Category Archives: Work-Futures-Research-Centre

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers – Digital technologies and school-to-work transition

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers

Digital technologies and school-to-work transition

Thursday, 11th July, 4 to 6pm| Building 32, Room 2097

We are an interdisciplinary working group at the Work Futures Research Centre at Southampton University. Our aim is to explore the role of digital technology in the formation of learner identities and in school-to-work transitions.

This 3rd seminar in our series will explore the   ‘perspectives of employers in the field of IT’.

When?Thursday, 11th July, 4 to 6pm.

Where? Building 32, Room 2097, Highfield Campus, University of Southampton.

Presentations:

Confirmed speakers:

Julie Feest, Customer Director, e-skills UK

Bob Paton, Managing Director, Accenture

Oliver Pope & Hayley James, Apprentices, IBM

 

Tea & coffee will be served. There will be wine and nibbles after the seminar.

Background:

We are an interdisciplinary working group at the Work Futures Research Centre at Southampton University. Our aim is to explore the role of digital technology in the formation of learner identities and in school-to-work transitions. We are hosting a series of seminars, each on a particular theme, with invited scholars and practitioners in order to explore relevant issues and concepts in this area of research.

Questions that are of particular interest include:

  • How is digital technology used to deliver education?
  • How are digital skills taught in schools?
  • How does digital technology shape young people’s learning?
  • How does students’ informal learning of technology feed into the formal school context?
  • How does digital technology translate into post-compulsory education career choices?

Please note that spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. If you are interested in participating, please register with Torhild Hearn via email T.Hearn@soton.ac.uk and let her know of any special dietary or other requirements.

If you would like more information about the seminar series, do not hesitate to contact me at M.Brockmann@soton.ac.uk

We hope that you will be able to join us and look forward to a stimulating discussion.

Further details about the project can be found on the WFRC Blog Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions.

 

Useful DOWNLOADS:

Seminar 1: Introductory Session

Seminar 2: Practitioner Perspectives

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers in the Field of IT

Project details available here.

Seminar 2:‘Practitioner Perspectives’ – Digital technologies and school-to-work transition

Seminar 2 ‘Practitioner Perspectives’ | Digital technologies and school-to-work transition | Tuesday, 28th May, 4 to 6pm | Building 32, Room 2097

We are an interdisciplinary working group at the Work Futures Research Centre at Southampton University. Our aim is to explore the role of digital technology in the formation of learner identities and in school-to-work transitions.

We are hosting a series of seminars, each on a particular theme, with invited scholars and practitioners in order to explore relevant issues and concepts in this area of research.

 

 

This second seminar ‘Practitioner Perspectives’ will focus on IT practice in schools, the new ICT curriculum, and young people’s informal learning of IT.

When? Tuesday, 28th May, 4 to 6pm.

Where? Building 32, Room 2097, Highfield Campus, University of Southampton.


Presentations:

Cythia Selby- Subject Leader, ICT and Computing, Bay House School Sixth Form College: ‘Digital Technologies: A Post- 16 Perspective’

Phil Bagge- Hampshire County Council Lead Computing/ICT teacher, CAS Primary Facilitator: ‘How does students’ informal learning of technology feed into the formal school context?’

Tea & coffee will be served. There will be wine and nibbles after the seminar.

Questions that are of particular interest include:

  • How is digital technology used to deliver education?
  • How are digital skills taught in schools?
  • How does digital technology shape young people’s learning?
  • How does students’ informal learning of technology feed into the formal school context?
  • How does digital technology translate into post-compulsory education career choices?

Please note that spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. If you are interested in participating, please register with Torhild Hearn via email T.Hearn@soton.ac.uk and let her know of any special dietary or other requirements.

If you would like more information about the seminar series, do not hesitate to contact me at M.Brockmann@soton.ac.uk

We hope that you will be able to join us and look forward to a stimulating discussion.

 

Further details about the project can be found on the WFRC Blog Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions.

Useful DOWNLOADS:

Seminar 1: Introductory Session

Seminar 2: Practitioner Perspectives

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers in the Field of IT

Project details available here.

 

 

Seminar 1:‘Introductory Session’ – Digital technologies and school-to-work transition

Seminar 1 ‘Introductory Session’ | Digital technologies and school-to-work transition | Monday, 25th March, 3 to 5pm | Building 32, Room 2097

We are an interdisciplinary working group at the Work Futures Research Centre at Southampton University. Our aim is to explore the role of digital technology in the formation of learner identities and in school-to-work transitions.

