um I'll just begin introducing the speaker today we've got the joy and the privilege um of introducing Professor Don passi as our speaker Don passy's research explores how digital Technologies support Innovative and inclusive practices in educational home and Community settings for Learners across the lifespan in addition to being a a pivotal member of the team here at the department for educational research Don's findings are consistently informing important decisions for policy and practice with you know International groups government departments agencies local authorities and private companies and corporations in addition to those of us who are influenced by um in terms of individual research lots and lots of interest in today's session Don thanks very much for spending time and effort with us we're really looking forward to hearing about parents education and digital Technologies um I'll be here if you need anything I can help with and I'll keep an eye on the chat so you don't need to be distracted by that hope you enjoy it as much as I'm sure we will uh and I'll see you in about 45 minutes or so thanks Tom okay thanks over so much Phil um thanks for your um kind invitation and uh and um for for being willing to lead on this session and uh thanks also to D for all of the the background that you've done on this and uh encouraging me um to um to be involved and to to make sure that I've got details to you at least um uh on time if not before time um and thank you everyone for coming along to the to the session um and I I'll speak on this topic of parents education and digital technology is um and I'll try to keep to time but I'm sure that if I don't manage that that that Phil will be happy to interrupt me at at any point so um just see if I can yeah I I should also say when I'm talking through this topic that when I talk about parents I am including parents Guardians and carers um so I'm I'm taking on board if you like all of those who have responsibilities for young people and support them um in their in their Endeavors um just to give you a bit of background uh my interest in this in this field of of parents education and technology is pretty longstanding my original interest was actually to do with how digital Technologies were being introduced into education an educational practice and I was interested in how that was shifting homework practices and I published a paper relatively early on um on on that topic and since then I have kept in touch and have published at various points and have researched on this field um across that period of time um couple of background things I think which um which are important in sort of setting the scene for this topic um first of all an an early review that was done on parental involvement um and this was a report that was done for the Department of what was then department of education and skills in England done by um deforge and abusar uh a very well-known report at the time and very influential and it indicated how parental involvement could affect positive outcomes for Learners so even at that time there was an indication a strong indication that parental involvement had a positive effect and um that of course is is one of the main reasons I think that that people have looked at this whole area of Parental involvement another what I would say was a follow-up report um again reporting to the to the government Department by Harrison Goodall was I think very influential because it distinguish between this idea of involvement and engagement when where engagement was to do with much more direct interaction rather than involvement which was a general form of support people being involved at at a more General level engagement meant that there was much more of a of a direct interaction both with the school and and with Learners so there's this disting distinguishment that was that was brought forward and of course since that time the question that's always been raised is how could this be achieved how could you achieve parental engagement so that it would affect the the outcomes for Learners and that's been a a question that I've been interested in from the technology point of view how is it that digital Technologies might be able to bring about some of those um positive effects um what I'm going to look at within this uh seminar are three things really um which I think I've outlined within the um within the abstract that's that's gone around um the first is to ask what roles or functions should parents be involved in when when children are attending schools or colleges or universities because I think that those roles or functions uh as I hope that I will demonstrate are important in terms of these ideas of Engagement and the second question would be how have digital Technologies affected shifts in roles particularly during and since the covid-19 pandemic um are they still happening and uh to what extent and then the third is what shifts and changes can um I talk about that I've done in recent times with colleagues which have looked at this idea of of digital technology that are leading to parental engagement so those are the three sorts of questions that I'm that I'm going to look at within within this session just to introduce you to my colleagues um who've been involved in the work that I'm going to talk about um Hazelwood house is with the school of education in in W University in New Zealand uh Amina chania is with the school of education in the tar Institute of social sciences in Mumbai India and John Anderson is with yoler University again the school of education in in Northern Ireland and it's been my privilege to work with um those three people uh over a number of years um and I will be highlighting the work that we've done together uh during this session and just to say that the the recent work that I will talk about in this field is um an AC mic paper that was done for the malta Journal of Education which was looking at effects and shifts arising with regard to parental roles and responsibilities during the covid-19 pandemic um secondly with all of those colleagues above um we guest edited a special issue of stelle um and I'll talk about the key papers in that um and we were able to put together um an editorial that Drew together points that arose from those really important papers that are that are easily accessible