Altered States of Academia

Category: Uncategorized

  • The Reception baseline assessment: a shameful data extraction process

    Mandy Pierlejewski, Guy Roberts-Holmes, Sara Hawley and Jennifer Holly In October last year, a few short weeks into the new school term, colleagues from University College London and Leeds Beckett University visited reception classes in two schools in England. This class is the final year of early childhood education which, in England, takes place in…

  • Thinking with Foucault and Ferris

    Claire Birkenshaw “Hey Cameron, do you realise if we’d played by the rules right now, we’d be in gym?” (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986) Scholars Hunter and Frawley (2022, p.14) argue that use of film as a ‘pedagogical tool’ can help students better understand abstract theoretical concepts to aid their application in imaginative ways. For…

  • Fortified Childhood

    Claire Birkenshaw “Some have suggested a barrier is immoral. Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside” (Donald Trump quoted in The Guardian, 2019, n.p.). Urban scholar, Leonie Sandercock,…

  • Silent Swing

    Claire Birkenshaw “No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves” (Carson, [1962] 2002, p.13). Writing recently in the Guardian, freelance reporter Harriet Grant (2024, n.p.) advances the notion that a “war on play” has been enacted across the UK in which…

  • Thinking with Barbie: Yay, [Paradoxical] Space.

    Claire Birkenshaw Barbie: “I feel kind of ill-at-ease, I don’t even know the word for it…Like I’m conscious of it but it’s my self I’m conscious of…” (Barbie, 2023) I must admit I am a little late to the “giant blow-out party with all the Barbies, with planned choreography and a bespoke song” viewing of…

  • Contemporary Childhood: Secured by Design

    Birkenshaw, C. (2024) Beckett Park: Climbing Frame [Photograph]. Leeds. © Claire Birkenshaw. Claire Birkenshaw “We [have built] playgrounds that are so monumentally boring that any self- respecting child will go and play somewhere else” (Gill, 2024, quoted in Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, 2024, p.7). Like the attending Levelling Up, Housing and Committee MPs,…

  • Lesson Planning with Generative AI. Cheating or resistance?

    Dr Mandy Pierlejewski In this blog post, I explore the idea that using generative AI to plan lessons is cheating. I compare artificial intelligence lesson planning with the use of government validated schemes such as Little Wandle, using Foucualt’s work on discipline to explore notions of lesson authorship. I suggest that the use of generative…

  • Thinking with Art: Banksy’s Metanoia

    Claire Birkenshaw “Well it ain’t written in the papers, but its written on the walls” (Matt Johnson, 1986). In the hands of the military, the stencil graphic is utilised as a means to communicate no-nonsense graphical edicts to direct, control, and corral compliance. When used by those with power, the stencil graphic facilitates a visual…

  • Thinking with Bourdieu: Illusio

    Claire Birkenshaw “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game.” (Leonard Cohen, 2016) Happy New Year! Set any New Year resolutions? I have. At the heart of my New Year resolutions for 2024 is the improvement of my ‘cultural capital’ portfolio in terms of “volume” and “composition” (Threadgold, 2018, p.45). I am motivated…

  • Thinking with Music: There is a [queer] light that never goes out

    Claire Birkenshaw “But don’t forget the songs that made you cryAnd the songs that saved your life” (Marr and Morrissey, 1985) As his 2023 Glastonbury ‘songs of The Smiths’ set with Stockport band, Blossoms, drew to conclusion with the playing of arguably one of The Smiths’ “best ever songs” (Marr, 2016, p.224), There is a…