Creative research methods interactive semimar

Organised by the Creative and Emergent Education Network (CEEN).

Nancy Katingima Day: Forgotten Educational Spaces: Music making in Contemporary Kenya
I will explore how the act of music making has been a powerful vehicle through which a unique, not yet fully understood worldview or philosophy, has played a part (and continues to do so) in shaping the minds of young people in contemporary Kenya. This ‘philosophy’ may be recognisable yet difficult to articulate using words or text therefore posing some methodological challenges which I am trying to address.
For over 23 years I have been involved with Music Education in various contexts within Kenyan urban educational contexts. I am now a part time PhD Education student exploring how Kenyan (in the broadest sense of the word) young people can capitalise on the vast richness of their cultural heritage while at the same time remaining relevant to their present reality as well as in negotiating an emergent future through music making.

Lizzie Swinford: My Body Talks: What does dance have to offer children with English as an Additional Language?
This presentation is based on a qualitative case study examining a 6 week project delivering dance workshops to 3 and 4 year olds in an Exeter nursery and focusing on the EAL children in the class. It concerns EAL children’s engagement in dance activities and the potential of dance to involve them in nursery life, meeting their social and personal needs through embodied creative activity.
I am a dance practitioner living and working in Devon. Recently my work has come to focus on early years and special needs children. Currently I am working on an ACE funded dance and story-making project for Devon Libraries with fellow dance and movement artist Pip Jones. I completed the MA in Education at St Luke's last summer and this presentation is based on my dissertation.

Thomas Ralph: Walking with Pupils as a Strategy for Fighting Familiarity

This presentation considers how a researcher, who is very familiar with school from an adult’s perspective, can fight this familiarity to better understand the day to day experience of children in that environment. In order to do this, it considers the nature of emplaced experience and the importance of movement in the creation of places. Walking with participants can enable a researcher to reorient themselves and bring their own experience closer to that of their participants.
It suggests that not only is the study of movement in school neglected, moving with children in school is a valuable means by which a researcher can fight their familiarity with that environment.
I recently completed his PhD which consisted of an ethnography that took place in a school in the South of England located on a social priority estate. This focused on investigating what kind of people the pupils wanted to be recognized as and asked what kind of place they wanted school to be. I am currently the Subject lead for the PGCE Secondary Maths course.