and then I'll also talk about recent joint research which has been done in New Zealand and Northern Ireland um where we've now produced an academic paper and a research report and then I'll talk about the implications of that and where I see it going next um just um a an overview of some of the things that I'm going to talk about in in terms of answering those sorts of questions um I think it's worth talking about some of the existing models and Frameworks that there are that uh try to highlight aspects of Parental involvement and engagement um as you'll see from what I'm going to outline most of these Focus um on or from schools rather than from across the educational Spectrum so there's actually um much lower volumes of literature with regard to parental engagement um that goes outside of the school sector some of the reasons for that seem to be to do with this idea of Ages of young people lead to Social and psychological changes um and this idea that um young people should become more independent as they become older and therefore the idea of Engagement and involvement shifts across the education sector so that seems to be a basis on which uh quite a lot of this work is is is thought through um and is determined however one of the things that has happened here I think quite significantly and has tended to shift that view is some respects for some people is that covid-19 and the pandemic shifted roles and responsibilities right across the education sector it didn't shift it just for the school-based sector it actually shifted it across the sector and what we now know to be the case is that actually as a result of those different forms of Engagement some of the outcomes for that were positive some of them were neutral and some of them were negative what we also know is that as a result of the pandemic some of those forms of Engagement that arose during the pandemic have persisted but they've not persisted in all places and they've not persisted in all places in the same way but we do know that there has been an effect um of of those of those [Music] changes if we think about the sort of models of of Engagement and invol M um the the the models actually that were derived were were derived fairly early on um and still to some extent persist however I will highlight that that these models didn't really take account of technological changes um so the technological environment when these models were developed is rather different from that that we find today and also it doesn't really take uh into account the types of social interaction and social changes that have happened even over those 20 or so years and part of that is because of the effective digital Technologies we know that the forms of social interaction that can happen as a result of of social media for example are different to those that could happen in in 2000 or so so uh I'll come back to that but just to say that I'm I'm going to uh show three different types of models which relate to this idea of how you can view um parental engagement um or involvement and Epstein's was the was the is the first of these and the interesting thing here is that Epstein looks at this very much from the ideas of of the ways in which parents can be involved and identifies these six different types of of of involvement so the idea that parents can become involved with education in terms of decision making or they can volunteer to undertake certain activities or they can communicate or they can be involved in general support through parenting or they can engage with learning at home or they can collaborate Across The Wider community so so Epstein's view of looking at the model of Engagement and involvement was very much to do with the types of actions that parents could Undertake and and these six were identified who dempy and Sandler who who looked at this um a little bit later a few years after wordss came up with a different type of model or framework and they came up with with uh a framework which was in five levels so the idea was that one could move from in essence one level to another um and that this was seen as a sort of progression in terms of involvement or engagement that one would move from one level to the next and what they were looking at really really were the factors and features which were in essence enabling or persuading or supporting the ways in which parents could become involved in education so at level one it was to do with what was influencing basic involvement I.E being willing to go to the institution being willing to talk to uh teachers Etc and then the second was was going beyond that which is to do with the choice of involvement which then relates back to Epstein's view this idea that someone could be involved in communicating but could also take a choice in terms of decision making for example with regard to institutions and become involved in decision making processes then they went on to the third one which was mechanisms the ways in which that would happen so the mechanisms of involvement the the actual processes um the the groupings that would happen that would enable that to happen and then at level four they were talking more about the tempering or mediating variables more of the ways in which the involvement or engagement was was more nuanced to allow particular um engagement to happen and then at level five to do with the idea of student outcomes that that parents were were involved in order to influence and support um student outcomes so that that was the different way that Hoover Dempsey and Sandler were looking at this and then the third one comes from Walker and and and a number of colleagues and Walker and colleagues looked at it much more from psychological concerns or motivations that the drivers that were happening behind the scenes and and again this was done in terms of in terms of levels so what they were looking at were if you like the concerns or motivations that were leading to engagement or non-engagement so they weren't looking at it purely from a a way of supporting involvement or engagement they were looking at it from a broader perspective of the ways in which beliefs for example or how invitations were perceived or life contexts were affecting the positive neutral or negative influences upon involvement or engagement and then that then they were looking at the