We are hosting a series of seminars, each on a particular theme, with invited scholars and practitioners in order to explore relevant issues and concepts in this area of research.

 

 

This first seminar ‘Introductory Session’ will provide an overview of the project and introduce the wide context of introducing ICT into our curriculum.

If you would like more information about the seminar series, do not hesitate to contact me at M.Brockmann@soton.ac.uk

We hope that you will be able to join us and look forward to a stimulating discussion.

Further details about the project can be found on the WFRC Blog Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions.

 

Useful DOWNLOADS:

Seminar 1: Introductory Session

Seminar 2: Practitioner Perspectives

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers in the Field of IT

Project details available here.

 

 

Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions

A new interdisciplinary project aims to help young people with the transition from school to work.

The project entitled Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions in England and Germany, will run from February to October 2013.

An interdisciplinary working group will explore the role of the digital technology in the formation of learner identities, learning cultures and in school-to-work transitions and a series of seminars with national and international speakers are planned. The ultimate aim remains to develop a research proposal to the Economic and Social Research Council.

Southampton Education School’s Dr Michaela Brockmann and Professor Alison Fuller, alongside Professor Susan Halford and Professor Pauline Leonard in Social Sciences, have received an award from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences’ Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund.

Dr Michaela Brockmann is also the English partner in the large EU Leonardo-da-Vinci Project, ‘Retail Sector Competencies’ (ReSeCo): Developing self and social competencies in vocational training for the retail sector, co-ordinated by Professor Matthias Pilz at the University of Cologne and involving partners in Germany, England, Poland and Italy.

This project aims to develop the personal and social competencies of young people and to help facilitate transition from school to work. One of the key outcomes will be a module handbook for use in colleges across Europe.

 

Contact Details:

Further details can be found on the WFRC website: www.southampton.ac.uk/wfrc/

Please contact Dr Michaela Brockmann M.Brockmann@soton.ac.uk for full details of all events.

 

Useful DOWNLOADS:

Seminar 1: Introductory Session

Seminar 2: Practitioner Perspectives

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers in the Field of IT

Project details available here.

 

Pushing forward on gender equality at the House of Commons

The Work Futures Research Centre was delighted to celebrate the eve of International Women’s Day with a panel discussion on ‘Gender Equality at Work: how far have we come and how far have we still got to go?’, held in the Palmerstone Committee room at the Palace of Westminster, London.

This event marked the start of a new Public Policy@Southampton commission which will bring together the views of academics, policy makers, practitioners, employers and employees to consider how policy might make a difference to gender equality at work.

Professor Pauline Leonard opened the event with a brief overview of some of the key legislative, cultural and economic shifts in gendered aspects of work over the past 40 years. Professor Susan Halford then introduced our distinguished speakers: we began with a view from the top – courtesy of Lynne Berry OBE, deputy chair of the Canal and River Trust, who explored why women are so poorly represented on the executive boards of major companies. She spoke of ambitious targets for  greater representation of women on company Boards, noting that while women have a bit more of a foothold in the voluntary and charitable sector they are still not taken seriously in FTSE 100 or FTS 250 companies. If we have a way to go at Board level, the picture was equally depressing when our next speaker Alan Whitehead MP  reminded us that  there had been under 400 women MPs since they first entered the House in 1918 (currently there are 146 women and 504 male MPs). Alan alerted us to the 32 men pictured in the splendid artwork adorning the committee room walls and the absence of a single female portrait; he suggested that without serious changes to selection and election processes this male dominance of the political sphere would continue.

 

Next, Samantha Mangwana, from Slater and Gordon Lawyers, spoke from the heart about the civil law cases she represents giving us anonymised, but extremely grim, accounts of the kinds of workplace harassment and sexual discrimination which women experience.  In passing she mentioned that 1 in 7 women lose their jobs after maternity leave.  Evangelia Bourmpoula from International Labour Organisation provided a wide ranging economists view of the global position of women in labour market using a wealth of research to demonstrate the continued vulnerability of working women in most of the world.  We then returned to the UK context with our final speaker Helen Sachdev, a Director at Barclays, who described some of the very positive training and development programmes this bank has introduced to support and develop its women employees.  She also gave a reflexive personal view of how gender discrimination had changed in her own working life – she felt that there was much to be positive about because women were less subject to overt and aggressive forms of discrimination, but that unconscious bias still persisted and could hold women back.

