English in Action (EIA) programme, Bangladesh: What’s this about using mobile phones in the classroom?

This workshop presents an overview of English in Action’s (EIA) schools component, implemented by the Government of Bangladesh. EIA is a large-scale UKaid-funded English language development project, aiming to provide learning opportunities to 25 million people in Bangladesh. The project looks to enhance social and economic opportunities, including better access to jobs. The schools component is a professional development programme for Government teachers, introducing communicative teaching methodologies at school-level. It is practiced-based and consists of print and audio-visual materials (on a mobile phone) to support teachers in trying out communicative activities with their classes. The training model utilised is school-based, involving learning with a partner teacher in school and regular meetings with local participating teachers. The project currently works with 8,000 teachers (primary and secondary) and 1.6 million students. By 2017, 76,000 teachers and over 8 million students will be reached. Questions will be invited on model and approach

English Speaking and Listening Assessment Project - Baseline. Bangladesh

This study seeks to understand the current practices of English Language Teaching (ELT) and assessment at the secondary school level in Bangladesh, with specific focus on speaking and listening skills. The study draws upon prior research on general ELT practices, English language proficiencies and exploration of assessment practices, in Bangladesh. The study aims to provide some baseline evidence about the way speaking and listening are taught currently, whether these skills are assessed informally, and if so, how this is done. The study addresses two research questions: 1. How ready are English Language Teachers in government-funded secondary schools in Bangladesh to implement continuous assessment of speaking and listening skills? 2. Are there identifiable contextual factors that promote or inhibit the development of effective assessment of listening and speaking in English? These were assessed with a mixed-methods design, drawing upon prior quantitative research and new qualitative fieldwork in 22 secondary schools across three divisions (Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong). At the suggestion of DESHE, the sample also included 2 of the ‘highest performing’ schools from Dhaka city. There are some signs of readiness for effective school-based assessment of speaking and listening skills: teachers, students and community members alike are enthusiastic for a greater emphasis on speaking and listening skills, which are highly valued. Teachers and students are now speaking mostly in English and most teachers also attempt to organise some student talk in pairs or groups, at least briefly. Yet several factors limit students’ opportunities to develop skills at the level of CEFR A1 or A2. Firstly, teachers generally do not yet have sufficient confidence, understanding or competence to introduce effective teaching or assessment practices at CEFR A1-A2. In English lessons, students generally make short, predictable utterances or recite texts. No lessons were observed in which students had an opportunity to develop or demonstrate language functions at CEFR A1-A2. Secondly, teachers acknowledge a washback effect from final examinations, agreeing that inclusion of marks for speaking and listening would ensure teachers and students took these skills more seriously during lesson time. Thirdly, almost two thirds of secondary students achieve no CEFR level, suggesting many enter and some leave secondary education with limited communicative English language skills. One possible contributor to this may be that almost half (43%) of the ELT population are only at the target level for students (CEFR A2) themselves, whilst approximately one in ten teachers (12%) do not achieve the student target (being at A1 or below). Fourthly, the Bangladesh curriculum student competency statements are generic and broad, providing little support to the development of teaching or assessment practices. The introduction and development of effective teaching and assessment strategies at CEFR A1-A2 requires a profound shift in teachers’ understanding and practice. We recommend that: 1. Future sector wide programmes provide sustained support to the develop teachers' competence in teaching and assessment of speaking and listening skills at CEFR A1-A2 2. Options are explored for introducing assessment of these skills in terminal examinations 3. Mechanisms are identified for improving teachers own speaking and listening skills 4. Student competency statements within the Bangladesh curriculum are revised to provide more guidance to teachers and students

Implementing English in Action in Bangladesh

In this paper, we focus on the implementation of the pilot stage of the project and the challenges that have been encountered in introducing resources and materials. We should also stress that our focus is on the schools’ part of the intervention, a particular area of responsibility for the OU, and not on the adult learning element that was the particular responsibility of the BBC WS

The Craft Hub Journey:Project Catalogue

Introducing the Craft Hub project and the International Exhibition ‘Investigating Craft Practices across Europe’, including its journey across Europe, the artistic curation and set-up methodology for a replicable, accessible and sustainable design, adapting to seven unique exhibition spaces and content. The recurring themes, Heritage, Sustainability, Experimentation, Technological Innovation, Empowerment and Social Inclusion create common threads running through the activities and research carried out by each Craft Hub partner

The Craft Hub Journey:Project Catalogue

Introducing the Craft Hub project and the International Exhibition ‘Investigating Craft Practices across Europe’, including its journey across Europe, the artistic curation and set-up methodology for a replicable, accessible and sustainable design, adapting to seven unique exhibition spaces and content. The recurring themes, Heritage, Sustainability, Experimentation, Technological Innovation, Empowerment and Social Inclusion create common threads running through the activities and research carried out by each Craft Hub partner

Integrating Sustainability in Asian Business Schools

This chapter discusses the ProSPER.Net initiative to integrate sustainability into business schools in the Asia-Pacific region. The project deserves scrutiny, as it led to positive change within each of the partner universities, involving innovative research, curricular transformation and the development of regional case studies. As such, the project is an instructive case in its own right, highlighting the successes, as well as the obstacles encountered, in introducing and coordinating education for sustainable development (ESD) in diverse organizations. The experience of the project clearly shows that whereas there is a recognized need to promote ESD in business schools throughout Asia, the process of achieving this is difficult and complex. Through a consideration of the achievements and frustrations of the project, it is hoped that this chapter will contribute to a better understanding of these issues, and will help in subsequent efforts to integrate sustainability in business education

Managing change of curriculum development in comprehensive schools: An analysis of the perceptions of some middle-managers' experience in several schools

