LIT REVIEW On Tuesday, Nov. 8, 9AM EST, I attended an LJMU Doctoral Academy Research Training, Synthesizing Your Literature Review. These are my notes and the 3 readings discussed:
*KEY-Limit the scope of your/my PhD reading to focus in on my outlined Project Aims and Research Questions:
Read and re-read the project aims and questions
In the introduction or abstract and conclusion, the reading does not begin to answer any one of them, set it aside
Focus on those that do answer at least one of my research questions
You may read on multiple questions/aims simultaneously
My thesis must demonstrate originality and contribute to the field
It must place me and my thinking into the wider debate
My thesis should ADD my thinking and questions and arguments to the conversation
All of the researchers I read are contributing to this discussion, and so will/am I, with each reading…
~Summarizing
~Analyzing
~Evaluating
~Synthesizing
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Read to answer questions, not just to gain (more or random) information
Abstract
Thesis questions/aims
Lit review
Conclusion
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ABSTRACTS and CONCLUSIONS
Critical reading questions:
• Who is the author? Significant?
• What is the main argument?
• Which methods are used? Appropriate and robust?
• What findings and conclusions are made?
• Does the evidence support the conclusion?
• What are the strengths and limitations? E.g assumptions?
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1.Moncrieffe, M. and Moncrieffe, A. (2019) ‘An examination of imagery used to represent fundamental British values and British identity on primary school display boards’. London Review of Education, 17 (1), pp.52–69. DOI https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.17.1.05
Abstract
It is observable that display boards are being applied widely by primary schools as visual representations for teaching and learning about the stated fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. The research presented by this article is based upon analysis of 27 display boards from primary schools across England, including findings from in-depth interviews with three primary school teachers. We wanted to identify and to understand how discourses of British national identity such as monoculturalism and multiculturalism are reified by schools and teachers through the imagery used on primary school display boards in the representation of fundamental British values. Our research makes an original contribution to the debate on teaching and learning about national identity, by offering empirical evidence both of representations of fundamental British values and of teacher interpretations of the policy.
Conclusion
This study has foregrounded its aims to provide an opportunity for teachers to reflect on images of icons and symbols used on primary school display boards of fundamental British values in order to represent British identity. When given this opportunity, teachers interpreted most of the dominant images of common icons and symbols of traditional British culture as not representing fundamental British values. The display board chosen by all teachers as being least representative used images that were icons and symbols of an ethnocentric traditional and stereotypical white British culture. Our research has identified that primary school fundamental British values display boards imagery generally project dominant white English majoritarian perspectives and discourses of British identity (Conversi, 2012; Pathak, 2008). We suggest that the continued uncritical use and endorsement of such images to represent fundamental British values by teachers serves to maintain the power of exclusive monocultural white British identities and perspectives, upheld as the norm. An examination of imagery to represent fundamental British values and identity 67 London Review of Education 17 (1) 2019 to the general exclusion of minority ethnic British identities and perspectives. In this way, a ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault, 1972) for
knowing about Britishness and British identity through a white British perspective is maintained. Our research suggests that the Prevent Strategy (Home Office, 2011) in its policy directives on the teaching and learning of fundamental British values has served to produce responses by schools that validate and spread ‘whiteness’ as power, dominance, normativity and privilege (Frankenberg, 1993).
Notes on the contributors
Marlon Moncrieffe, formerly a primary school assistant head teacher, is a senior lecturer at the School of Education, University of Brighton. His research interests focus on using twentieth-century Black British history in teacher education. Audrey Moncrieffe is a primary school teacher with over 20 years of teaching experience in urban and rural primary schools.
