MULTIVERSE exploring diversity and achievement

Initial Teacher Education Professional Resource Network

UCET Primary Workshop15th May 2008

Pat East DirectorVini Lander Deputy Director

Multiverse

• TDA project 2003-2006

• Extended for 2 years 2006-2008 further 6 month extension until February 2009

• Three key strands to the project

– Commissioning materials and research for the website

– Uploading existing materials to website

– Dissemination activities

Structure• Website with range of resources for student

teachers, ITE tutors, mentors, teachers and advisers

• Organised in strands– Bilingual and multilingual learners– Race and ethnicity– Refugees and Asylum Seekers– Religious Diversity– Social Class– Travellers and Roma

Dissemination

• Regional Co-ordinators

– London – Raymonde Sneddon

– South West – Jane Gibson

– North East – Steve Rawlinson

– North West – Maxine Greaves

– East Midlands – Karen Elvidge

– West Midlands – Narinder Brach

– South East – Katharine Milcoy

Regional activities

• Regional workshops

• Road shows – for student groups

• Institutional staff development

– Subject teams

– Phase teams

– Professional studies co-ordinator

Working with others

• Subject Resource Networks

• SCITTs and EBTTs

• DCSF

• National and International conferences

NQT Surveys

Multiverse profile

• Who is your Multiverse institutional contact?

• How do they promote Multiverse in your institution?

• Is there more that can be done to raise the profile of and use of Multiverse resources in your institution?

National Issues in ITE• Meeting the duty of the Race Relations

Amendment Act 2000• Institutional policy and practice• ‘M’ level PGCE• Inspection• Recruitment and retention of Black and

minority ethnic student teachers• Masters in Teaching and Learning

Local institutional issues• Low/high diversity areas• Most students teachers are well intentioned and

want to make a difference• How well do we enable them to do this with

respect to issues of diversity?• How well are these issues embedded in the ITE

curriculum within your institution?

Embedding diversity

• How can we work through the ‘time’ issue?

• Collective commitment

• It can be done. But it is always work in progress.

The heart of the matter• Racial inequalities in the education system do not just

mirror the inequalities in society, they entrench them, passing them on to another generation. (p15, DfES 2006, Getting It. Getting It Right)

• The exclusion gap is the most obvious manifestation of an effect that seriously threatens to undermine the Department's efforts to extend opportunity to all children and learners. Left to its own devices, the system will conclude that Every Child Matters, but that Black children's failure and social exclusion is to be expected - that it matters a little bit less. Personalisation could empower Black pupils to fulfil their true potential, but not whilst teachers' view of the person is conditioned by subconscious prejudice. (p16, DfES 2006, Getting It. Getting It Right)