leans towards the factual and informative style or if I am brave enough to lean towards opinion and debate style of blogging. I do think I am well and truly on the fence with it all. I have to say that one lesson I have securely learned (5) opinion can generate the inflammatory and so I must be ready for the response to whatever it is I may have written that day. I do not feel anything I write is rude (201digital) but I know the questions I ask and the way that I ask them seem to bring up the heckles on my reader’s neck. My questions have never been simple, straight forward or surface level. Like ever. In high school I learned really fast to quietly observe and use the power of deduction to work out the answers. Now I live and work in a purely academic world and so questioning is a given. In that world almost any question you ask is allowed because we are teaching and researching. However, out there, in the real world where society is not predicated on asking philosophical questions – I stand out, lets leave it at that. I’ve learned (6) take notice of the online environment you are posting and sharing your blog because the same question can be framed in a way that suits the group you are part of, or the social media you are engaging with. Academically worded questions, in the groups I am part of, simply generated mistrust and suspicion. I really could have worded them differently. Live and learn!

(7) Do not generalize or state opinion as fact which seems quite obvious when I write it here, but for me this is reliant on not posting the same day as writing. Its clearly a bad habit of mine, and actually something that can really help me when it comes to writing up my thesis. It is relatively easy to remove a couple of words to slightly alter the sentence. For example, “the home education community do not feel they are treated fairly by inexperienced school authorities which leads to suspicion and mistrust” – wait! keep reading, don’t comment yet…this sentence sounds like the author is speaking on behalf of the home education community, or at least that the author assumes (i) that they want to become aligned with state schooling and, (ii) everyone who home educates mistrusts authority. The simple editing of that sentence can reduce the inflammatory reaction to it: “the home education community may not feel they are treated fairly by authorities which leads to poor working relationshipsA small, yet significant change in the choice of wording, and the heat has been removed from the sentence. It no longer reads as though the author is speaking on behalf of the entire home education community.

I have returned to the world of blogging because I can see the benefits to research and the research community. Government’s bring bloggers into policy and news agencies refer to bloggers almost daily to comment on headlines and current affairs. I do see the benefit of blogging. Adding my name and my research to the blogging world, now that hasn’t been such a great experience. Yet. I persevere because I have something to share and I believe that something is important for the world to hear. Education is my world (after my 4 kids obviously) and adding caveats all the way through a piece of writing in case I upset commentators really doesn’t come naturally.

I live and learn. I write and learn. I believe in our motto every experience is a learning experience.

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree: the blossoms during Covid-19

Parents were asked, ‘Does anyone who chose to use schools feel their children have blossomed whilst learning at home?’. Within less than 24hrs there were over 200 responses. Within 48hrs over 400 responses. The question asked parents to reflect upon the last 5 months and identify if anything had changed since lockdown forced education back into their hands. The sheer number of responses in such a short space of time was awe inspiring. The over whelming majority of responses had identified how much “happier” their children had been whilst learning at home. Although comments are still coming in, over 75% of the responses were the positive observations made by parents suggesting that educating at home had improved the wellbeing and mental health of their child(ren). Other polls created by home education groups have looked at the number of parents who have since chosen to home educate permanently (49.5% in the Scottish Home Education Forum survey ). However this question was composed to look specifically at the wellbeing and mental health of children since lockdown began. It is already known that children’s parents are best placed to observe and assess the wellbeing of their children. Parents are gatekeepers and safeguard the mental health of their children. Parents are strategically positioned to notice signs and symptoms, behavioural changes or red flags indicating all is not well; parents are the first line of defence for children.

Covid-19 has unsettled families around the world, however, this is an unprecedented opportunity for home education to shine. Of course there are critics who will say that thousands of children are now ‘behind’ and thousands of children have been ‘let down’ by parents struggling to educate from home . However, can a child actually be behind if we remove the levels, testing and curriculum measures that we use in our antiquated schooling system? Imagine a child walking through the most magical forest ever to have grown; trees as tall as the blue sky above, forest animals scurrying through the undergrowth and butterflies glistening as they dash from leaf to leaf. Can you picture the breeze lifting a million blossoms from their stem as they flower and share their springtime aroma? Feel it; see it; hear it; smell it; that freedom to blossom and fly. It is a safe bet that there is no adult with that child in the picture created within your minds-eye. No adult checking off boxes that sit next to generic statements like, ‘ I know which is left and which is right’ or ‘I Can identify Oak leaves’ and ‘Firm understanding of the life cycle’. Of course not, of course that adult does not feature in our perfectly created forest where our imaginary child is free to roam, dance, collect, touch, taste, smell and explore. That checklist does not objectively reveal all the new sensory or experiential learning that is taking place for our imagined child. Our child cannot be ‘behind’ in their learning if we do not have a checklist in the first place. There is just learning and experience at the pace and rate of each child. Learning that may well be scaffolded (supported) by older children, younger children, parents, teachers or others; remove the testing and a child’s natural abilities, inquisitive mind and desire to learn through exploration can be followed and progress observed.