parental forms of Engagement again through concerns and motivations so they they were looking at this very much from the individual perspective and was saying that there are many many factors here which Arise at an individual uh parent uh career or Guardian um perspective that can influence what's happening with regard to that involvement or or engagement one of the things that that um is is interesting of course is all of those were models that were derived prior to the current situation I.E the digital situation and the pandemic and post-pandemic situation and one of the things of course that arose dur in the covid-19 pandemic was that there were shifts in terms of the ways that parents were involved often with education and there were six I would say ways in which those changes happened and the first was the teaching medium so this moved largely from a face Toof face to an online medium so the medium that was happening shifted and at the same time there was a shift in terms of teaching mode so the mode going from classroom based became remote or Blended sometimes or hybrid so that was from a teaching perspective but from a learning perspective there were also similar Chang es so the learning medium changed it changed from being largely face to face to much more screen based and the mode changed much more from direct to indirect whether the communications Technologies or the digital devices that were in place allowed synchronous or asynchronous nevertheless there was a change in mode from a direct to an indirect set of interactions the learning environment also changed it changed from a classroom situation to a homebased situation and in essence because of those changes happening parent Guardian career roles also changed so the idea of of parents guardians or carers offering General support was shifted because in many cases parents Guardians and carers were involved in in a different range of roles they could even be in involved as as a part-time teacher they could have been involved as a tutor or a facilitator or a counselor so for example um we know that during the pandemic period there were parents who were supporting their children at a subject content level and were supporting their online work similarly they were operating some parents were operating as as a tutor I.E they were
enabling the Learners to ask questions which they would then answer and they would um enable someone to have contact with others to be able to answer those questions they could be acting as a facilitator in other words they were enabling um access to other resources to point to other resources that would be available and possible or they could act as a counselor I.E that they could support in in Social or psychological way ways and we know that all of those happened at various times in various ways and in various places it was not uniform but they they happened um so the shift was uh quite significant post covid-19 um we were interested in how that shift had happened and that was really the um the way in which the Stell special issue arose and how the four of us work together as guest editors and and on this we received 10 really quite important papers that gave us different perspectives on these shifts um and just to briefly explain those um the first one was very much an an orthographic study looking at an experience as a parent of of of how one coped with the situation of movement from a school to a homebased situation with distance learning that was that was very much um a school Age based one but the second one was very much at a higher education level so we were also able to get um ideas through an ethnographic study of how that was affecting the shifts at a higher education level and interestingly there were there there were similarities clearly between them because of the ways in which that shift happened um it it it it happened in in relatively similar ways and then the the third of those papers was looking at it from the point of homeschooling where children had special educational needs and and whether actually that was that was something that in enabled lessons to be learned not only in the home but also in the school subsequently and the fourth one looked at it um from uh a parenting mediation perspective um I.E what did parents need to do in order to support their their children and what digital competence did they need and did they acquire during that time and this was um an an interesting paper which was looking at it from um uh in in in India in parts of India and similarly the the fifth paper here was also um based in India and this was looking at pre- primary and again what effects uh the technology was having in in the pre primary area the second set carrying on from that um the first of these was was set in in New Zealand and was looking at parental engagement and basically what digital spaces were offering what benefits they might be offering and and what they were not both During the covid period and and subsequently and the the uh following one looked at it through Northern Ireland uh which is looking at how parents were responding during the emergency remote teaching um and subsequently and the paper that followed also looked at this in Northern Ireland but looked at it from the point of view of preparedness how were schools prepared as well as how were homes prepared were they prepared and what were the factors that or some of the factors that enabled some homes to be better prepared and some schools to be better prepared to support this shift and change during the Rises and the um the ninth paper was looking at this from um a more International perspective and was talking about the change of role from the idea of of parents being a gatekeeper to parents being a Proto online shoor which I hinted at in the in in in the previous um slides and then the final one looked at this from the point of view of a global evolution of of Parental engagement and digitally connected families um and actually made the point that in many ways um parents have taken a lead with regard to the use of digital Technologies and supported learning um in some places um that that hasn't necessarily uh been explored um widely but nevertheless less has been taken up in certain places very strongly so what we were able to get from these papers was was a very very rich picture um across