The Buckingham Journal of Education

Embracing Diversity of Provision in Education

Mark Deacon — 2024-10-28

Development of Emotion Regulation by Integrating Mindfulness Praxis in Early Childhood Education

Lana Frančeska Dreimane — 2024-10-28

Rapid technological development and information overload has shaped the identity of the 21^st Century and has had an immense impact on many social aspects of human life including education systems and children across the world. In their early years, children experience rapid flows of information and a vast range of emotional stimuli every day which, without the ability to effectively self-regulate the emotional responses to these stimuli, can cause anxiety, cognitive overload, socialisation problems and uncontrollable emotional release, resulting in psychological distress for everyone involved – children, parents, and educators. Furthermore, in early childhood education long-term implications must always be considered as, during such overwhelming moments, a child is not able to effectively engage in socialisation or learning processes and subsequently, this can have a negative effect on overall long-term development and the life of a child. This research confirms that, in the past decade, social emotional learning has, for many education institutions across the world and systems worldwide, become an integral part of learning. Nevertheless, in early childhood education research, there remains a notable knowledge gap concerning the lack of systematized knowledge and practical tools to support the development of emotion regulation skills in early childhood education. This paper presents a theoretical and qualitative multi-method study, including a pedagogical intervention, providing scientifically grounded answers and practical advice for educators and early childhood education institutions on how to integrate mindfulness praxis to promote emotion regulation skills of children aged five to six. The results of the research show that meaningful and qualitative support of emotion regulation skills development are provided, through the inclusion of mindfulness praxis as a purposeful and systematic part of early childhood education.

Case study: TA to Teacher: An Alternative Route into Teaching

Sarah Layzell — 2024-10-28

The purpose of this article is to sketch out a case study of the BA (Hons) in Primary Education, delivered by Anspear and the University of Buckingham, as an ongoing alternative route into teaching aimed at addressing some aspects of the recruitment and retention crisis in the schools sector in England. While the policy response to the crisis has revolved around secondary school teachers, this elides the scale of the challenge facing primary education along with the recruitment, retention and development of teaching assistants. This article outlines the rationale for developing an undergraduate degree specifically for teaching assistants working in primary settings, the core principles of the degree programme, and how we have used established science of learning and learning design principles in order to develop digital learning content for the degree.

Reading for Pleasure – A Silver Bullet or a Wild Goose Chase?

Timothy Mills — 2024-10-28

Although we all inherently feel we understand the pleasure experienced when reading an engaging text, the application of these feelings to reading education can become conflated with subjectivity, socio-cultural partiality and personal bias, making the definition of ‘Reading for Pleasure’ highly subjective. This paper investigates the research around the phenomenon of ‘Reading for Pleasure’ and questions some of the assumptions made by that research particularly around the definition applied. It suggests that a more useful approach for educators would be to promote a commitment to reading in schools and, through research evidence suggests how this might be achieved.

Does Jane Austen Matter?: Foreign Language Students’ Perspectives to Literature Teaching

Alain J.E. Wolf — 2024-10-28

This study aims to examine foreign language students’ perspectives to literature teaching in the context of higher education. The research, conducted in a Romanian University, drew inspiration from decentred qualitative methodology (Holliday, 2011). Based on a distinction made by linguists between that which is explicitly said and that which is left implicit, the study provides an account of some characteristics of literary language, e.g. recovery of inferences based on the literary and historical context. The analysis of data was informed by transcribed audio recordings of semi-structured interviews. The findings show that students perceived literature teaching as beneficial, enhancing their pleasure of the text and their understanding of cultural and historical contexts and co-texts. They identified the following characteristics of literary texts as beneficial to their learning: the enrichment of lexis and the historical/literary context, the identification with characters leading to the use of collocations and creative writing.