On this page you will find details of our London seminars in chronological order and details of our 2009 conference: Socio-economic Status, Social Class and Education.

8 December 2009, London Seminar

Making a Difference to Learning in City Schools: The Ealing Professional Learning Community

Speakers:	Professor Louise Stoll, London Centre for Leadership in Learning, IOE
	Julie Lewis, Acting Assistant Director, School Improvement, London Borough of Ealing
	Keir Smith, Deputy Headteacher, Twyford Church of England School
	Carrie Sharman, Teaching and Learning Consultant, London Borough of Ealing

This seminar reported on research following the first year of the Ealing Professional Learning Community (PLC), a research-based initiative established in October 2008 to promote school-to-school networking. The PLC now involves all of Ealing’s secondary schools and special schools. Its main focus is improving learning about learning within and across the networking schools. The seminar provided an overview of the initiative, its aims and development as well as research findings related to the following questions:

• What helps promote networking for learning between the schools?
• What challenges are faced by these schools in developing their professional learning community
• What is the impact thus far?
• How can networking for learning in city schools be deepened?

The leaders of the initiative described how they drew on the research findings and their own evaluations to develop their plans for this year. Participants also had the opportunity to discuss the implications of the initiative and research for other settings.  

Links:	Presentation 1 - 8 December
	Presentation 2 - 8 December
	Presentation 3 - 8 December

19 November 2009, London Seminar

The experience of male adolescent refugees during their transfer to UK secondary school settings 

Speaker:	Dr Catherine Burcham

 

This seminar reported on research which investigated the experience of male adolescent refugees during their transfer to a UK secondary school.

The study was conducted in 2008 as part of the Doctorate training in Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychology at the Institute of Education. Six male adolescent refugees from the same London based secondary school were interviewed about their experiences of secondary transfer and the approach adopted in the research was Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. 

The seminar provided an overview of this research, outlining the school based factors that these young people identified as having helped and hindered their transfer to secondary school. Implications for practice in schools, which are based on the experiences and views of these young people, were also offered. 

Links:	Presentation – 19 November

 

5 October 2009, London Seminar

Education for Diversity: A European Project  

Speakers:	Dr Shirley Lawes
	Verna Brandford
	Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, IOE

This project, funded by the European Council, brought together teachers, researchers and teacher educators to:

• Explore current understandings of diversity across eight European countries: Bulgaria, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Roumania and UK
• Develop practices which utilise diversity as a resource for learning

On this project the UK was represented by the IOE team and teachers from two London schools. In this seminar the IOE team presented the key stages and outcomes of their project.

Links:	Presentation - 5th October

    

24 September 2009, London Seminar

Languages of London: Population, language, ethnicity and socio-economic aspects of education

Speakers:	Michelle von Ahn , LB Newham & ESRC User Fellow, IOE
	Dr Ruth Lupton, LSE
	Prof Dick Wiggins, IOE

This one year study, which finished in September 2009, originally started as the LERU initiative to produce the update of the study which has been for the last ten years the key reference on languages of London. Multilingual Capital: The Languages of London Children and their Relevance to Economic, Social and Political Policies (2000), edited by P. Bakerm and J. Eversley, used pupil data from 1999 to identify and map languages of London. Currently, a team of editors and authors are working on turning the outcomes of the ESRC study into: Multilingual Capital - Ten Years on. This joint IOE and CILT (National Centre for Languages) book will be available later this year. 

In 2003, Tim Brighouse launched the Student Pledge as part of the London Challenge programme. One of the elements of the Pledge was to offer Key Stage 3 London secondary school students a residential experience.

Professor Michael Reiss and Dr Ruth Amos at the Institute of Education were commissioned by the Field Studies Council, on behalf of the providers operating the London Challenge Residential Initiative, to carrying out a 4 year evaluation (2004 – 2008) of the impacts of the residential on participating students. The evaluation involved just over 2000 students, their teachers, many parents and carers, and senior managers from the schools. Ofsted (2008) state a commonly held point of view about learning outside the classroom:

‘When planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils' personal, social and emotional development.’

But what would inner city students make of all the green space, the adventure challenges and the learning opportunities presented to them as they lived and worked with one another out of their comfort zones? Cognitive, affective, social and physical impacts were explored as part of the evaluation.

This seminar reported on a Case Study project which involved visits to ten Primary and Secondary schools across England, three of which were in London, to assess the educational provision for EAL pupils. The study was conducted as part of the development of a new strategy for EAL for the teaching workforce funded by the Teacher Development Agency.

Researchers visited each school for periods of between one and five days, in order to assess practice, policy and attitudes to the teaching of pupils for whom English is an additional language. Schools were invited to respond to questions related to the structures and policies in place, key personnel responsible for EAL provision and the overall vision for promoting learning and enhancing the achievement of EAL pupils  in the school.