the the sector but looking at it from different types of of of perspective which which enabled us to to to draw out some some key um points which we then uh wanted to follow up in in some joint research work which was done uh with colleagues in in New Zealand and Northern Ireland and for that work we involved four primary schools in New Zealand and four in Northern Ireland and what we were looking at was exploring uses of digital Technologies and how they built connections between families and schools when children were transitioning so we were looking at it initially at that very early stage of transition when children are moving from home to a situation where they're engaging with the school and the key question that we asked was to what extent are digital Technologies being used by a school to develop supportive links with families in their transition to school and we came out with a whole variety of findings many of which surprised us um we found for example that all of these schools were using a variety of online and social media applications where they were enabling connections between the family between the home and the school and also we were finding that where there were a range of languages spoken they were using Google Translate in order to make uh material more accessible and messages more accessible to to families they were using um multiple online channels they matched up with parental preferences where they could but the most common form of communication was text messages and they could either send those out by volume to all parents or they could send them out individually to individual parents and using the applications that they had they were able to identify whether the parents actually received them or not so in terms of communication they were the that the schools were able to um uh Aid their communication and to understand what was happening to their communication a lot they were also answering questions from parents that were coming back either by email or or by text and this clearly had an effect on when this was happening and and I can come back to that point but uh one of the um issues challenges um things that have have to be managed as a result of this is that of course if you're increasing communication you're also potentially increasing the times when communication can happen and that is something that may need to be managed in particular ways what was interesting is that communication was pretty much happening on a daily basis that news about events news about ideas of homework news about mess that was going through messages often Illustrated were happening pretty much on a daily basis so this was very very regular communication which was aided by by forms of of of applications so the other issue of course was was the Privacy they needed to be concerned about privacy and they tended to use closed groups so they were using Technologies where they recognized that privacy was was something which was um uh taken into accommodation and so that they could be clear that everything was Secure and parents could be clear about that uh security as well it was found however that there were parents who who either couldn't or or felt that they didn't want to engage through digital Technologies and still schools maintained their contact with them either through telephone calls or by sending out through paper-based uh resources um and this also showed quite a shift in terms of that diversity of communication which was [Music] happening the the they were also using learning environments as well as applications as well as apps to provide insights for Learning and to encourage parents to be involved in that to respond to what they were seeing to respond to questions that they were asking and as a result of using Technologies these schools were monitoring and reviewing these different Technologies quite regularly but they were also gaining insights back from the parents so one of the things that was happening was that they were finding out if their parents were were happy with the forms of communication and how they were communicating they identified therefore the things that were working well and it was those things that were working well that tended to determine how they wanted to move forward with the uses of the Technologies although cost of course became a factor either to a lesser or a greater extent depending but but the main reason for this form of um use of digital technology and selection of digital technology was to ensure that the communication was effective and as a result that the engagement was effective and that the effect upon the children was positive and the effect upon the learning was positive so they were monitoring all of those features and factors that that that that were happening as a result of that because of the changes that were that had happened since the those original models were put together um we devised a new model uh which took account of digital Technologies and the ways in which now uh communication happens this is um a very small image so what I've done is I've drawn out um the four key levels from this and what we did in this framework was we took we took it from a perspective of a school leader so again we used the idea of levels but the idea that this is coming from how might a school leader look at this in terms of developing engagement with parents carers and Guardians and the first level was to establish the communication build initial connections then to develop opportunities for parents to engage how could they how could the parents develop connections with others as well as with them and that was a that was a very very important one it wasn't just connecting as a onetoone it was actually enabling the parents to connect with the community to a greater extent and support how could the school help the parents to become involved in their children 's learning so for example we saw uh cases where um teachers had created videos that they sent out to parents in order to inform them about a particular topic so that they would understand that and be aware of how they might then go on to help their children at home and then the third level was to maintain that support so that as the needs of parents in the school grew so they could continue and maintain that support and the fourth level was to review practices and