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Including Religious Studies, Languages and Translation

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ISSUE 3, JULY 2013

We are coming to the end of our first academic year at the Hendon Campus and feel very much at home now. It has been a very challenging year for all staff and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support and contributions to the department over the last 9 months. It has been a busier year than ever and this newsletter represents just a third of it. I will leave you to read about the exciting range of interesting research and visits that staff and students have been involved in. If you are wondering why an interesting event or piece of work isn’t being covered in EDnews it is because you didn’t write it up and send it in – there will be another one around the end of October, start writing now!

Finally, I would like to thank all those who are leaving the University before the next EDnews for their contributions over many years. Steve Thaw, Carolyn Morris, and Spyros Themalis will all leave us by mid-September. Andy Maher is also leaving us after more than 10 years of service. He is best known by the Partnership as the Director of Lonoco, an Employment Based ITT enterprise that he built from scratch into a highly successful provision. Lex Jones is also leaving us after 32 years of service. See the next EDnews for a special feature.

I would like to wish everyone in the Department an enjoyable and restful summer break. See you at graduation and then in September.

Debbie Jack Head of Education

Middlesex University Partnership

One of the many advantages of moving to Hendon has been the opportunity to develop stronger partnerships with local Barnet schools and in some cases forge links with schools that we haven’t worked with before. We are very fortunate that our partnerships and links with Enfield, other London Boroughs, Hertfordshire, Essex and Milton Keynes, are all going from strength to strength too. Our partnerships are so important in all areas of the department but never more so than in relation to the School Direct initiative. School Direct is the route by which teachers can be trained on a programme run by the schools and where the allocation of places and funding rests with the schools. We are delighted that over 60 partnership schools working in alliance have chosen to work with Middlesex University. School Direct partnerships have secured allocations of around 160 trainee places for September 2013. Recruitment is very good overall and will continue throughout the summer.

We still need a few placements for our BA Year 3 finalist students. Please email Angela Ashley at [email protected] if you can help. 100% of our BA students ended their programme as good or outstanding with 52% being outstanding last year.

Welcome to EDnews

Updates from Dr Carmel Clancy (HoD)

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Clancy (

The Department Welcomes ‘new’ Colleagues

Dr. Federico Farini joined Middlesex University in 2013. He was previously researcher in Sociology of communication and cultural processes at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 2008 (Sociology of Education).

As a researcher, his overall purpose will be to create and disseminate knowledge through initiating and conducting original research and through publication in the area of education studies.

His fields of expertise include: Childhood Studies, Educational Communication, Healthcare Communication, History of Education, Social Theory, Sociology of Education, Systems Theory.

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/staffdirectory/federico-farini.aspx

Primary and Early Years Programmes

At the end of this academic year the Primary and Early Years team and our partnership schools have lots to celebrate:

More than 160 BA and PG students will gain Newly Qualified Teacher status later on this summer and most have secured their first teaching post, many in partnership schools. We will have a chance to raise a glass and celebrate with them at graduation.

The PG Primary and Early Years finalists were highly successful on their final placements; all were graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.

Both PG and BA2 students have had a chance to undertake optional placements in Special Schools. The messages received from students and teachers have been highly positive. “I didn’t think I would be able to cope” said one BA2 student, “and now at the end of the placement I do not want to leave.”

All Primary and Early Years programmes have been reviewed and are now fully recruited, with a waiting list for each one.

The whole team of tutors attended a professional development session at the Docklands Museum of London in early July. An exciting day and a perfect way to start thinking and planning next year.

Leena Robertson

Reports from the Directors of Programmes

Updates from Dr Carmel Clancy (HoD)

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Reports from the Directors of Programmes

Education Studies, Early Childhood Studies, Early Years Teaching Programme, Learning & Teaching

Well done teams! Excellent pass rates and progression across all programmes, plus record numbers of finalists. We can look forward to celebrating together on the 18th July.

Student prize nominees: Polly Wahida Aktar who achieved a first class hons in Early Childhood Studies alongside EYPS and has been offered a place on the PGCE. Kerry Furlow overcame personal challenges, achieved a first class hons in Education Studies and she is taking up a School Direct teacher training opportunity.

Dr Mary Ann Jordan is returning from Baylor University, Texas with a group of trainee Head Teachers on 15th – 18th July. The four day visit has run successfully for three years and has a well established programme of events. Dr Jordan and the group visit a range of primary and secondary schools over two days and attend two campus based days of presentations and a panel discussion.

