Psychology, Sociology and Education
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14
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Item The power of placements: reflections on a joyful activity to empower teacher educators(University of Aberdeen, 2025-09-15) Scholes, Stephen C.; Dey, Donna; Green, Christopher; Michael, Eluned; Oates, Catriona; Payne, Orlaith; Shirazi, Tara; Stevenson, SarahIn Scottish university-based initial teacher education (ITE), university-based teacher educators support and assess preservice teachers during school placements. This work requires substantial knowledge and skills, rapid relationship building, and extensive travel. Teacher educators navigate emotionally demanding situations, balancing rigorous standards with individual growth when making crucial professional judgements. This piece positions school placements as a joyful and empowering experience. Through curated reflections from eight teacher educators across four Scottish universities, it explores key themes, demonstrating the empowering potential of placement practice. This contribution aims to foster a positive self-image among teacher educators and highlight the value of placement work. In doing so, it challenges institutional views that sometimes overlook the skill, intellectual rigour, and pastoral expertise essential to effective teacher-educators’ placement practice.Item The Marginalization of Religious Education: Solutions for a Shared Challenge from Scotland(Taylor & Francis Group, 2025-08-21) Scholes, Stephen C.Scholarship on Religious Education (RE) has called for knowledge transfer to address the marginalization of the subject. This article builds on this discussion by exploring the situation for RE in Scotland based on new insights from a collaborative project that adopted an action research approach. The article makes three main contributions. First, the data examined includes perspectives from members of the ‘RE community’ in Scotland, enabling it to offer an updated account of the national picture. Second, it explicitly connects Scottish developments to international trends. Finally, it highlights solution-focused insights into the common challenge of the marginalization of RE in Scotland and, potentially, beyond.Item Empowering future literacy instructors: the role of mastery experiences in pre-service teachers’ literacy knowledge and self-efficacy(2025-08-14) Law, Jeremy M.; Boese, Karen.; Roy, Suparna.; Boese, Alexandra S.; Scholes, Stephen C.Teachers play a crucial role in reading development, but many lack explicit content knowledge and literacy self-efficacy for effective instruction. This study explores a mastery experience-focused professional learning opportunity to enhance pre-service teachers’ literacy instruction skills. Grounded in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, it argues that mastery experiences are crucial for developing effective literacy teachers. The program integrates explicit knowledge instruction with hands-on, collaborative experiences over 10 weeks. Results indicate statistically significant growth in self-efficacy and literacy instruction knowledge among participants. The study also highlights potential reciprocal benefits for local children and schools, particularly in supporting struggling readers. The findings suggest this approach effectively prepares pre-service teachers to be literacy instructors, bridging the gap between theory and practice. This research provides valuable insights into the potential of mastery experience-focused initial teacher professional learning opportunities in transforming literacy education.Item Religious and moral education in Scottish non-denominational primary schools: charting curriculum change through school handbooks(Taylor & Francis Group, 2024-10-01) Scholes, Stephen C.Religious and Moral Education (RME) in primary schools has been an under-researched aspect of state-funded schooling in Scotland. It has received little scholarly comment, and even less empirical research has been conducted on the extent and nature of provision since the implementation of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence from 2010 onwards. Using the findings from a document analysis of ninety school handbooks from one local education authority, this article contributes to the limited scholarship on this topic. Through a discussion of the themes of compliance, content, and community, the article highlights ongoing challenges concerning implementing CfE RME in the primary sector. It concludes by considering the marginalisation of RME and suggesting that focusing on professional learning and further empirical research are vital next steps.Item Where grief education goes to die? A response to making learning about grief, death, and loss mandatory in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence(Cruse: Bereavement Support, 2024-02-14) Scholes, Stephen C.This rapid response raises challenges to Dawson et al’s (2023) recent proposals for mandatory grief education in schools; in particular, it considers curriculum crowding, the limitations of legal mandates and initial-teacher education. It proposes collaborative working between specialist groups as a way forward.Item Scotland: The Long-Delayed Rise of a Conservative Nationalism?(European Conservative Nonprofit Ltd., 2024-02-04) Gilfillan, PaulItem Scotland: The Strange Case of the Missing Nationalism(European Conservative Nonprofit Ltd., 2024-02-03) Gilfillan, PaulItem Leaving or Staying “Home” in a Time of Rupture: International Students’ Experiences of Loneliness and Social Isolation during COVID-19(2024-01-04) Wallen, Linnea; Sagan, Olivia; Scally-Robertson, MhairiDuring COVID-19, international students were faced with the decision of remaining in their country of study or returning to their home countries, with little knowledge of when they would next be able to return or leave. Both choices left the students vulnerable to feelings of loneliness and social isolation. This paper examines how international students at a Scottish university experienced and navigated leaving or staying “home” and how loneliness and social isolation characterised these experiences. We further contextualise these experiences through Holbraad et al.’s (2019) prism of “rupture”. The data were generated between February-July 2021 through semi-structured focus groups and qualitative questionnaire comments and were analysed through Thematic Analysis. We discuss three themes: 1) Liminal Friends and Strangers, 2) Sense of Home and Family, and 3) Staying or Leaving the Country. The study contributes to the expanding body of research on experiences of loneliness and social isolation amongst international students.Item Uncertainty as Affective State and Critical Engagement Strategy in Museum and Heritage Site Settings(University of California Press, 2023-03-16) Wallen, Linnea; Docherty-Hughes, John R.Some pasts have long been uncertain—among those, prehistoric lives in areas where limited archaeological evidence has been unearthed. The Scottish Crannog Centre holds a collection of Iron Age artifacts that have been excavated from the bottom of Loch Tay, jigsaw pieces that are used to tell the story of the everyday lives of crannog dwellers two and a half thousand years ago. The visitor experience at the museum is built on direct interaction with the museum team as the visitors are guided through the site, presenting ample opportunities for critical questions to be raised and discussed about how the past can be understood in the present and how it can inform the future. Facilitating such conversations—and using Iron Age artifacts as points of connection and as conversational prompts—involves a careful balance between fact, interpretation, and imagination; what we know for certain, what is likely, and what we do not, and cannot, know. This paper focuses on how Scottish Crannog Centre museum practitioners employ uncertainty as a feeling, a process, and an engagement strategy in generating critical reflections and conversations among visitors. Drawing on data generated through twenty-five interviews with museum staff, apprentices, and volunteers, as well as ethnographic observations, we explore how the team manages uncertainty, how it is positioned and functions in interactions with visitors, and how uncertainty facilitates a sense of connection to the distant past. In so doing, we argue that uncertainty can be more clearly conceptualized as an affective state and a critical strategy when exploring how prehistoric and present-day life are connected in museum contexts.Item Mentoring Teachers in Scotland: A Practical Guide(Routledge, 2022-05-19) Eady, Sandra; Essex, Jane; Livingston, Kay; McColl, Margaret; Eady, Sandra; Essex, Jane; Livingston, Kay; McColl, MargaretThis book assists mentors in developing their mentor skills, offering guidance needed to support the development of beginning teachers in early years, primary and secondary schools in the Scottish education system, as well as supporting all teachers in their career long professional learning.