explore new opportunities so what we were surprised to see in these cases was that parental engagement was there it was being supported by by schools it was being um encouraged and as a result parents were engaged in the sorts of ways that that we had had uh seen through previous uh models and Frameworks and that this was leading to to positive outcomes and those those sorts of positive outcomes are are reported in in a report in an academic paper that we that we published on this to go beyond that we were only looking in that at that sort of transition period at those early years areas we wanted to look beyond that so as a as a further investigation and I'm only here outlining what's happened at this stage because um this hasn't been concluded this is the part that's that's now in process it's been driven if you like by the findings that have come through that whole series of of of work um we had 14 visits to schools and that included primary post primary I secondary and special in in Northern Ireland that happened last month what we found from those visits was that across the schools engagement with parents is increasing especially in some schools and what's being found is that the ways that the schools are going about this and it's in line with that sort of framework and model which we put forward with they those schools are finding that parents who have never engaged previously are now engaging as a result of the efforts through the forms of digal technologies that they're using and the ways that they're using those digital Technologies but also parents are becoming more aware of H what's happening on a daily basis through not only through what the schools and the teachers are doing but also what the children are telling them so what the Learners are giving them in terms of feedback so that sort of of of feedback between the parent and the learner is increasing in in some of these schools and again often being supported by video or audio resources that go out to parents to to to help them with understanding particular topics or to to widen their awareness they're now finding that parents are driving the communication rather than schools so whereas in the past these schools were finding that they were having to drive it they're now finding that the parents are driving the communication and that's that that is that is becoming a separate issue some of the parents are are wanting to become more and more engaged in supporting learning at home while others are quite happy that they that they that they have um a balance what's happening is uh interestingly that pupil Independence is being enhanced in some instances there were some very uh crucial I would say important examples of where where um particular pupils and groups of pupils had gained in terms of Independence because of the ways that they were able to work um not only at home with parents but also now in schools with teachers in a different sort of way and overall we felt that this this really had implications for leaders and how leaders might be leading or managing schools teaching and learning we're not indicating that this is universal but it it is interesting that this is arising in certain situations so we're now questioning whether there are new practices and new models arising um we're questioning whether actually this idea of of leadership and engagement is happening more at a community-based level rather than at an individual parent teacher or parent School level we're seeing in some instances more sharing because of the use of digital Technologies not only across the school but also across parents and between the parents and schools and we're seeing a shift in terms of the ways in which that learning is happening going from a formal based approach to more informal based approaches and a balance between those so we do have future questions which are the ones that we're going to look at next um we don't know how widespread these shifts might be we don't know whether that will happen in in select instances or whether this is is tending to happen in a wider number of instances so we're going to be looking to explore that we would like to know what the implications are what are the implications at um at an individual institution what implications are there for institutions in the future and what are the longer term implications and possible directions for education does this mean that in fact um schools uh colleges uh universities might become uh rather different in terms of the ways that they are approaching things because of the differences in terms of home base and institution base will this will this affect some forms of changes in the future or not um so these are questions that we we don't know the answer to but that we're certainly interested in so I think my time is nearly up and there are the references for the the text that I've referred to during um uh this um presentation and I think you know where to contact me anyway so I'm going to stop there because I hope that I've stimulated sufficient questions to keep us going for a little while longer so over over to you Phil if that's okay with you super thanks very much for that Don do you want to just stop sharing your slides and we sure we'll have a chat and uh if you have got a question then um please do feel free to type it into the chat or just make clear that you want to ask Make some noise or raise a hand either virtually or um turn your camera on and raise it that way if you like thanks for the insights Don they were as expected qualitatively meaningful right up our street as a seminar series they were superb um I wonder if I could ask uh a question in these early few minutes perhaps while people are warming up you've worked across a lot of different settings with different participants different stakeholders you know some Gatekeepers maybe arms length even are there any particular groups in any particular settings who you're concerned might be left behind in all this I mean I acknowledge of course that you've got very humanistic drivers about um outcomes for Learners which you mentioned earlyer on um other perhaps any group groups of I don't know parents carers and Guardians who we ought to be particularly concerned about more than others or you know for for those of us who might be able to devote some time and attention in our research