Did you already start responding to that last paragraph with a ‘but…’? There will always be a counter-argument and a ‘but’. Considering how autonomous learning might look in practice does not mean we have to ignore proven theory. We know scaffolding helps, we know children’s cognitive development, social development and emotional development happens at different ages and stages for each of them. The aim here is not to challenge the well proven theories of development and learning, more to soften the pro-school versus pro-home education argument. Does it have to be so contrasting? There is an enormous difference between the pressure of being tested amongst 29 other children and a parent asking if a fact or concept can be recalled.

Parents responded to the original question with comments such as “Ive noticed huge gaps in their knowledge” and “I immediately noticed gaps so we went back to basics”. An entire book could be dedicated to reasons why children have gaps, a week off school with chicken pox, a hearing concern, boredom, too much teacher-talk, a music lesson during carpet-based teacher-input…to name just a few. Society (and Government) have come to believe everything can and should be learned in schools and that children should never be absent (in mind or body). This leaves some parents wondering what their role actually is beyond feeding, clothing and housing their offspring; “I didn’t realise how little they were learning at school…they are not teaching the life skills I thought that they were”.

Interestingly not many home educating families have a complete dislike of everything that is schooling. Many are teachers themselves , many have been trained to teach in the very schools they choose not to place their own children. What is far more interesting is that there are many teachers who love education, educating and learning but despise the system in which they have to teach. Our teachers are up and coming hero’s during this pandemic, they will be the next front line within days and weeks as each of the UK’s leaders make tentative moves to getting children back into the classrooms. Our teachers and our children are about to participate in the worlds biggest, scariest experiment of all; keeping Covid out of our classrooms.

There are valid reports with reliable data being generated almost daily, as researchers publish in response to this new world, with new opportunities for once in a lifetime access to the human responses towards Covid-19. The DELVE report ‘Balancing the risk of pupils returning to school ’ paints a bleak picture of the future of an entire generation if children should miss any further schooling. Professor Burgess who is the main researcher and author of this report has been quoted saying “we know how damaging it is for children to miss out on school…” and the report argues that the 3-4 months of schooling that children have already missed equates to around a 3% loss in earning potential for each child. However a report that uses education rather than schooling as the subject of the research, is yet to be found. Lets be clear, many reports are based upon a child’s schooling not on their overall education. There is a reason for this, leaving the general confusion between schooling and education aside, there are existing parameters and an existing, measurable framework if researchers use schooling as their subject. There are no such parameters or frameworks to analyse within home education, at least not yet. Simply put, schooling success and failure can be measured because the framework of success and failure is already set out in the Oftsed reports, GCSE data, A-Level data and SATs data. We already know that a child who leaves primary school without a level 4 in literacy and numeracy will go on to struggle to achieve 5 good GCSE’s . We already know that a child who leaves school without a C (4/5) in English and Maths will go on to earn less than the child leaving school with a B (6). There are measurable data sets that can be analysed in order to make justifiable predictions about each child’s future.

There are no such data sets in home education. Does that mean a child cannot learn effectively outside of a classroom? Of course not (listen for the cries of fellow home educators and their long-suffering representatives and group administrators). Parents responded to the question with exclamation marks and bold type, such was the passion behind each of the answers; “IMMEDIATE CHANGES FOR THE BETTER”and “She thrived, Im a teacher and Im considering leaving my job…. It is difficult not to see the upwards trend of parents seriously considering or taking the plunge into home educating full-time when responses read “My sons writing was nearly illegible but he is now working at his brothers level (2yrs older) because I link his work to his special interests. The school refused to do this.”

Home educators are slowly gathering pace and coming together in an organised fashion. Parents who once believed schools to be the only place a child could be educated, were thrown into that teaching role over night. Those same parents responded to my question with passion, eagerness and in some cases anger. Many parents responded to say “I noticed gaps in their learning” and even more responded to say that they had noticed an enormous change in their children’s behaviour, for the better. Children’s wellbeing and mental health has improved in dozens of cases. Over 75% of my 200+ parents expressed that their children’s mental health and wellbeing has improved since learning from home began (“…she’s less tearful and doesn’t wake up feeling sick and crying every morning” and “My 5yr old reception child thrived…it has made me really see the value in Home Schooling”).

