ESRC – BIPE Project

Guest lecture at the University of the West of England

Posted on 12th February 202412th February 2024 by lucy.haslam

On 31st January, Katherin and Valentina were invited to give a guest lecture at the School of Education and Childhood of the University of the West of England in Bristol.

The lecture was delivered as part of the Policy and Contemporary Issues module offered to the students enrolled in Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) for Early Years, Primary, and Secondary education.

The lecture – titled Inequalities and bias in schools: using big data to detect injustices – provided an overview over ‘traditional’ and recent academic research on socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in education, focusing especially on the role of teacher-student relationships and school and classroom environments.

BIPE preliminary findings on teacher bias were presented, providing an example of how academic research making use of big data can be used to engage in conversations with educational practitioners and policy makers. Students were encouraged to be diagnostic in recognising the influence that big data has today on educational policy and critically evaluate its value, limitations, and complexity, especially when considering the topic of biases and inequalities in existing across schools in England today.

After the lecture, the students had the chance to engage in reflective and creative group activities in their seminar groups. Guided discussions encouraged PGCE students to critically discuss BIPE preliminary findings on teacher bias in light of their own experiences and views and reflect on potential strategies and changes to fight such biases.

Participant feedback was very positive highlighting both the interest in the topic and its relevance for their own professional development. Particularly, as the students had just finished their first 3-month placement in primary and secondary schools, they found the opportunity to relate their own first-hand placement experiences to the academic research and findings presented very useful and motivating.

If you are interested in hearing more about our teacher workshops, further information can be found on our flyer.

Slides from the workshop can be found on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.

Katherin presents at the University of Bamberg

Posted on 13th March 202313th March 2023 by lucy.haslam

Katherin presented initial results of the project at the Oberseminar of the Chair for Sociology (Social Stratification) of Professor Cornelia Kristen at the University of Bamberg. The title of the presentation was ‘Social and ethnic biases in primary school: Preliminary results from a study of teacher perceptions of students’ academic attitudes’.

The abstract for the presentation was as follows:

This study aims to investigate socioeconomic and ethnic biases in teachers’ perceptions of students’ attitudes to school. Here, we define a social or ethnic bias in teacher perceptions of the student’s attitudes as discrepancy between a teacher report of a student’s attitude (e.g., how much student finds school interesting, enjoys school, etc.) and the student’s own report that is systematically linked to the student’s socioeconomic status or ethnic background.

This talk presents results from a study using large-scale secondary data for England – the British Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). In a first step, a residual method was applied to estimate the discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions, and in a second step, the residuals were regressed on student socioeconomic and ethnic background, as well as a number of confounding and mediating variables. Preliminary results show important socioeconomic and ethnic biases in the teacher perceptions.

The study will be extended by corresponding analyses for Scotland (Growing Up in Scotland) and Germany (National Education Panel Study). The multi-country approach will enable us to explore how “macro-level factors” such as education policy and teacher training influence teacher bias. In this talk, theoretical assumptions on the possible impacts of such “macro-level factors” will be discussed.

First Federation Trust workshop

Posted on 13th March 202313th March 2023 by lucy.haslam

On 25th January, Katherin and the BIPE team gave a workshop on biases in primary education to school leaders and teachers from the First Federation Trust.

The First Federation Trust is a multi-academy trust and education charity linking 19 primary schools located across Devon and into Dorset. The aim of the trust is to enhance the provision of the schools, whilst enabling them to maintain their individual identities and the freedom to shape and deliver a curriculum that reflects their school’s values and the aspirations of the children they serve.

Participant feedback was very positive highlighting the importance and impact of such activities. Participants said, for example, that the seminar motivates teachers to:

Extend our curriculum further, to include opportunities to challenge bias thoughts, to support both children and staff on views and openly discuss their views.

If you are interested in hearing more about our teacher workshops, further information can be found on our flyer, on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.

Katherin presents at the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE) of the University of Bristol

Posted on 13th March 202313th March 2023 by lucy.haslam

On the 6th of December, Katherin presented at an internal CIRE meeting, a forum intended for faculty and PGRs to share research ideas and ongoing projects in order to receive feedback from faculty and PGRs with different research interest and areas of expertise in the field of educational research.

Katherin presented some preliminary results of the BIPE project focusing on social and ethnic biases in primary school in England.

Slides from the presentation can be viewed on our ‘Materials and publications’ page.

Welcome to our new Senior Research Associate

Posted on 3rd July 202227th July 2022 by lucy.haslam

We are delighted to have a new member on the project team!

Valentina Perinetti Casoni has joined us as Senior Research Associate and will be working with us on data analysis, writing up of publications and impact activities.

We are now getting started with a paper on discrepancies between teacher, parent and children’s perceptions of learning and teaching. We are curious to find out whether such discrepancies vary by student, social and ethnic background, and what their impacts on further educational pathways are.

Jurassic Coast Teacher Network

Posted on 1st July 202213th March 2023 by lucy.haslam

Scenic photo of the Jurassic Coast, featuring a blue sea, cliffs and sand dunes

On 30th June, Katherin gave a workshop on unconscious bias to teachers in the Jurassic Coast Teacher Network. This network, which is led by Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, connects teachers across schools in West Dorset, South Devon and Somerset.

Participant feedback was very positive and shows the workshop will have impact on practice:

It was very thought provoking and produced many conversations about what we do or don’t do, and what we might need to think about…it will help inform our work next year on feedback and marking.

If you are interested in hearing more about our teacher workshops, further information can be found on our flyer, on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.