Webinar 7: Studying MA Education in the UK: Q & A with lecturers

Event Date：19 Nov 2021 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Venue： Online event

Content: The Studying MA Education in the UK series provide a platform for international students to interact with lecturers (who are also international academics in the UK), discussing issues and challenges commonly faced by international students as they adapt to a new educational system and culture. In this first session, we have invited three lecturers teaching on MA Education courses at UK universities to answer questions from students. It will be an exploratory event, from which emerging themes will be identified to inform the focus of future sessions. If you are an international student currently studying an MA Education or related courses in a UK university, you are welcome to attend this event with any questions you have about your study.

About speaks:

Dr Yuwei Xu is an Assistant Professor in Education and Teacher Development at the University of Nottingham, where he teaches MA Education core modules. Previously, he has held academic positions at the UCL Institute of Education (where he remains an honorary lecturer) and the University of Portsmouth. Dr Xu is a sociologist of (early) childhood, education, and gender; with expertise particularly in gender and men in early childhood education, child agency, child-centred diversity and quality education, parenting, and women in STEM. Dr Xu serves as an editor for Children & Society journal, an associate editor for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, and an editorial board member for British Educational Research Journal & Journal of Childhood, Education & Society. He is also a British Educational Research Association (BERA) council member and membership lead for Gender and Education Association.

Dr Jie Gao is a Lecturer for the MA Education Programme at Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, UCL Institute of Education. She also works as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Teacher and Early Years Education, UCL Institute of Education. Her research background lies in psychology of education, with research interests including parenting, children's play, agency, well-being, motivation theories and innovative methodologies. Her current research projects mainly focus on children's voices in early childhood education and care; transition period from preschool to primary education; the development and evaluation of parenting programmes; and early years teacher continuing professional development.

Dr Jie Liu is a Lecturer in Education at UCL Institute of Education where she bases on MA Education, one of the few large-scale postgraduate degree courses at UCL. Before joining UCL, she worked as a Teaching Fellow on MA Education at the University of Reading. Dr. Liu also has teaching experiences in three different universities in China and in Singapore. Her research interests include multilingual education and multilingualism as well as ethnicity and education.

Webinar 5 & 6: Pursuing a Academic Career in Mainland China

Organisers/Chairs: Dr. Tinghe Jin & Cassie M. Zhang Date: 26th March/ 26th April 2021

Professor Luo Shengquan, who is a doctoral supervisor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Education, Southwest University, is entrusted with crucial posts, namely, Deputy Secretary-General of the National Professional Committee on Curriculum Theory and Director of the Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and Educational Big Data, Southwest University. He has also won several academic titles at various levels , such as Title winner of “National Talents”, a Distinguished Professor among“Bayu Scholars”of Chongqing, leading personnel of Chongqing Philosophical and Social Sciences, academic and technical leader of Chongqing. Professor Luo has been a visiting scholar in Michigan State University(USA) and University College London(UK).The major research field of Professor Luo lies in Principles of Education, Teacher Education, and Curriculum & Instruction Theories.

Dr. Shuiyun Liu is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University (China). She got her PhD from Institute of Education, UCL, in 2011, and her Mater degree was from University of Oslo, Norway (Erasmus Mundus Programme). Her main research interests include educational policy, higher education and quality assurance. Dr. Liu has published in a number of journals, including Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, Higher Education Policy and Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, etc. Her book, Quality Assurance and Institutional Transformation: The Chinese Experience was published by Springer in 2016; External Higher Education Quality Assurance in China was published by Routledge in 2018. Besides, she also contributed to six other books with separate chapters.

Dr Lisha Liu is a Senior English Instructor (Teaching-track faculty) and Course Coordinator at Center for Language Education, Southern University of Science and Technology, China. Her research mainly focuses on innovative approaches to English language teaching at Chinese universities.

Dr Hui Yu is Associate Professor of Educational Policy in the School of Education at South China Normal University, China. Dr Yu's main areas of interest are in sociology of education with a focus on policy processes and social class equalities. His ongoing research project focuses on the rural migrant children’s education and social mobility in urban China. His recent works have been published in Journal of Education Policy, Australian Educational Researcher, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and Asia Pacific Journal of Education.

Dr. Shi Pu is Lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University, National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education. She obtained her PhD degree in education from the University of Cambridge in 2016. Her research interests include foreign language curriculum and instruction, critical thinking, and academic literacies in intercultural contexts. Her recent publications appear in Language, Culture and Curriculum, Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, and a range of Chinese academic journals. Her book Critical Thinking in Academic Writing: A Cultural Approach is to be published by Routledge in 2021.

Webinar 4: Pursuing an Academic Career in the UK

Organisers/Chairs: Dr. Tinghe Jin & Cassie M. Zhang Date: 26th February 2021

Professor Ming Cheng is a Professor of Higher Education and the Chair of the Higher Education Research Group at Edge Hill University. Professor Cheng have over 14 years’ international experience of working at British and Chinese universities. Her research interest covers curriculum internationalisation, postgraduate learning and supervision, internationalisation of higher education, quality culture and quality evaluation.

Dr. Yuwei Xu is a research fellow & lecturer in teacher and early years education at the UCL Institute of Education. With a PhD in gender and early childhood studies gained from the University of Glasgow, Yuwei’s research interests include gender and men’s participation in early childhood education and care, child agency, 0-3 curriculum, child-centred pedagogy, parenting etc. He is an editor for Children & Society journal, an associate editor for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, and an editorial board member for British Educational Research Journal. Yuwei recently edited a special issue on ‘Beyond gender binaries: pedagogies and practices in ECEC’, together with Jo Warin and Martin Robb. He is also the executive committee memeber of Gender and Education Association, external examiner, and PhD advisor.