That may seem on the whole a fairly negative appraisal of how far we have come – yet the panel was inspirational and uplifting, not least because all the participants spoke passionately about how they overcame discrimination and used their work and experience to challenge gender inequality. Together the panel (and the lively contributions from the audience) provided a welcome and positive start to the work of the Policy Commission. We hope to report more here as this work continues but in the meantime want to acknowledge the fantastic start to the debate given by our splendid panel.

Further work on this commission will be continued, providing an evidence based Policy Briefing with a view to changing public policy in this area.  Podcasts of the event will soon be available at http://publicpolicy.southampton.ac.uk/

Please visit the Work Futures Research Centre website for further news about the centre’s research at: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/wfrc/

Follow us on twitter @WorkFutures

Social Justice and Gender Equality – WFRC gets to grips with big political issues

Members of the Work Futures Research Centre joined forces with the Sustainability Science at Southampton multidisciplinary research group at the University of Southampton to mark the UN World Day of Social Justice on 20th February.

 

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s message for the day was “let us intensify our efforts to achieve a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable development path built on dialogue, transparency and social justice” and we took this to heart in our public seminar with Duncan C Campbell, Director for Policy Planning in Employment at the International Labour Office and a Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labour, IZA.

Duncan’s seminar presentation examined the old and new features of labour markets in developing countries. A passionate speaker on the topic of inequality, Duncan reviewed the all too depressing statistics about vulnerable labour and global poverty. The stark message to a room full of academic staff and students in Southampton was that some 85% of the world’s population – estimated in 2010 as between 1.48 and 1.59 billion people – have no formal work arrangements – and suffer irregular employment, no contracts, inadequate pay and dangerous work conditions. As an economist by training Duncan’s talk necessarily explored the macro economics of these labour patterns, but he was also keen to explore the social impacts too – looking at the damage of injustice across developed and developing world contexts.

Having been fired up to think about globalisation and injustice in the context of work, WFRC now turns our attention and passions to matters ‘at home’ as we plan our symposium to debate Gender Equality at Work on Thursday 7 March 2013 | 2.00pm–4.00pm | Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, Westminster.

WFRC Directors Professor Susan Halford and Professor Pauline Leonard of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Southampton will facilitate a Panel Discussion with Alan Whitehead (Labour MP for Southampton Test), Baroness Margaret Prosser (Deputy Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission), Samantha Mangwana (Principal Lawyer for Slater & Gordon Lawyers), Evangelia Bourmpoula (Economist for the International Labour Organisation), Helen Sachdev (Director of UK Strategy, Retail and Business Banking at Barclays Bank) and Lynne Berry OBE (Deputy Chair of the Canal and River Trust and Director of Public Benefit). We hope that these talks will provide inspiration and encouragement ahead of International Women’s Day on 8th March.

Further information:

Duncan Campbell Power Point Slides can be found at:

http://www.slideshare.net/multisoton/university-of-southampton-duncan-campbell-labour-markets-in-developing-countries-un-world-day-of-social

To register to Gender Equality at Work symposium at: http://publicpolicy.southampton.ac.uk/genderequality/

Follow the debate on Twitter @workfutures

Enhancing Research Impact: Public Policy

By Lisa Then, Public Policy@Southampton Co-ordinator

 

The Public Policy@Southampton Team was formed in October 2012 to increase the reach and impact of University of Southampton research.   With a remit to engage world-leading research with key policy makers, I organised the inaugural Public Policy event ‘The Policy Implications of Austerity on Active Citizenship’ which took place in December at the House of Commons.  This sparked political interest due to the current climate and was notably attended by the European Commission, MPs and MEPs.

The recent Policy Commissions Competition has provided £30,000 for three significant research projects: ‘Gender Equality at Work’, ‘Future Availability of Flood Insurance in the UK’ and ‘Fuel and Food Poverty among Older People in the UK’.  Additional support for this research from C2G2, Social Sciences SRDF, ESRC CPC, Ageing USRG and Population Health USRG has established cross-faculty multidisciplinary collaboration and I look forward to arranging successful impact and public engagement opportunities with them throughout the year.  In addition we are delighted to be the proud sponsors of the first University of Southampton TED X Conference  which will be live-streamed nationally as part of the University’s Multidisciplinary Research Week.

We are eager to make further links with USRG members to support innovative research across disciplines to address global challenges in accordance with the University Strategy.  A ‘Pathways to Impact Strategy’ can be viewed on our website and we invite researchers to view this and discover ways which we can assist with their research impact.  The profound work of the Work Futures Research Centre is of key interest and we invite researchers to share their work on our external facing blog.

Please visit publicpolicy.southampton.ac.uk for further information and follow us on Twitter @publicpolicyUoS.