are there any particular groups you might point us towards do you think yeah that that's an interesting one Phil um and I think I think I'm going to answer it um uh in in a particular way which is to say one of the things that's coming across here as being important and in a sense is reducing any sorts of division is this opportunity for for sharing that where there is a desire to share either across the institution or across the community whether that be the parent Community or whether that be the W A Wider uh local community then that seems to to be a way of um in some way is addressing the divides because what what we've been seeing U right across this period of work is that where that's happening people will chip in and help others whether that's with regard to digital competence and understanding whether that's to do with digital access whether that's to do with digital devices whether it's to do with advice it it's it is happening where that is being encouraged through this this form of interaction where you're not getting that sharing that would be the part I think that I would be concerned about in terms of of it enabling that that divide to exist so where where it is difficult to enable that sharing to happen I think you have the opportunity for that for that division to happen so I think that one of the things that for me that comes out of this entire work if you like is is that there if we can encourage forms of sharing through digital Technologies then we have a chance of supporting people with regard to divides and and we're seeing this we're seeing this in terms of the evidence that's coming out of India for example as well as evidence that's coming out of the UK or that's coming out of Croatia or whever yeah those those similar those similar features are happening in terms of the importance of sharing so I don't know I don't know whether that starts to answer your your question Phil I think it does yeah I suppose by definition that the people we need to focus on are difficult to find aren't they um like like a lot of educational research we've got a great question from uh mave I'm going to read it out mave but if I'm um if I'm guilty a mansplaining please do un mute and just speak over me and I'll show um mes ason the chat what were the profile of the schools the socio economic groups you know parents mothers working would you be able to provide a bit more detail about that yeah thanks for that mave um the the details are in the are in the reports and and in the papers um that that we've published um basically we were looking for um a diverse group so we were looking at situations where people were in uh rural as well as in urban locations where for example uh where we were looking at schools where there were high levels of um social deprivation lower levels of social deprivation higher levels of free School meals and therefore we we um we anticipated that we would get um coverage of different groups we recognized that were working with small numbers um but uh given what we wanted to do was to try and get um some sort of interesting handle on this as a starter and therefore we selected down to a relatively small number but we did go for the highest diversity that we could so we were looking at small versus large rural versus Urban um High socio economic versus low socio economic I hope any any more details would be in would be specifically in the papers um Ma and I could I could highlight those and bring those out if that was of of interest at this stage hopefully that's uh that's aned you may if not just uh drop as a line I did put a link in the chat a bit higher up to Don's um research profile as well so you should be able to find things that on to the um Estel special issue uh we've got a question from Kathy Kathy Chandler uh again I'll read it out Kathy but if you want to unmute I'll shut up if you start talking okay otherwise I'll read it out um Kathy says I'm wondering if one of the roles that parents also adopted during the pandemic when their children's learning was much more visible to them was that of an inspector and whether being more aware of their child's experience has changed their sense of how much they feel they need to engage okay thanks Kathy that's that's a really that's a really very interesting question I I suppose I'll I would start by saying of course there were instances within the pandemic where it was found that that actually the forms of Parental engagement were were negative I.E that
parents became overdemanding um and and therefore had a negative effect upon both their the forms of interaction that they had with their with their children with their learners but also the outcomes of that learning so in some instances we do know that parents had a negative effect and that often that was that was down to the fact that they were um either um they were trying to regulate things to too great an extent or they were trying to ensure that things were happening in particular way Etc so we know that that to be the case what we also know is that quite a lot of parents became much more aware they say they became more aware of Education what education is trying to do what forms of learning their children were involved in and what the outcomes were that were um I wouldn't say expected but um anticipated for those for those Learners so there was um an increase in in the case of many parents with regard to how they perceived education and how they perceived the value of education and what the education was attempting to achieve that in itself I think is is quite a move forward um we don't always know exactly to what extent that happened because we don't have we don't don't have very large data from many many places we have large data from some places but not not very many um but we do know that that happened um I think to some extent um there were parents who were taking more of an inspection role I.E they were monitoring what was happening they were they were monitoring the ways in which their their children were engaging with for example online learning with other children online with activities that were being um put forward by teachers not only online but also those activities that we were asking children to do at home offline so they they were inspecting or monitoring in that way and I think as a result of that certainly that