Dr Paul Miller is visiting us on Monday 15th July with a group of 12-16 Headteachers/Senior teachers on the MEd Educational Leadership programme at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech).

Several of our team are attending the EECERA conference in Estonia 28th – 31th August and a small group are attending BERA 3-4th September. Exciting opportunities to broaden our MDX horizon!

Away days: We ate well and worked very hard … at the Hendon Hall Hotel on Wednesday to address ways of enhancing student experience. In all aspects, the team together and the outcomes, were developmental and fun! We will be taking this drive forward to the review day on Monday where we can look forward again to … eating well and working hard!

Beth Gallagher

Employment Based Routes

Final assessment and moderation of Graduate Teacher Programme candidates takes place as this episode of Education News goes to press. As a result, complete figures for assessment outcomes are not available. However, of the eighty candidates completing GTP in July, 32 have already been graded good and 29 outstanding, with further results being submitted in the next two weeks. A further 65 candidates will complete in December this year and this final cohort will complete twelve years successful association with the Graduate Teacher Programme.

We look forward to the start of School Direct, where we are working in partnership with schools to train around sixty primary teachers and nearly one hundred secondary teachers, across a range of subjects.

Andy Maher

Updates from Dr Carmel Clancy (HoD)

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Reports from the Directors of Programmes

SEND in ITT at Middlesex University

This year has seen a dramatic shift in SEN provision for ITT. This has partly been achieved through developing clear, strong partnerships with a number of SEN schools over the course of the last two years.

We have formed a particular partnership with Swiss Cottage School Development & Research Centre and piloted, with them, the framework for SEN in ITT. All secondary Student Teachers have spent a day at Swiss Cottage examining approaches in SEN and how these could apply in mainstream. The Special School Experience Framework has received grant under the Department’s SEN/D programme. In addition in January 25 STs spent a week in the school working closely across all areas in classes. Another 35 STs are now completing their 3rd placement in Swiss Cottage and other partner schools as a 4 week placement.

Joint collaboration between the Primary, Secondary and Early years team culminated in a superb ‘Learning with SEND’ conference on May the 15th. 60 Student Teachers from across the department are undertaking placements in the Special School environment in order to develop their teaching skills with enhanced strategies for main stream teaching. Mentors from the Special School placements worked alongside Student Teachers and university staff to discuss issues relating to the Teachers’ Standards and innovative research and practice taking place in the SEND area. Highlights of the day included a “Learning through Science” story telling workshop and singing the Swiss Cottage song! A fantastic day was experienced by all and evaluations of the day showed the session was extreme valuable in building partnerships with Special Schools and developing best practice together.’

Middlesex Secondary ITT was prominent in the national dissemination conference held at Swiss Cottage School in early June when students and staff involved in the placements discussed the national programme and its success. Working with the IOE, Exeter and Realgroup we examined ways forward for the programme. This is going to be followed up by interviews for a national SEN magazine in late June.

Science through active Story Telling

Updates from Dr Carmel Clancy (HoD)

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Interpreting & Translation Group

As the academic year 2012/13 draws to a close, the Interpreting & Translation team can look back on a very busy and successful two months (since the last Newsletter came out):

Successful programme Review

The Review of BA Interpreting & Translation and MA Translation programmes went extremely well. The Panel commended the design of the programmes, the calibre of students (in terms of progression, achievement and students’ graduate destination) as well as the “cohesive, knowledgeable and confident programme team”.

Teaching of the new MA Translation starts in October 2013. The new BA Interpreting & Translation will start a year later, in October 2014.

Online interpreter assessment software

We have signed a partnership agreement with Lucentum Digital Productions, via the Research & Knowledge Transfer Office, to further enhance the online interpreter assessment software Brooke Townsley developed for the ALS/Ministry of Justice Project back in 2012.

Collaboration with the Marguerite Duras Society

Our group has started a collaboration with the Marguerite Duras Society on a research project on the audiovisual and literary translation of Marguerite Duras’ work.

European projects

Brooke Townsley attended a three-day Qualitas project consortium meeting at Utrecht University. Qualitas is a European project aimed at establishing the procedures in professional qualification for translators and interpreters involved in criminal proceedings. Middlesex is one of seven universities participating in this project funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice.

The Building Mutual Trust 2 European project, which was led by Middlesex, has drawn to a close. The project has produced a suite of interactive web-streaming videos designed for judicial staff working through legal interpreters. The final website where the project and its predecessor, Building Mutual Trust 1, can be viewed is under construction; the web address will be disseminated soon.

