There is always a reason, an underlying motivation, for any individual interest. This includes research interest. At a basic level I am interested in how people learn and in the conditions for learning. I think the roots of this goes far back into my own childhood. Somewhere, somewhen, there is that something that is the core of our individual existence. I remember looking in the mirror as a young child, and being aware of myself as separate from others. We are separate and unique but in other ways we all share basic feelings and experiences. One things we all have in common is the experience of being children, of being young and small.
My core belief is that most important of all, at any stage of education, is compassion and kindness. I hope that any future results of my research will improve and make better education for students and teachers alike. Teaching is a difficult profession where you often have to think on your feet, and I think teachers are often undervalued. That said there is room for improvement both in practice and in systems. Formal education takes place within systems and in institutions of learning. These are regulated by rules and structures and histories of practice. A student can easily become insignificant in these system. However, effects of a system will become part of the student’s lived experience for good or bad. Therefore I think it is important to reflect on the power educators have over students and how this power translates into teaching and assessment practices.
We measure and judge students and their knowledge and learning. We turn these measurements and judgements into marks and grades. These assessments can determine access to further education, jobs and affect feelings of self-esteem (Bezemer and Kress, 2016) making assessment practices a core influence on, not just students’ learning, but also their lives. Therefore it is important that assessments recognise signs of learning when expressed in different ways, using different media and in different shapes and forms. My ongoing research on digital text and assessment practices place focus on recognition of learning in higher education, but should be relevant for other levels of education.
Reference:
Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, Learning and Communication: A social semiotic frame. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315687537
multimodal study 