Childhood and Youth - OU Community Online

The Open University's teacher training programme, which was judged Outstanding by inspectors in Northern Ireland last year, has received a glowing report for its work in England.

Ofsted, the government's office for standards in education, has rated the OU's initial teacher education in England as Outstanding in all but one area. That area, Attainment, is rated Good.

The Ofsted report, based on its inspection in March,  says that the structure and flexibility of the Open University teaching training provides high quality training for people who in most cases would not otherwise have entered the teaching profession.

It says: "They are trained well and the very large majority successfully complete the course and secure teaching posts that suit their personal circumstances.

"The overwhelming majority of successful trainees remain in teaching beyond the early years, a testament to their personal qualities and to the quality of training and support they receive."

The Ofsted report follows a glowing assessment of the OU's teacher training programme in Northern Ireland, conducted by the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) last September.The OU was the only Northern Ireland institution to receive the highest grade, Outstanding.

The Open University offers a professional graduate certificate in education (PGCE) to teach in the 11 to 16 age range, with post-16 enhancement for most trainees, in: design and technology; geography;  mathematics;  modern foreign languages (French, German and Spanish);  music; and science (biology, chemistry and physics). Successful trainees can take an additional masters-level module, leading to a postgraduate certificate in education, at the end of the course.

Useful links

• Professional Graduate Certificate in Education

Picture: Thinkstock

Open University Professor of Social Marketing Gerard Hastings, also director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Centre for Tobacco Control Research at Stirling University, has welcomed the move by MP Dr Sarah Wollaston to put forward a private members bill to limit the advertising exposure of alcohol to children.

“There’s now a steady stream of evidence showing that the increasing consumption of alcohol advertising is associated with a greater number of people drinking from a young age," said Gerard.

“Recent research has painted a powerful picture of young people being inundated with messages that depict drinking as normal, fun and something we should be doing all the time, which is an unhelpful norm.

“But this is not a proposed ban on alcohol advertising; it’s simply aiming to reduce vast swathes of it to protect children and young people, and also to make it more factual so that consumers can make informed decisions.

“We know there are serious health issues attached to drinking so we want to change behaviour in society. People should be able to choose not to drink without being made to feel as though they have to excuse themselves.”

Useful links

• BBC News online report
• A report authored by two OU academics calls for a total ban on alcohol advertising

The feature film Vortex, directed by John Oates from the Child and Youth Studies Group in the Open University's faculty of Education and Language Studies with his Hungarian colleague Csaba Szekeres, won a Premier Award at the British Film Institute on  Thursday (24 March). This top award was given by the British Film and Video Council in the Learning on Screen Awards competition 2011.

The film is a co-production by The Open University and the Hunnia Filmstudio, Budapest, and is a documentary that follows the lives of young Roma children and their families living in poverty in a remote village in rural Hungary.

Vortex also won top prize in a Hungarian film festival last year, for its hard-hitting portrait of the lives of an ethnic minority group.

The OU’s Child and Youth Studies group conducts national and international research, including the Young Lives project tracking the development of children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over 15 years.

Image: Still from Vortex

The Children’s Research Centre based at the OU has received another generous donation from OU alumna Yvonne Perret of £15,000. “It will enable us to continue the work we are doing in schools supporting children to undertake their own research” says the OU’s Mary Kellet, Professor of Childhood and Youth. 

The extra funds are key to the centre’s ongoing research. Professor Kellet adds: “Crucially it will enable children to disseminate their own work at national and international conferences and other high profile events. It is really important that we are able to showcase their work in this way and give children a platform on which to build their research voice. The Children's Research Centre now has well over 100 original research studies by children and young people and is generating a valuable body of knowledge.”

Useful links

• Find out more about Yvonne Perret and why she donates to the Children’s research centre
• Fundraising at the OU
• How to donate

Why? Dr Panagiota Alevizou is a researcher in the Open University's Institute of Educational Technology who is trying to find out.

She and other academic volunteers on the Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee are running a high-profile survey to uncover the barriers to scholarly participation –  and they want to hear from as many OU folk as possible. 

"We would like to hear from experts in their field,  who do not contribute, what has deterred them from participation. But we'd also like to hear what motivates people who do participate, either randomly or actively, and gain an insight into the opportunities this offers. 

"It is important we have a large volume of respondents to get a representative sample, so we're hoping as many as possible will take part. The online survey only takes about 15 minutes to complete." 

She said the anonymity of Wikipedia may be an issue for some academics because they can't get credit for their postings. But it is precisely this anonymity is which motivates many people to participate.  

Other possible deterrents could be technical difficulties interfacing with Wikipedia, and not being able to cite particular academic resources because they are not open or accessible to all. 

Some academics continue to be sceptical about Wikipedia's credibility as a source of accurate information, she said. "A lot of people say they do not like Wikipedia, but it is a very popular site and it has masses of information, which can be vetted.  

'It's like any other resource in that, if you're doing research, you don't just rely on one book or one encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is an entry point to research."

Take part in the Wikimedia survey here. 

