Just before Summer break, we ran a well-attended session in the Education department introducing doctoral researchers to senior education journalists. The idea was to give researchers, and faculty members if they fancied it, some exposure to how education stories work and how they might catch the eye of national media in future. A number of people who weren't able to attend asked if we would provide notes and a recording. These are below.
The event was funded by a grant from the Bath University Doctoral College Training Fund. Sian Griffiths, Education Editor at The Sunday Times, kindly attended, along with Warwick Mansell, formerly of the TES and now owner of investigative resource 'Education Uncovered'.
For doctoral students, it's worth remembering that it's quite possible you're working on something which could be shared widely through the national media. And for EdD students who have yet to decide where to focus their main research project, it's certainly worth taking a look around at what kind of thing captures the imagination of people in their particular professional field. Of course, we're not at Bath to become household names. But on the other hand, some ideas which deserve to be discussed widely often don't get seen beyond a very small audience. Sometimes, with the right publication and the right journalist, it's possible to get the best of both worlds.
If you'd like more of this kind of thing then do let us know and we'll see to it.
It's useful for doctoral students to know about the excellent Doctoral College Training Fund, by the way. It provides grants of up to £1000 annually for just this kind of initiative. Somebody's got to get them and this time it was us. Next time, it could be you; so do keep an eye out. But frankly, we're hoping it's us again.
Finally, we thank Sian and Warwick very much for their super presentations, which we're sure will have given attendees plenty of food for thought. And of course we encourage you to follow Sian's regular education stories each week in the Sunday Times, and take a look at Warwick's gripping investigations into educational issues at Education Uncovered.
The notes of the event and two audio file clips are here. These were kindly provided by a Sussex University PhD student present who also addressed the meeting with some tips on how to input into UK parliamentary inquiry processes. If attendees need his contact, let us know and we'll get it for you. The file clips are in audio and for technical reasons do not contain the whole presentations. We've placed them into a very temporary drop site owing to restrictions on the format of content which can be imported into the Bath University system. We'll work out something tidier as quickly as we can; whatever we do the link here will continue to work.
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