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This study presents a contextualised analysis of middle management and innovation. As a small-scale investigation, it records how some middle-managers perceive the experience of innovating in comprehensive schools. It analyses their reasons and processes for introducing and maintaining innovation, and examines some related issues. The context is the hierarchical structure in which heads of year, department and faculty exercise horizontally defined responsibilities. It extends earlier case-study research of curriculum development in three comprehensive schools. Data was collected by two qualitative methods: by semi structured interviews with a known and consciously-selected sample from three separate schools in two authorities and by open-ended questionnaires mailed to a self-selecting but anonymous sample in a third authority. Triangulation was also achieved by an eclectic review of existing literature. The findings show that the middle-managers adopted three common, effective and generally applicable approaches, namely, consultation, investigation and training, to introduce their innovations and to increase teacher confidence, skill and competence. To maintain the innovations, they promoted team building to increase co-operation between staff. The purpose of innovating was to improve the quality of pupil learning: an expectation which had been commonly developed as a result of courses, practical experience and professional contact. There was no evidence of any systematic evaluation: it tended to be self-evaluative and intuitive with an emphasis on classroom events. The extent of the head's influence seemed to depend upon the degree of involvement and delegation by the head, the quality of the school's working environment, and the level of commitment of the middle-manager

Engaging with 'impact' agendas? Reflections on storytelling as knowledge exchange

The ‘impact agenda’, that is the whole gamut of initiatives related to knowledge exchange and public engagement that have been articulated in recent years, has had and continues to have a significant shaping influence on the way in which academics carry out their research. Within a UK context, the Research Excellence Framework (2008-2013) has made an explicit engagement with this agenda virtually compulsory for research-active academics by introducing ‘impact’ as a new criteria on which the research performance of universities, departments and individual researchers is assessed. The new emphasis on impact, defined as the ‘demonstrable contribution’ that research makes ‘to society and the economy’ beyond specialist academic audiences, has generated much discussion and controversy among academics. The ‘impact agenda’ has been critiqued on a number of grounds, ranging from diluting standards of academic excellence (Jump 2012), to limiting academic freedom by tying fundable academic enquiry to policy objectives, to concerns about the difficulties and costs involved in assessing ‘impact’ (Martin 2011). The widespread perception that academic autonomy is increasingly threatened by the twin forces of ‘audit culture’ and the commodification of higher education has been exacerbated by the broader climate of economic austerity and related cuts in university funding. Meanwhile, ‘impact’ itself remains a poorly understood and nebulous concept even as ‘impact case studies’ are embedded within REF criteria and scores. The difficulty in clearly defining the rules of the game stems from the fact that each discipline, research community and individual researcher has their own notion of ‘impact’ as it pertains to their work. Nonetheless, there is a real danger that lack of clarity, compounded with the obligatory compliance to impact assessment, may encourage a strategic ‘game-playing’ and a random incentivisation of short-term ‘impact’ activities by university management, rather than a vision of what meaningful engagement with non-academic publics may look like. In the light of this, the basic aim of this chapter is to reflect critically on the difficulties of implementing impact agendas with recourse to a Research Networking initiative (Translating Russian and East European Cultures), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The chapter focuses on knowledge exchange, since a key and recurring point of reflection throughout the initiative concerned the nature and practice of knowledge exchange (cf. Mitton et al. 2007) across academic and non-academic ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998). This topic is explored here though a case study of one particular strand of the TREEC Network Initiative dedicated to storytelling. The heart of the chapter reflects on storytelling as a way to facilitate ‘knowledge exchange’, as well as on the ability of the storytelling events organised to bring together different publics. Whilst critical of ‘impact agendas’, I proceed from the position that, as publicly funded researchers, academics have a responsibility to contribute to the wider society through their knowledge, skills and resources, and that beyond strategic compliance to impact assessment ‘knowledge exchange’, broadly defined, has always been and should remain an integral part of university activities

Cell spotting: Educational and motivational outcomes of cell biology citizen science project in the classroom

Success stories of citizen science projects widely demonstrate the value of this open science paradigm and encourage organizations to shift towards new ways of doing research. While benefits for researchers are clear, outcomes for individuals participating in these projects are not easy to assess. The wide spectrum of volunteers collaborating in citizen science projects greatly contributes to the difficulty in the evaluation of the projects'' outcomes. Given the strong links between many citizen science projects and education, in this work we present an experience with hundreds of students (aged 15-18) of two different countries who participate in a project on cell biology research-Cell Spotting-as part of their regular classroom activities. Apart from introducing the project and resources involved, we aim to provide an overview of the benefits of integrating citizen science in the context of formal science education and of what teachers and students may obtain from it. In this case, besides helping students to consolidate and apply theoretical concepts included in the school curriculum, some other types of informal learning have also been observed such as the feeling of playing a key role, which contributed to an increase of students'' motivation

Adult literacy and learning for social change: innovation, influence and the role of non-state actors; case studies from Afghanistan, China, the Philippines and Senegal

The four case studies offer insights into how non-state actors in these contrasting country contexts have influenced adult literacy and learning, not only within education but across sectors. Whilst several key non-state actors reviewed here were initially invited by governments to fill the gaps in adult literacy or learning provision through contributing technical expertise or finance, they began to play a strong role in expanding the curriculum, working with different community-level organisations and/or new approaches to learning (including online). Their impact ranged from introducing innovative learning spaces and adult literacy approaches, to developing systems for quality assurance and accreditation and finding new ways to engage with previously marginalised groups. Exploring the complexity of relationships between state and nonstate actors, this overview argues that changing social values that lie beyond formal development and educational institutions are influencing the kind of adult education provided by the state. There is an urgent need for strong state leadership and dedicated funding to ensure that high quality and inclusive adult literacy and learning programmes can operate successfully on a national scale and non-state actors could play a greater role in advocating for such changes