Category: Education

Students in a lecture hall

Professor Do Coyle: A think peace – ‘words create worlds’ (Heschel)

Education is ….

We are all familiar with great thinkers’ expansive definitions, ranging from ‘training the mind to think’ (Einstein) to being ‘the most powerful weapon’ (Mandela) – the stuff of fridge magnets. Follow-through questions remain unanswered, e.g., to think what? Training implies predetermined behaviours in measurement-frenzied educational systems; and what, exactly, might a weapon – however symbolic – be protecting or fighting for?

Yet, as educators we are committed to values-driven navigation through the complexity, fluidity, politicisation and unjust boundaries inherent in our here-and-now systems. So how can we make future schools and universities ready for our learners and not, as in current thinking, the reverse?

Forchheimer (2022) promotes future-back thinking as breaking free from ‘the boundaries and noise’ of present-forward thinking. For me, absolute optimism embedded in futures thinking offers excitement and hope, pushing envisioning possibilities into new places.

Inspiration lies in actioning two key strands: Tauritz’s (2016) work in pedagogies of uncertainty provokes ideas about how young people can embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, confusion and super complexity across diverse contexts. Friere’s 1992 pedagogy of hope explores educators’ responsibilities towards social justice and fairness underpinned by cultural consciousness and reflexive criticality, unafraid of circumnavigating dominant forces.

As MHSES will undergo metamorphic change, I offer four provocations welcoming fearless debate that positions educators as future thinkers and activists:

  1. Ways in which we define, learn and use languages will change foregrounding epistemic and textual ‘fluencies’ that both decentre and promote linguistic fluency.
  2. Given digital advancement and multimodal literacies, all educators (and, subsequently, their learners) will have the tools to use languages as fundamental learning resources across all fields of learning.
  3. Multilingualism and multiculturalism are the norm – monolingualism is an unacceptable condition.
  4. Spatial literacies are reimagined in ways that enable us to use any physical, cognitive, social, virtual spaces to deepen and broaden a 4D understanding of our world.

These provocations are built on an assumption that values of social justice and fairness, resilience and agency, flourishing and self-esteem, respect and curiosity drive our purpose as educators.

References

Barnett, R. (2012) Learning for an unknown future, Higher Education Research & Development, vol. 31, no.1, pp. 65-77.

Forchheimer, S. (2022)   IFTF – What Exactly is Futures Thinking?

Tauritz, R. (2016). A pedagogy for Uncertain Times in W. Lambrechts and J. Hindson (Eds) Research and Innovation in Education for Sustainable Development. Environment and School Initiatives – ENSI, ZVR-Zahl 408619713, Vienna, Austria

Language Education at Moray House

Language(s), Interculturality and Literacies Hub

Institute for Language Education (ILE)

About the author

Professor Do Coyle is Chair in Languages Education and Classroom Learning and one of the leads of the Language(s), Interculturality and Literacies Hub.

Student raising hand in classroom

Dr Heidi Smith: The Future of Education

I hope for a future for education and sport that is creative, innovative, and ever changing as it responds to the world’s needs.

Needs, I believe, must be front and centre such as:

  • social justice
  • sustainability
  • leadership
  • intersectionality
  • inclusivity
  • diversity
  • creativity
  • decolonisation
  • eliminating unconscious bias
  • future-focused thinking

The evolution of education

Education which embraces land and the more-than-human in the same way human rights are upheld. A curriculum with bravery and courage as core, and an active rebellion against old ways of educating. Allowing learners to create their own learning pathways, supported and encouraged with agency and autonomy.

Education which finally embraces the current issues, actively makes changes to ensure that we are not having the same conversations about the same challenges/issues with education in another 175 years’ time.

Education which is respectful, reverent, responsible, reciprocal and has relationships at its core, with a focus on the impact of all of our actions (individual and collective) for the next 175 years.

Now is the time to act. Change. Lead the new way we all know is possible. Leave the structures and constraints behind as we forge new ways of learning and educating.

Expore our education programmes

Teacher Education

Outdoor Education

Outdoor Environmental and Sustainability Education

About the author

Dr Heidi Smith is a Lecturer in Outdoor and Environmental Education.

Moray House quad and buildings with Arthur's Seat in the background

Dr Laura Colucci-Gray: The Grounds of Moray House

Dr Laura Colucci-Gray shares a poem inspired by Moray House.

The Grounds of Moray House

GroundsStudents looking at artwork.

Grounding

Being grounded

With roots in the grounds

Buried?

Planted!

Stretching out

Straight from the ground

Not suppressed

but kept in reserve,

with the capacity to attend to life

and to wait

A quiet spaceClay sculpture

Contemplative?

Observant;

Invitational?