Useful links 

• Experts to underpin Wikipedia’s open wisdom? 
• Why don’t more scientists contribute to Wikipedia? 
• Wikipedia Comes to Age
• Time to Underpin Wikipedia Wisdom
• Come out from under that bushel
• PlagiPedia shows the web is passionate about correcting its own follies

Associate lecturer in child development at the Open University, Dr Helene Guldberg, discusses her book Reclaiming Childhood. In it she argues that children in Britain today need to be set free from the pressure of overanxious parents...

Dr Guldberg believes there is a difference between the perceived view of a child in the UK compared to reality. “We are continually told that children are cooped up, passive, apathetic and unable to create their own fun and entertainment. Their imagination is apparently dulled by too many hours of watching television and playing sedentary computer games”. She argues in her book that this is not the case and says “it is not children that are messed up, but today’s attitude to children”.

The media creates a lot of coverage of child-related issues such as knife crime, obesity, bullying, abduction which can make parents more cautious about the whereabouts of their children than in previous generations. Dr Guldberg suggests “society’s desire to protect children from the harsh realities of life has gone too far. There is a real danger that by cocooning children, overprotecting and over supervising them, society could be denying kids the opportunity to grow up into capable, confident adults”. Which she feels results in children losing out on childhood experiences taken for granted in the past.

In today’s society every adult coming into contact with children can be seen as a threat which Dr Guldberg feels as a result of “the message given by the government and various charities to be suspicious”. “For instance,” she says, “it is almost impossible in Britain today to take photos of one’s children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews in public places if they are surrounded by other children. This is now treated as being akin to potential child pornography. This is a very sad development.” 

The use of social media by children is now on the increase. Dr Guldberg believes the “motivation to use social networking sites is a positive one”. She adds: “If children are not allowed to mess around with their friends outdoors, away from adult supervision, they will look for other means of circumventing adult control. Their main motivation is to look for ways of socialising with their peers, and social networking sites provide one of the few arenas for young people to conduct relationships with each other outside the increasingly closely monitored worlds of home and school.” As a final thought she suggests that if we want to change this, then giving children and young people more freedom is the key.

The full interview with Dr Helene Guldberg is available to read in Sesame, page 40, issue 241.

Useful links

• OU module Understanding children (Y156)
• Helen's book, Reclaiming Childhood
   

TV is a  convenient scapegoat for all the ills that befall children but new research suggests that watching too much television and parents not talking to their children can’t be blamed for speech and language problems.

A survey for the Communcation Trust was carried out to explore perceptions about children’s speech and language development, and finds that parents and too much TV are wrongly being blamed.

Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at The Open University, Dr Mary Jane Kehily’s, own research found that “children used television as a cultural resource to think with and talk with. Far from being passive and mindless, children view television actively and critically engage with what they watch.” 

“It’s not uncommon for television to get a bad press,” she says. “The ‘box’ in the corner of the room carries so many negative associations – frequently regarded as a mindless activity, and generally cast in a bad-for-you kind of light, TV is charged with making couch potatoes of us all.

“Stereotypes of that brand of human spud are ever-present in British comedy. The family most dedicated to the box, The Royle Family, exist as potent reminders that watching too much television places you in the underclass rather than the middle-class. Laughed at, rather than laughing with, excess TV drains these unfortunates of their critical faculties. Watching television and laughing about people who watch television, we collude in an elaborate joke; they have become lazy, stupid and fat – but we’re not like that.

“Just when you thought that this negative view of television couldn’t sink much lower, along comes a new survey to drag the reputation of the box into the sea-bed. Polling 6,000 people, the Communication Trust found that one in six blamed excessive TV watching for children’s speech and language problems. 2,500 people thought that parents did not talk to their children enough.”

Cultural resource
Dr Kehily says, from a sociological perspective, television, like other media forms, has always been a vehicle for adult concerns and anxieties and can spark a ‘moral panic’. In fact, television viewing may have positive and life-enhancing effects upon children, she explains, but that contrary expert opinion doesn’t make the news.

Her own research reveals positive benefits in the way children interact with television. She says: “In my own research at The Open University with children in the 11 to 15 age range, I found that children used television as a cultural resource to think with and talk with. Far from being passive and mindless, children view television actively and critically engage with what they watch.

“The young people I studied over the course of two years, used television as a framework for discussing issues that concerned them and had a bearing upon their everyday lives. Plots from the soaps, TV characters and dramatic serialisations became the subject of scrutiny and were used like roadmaps to explore the terrain they were travelling. Through television, these young people explored family relations, sexuality and gender identity and would frequently juxtapose their own experiences with media constructions. In some cases, television enabled teenagers to speak about sensitive issues that may have otherwise been taboo with the peer group. In such discussions children think about matters of morality and responsibility, actively negotiating what they think and how they feel while also considering what others think of them.

“My study concluded that television, like other popular cultural forms, should be seen within a broad social context as an influential, mass produced and publicly shared media form that speaks to children in particular ways and enables them to talk back. Not a ringing endorsement of television as good-for-you, but an acknowledgement that there may be social benefits for children and particularly for peer group relations.”

Dr Mary Jane Kehily is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at The Open University. Her book, Sexuality, Gender and Schooling, Shifting Agendas in Social Learning was published by Routledge, 2002.

Useful links

• BBC news story - parents 'wrongly blamed for speech problems'
• More about Dr Mary Jane Kehily