Articulation Agreement

We have signed an articulation agreement with Euro Akademie Berlin concerning the progression of its students to our BA Translation programme. Programme entry point for Euro Akademie students will be the final year of our undergraduate programme.

Other achievements and activities

Abele Longo was invited for a reading of his poetry at an event hosted by the Pentatonic Arts Centre in Rome on 16 June 2013. (The photo shows Abele with the writer Augusto Benemeglio)

The preface of Abele’s poetry book, Reversibilità, has won the second prize in a national competition in Italy organised by the University of Forlì.

Brooke Townsley delivered a one-day workshop on Interpreter training to trainers at the University of Swansea on June 13.

Edgar Schröder attended KMU Akademie’s graduation ceremony in Linz, Austria. KMU Akademie is a collaborative partner delivering distance education business programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Edgar has been University link tutor for KMU Akadmie since September 2012. One of the graduates who was awarded an MBA at the ceremony is Michael Walchhofer, former alpine skiing world champion and Olympic downhill silver medalist

(second from left on photo below).

On 22 May 2013, a group of colleagues from our CTL collaborative partners visited Middlesex. CTL is a consortium of partner colleges in Germany and Switzerland offering programmes in Theology, Pastoral Studies, Christian Education and Christian Leadership. The group met with our Dean, our Deputy Dean Dr Tracey Cockerton and Edgar Schröder (University link tutor for CTL) to discuss possible future developments with regard to their provision. In addition, they were given a tour of the Hendon campus and even managed to get a glimpse of Bianca Jagger as their visit coincided with her attendance at our Fairness conference.

Student achievements

Ildiko Somogyi (photo - right), one of our final year BA Translation students, has been asked by Tim Seldin, President of The Montessori Foundation and Chair of the International Montessori Council, to translate his new book, Everything you ever wanted to know about Montessori Education, into Hungarian and Romanian.

Reports from the Directors of Programmes

Updates from Dr Carmel Clancy (HoD)

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Graduate Teaching Assistants

This year has seen the introduction of a new role within all schools at Middlesex ... the Graduate Teaching Assistant! It has been a pleasure to be included in a great department with such a diverse range of teaching teams. We have experienced the majority of different programmes that run within the Education Department which has allowed us all to understand the diverse nature of the sector. It is safe to say the introduction of the role has been a learning experience for all involved, with little known at the start about how GTA’s can be and should be most fully utilised. Within programmes we have completed a range of different activities and provided varied levels of support, with several staff and students expressing their gratitude for our assistance.

We have all successfully completed the PGCert in Higher Education, which now allows us to become Associate Members of the Higher Education Academy. Annabelle and Sam are looking to begin a Masters this coming year to aid their professional development, and Elena is looking at range of topics and routes in which she could further enhance her study.

Throughout the next academic year we are looking to continue assisting the department as we have over the last ten months, especially the range of programmes that are aiming to focus on student engagement and support. We have also been approached by the Education Studies/Early Childhood Studies team to be a significant part of their induction week, as well as individual days for their Foundation degree programmes – we are all excited to be involved in this!

We look forward to the next academic year and being even more involved with our students.

Annabelle, Elena and Sam

Reports

Events and Meetings

Graduation

Thursday 18th July

Morning Ceremony

Ceremony Begins at 10.20am

Staff Conference 2013

Save the Date ….

Monday 16th September

Hendon Campus

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Departmental News and Achievements

Shirley Allen and Angela Scollan visited the University of Chichester on 11th June 2013 to present a research paper at the university's Learning and Teaching conference, which had a focus on student employability. In their presentation, Shirley and Angela explained the range of professional programmes provided for Early Years Practitioners at Middlesex and discussed key areas of professional development that could support practitioners to manage the complexities and rapid pace of policy change in the early years sector. The paper considered strategies that could support practitioners to manage challenges inherent in their work with children and families. Emergent themes of 'reflectivity' and 'personal agency', which were covered in the presentation, were the subject of a stimulating discussion with conference delegates after the presentation. Shirley Allen and Angela Scollan

I have recently returned from the International Conference on Language and Super-Diversity in Finland, University of Jyväskylä. The conference was titled ‘Language and Super-diversity: Explorations and interrogations’ and it was the first of its kind and an excellent one! My paper ‘Silences within Super-Diversity – young multilingual children starting school in England’ (co-presented with Rose Drury) drew on the project completed in two partnership schools in recent years. This project ‘A day in the life of a bilingual practitioner’ examined the home language support provided for young multilingual children in the foundation stage classrooms. We filmed two practitioners for one whole day in two different settings and used the edited clips for further practitioner interviews. The paper presented in Jyväskylä explored young children’s silences and raised questions about the home language use for deeper learning purposes.