level of awareness would have would have would have happened it would have inreased and that's that's that's how how that was arising um I think also there were parents who just became much more interested in the topics that were being taught and that were that were happening um and they they engaged because they uh recognized that it was something that either they had been interested in and it had rekindled their interest or there were topics that they just didn't know about and that they found that they had an interest in finding out more so in some cases they were actually learning along with their children and I think it's that that's driven some teachers now to produce these audio or video resources that go out to parents in order to help them to understand topics that uh that they might that they might not have um felt that they understood fully thanks Richard so thanks Kathy I hope I hope that I hope that helps to um to answer your your question a bit it's a great question thank you yes it does I was thinking about my experience as a parent during the pandemic um you know and and just the opportunities that opened up for me really um being able to see what was going on you know the school suddenly became a lot more more visible so it's yeah really interesting to to hear your Reflections thank you thanks Kathy yeah I think um I I think I mean looking at it also from the other the other um perspective what was also interesting was how many teachers and principles have have said to us that it actually opened up the the homes to them that that they were they were often quite surprised at the fact that that the parents and families were willing to in essence open up their homes more to them as teachers under school and as a result of that they gained in terms of understanding home situations parents families to a much greater extent so I think I think that there was also something that was happening reciprocally there um in terms of in terms of that happening in both directions so there tended to be this sort of Greater Mutual understanding in some cases that was arising which I think was fascinating it's a really interesting scenari hundreds of millions of people around the world doing having a shared experience but in very unique ways what a great thing to research from um from the perspective of a researcher and Scholar who's been doing a lot of this stuff done you you explained it in 2021 um sorry in your 2021 paper um you described these six shifts about I think it was uh medium mode environment androll um that kind of thing if we looked back preco and we looked at say shifting levels of Engagement think these models by Epstein Hoover dempy and Sandler and uh motivational drivers but I think Walker at all do you think something like adapting to co has it accelerated the way people might go through those modeled levels or did it just completely destabilize those models to a point where we now need to be critical about any preco model and we need instead to look at these like your community-based four field model is is that where we're at in terms of um you know the methodology and methods level decisions do we have to now say oh hold on this was preco I think that's a that's a really interesting question Phil um I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't like to to over you know to to take things too too far on this but I would say that I would say that anything that was derived preco is worth looking at and exploring as to whether it applies postco um because undoubtedly the covid period did bring about it it not only brought about changes that were to do with practice and the ways that people could practice it actually changed in some respects behaviors it changed attitudes it changed um it it also brought about changes in terms of understanding with regard to um different um shall I say social and psychological issues challenges concerns Etc and and all of the models that were produced preco might not have taken them into account as much I'm not saying that that would happen for all models or all Frameworks that would be to do with education but I definitely think I definitely think it's worth looking at um certainly what we were finding was that when we were looking at those at those pre technology and covid models that that there were they were perspectives that they were taking which were based upon some of the ways in which the practice which originally conceived so so the whole basis of the educational system was was often based upon um an idea of a progression across time rather than it being thought about in terms of an holistic approach to learning in terms of developing lifelong considerations and practice so so this idea of of of learning and education being something to do with a process over time in some respects actually during with digital Technologies and during covid has been shifted because the the IDE in some respects the idea of the idea of age the idea of of responding to particular cohorts and groups for example has shifted in many respects and we're we're now talking about we we you know I think that I think there is a shift in terms of how we might be thinking about the underpinning ideas that created those Frameworks and we have to go back to that and say do those still hold not and yes we still we still at the moment regard education as a progression but do we regard it as a progression in the same way as we did um prior to the use of Technologies and prior to covid I I would say there could be shifts there yeah I mean we we also can't look back with rose tinted Nostalgia and have ever expected those researchers to predict a global pandemic I suppose comeing I wonder if that's um in the psyche of you know a lot of educational researchers like yourself and people on the call at the minute that you know oh how do we predict for these you know massive things when we're generating new when we're extending Theory and maybe proposing models and things like that you know yeah I mean I think I think again that's a really a really interesting one you know the the ways in which I I mean during during my time of looking looking at education and looking at it from a a a policy practice research perspective the shifts that have happened um have undoubtedly happened in some respects more rapidly partly that's because of the the