探花社区

Childhood, Families and Society SIG

The Childhood, Families and Society Special Interest Group (CF&S SIG) promotes debate about the practices and theories that shape children’s and families’ lives in contemporary societies. This includes their environments, interactions, relationships, care, education, and welfare.

The SIG brings together colleagues from across the Health, Social Work and Education Faculty. We also welcome colleagues from other departments and campuses to build interprofessional connections.

Dr Angela Scollan leads the group. Its members include pedagogues, researchers, professionals, and educators working across a broad range of topics:

• theories of childhood and theories from childhood
• children’s lived realities
• children’s rights, with a focus on the right to self-determination
• play, art, digital technology, environments, and the transitions between them
• education for, with, and from children
• research methods involving children and children as researchers
• social work
• nursing.

The CF&S SIG is committed to critical research that recognises the complexity of contemporary childhoods and multidisciplinary services. We explore these areas through theoretically informed intellectual projects, empirical research, and evaluation projects.

Creative Methodologies SIG

The Creative Methodologies SIG (CMS) uses arts-based methods to explore unconventional ways of generating data. It also considers what counts as valid knowledge.

The SIG takes a philosophically informed approach to research. It emphasises the "feltness" of research by examining how matter, meaning, and affect are connected throughout the research process.

These approaches do not treat the researcher as a detached, dispassionate, and objective observer. They emphasise co-creation, embodiment, and relationality. Human and non-human actors, materials, and atmospheric forces all contribute to the creation of knowledge.

Creative methodologies draw on arts-based practices such as performance, movement, and storytelling. They give attention to sensory, affective, and material ways of knowing. This challenges traditional divisions between:

• intellect and emotion
• subject and object
• theory and practice.

CMS explores several philosophical foundations. These approaches understand creativity as emerging when bodies, spaces, and discourses come together. They allow research to develop in unpredictable and dynamic ways.

This approach encourages experimentation, reflexivity, and responsiveness. It views research as a generative and ethical practice that recognises the vitality and agency of the more-than-human world.

The SIG holds a small number of in-person workshops during the academic year. It is open to all researchers, including PGRs, ECRs, curious researchers, and sceptics.

The SIG is based in the Education department. However, it provides a transdisciplinary space for researchers from across the University. It invites them to reimagine what research methodologies could become and how they could generate new knowledge.

Professor Jayne Osgood and Dr Nic Fryer lead the group.

Pedagogic Research SIG

University staff are expected to teach, conduct research, and engage with their wider professional communities. This SIG brings these roles together to promote and celebrate research into pedagogic practice.

Our work examines how University staff and colleagues in partner organisations use research to explore and improve the quality of student learning.

The SIG provides a forum for:

• case studies of pedagogic research that seek to improve understanding of how students learn through planning, assessment, teaching, and student activities
• evaluations of University frameworks and initiatives, with a particular focus on student experiences and learning outcomes
• methods that combine teaching and research, including action research, co-construction, appreciative inquiry, evaluations, and case studies
• staff development initiatives based on research evidence.

The SIG helps colleagues bring their teaching, research, and outreach activities together in coherent projects. Its aim is to ensure that excellence in teaching supports, and is supported by, high-quality educational research.

Professor Lee Jerome leads the SIG.