Generative

The vision is the dream

Of a place where education is not afraid

To free others

And to free itself.

 

Laura Colucci-Grey's poem

Explore our teacher education programmes

PGDE Primary

PGDE Secondary

MSc Transformative Teaching and Learning

About the Author

Dr Laura Colucci-Gray is a Senior Lecturer in Science and Sustainability Education.

 

Fiona Bowie

Fiona Bowie: Gaelic education

Fiona Bowie, Teaching Fellow in Gaelic Education, talks about her hopes for the future of Gaelic language in education, as well as her favourite places to celebrate the language.

Learn more about our Gaelic Education programme

Our degree in Primary Education with Gaelic, with routes for Gaelic Fluent speakers and for Learners, qualifies all graduates to work as primary teachers in the Gaelic-medium or English-medium sector.

Primary Education with Gaelic

Phone with ChatGPT open on top of a textbook

Dr Kenneth Fordyce: AI’s potential and the future of language research

Phone with ChatGPT open on top of a textbook

Language is central to most of the key issues faced by societies in the 21st century, whether it’s the world of social media, echo chambers and misinformation, or generative AI-driven chatbots such as ChatGPT, or authoritarian and populist politicians promoting post-truth discourse. Understanding of language(s) and awareness of how language functions are more important than ever in being able to actively work with technological and societal change. 

In the field of language(s) teaching and education, artificial intelligence has led to astounding advances in the ability of technology to translate between languages and to capture speech into text. The language teachers of the future will need to be able to harness the power of AI to personalise language learning and teaching: for example, ongoing analysis of learners’ speech and writing can potentially be turned into individualised learning tasks.  

Research in the field of language education will need to become increasingly interdisciplinary, with language educators studying alongside linguists, sociologists, philosophers and machine learning experts to revolutionise the way language is taught and learned. 

Beyond the language classroom, applied linguistics need to work with AI experts in developing understandings of how misinformation is disseminated and what can be done to counter post-truth discourses.  

The developing ability of AI to process huge amounts of language data can have an impact in areas such as medical care and criminology, among many others. For example, thousands of doctor-patient interactions can be analysed to investigate patterns between stated symptoms and medical diagnoses to identify potential ways in which doctors may miss key patient information due to the way patients choose to communicate symptoms. In the area of cybercrime, the anonymity of online trolls is a huge challenge for police. However, forensic authorship analysis is a way forward in identifying suspects which can be strengthened through collaborations between police and computational linguists. 

The Institute of Language Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport can play an important role in conducting research alongside colleagues in other Schools (e.g., PPLS, Informatics, Social and Political Science, Centre for Open Learning) to take forward research addressing key language-related issues and challenges in our rapidly changing social, political and technological landscape. 

Learn more about our language research

Explore our language education programmes

Language and Intercultural Communication

Language Education

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

About the author

Dr Kenneth Fordyce is co-head of the Institute for Language Education (ILE).

Two women walking in the Meadows

Professor Emerita Nanette Mutrie: Physical Activity for Health

Two women walking in the Meadows

My research career in physical activity for health began when I trained as a physical education teacher at Dunfermline College, where I learned that people could get ‘hypokinetic’ (too little movement) disease. Dunf – as it was affectionately known – became part of Moray House College of Education, which in turn became part of the University of Edinburgh, and so when I was appointed as Professor of Physical Activity for Health in 2012, I felt I had returned home. 

More recently, ‘sport’ was added to the Moray House School of Education title. The word sport represents the work of those teaching and researching physical education, sport management, coach education, sport science and physical activity for health.    

The future looks long for physical activity for health as a research topic. For me it has moved from the minor mention of ‘hypokinetic disease’ in a gymnastics book to a major public health concern. Physical inactivity causes the same number of global deaths as smoking – a surprising comparison for many. 

Here are three topics that researchers from various disciplines are tackling right now: 

  • How best to encourage people into activity? Maybe the answer is walking! 
  • How messages about activity should be framed? Here the answer is likely to be about the ‘feel good effect’ rather than inactivity being risky for health. 
  • Is sitting down too much, bad for our health? Here the answer is yes – and we are building evidence not only of long-term influences but on short term effects such as back pain.   

 Future topics which call on collaboration across the teams of researchers in Moray House School of Education and Sport include how physical education and physical activity for children can help academic performance. As the evidence for this link between body and mind becomes clearer, physical education will never be cancelled in favour of exam preparation and the beginnings of hypokinetic disease will, at the very least, be delayed. 

Learn more about our MsC Physical Activity for Health programme

Learn more about our research in Physical Activity for Health

Explore an interactive timeline of the School’s history

About the author

Professor Nanette Mutrie, MBE, is the founding director of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) and former Chair in Physical Activity for Health.