Faculty will welcome Cambridge Foundation Year students as part of landmark University programme
Wednesday 13 January
Education will be one of the subjects on offer to students from the Cambridge Foundation Year: a new programme offering talented students from backgrounds of educational and social disadvantage a new route to undergraduate study at the University of Cambridge.
The one-year course, which is initially being run as a pilot scheme, is aimed at applicants who have the ability to succeed at Cambridge but have been prevented from reaching their full potential by their circumstances. It will prepare students for further learning and offer them the chance to progress straight to an undergraduate degree at Cambridge.
Read the full story here.
In Ethiopia, schools still lack basic means to contain COVID, as pupils return after months of interrupted learning
Monday 14 December
Many schools in Ethiopia lack the hygiene facilities and infrastructure to control COVID-19 effectively, as they reopen for the first time after months of disrupted learning, new research indicates.
Read the full story here.
Demigods and monsters
Monday 14 December
Is there more to the Percy Jackson adventures than meets the eye? A new article by Frances Foster, from the Centre for Research in Children's Literature, suggests these novels may be challenging modern myths as well as old ones.
Read the full story here.
Foreign aid cuts put girls’ education at risk
Thursday 26 November
The UK government’s 2020 spending review includes a cut in international aid, from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%. Research shows that this will have severe effects on the lives of girls worldwide.
This article, by Professor Pauline Rose, is republished from
The Conversation under a Creative Commons Licence.
University outreach programme improves self-belief in prospective students
Wednesday 25 November
The initial results from an evaluation of a higher education outreach programme suggest that it significantly increases prospective students’ self-belief about their ability to learn and thrive at highly-selective universities.
Read the full story here.
Spill-over effects show hidden value of prioritising education of poorest children and marginalised girls
Friday 20 November
International development projects that target the education of the world’s very poorest children and marginalised girls also significantly improve other young people’s attainment, according to new research that suggests such initiatives should become a priority for international aid.
Read the full story here.
‘Learning pathways’ show how children who miss out on best start could be guided towards better reading and writing by age 11
Thursday 12 November
The early talk and communication that children experience when very young, though essential in preparing them for school, has no direct impact on their reading and writing skills by age 11, new research shows.
Read the full story here.
Profile: Nicola Morea
Monday 9 November
What do you do if you love the idea of teaching, but also feel passionate about research? In Nicola Morea’s case, the answer is: do both. At the age of 29, he has already completed a PGCE and Masters with the Faculty, and is now part-way through his PhD. He has also been a professional teacher, head of department, and mentored another Faculty trainee. He told us why he made the decisions he has, and how he has managed to maintain an active interest in teaching, research, and school leadership.
Read the full story here.
Road named after Cambridge’s first female Professor of Education
Monday 2 November
The University of Cambridge has honoured its first female Professor of Education – Jean Rudduck, who died in 2007 – by naming a road after her on the new Eddington campus in North West Cambridge. Fittingly, Rudduck Way is located immediately opposite the main entrance to the pioneering Cambridge University Primary School, which many members of the Faculty of Education played key roles in helping to establish.
Jean Rudduck was well-known for championing the potential of ‘pupil voice’ as a means of achieving school improvement and changes to teaching and learning. Her ideas were taken up not just across the United Kingdom, but in many different countries around the world. She was joint Director of Research at Homerton College during the 1990s and made major contributions to building the College’s reputation as a centre for research and innovation. She also played an important role in helping to create the vision for the new Faculty of Education which emerged in 2001. She was subsequently appointed Professor of Education by the University, the first woman to hold such a senior role in the subject area at Cambridge.
Rudduck Way was named as part of a wider process through which the University received more than fifty suggestions for names for streets and roads on the new Eddington development. More than 50 such nominations were received altogether. Other names used on the site include those of the biblical scholar, Miles Burkitt; the archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod, and Alan Turing, the pioneering computer scientist.
Profile: Madeline Platt
Friday 30 October
Madeline Platt, 22, is a trainee on our Early Primary PGCE course, and has been passionate about working with children for as long as she can remember. Because she has dyslexia, however, she was told by some that she would never be able to pursue an academically-based career. She told us about the journey that led her to a teacher-training course at Cambridge, what it’s been like joining the Faculty during a pandemic, and why she is starting to think that teachers are basically ‘superhumans’.
Read the full interview here.
Paul Hirst (1928 - 2020)
Thursday 29 October
The Faculty is saddened to announce the death of Paul Hirst, a former Professor of Education at Cambridge and Head of the Department of Education – one of the institutions that predated the modern Faculty.
Professor Hirst was a widely-respected scholar of the philosophy of education and educational theorist, whose work proved particularly influential as new, degree-level courses for trainee teachers emerged in the 1960s.
He first came to Cambridge as a student after the Second World War. Having worked as a teacher and then as a researcher in Oxford and at King’s College London, he returned in 1971 to take up a post as Head of the Department of Education. At the time, he described himself as joining “a group of people … who are beginning to contribute significantly to work in the philosophy of education.” His lectures, which were renowned for their highly performative style, were a popular course highlight for many students.
Part of his legacy to Education at Cambridge in its present-day form arose from the active role he played in building connections between the University, the Department of Education, the Institute of Education and Homerton College, on the basis that these separate bodies would work more effectively in unison than apart. This was an aim realised during his lifetime, both with the establishment of the Faculty of Education, which drew on the foundations laid by these earlier institutions, and the granting of full college status to Homerton in 2010.
Professor Susan Robertson, Head of Faculty, said: “Everyone at the Faculty will be deeply sorry to hear of the death of Paul, who was not only a prime mover in many areas of educational theory and research, but someone without whose groundwork, the Faculty might not exist today. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his family.”
Free, online course launched to help adults promote children’s social and emotional learning through play in times of stress
Monday 26 October
Faculty of Education researchers have helped to develop a new, online course, which enables both parents and other adults who work with children to support their social-emotional learning and wellbeing through play during times of change or stress.
Read the full story here.
Interactive project to help parents of children with developmental language disorder
Thursday 22 October
A new project and website aimed at expanding the reach of research to help the parents and carers of children experiencing language difficulties has been launched, coinciding with International Developmental Language Disorder Awareness Day. The project is led by researchers at the University of Bath, who are collaborating with colleagues here at the Faculty of Education, as well as at City University, London.
Read the full story here
Spiritual development in schools needs to be remodelled and reclaimed from ‘policy creep’
Monday 12 October
A new analysis of pupil wellbeing has called for a re-evaluation of how schools support ‘spiritual development’, arguing that the present legal requirement is vague, confused, and has been appropriated for political ends.
The philosophical and historical study, by the University of Cambridge academic, Dr Daniel Moulin-Stozek, traces the origins and history of what British schools today call ‘Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development’ (SMSC).
Read the full story here
Children use make-believe aggression and violence to manage bad-tempered peers
Wednesday 7 October
Children are more likely to introduce violent themes into their pretend play, such as imaginary fighting or killing, if they are with playmates whom peers consider bad-tempered, new research suggests.
Read the full story here.
2020 PEDAL studentships announced as Centre takes on record number of PhD candidates
Wednesday 7 October
Four PhD candidates have been awarded PEDAL studentships – which cover the cost of a PhD course in the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) – for 2020.
Read the full story here.
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