By the time the question had been in the public domain for 24hrs, there were over 200 responses:

“ My 6yr old is a highly sensitive child and cried going to school. I see her running, playing and laughing now. That is just the tip of the iceberg.” “My son has flourished, he was disappearing before our eyes…it sounds strange but in a way lockdown was a blessing for us in regards to my lovely boy” “his anxiety has almost vanished and we are learning to love life again” “being able to learn at their own pace…has really helped them rebuild their confidence and redevelop a love of learning”

Not every response was a feather in the cap for home education. Some parents noticed that their children were missing school friends, the structure and some were concerned about missing learning on the run up to their exams:

“ Yes but annoyingly he wants to go back to school.” “Mine cant wait to go back. We will be going back to school as soon as they open the doors” “want to get them back into a bit of a routine worried they will be behind when they go back” “being an only child can be devastating at times like this”

Overall the great majority of parents expressed enthusiasm for the home education option and emphatically expressed their joy at the improvement in mental health of their children. There are consistent themes generated from parents responses including gaps in children’s education, increased mental and emotional wellbeing, a reduction in anxiety and anxious behaviour and an increase in overall happiness and relaxation. Some parents have looked into the legality of deregistering their children while others desperately ask “how do I go about this? What do I need to do?” It is clear from over 300 responses that parents are choosing to deregister children primarily because of a marked improvement in the wellbeing and mental health status of their children and young people.

Clare Haughey MSP was appointed minister for mental health in Scotland in June 2018, her role takes responsibility for child and adolescent mental health. As both the Scottish and UK government take steps towards bringing “all” children back into the classroom, one might ask Clare Haughey MSP, the question “if parents are observing such a marked improvement in their children’s mental health, can we not elevate home education to be a real alternative educational choice for families?”

13 & in Lockdown

The Teenager Living with Covid-19

Living in lockdown as a home-schooled 13yr old.

“Lockdown, a word that, just last year, had a very different meaning. Now, when people hear the word ‘lockdown’ they think of social distancing, they think of the vulnerable who are shielding, and they think of the global pandemic. For me, lockdown meant a change of mindset and added worries. Lockdown meant that I was limited in what I could do and who I could see. Lockdown meant that I had new considerations and needed to remember things that I barely thought about before.

Simple things like going to visit my grandparents or nipping to the shop to get snacks weren’t an option anymore, they were options I may not have taken up in the first place, but not having them felt like I was caged in. It was like being in a room after someone had locked the door; I might not have left the room when the door was open but when the door was locked, I felt trapped. I couldn’t see my dad either because, while we lived in Scotland, he lived in England. As he worked with people outside of his household, he was not allowed to see us because we were shielding. Lockdown brought worries and problems that I couldn’t fix. Both my mother and sister were in the vulnerable category, meaning that we had to be extra careful whenever we dared leave the house, we never left without multiple pairs of gloves and a mask. My two sisters and I would take turns in going to the shop with our live-in nanny, so we could get used to wearing masks and gloves whenever we went out.”

Much has been debated over the last 5 months regarding the mental health decline of the country and how the lockdown has caused a spike in domestic violence, neglect and poor mental health. Ministers may well attempt to ‘raise awareness of children talking about their mental health to others’ but are we really acting on these concerns and is just talking about mental health enough? For some children blogging, diary writing and tweeting has become the go to place for teenagers to express how they are feeling and what they are seeing. Who is taking notice of the words they speak…

“ Lockdown was easier for me than a lot of people; I had space. Space to avoid my family (if I so wanted), space to exercise and have fun without having to leave the property and space to relax. Also, I was not as affected by Lockdown as countless others were; others struggled through lockdown because they were forced to self-isolate alone and couldn’t socialise. I had my family with me, no matter how annoying they could get. Before lockdown, my mother and our nanny would drag me to ‘make new friends’ or when we went Ice-skating they would encourage me to speak to others; after lockdown started, I didn’t have to speak to anyone outside of my family or the safety of my friendship group. One thing that we never had to worry about was unemployment; thousands of people lost their jobs due to Lockdown but, because my mother was a lecturer at a university, she could work from home and do all her work from her laptop. My dad, however, worked in hospitality so he couldn’t work. He immediately got a job working night shifts at a supermarket. Other people were stuck at home, which caused us to take more time and attention when we contacted them. For example, my sisters and I started to face-time our grandparents more often and frequently wrote letters to various people. We wouldn’t have started to do this if Lockdown hadn’t happened. As thousands succumbed to the invisible disease, we were taking our vulnerable 70-year-old grandparents far less for granted. We were lucky that they were knowledgeable and isolated early. We are lucky every day we have them at the end of a video link.”

Listening to this 13 yr old, how can we ignore the worries she has about her parents employment situation or the health of her elderly grandparents? The words have been written, she has expressed her concerns, only an adult is able to make any change or headway with those circumstances, and yet a young teenager spends at least part of the lockdown worrying about adult concerns. On the one hand we might praise her maturity for considering such topics; on the other there has to be some level of adult intervention that allows her to worry more about what she should want to eat for tea rather than how and who will provide the food.

