Black History Month at IOE, 2024

Creating impact through research, from our early career researchers

Widening engagement with climate policy

For the UK to reach its Net Zero target, every community will need to be engaged but its environmental sector and climate movement currently lacks diversity, particularly from working-class and minoritised ethnic and religious groups. Dr Alessandra Palange’s project, Letters from the Global South, set out to address this problem and aimed to get more people from different backgrounds to learn about and engage with climate policy.

Embedding decolonising research in higher education

Universities, like all institutions, need to take the legacies of colonialism seriously: to consider how its long history still shapes aspects of their culture and ways of working, including their teaching and research, perpetuating unjust social relations. Cultures of Decolonisation is a UCL Grand Challenges research project that has helped researchers to reflect on their practices, identifying challenges and practical steps to effectively embed decolonising research at UCL.

Other research at IOE is investigating further issues at the intersection of ethnicity and education; this includes the ESRC Education Research Programme, which brings particular focus to the role of teachers. Within the ERP's collection of projects, a team at Durham University are researching ethnic disproportionality in the schools of England, the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority teachers and its relationship to school outcomes.

Creating space for Black voices at UCL: a student perspective

Kelly interviewed fellow Master's student Olivia about her experiences being from a minority background within academic spaces. They then decided to hold an event to share and celebrate voices across UCL's Black community and what they're working on.

“One panellist said: "If I decided to remove myself from the space for seeing a lack of people who look like me, there would be even less of us in the space – that’s why it’s important to keep going."

Read Kelly and Olivia's account of the process and their key takeaways.

Thinking about life through all of their eyes: a school leader's duty

The ECF Staffroom podcast speaks to early career teachers, mentors and participants at all levels of the UCL Early Career Teacher Development Programme. This episode encourages listeners to step out of their bubble; Raf Alleyne, Assistant Principal at London Screen Academy, tells us about the importance of reflecting on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. ECF stands for Early Career Framework.

Listen to the podcast with Raf Alleyne on your preferred podcasting platform; visit the links or search for 'IOE insights, thinking about life through all of their eyes'.

Events

Research seminar: Investigating discrimination in childcare access across Europe: Insights from field experiments

16 October 2024, 1:00–2:00pm

Guest speakers will present fresh data on the prevalence and nature of discrimination in the childcare sector across various European countries, focusing on racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation biases.

Lecture: Schools, policy and inequality - Researching why teachers do what they do and what it means for children

5 November 2024, 5:30–7:30pm

Professor Alice Bradbury will outline her work on the intersection of policy and inequality in primary and early years education since the late 2000s, focusing on how reforms have engendered cultures of accountability and datafication, which may work to reproduce inequalities.

Conference: Reimagining higher education: Journeys of decolonising

8 November 2024, 9:30am–6:00pm

The Centre for Inclusive Education at IOE is hosting this conference to share experiences and work on decolonisation as universities begin to embark upon decolonising activities.

Running an event that you’d like us to add here? Please get in touch at ioe.marcomms@ucl.ac.uk.

More events, book recommendations and interest groups across UCL for Black History Month

More information

• Black History Month website

Image credits

Top to bottom:

• UCL.
• UCL IOE Communications.
• Sam Balye via Unsplash.