Yee-Ni Tse (Cindy) is a final year PhD candidate in music education at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). Her research mainly focuses on the graded music examinations, music instrumental teaching and learning, and their relationship with the social-cultural context in Hong Kong. Alongside her doctoral research, she is working as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant for different departments and programmes, including undergraduate, postgraduate taught and research, at the Institute of Education and the University College London. She was previously a Research Assistant at the IOE and was a former instrumental lecturer at the Kingston University. Before pursing her doctoral degree, Cindy was a professional performer and an experienced music educator in Hong Kong. Her research interests also include formal and external assessments, the sociological aspects of music and education, pupil-parent-teacher triadic relationship in music learning, music instrumental pedagogy, and music and cognition.

Webinar 3: Virtual Academic Writing

Organisers/Chairs: Dr. Tinghe Jin & Cassie M. Zhang Date: 29 Jan 2021

This virtual writing retreat will be a half day event. Druing this event, we will also have some discussions around 'personalities, strengths and motivations' for pursuing a academic career which will prepare you for our next two webinars - webinar 4 & 5: Pursuing a academic career in the UK & China! The pre-activity will be sent out 2 hours before the event.

The registration will be closed 2 hours before the event. More detail information, zoom link will be provided to registered attendees 3 days before the event. The event will not be recorded.

Webinar 2: Writing Up Your Thesis During the Covid-19: Perspectives from Recent PhD Graduates

Organisers/Chairs: Dr. Tinghe Jin & Cassie M. Zhang 18 December 2020

"Dancing my table of contents: dilemmas and approaches in the writing up of my thesis"

Dr. Andrea Detmer

Drawing on transformative learning theory, I will discuss key dilemmas I experienced in the process of structuring my PhD thesis that are reflected in the table of contents. These include defining my epistemological position, the legitimisation of my findings and writing an interdisciplinary thesis. I will share some approaches to face these dilemmas.

Dr Danyang Zhang

obtained her PhD degree from University of Cambridge in 2020. She was awarded two masters at Institute of Education, University College London. She was served as the undergraduate supervisor, teaching assistant and research assistant at University of Cambridge. Dr. Zhang has published her work in several SSCI journals, including Applied Linguistics and Computer Assisted Language Learning, and published articles in various international prestigious conferences. She was awarded the “Excellent Student Scholarship” of BERA (British Education Research Association) 2018, and got the “Excellent Paper” at BERA 2018 and MLearn 2019. Dr. Zhang now is the journal reviewer of ReCALL (SSCI) and Virtual Reality (SCI). Her research interests mainly include technology-enhanced language learning, second language acquisition and language teaching.

“Thesis writing-up for qualitative researchers”

Dr Jingran Yu

For many qualitative researchers, the process of ‘writing-up’ does not simply mean describing their research findings on paper – very often, the arguments take their final shape while they are writing, not before. The writing-up process usually entails intensive thinking and revising, and is even intertwined with several rounds of data analysis. Furthermore, many doctoral researchers are not very experienced in writing such a long piece – it is a marathon not a short race, compared to the master’s or bachelor’s dissertation. Writing-up the thesis can be a stressful period, even more so if you are not a native speaker of English; however, it can also be exciting, enjoyable, and rewarding. In this workshop, I will share with you my personal experience and understanding of the writing-up period, how to manage your expectations, time, and productivity, and more importantly – how to enjoy your final writing-up year.

Webinar 1: Data Collection during the Covid-19

Organisers/Chairs: Dr. Tinghe Jin & Cassie M. Zhang 20 November 202

“Online data collection for applied linguistics research during the COVID-19 pandemic”

Jim McKinley, UCL Institute of Education

Conducting research in applied linguistics has always had its fair share of dilemmas to face, obstacles to negotiate, and unforeseen circumstances that sometimes require a completely new approach. I’ve described it as ‘messy’ in multiple publications. With the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ‘new normal’ (or ‘new messy!’) is defined by staying at home and social distancing, which presents myriad problems for collecting data. While online data collection methods have been covered at length in the literature, before the pandemic, they were described as alternatives. Now, they are, for many of us, our only options. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the primary online data collection methods including questionnaires, online interviews, and document data collection, while highlighting the changes to the ethical considerations of these methods.

About the speaker: Dr. Jim McKinley is an associate professor of TESOL and applied linguistics at UCL Institute of Education, University of London, where he serves as Academic Head of Learning and Teaching in the department of Culture, Communication and Media. His research explores implications of globalisation for L2 writing, language education, and teaching in higher education. He is an author and editor of several books on research methods in applied linguistics. He currently serves as an editor-in-chief for the journal System.

Undertaking research during COVID 19.

Dr Kate Russell

This presentation will discuss some of the key practical and ethical considerations of conducting data collection during the COVID 19 pandemic. From the perspective of participants, students working on dissertations, individual researchers, and university settings, the specific risk assessments will be explored in regard to conducting research at this time. This will have a focus on educational research but will apply equally to many research contexts.

About the speaker: Dr Kate Russell is an associate professor of physical education and sport at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at UEA. She also serves as the current Chair of Research Ethics for the School and will become the University Research Ethics Chair from 1st December. Her roles in this context mean that she comes into all ethics applications for projects in education and also provides guidance for other educational related projects across the university.