Leena Robertson

‘Left’ by Christine Khwaja

I was delighted that my painting was shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2013. I started painting four years ago, but this is my first abstract. It was inspired by a tiny photograph in a newspaper of three widows from Homs. I am currently working on another abstract featuring the new Pope. Who knows, it might make the final hang next year!

Dr Delia Cortese' article ‘Voices of

the Silent Majority: the

Transmission of Sunni Learning in

Fatimi Egypt’ has just been

published in the refereed journal

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and

Islam, vol. 39 (2012), pp. 345-366.

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Art in Early Childhood Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus 7th– 9th June 2013

Fiona Bailey and Victoria de Rijke attended an Art in Early Childhood Conference, hosted by the

University of Cyprus in Nicosia. Delegates from a range of backgrounds including arts practitioners,

grass roots organisations, activists, ITT and teachers came together to share good practice and

discuss research projects, practical initiatives and the current thinking in relation to the visual arts

as they intersect with early childhood education.

Our paper – working title ‘Mud, Mess and Magic’ – drew upon a short action research type project

carried about at Middlesex as part of our Community of Practice, and involved students following

the Early Years programmes at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. Our focus was on

ephemeral art, outdoor play and ‘making a mess’, as a resistance to the reduction in messy and

outdoor play in our early years settings, schools and increasingly risk averse societies. Through this,

we are also aiming to examine how we, as tutors, can to develop our own practice with a view to

increasing student confidence in an area where many express concerns - from personal insecurities

about creative ‘skills’ to worries about the practical and logistical barriers they face using these

approaches in a school context.

One of the most interesting aspects of the conference was the recognition of the close connections

and shared thinking between early childhood arts professionals from as far afield as New Zealand,

China and the UK, both in relation to current good practice and a shared vision of ways forward.

We hope to publish the early outcomes from the research in the institute’s on-line, peer reviewed,

International Art in Early Childhood Research Journal, and also to build on our findings over the

course of the next academic year, feeding into the delivery and development of the new Expressive

Arts module for PGCE Early Years.

Visiting Cyprus and meeting people from both sides of Europe’s last divided city was in itself a

fascinating experience which left us both eager to know more about the history of this island, and

also to find out about any ‘cross-border’ arts/education initiatives which may be underway – as this

was an area which was not highlighted directly by the conference, though would seem to be a vital

and key area for development in this area of work.

Fiona Bailey & Victoria de Rijke

Departmental News and Achievements

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Teresa Tunnadine – Honorary Graduate

‘In the 1990s, schools that were failing often tried to

draft in someone charismatic, usually a man, 6ft 2in,

who would be seen as a saviour, make all the

decisions, be everything to everyone and solve all the

problems in the system - and in life generally. But

consultative leadership involving staff and students

gives everybody responsibility so there is collective

ownership. Everyone is doing the same thing in the

same way and believes in what they do.’

These are the words of Teresa Tunnadine, Headteacher

of The Compton School just next door in Barnet, which

opened its doors again in 1992 as an Academy after

being mothballed for a year with serious weaknesses.

Since then – and certainly since Teresa led from 1999-

the mixed multi-ethnic 11-16 school has built in

strength: of models of leadership, shared

management, staff recruitment, parental engagement

and pupil achievement. In their last Ofsted Inspection,

the school was awarded outstanding in all areas. The

school is now a Beacon school, officially designated as

a model of good practice and a National teaching

school.

By her own admission, Teresa has learnt to be skilled

at organisational politics, but never at the cost of her

values of openness and honesty. It’s about choosing

the moment. She argues: ‘having superheads is

probably not the answer for schools in difficulty. I sense

we're the growth of the democratic leader - that's

certainly what works in our school.’

It’s quite a year for Teresa – her school will achieve

technology college status from September, our School

of Health & Education are awarding her an Honorary

Doctorate in recognition of her many achievements

and special relationship to the University, and she has

also been awarded an MBE for her services to

education. What next?

Victoria de Rijke

Departmental News and Achievements

Editorial Team

Debbie Jack

Leena Robertson

Elena Aliferi

Annabelle Leaver

Sam Reynolds