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2. Elton-Chalcraft, S., Lander, V., Revell, L., Warner, D., and Whitworth, L. (2017) ‘To promote, or not to promote fundamental British values? Teachers’ standards, diversity and teacher education’. British Educational Research Journal, 43 (1), pp.29–48. DOI: 10.1002/berj.3253
Abstract
In this article we seek to problematize the presence of the requirement within the teachers’ standards (DfE, 2012), that they ‘should not undermine fundamental British values’ in the context of initial teacher education in England. The inclusion of this statement within the teachers’ code of conduct has made its way from the counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent and raises questions about Britishness, values and the relationship between the state and the profession more generally. We argue that the inclusion of the phrase within a statutory document that regulates the profession is de facto a politicization of the profession by the state thereby instilling the expectation that teachers are state instruments of surveillance. The absence of any wider debate around the inclusion of the statement is also problematic as is the lack of training for pre-service and in-service teachers since it means this concept of fundamental British values is unchallenged and its insidious racialising implications are unrecognised by most teachers. Keywords: Britishness; fundamental British values; identity; teachers’ standards
Conclusion
The implications for teacher education are far reaching, particularly so since the publication of the white paper Education Excellence Everywhere (DfE, 2016), which advocates the wholesale system of school-led teacher training effectively removing universities from the process of teacher education and thereby delimiting the space available for critical academic debate that could inform preservice teachers’ understanding of the term ‘fundamental British values’ and provide them with different/alternative conceptions of Britishness. If teacher educators, in universities and in schools, adopt an uncritical stance on
the notion of Britishness, and if they also fear the consequences of negative Ofsted inspection comments related to how schools promote fundamental British values, then the transformed preservice teacher training sited in schools may well play safe in preparing new teachers not to undermine fundamental British values. Without the opportunity to critique what it is to be British within the context of equality and diversity in twenty-first-century Britain it is likely that the majority of student teachers will struggle to develop a sense of belonging among some BME pupils that engenders feelings of pride and loyalty in being, say a British Muslim, a British Sikh, or a British Hindu. Indeed, the opportunity to develop social cohesion through shared values may be missed since some children and young people may be left with the feeling that some are more British than others. We need to educate student teachers and teachers to develop, with all children, a sense of pride in who they are with respect to their ethnicity and nationality. This can only be achieved if we create critical spaces and identify experts with whom student teachers and teachers can critique the imposition of the specific standard to, ‘not undermining fundamental British values’ within their code of ‘Personal and Professional Conduct’ (DfE, 2012), which seeks to control and police the development of future teachers and citizens of multicultural Britain. It is in our diverse classrooms with teachers who can lead and develop conversations about belonging and being British that we will begin to overturn the racialized nostalgia-filled stereotypical conception of what it means to be British to develop citizens with BME heritages who unequivocally identify with, and are confident in feeling British.
Notes on contributors
Lecturers in initial teacher training at the Schools of Education at University of Cumbria, Edge Hill University, Canterbury Christchurch University and Middlesex University
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3. McCully, A. and Clarke, L. (2016) ‘A place for fundamental (British) values in teacher education in Northern Ireland?’ Journal of Education for Teaching,42 (3), pp.354–368. DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2016.1184465
Abstract
This paper examines the distinctive locus of teacher education in Northern Ireland (NI) in respect of Fundamental British Values (FBV). It is written from the perspective of teacher education tutors in a PGCE programme that explicitly subscribes to pursuing the Shared Future agenda as outlined by NI Government policy in 2005. First, it establishes the inappropriateness of pursuing an FBV agenda in NI where the historical and contemporary context has been characterised by division expressed through opposing British and Irish identities; and, emerging from conflict where future political progress requires greater accommodation between these two often hostile positions. Second, using data from a previous Teaching and Learning Research Programme study (2005) on Values in Teacher Education as an indicator of student teacher social and political attitudes, it draws on later NI census (2011) and Life and Times Survey data (2005 and 2008) to identify the challenges and opportunities facing teacher educators wishing to encourage a more nuanced awareness among student teachers as to how identity issues impact on education. Finally, one teacher education initiative designed for this purpose is examined and its approaches
offered as a means that Initial Teacher Education might contribute to producing teachers better equipped to contribute to a more accommodating society in NI in the future.
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated that the position of Britishness in NI is highly contested. In states where ethnicity or identity is a driver of internal communal violence education can be both a positive or negative contributor (Bush and Saltarelli 2000; Smith and Vaux 2003; Davies 2004; Gallagher 2004; Tawil and Harley 2004; Paulston 2011). If a force for positivity, it is recognised that, when it comes to implementation in classrooms, conflict sensitive curricula accompanied by teacher education fostering the knowledge, aptitudes, dispositions and skills to interpret the latter in practice, are of crucial importance. Implicit within this is that teachers and teacher educators have a duty both to understand the complexities of conflict situations from different perspectives and a duty not to lead young people in directions which might enflame sensitivities. Therefore, the attribution of worth exclusively to one cultural identity or tradition within the education system is, by implication, a rejection of the other (Bush and Saltarelli 2000; Smith & Vaux 2003). Davies (2004, 76–80), in analysing the role of education in handling contested identities in conflict contexts highlights that it is insecurity that leads individuals to adhere to exclusivist ideologies. Rather, they should be encouraged to recognise that identity formation is fluid and ‘self-making’. Davies (2004, 76–80) argues for ‘ambiguity’ and ‘hybridity’ as ways of understanding ‘our multiple overlapping “layers’ of identity” from the personal to the international’. Thus, identity should not be conceptualised as fixed or mutually exclusive. Education in post conflict societies is obliged to encourage young people to examine existing situations in new ways and envision new possibilities.
Notes on contributors
Senior lecturers in the School of Education, Ulster University, Coleraine, UK
