Humanistic Perspectives

Aims

1. Advocate the value of humanistic research within wider educational and societal debates.
2. Explore and contribute to the development of humanistic research methodologies in the School of Education.

We intend to establish a collegial and productive community which supports members with their communal, and individual, projects.

Our priorities for the first year of the research group are:

1. Establish and run regular meetings for group members.
2. Facilitate academic writing.
3. Generate and maintain a social media presence as a pathway to knowledge exchange and communal group activity.
4. Seek external funding for research.
5. Contribute to School of Education-wide, Faculty wide events and events beyond Oxford Brookes University.
6. Contribute to seminars, within and across research groups and within School of Education.

Group members include research students and lecturers, working on different projects, with common humanistic aims.

Projects

• Remembrance in schools.
• Youth aspirations in the UK and US.
• Fatherhood and the outdoors in children’s picture books.
• Reading for pleasure
• Class and ability in educational policy.
• Moral education and citizenship, historical and philosophical perspectives.
• Learning with artists and art and design education policy.
• Child-centred pedagogy within the Forest School approach.
• Cross-curricular approaches to primary history.
• History and philosophy of primary education.
• Phenomenological insights to the practice and theory of teaching, spirituality and education.
• Doctoral identity.

Events

Group members are organising a number of major events in the coming months:

• Culture, Commitment and Care across the Life Course, Oxford Brookes University, 8-9 June 2017.
• MA Artist-Teacher exhibition, Glass Tank, JHBB, 19 June-21 July 2017.
• Visual Methods symposium, 17 November 2017. This is the second annual Multiple Methods in Educational Research event, and is being organised by members of the Humanistic Perspectives, Applied Linguistics and STEAM research groups. This event is open to academic staff and graduate students throughout the South East region, and comprises presentations from external speakers, and workshops for working with visual data organised by staff in the School of Education.

Networks

Members are involved in various academic, professional and policy networks:

• British Association for Early Childhood Education;
• History of Education Society; International Standing Conference for the History of Education; Social History Society;
• British Educational Research Association, particularly the History, Children and Childhoods, and Social Justice SIGs.
• National Association for Environmental Education, Forest School Association
• Association of Social Anthropologists; Anthropology of Childhood and Youth Special Interest Group, American Anthropological Association
• National Society of Education in Art and Design; All Party Parliamentary Group for Art and Design Education

Academic staff with related research interests