Dr Victoria Cooper

Professional biography

Areas of interest

• Children and young people’s identity development
• Childhood and adolescent mental health
• Qualitative research methodologies – developing participatory, responsive approaches

Current research projects

My current research combines a number of small ethnographic projects across education and care settings (including primary and secondary schools, as well as youth clubs and after school groups) in Gloucestershire making up an on-going study of 210 children and young people since 2011. The principal focus of the research is to explore different ways of engaging with children and young people, including the analysis of different data collection instruments, as means to examine childhood and youth identity.

The Children’s Research Centre in partnership with Hope

The Children’s Research Centre led by myself and Jane Payler has been awarded funds from Hope Support Services. The aim of our research is to raise public, media and stakeholder awareness of the scale of need nationally for Hope Support Services (or similar) and awareness of the work Hope is currently doing with a view to securing funding to carry out further research and extend services. The research will synthesise information from open data sets, information held by Hope and new small-scale research with Hope children and young people to tell individual stories. The initial aim will be met within a one-year time-frame and consist of an indicative research report and launch event. 

• Extent of need for HOPE support amongst children and young people (Hope Support 2017), launched at the Houses of Parliament, 27th March 2018. Access the research report here.

The Children’s Research Centre in partnership with the Field Studies Council

Under the structure of the Children’s Research Centre (CRC) myself and Trevor Collins from KMI have been collaborating with the Field Studies Council (FSC) since 2013 to co-produce tools and resources for student-led enquiry-learning related to the secondary curriculum. Over the last two years Trevor Collins and myself have developed a Geographical Investigations key (i.e. a fold-out guide) for A Level Geography students, and we are currently developing a companion booklet for practitioners facilitating student-led enquiry. This collaboration draws directly on OU research publications into student-led research (developed within the CRC), and technology-enhanced learning (from the ESRC/EPSRC funded Personal Inquiry project). 

Current projects

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Health Kick

• Academic support for a new BBC production
• Website launch in Jan 2017
• Series launch in June 2017

Forthcoming publications 

Journal publications

Cooper, V. L. (2017) Lost in translation: Using photo-elicitation to explore childhood identity, in Children’s Geographies, http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6nJJ9p3NpGWwgYRDriUY/full. 

Books

Cooper, V. L., Montgomery, H., A. and Sheehy, K. (2017) Parenting: What type of parent do you hope to become? London: Penguin publications. Forthcoming

Chapters in Books

Cooper, V., L. and Kellett, M. (2017) Listening to children, Palgarve:  Forthcoming. 

Following my early career in primary education I have taught within the social sciences both in further and higher education. Since joining the Centre for Childhood, Youth and Sport I have principally focused on teaching in childhood studies and educational research methods.

I have taught on a variety of undergraduate and post graduate modules in early year’s education, psychology, social science and educational research methods. I have also chaired a number of undergraduate and post graduate modules within the university and have externally examined at a number of external higher education institutions.