rapid changes that are happening in technology but it's also to do in with the ways in which that technology is affecting um other features like communication like sharing like opport Unity like access and those things are shifting to and and they're shifting increasingly so I would say from an educational research perspective that that is actually opening up opportunities on the one hand because it means that we need to explore those shift and change um perhaps more regularly in an ongoing basis but on the other hand it produces challenges because it means that to do that um those who want the those outcomes from our research want them more quickly so in order to be able to understand how they work in a contemporary situation because that contemporary situation might actually shift quite dramatically quite quickly so so we have you know I think I think from a from a research perspective um we're in from an academic point of view I would say we're in interesting times but also from an academic point of view I'd say we're moving into quite challenging times because the the ways in which our research will be needed will be increased but the amount of time that we will have to do it and therefore being able to do things over a longer period of time might become more challenging but you know that I'm I I can be you can tell me in 20 years time if I'm wrong on that I don't mind don't know I think we'll still be wondering won't we there's that old Confucian curse isn't that may you live in interesting times yeah yeah yeah yeah um probably what you were moving us towards I don't want to monopolize the questions we we'll just see if any more come through on the chat I think you've um given us a right treat there is there uh just just to kind of start moving us towards um concluding is there a particular um I suppose family of theoretical approaches or methodological techniques that you'd sort of favor is there anything that you'd particularly think is is opposite for research with uh not just the people who are involved in the teaching learning interactions but kind of stretching that um I suppose that whole notion of sharing an independence and formal and informal and you know stretching our our tradition additional conceptions of Who's involved in this is there any particular way you you drawn to the analysis and the design and things like that uh well yeah I mean I mean I i' I've been a u a mixed methods researcher for a long time and and um I still see the value of mixed methods within within this sort of area um and I guess that you you probably recognize that from the sorts of questions that that that I like to ask so I like to ask things like you know to what extent is this happening you know I I am interested in in that because that that will tell me something um about the sort of trends that might be happening where they might be going what we might be able to say about about the future so I'm interested in it from that sort of quantitative perspective and I think that that's potentially important we also need to know those sorts of things in order to be able to address particular areas of issue you know you mentioned uh areas of divide we need to know the extent of divide at any one time and therefore you know how we might be able to address that but then again we can only do that I believe if we have qualitative evidence that enables us to understand why something is happening and how it can be addressed and and the sorts of reasoning behind things so we need that in-depth investigation as well as the broader ideas of Trends so my my interest really is is in how we can use that blend of quantitative and qualitative focus in order to support the future Direction and the future success of where we might be going in terms of education um so for me those two elements are important and personally I I mean as a as a as a as a researcher I use I use both um I I am I use mixed methods but on the other hand if individuals want to focus on qualitative or quantitative and those perspectives enable us to gather a more mixed methods thinking for from the two sets of evidence then I'm perfectly happy you know if we can see the links between those and can make the connections between them and that was that was the one of the interesting things that came out of the papers that were in the Stell issue that some of them were coming very much from a qualitative point of view others were coming from a quantitative point of view but it was possible across across that scenario to get an idea of of of the sorts of are things that were happening why they were happening and some of the ways that we might approach it in the future and for me that was that was really important yeah it was certainly a Showcase of um what you know what we might describe as trustworthiness where you could pick any of those papers and actually the editorial well and if your opinion went this way and the papers went that way you still knew why and you could still engage with it and and understand why you were diverging it was great um look as much as I think we could listen to you all day long Don I think you've got a lot of other people waiting to access your time and wisdom it's almost time for us to say Cheerio so thanks again for taking the time and effort that you've invested in us and um we wish you well with what's next in terms of the series our next online seminar will take place on Wednesday the 29th of May 2024 it will be presented by Katherine Atkinson and wean woo from The Institute of education at the University of Manchester and the title is inside the Chinese heterosexual Matrix exploring sexuality leader identity and agency among lesbian and gay midlevel School leaders in China so please do drop d a line if you'd like to join us for that and if you'd like to be added to these mailing list for the series uh there'll be a few thanks coming in on the chat I think Don and um thanks very much again very kind of you to take the time to spend with us no problem my pleasure and thanks thanks to everyone for for for coming along and uh for participating and having the patience to listen to me and uh if you if you have any questions at any point that's that's no no no problem I can always find someone else to answer them for me okay superb thanks very much thanks for coming everyone thanks
2024-07-30