“Many shops and businesses closed because of the pandemic, one of these was the vet. Due to the vet being closed, we had to deliver 6 kittens in the middle of the night by ourselves, with no experience. Mittens, the mother, had been showing signs of being pregnant for about a month before she gave birth to the kittens. Our rabbit also gave birth to 6 kits the morning after, by this time most of us had nearly passed out from exhaustion. Then, to make matters worse, the chicks started to hatch in a bush in front of the house.”

If we set aside the mental health of young people experiencing lockdown just for a few minutes, researchers must take this opportunity to listen to the experiences of children and their personal narrative. The level of education during this period of time is arguably unprecedented. Some teenagers built their own businesses fetching and carrying food for local residents, other teenagers volunteered in an effort to assist those who were shielding or vulnerable. A good number of teens took on the role of tutor in their own home or via video calls to friends and family members. The level of education and experience that Covid-19 afforded our young people may never be repeated again in their lifetime – so we should capture their experiences, their voices and look carefully at the level of education they received. Let’s not cloud this opportunity with a debate around academic capital versus education capital and simply agree that for many young people, even those who were struggling in schools and college, have increased their capital in ways we can only imagine. Capture their narrative and we can start to analyse the benefits to young people rather than just listing the losses.

“Lockdown didn’t change everything, unlike many others, I had to continue my schooling. Whilst my friends, who went to school, effectively had a holiday during lockdown, I was made to carry on with my schoolwork. At first, I was slightly annoyed at the unfairness of it but then I soon realised that it was no different to when my friends had ordinary school holidays; I still did my schoolwork even when they had holidays. My mum also made sure that our sleep patterns remained relatively the same. Many people in lockdown struggled to keep a consistent sleep schedule and this often resulted in them being tired and lethargic during the day. Mum still made me get up at 9 o clock every morning and she still made me do my morning chores. She tried to keep our life as normal as possible, the only major differences in our routine were the trips we usually had to museums, parks, pools and the ice rink.

Social distancing was a concept that, before lockdown, was unheard of in my generation. Many adults were unprepared for this national pandemic; my mum was ready! Every time we went down to London, she would always use ‘The Zombie Apocalypse’ metaphor to teach us not to touch anything, like elevator buttons in the subway, in case of germs from the thousands of people who may have touched it before us. We would always wear gloves outside of our apartment and, if we did have to press buttons on the elevators or open doors, we would use our knuckles instead of our fingers. Just as the first Covid cases were being reported on the news, we went on a short trip to Carlisle and, even though there were no recorded cases in England or Scotland at that time; even though the government had not issued a lockdown, mum still made sure we had our gloves and didn’t touch anything unless we had to. This meant we couldn’t pick up anything in shops unless we were buying it, we didn’t lean on anything outside or inside of any shops and we all had gloves on and stayed away from others. My dad said that she was overreacting; that the percentage of the population who were infected was really low. Mum told him to make sure he and my brother were washing their hands and keeping away from others because they both worked in the hospitality industry. We went into an self-imposed early Lockdown before anyone else at the start of February because as soon as my mum heard about China having a mass outbreak of Covid she knew that it was only a matter of time before the UK started reporting their first cases. She believed that the only way to ensure the safety of me and my sisters would be to put us all into Lockdown. We were prepared for the pandemic even before the WHO declared the outbreak to be a pandemic. I’m grateful for mum’s swift decision; we were able to easily adjust to Lockdown and keep safe.”

#Covid-19 #literacy #childsvoice #narrative #family #teen #education

Recruiting for a Pilot Study

Hello Everyone,

Covid-19 may have changed the way we are conducting our research, driving our in-person interviews to online platforms or telephones, pushing us to discover new ways to approach observation-based research etc. My own experience has been slightly less affected by Covid-19 because I was still in my first year of my degree when it began. Now I am entering into my second year and attempting to navigate conducting a pilot study where recruitment was meant to take place amongst international students attending my university. As no one is on campus, the logistics of recruitment have changed slightly. In some ways, this will help make my study more robust, as I am recruiting through social media and hopefully gaining participants from all over the UK. I am also widening the student levels I’m recruiting from for the same reasons.

Covid-19 has changed the way I am approaching my research (e.g. pushing me out of my comfort zone to recruit via social media platforms, but it has also afforded me the opportunity to think outside the box. Because the traditional approach to certain aspects of research is now limited, we as researchers are able, and encouraged, to try new things. While there are risks involved, I think the push for, and acceptance of, non-traditional ways of conducting research during this time will help strengthen academia as a whole.

And for those of you interested in helping a fellow PhD student with her research, please do consider filling out my questionnaire if you are an international student studying in Scotland. The purpose of the research is to explore the nature of the relationship between culture and the use of public library resources by international students. If you are an international student, please consider participating in this research. The questionnaire should take no longer than twenty minutes. You can find the link here: Culture and Public Library Use Questionnaire