Meet the team:
Dr Karen Hosack Janes
Karen is a Senior Lecturer, Subject Leader for Art & Design and Module Leader at Oxford Brookes University. She is also an independent education consultant, an Associate Consultant for Chris Quigley Education Ltd, and an Associate of the National Society for Education in Art & Design. She specialises in pedagogies that nurture creative development.
She has taught in schools, in universities and in the museums and galleries sector, as well as acting as an adviser to cultural learning projects such as Art UK, and working with teachers internationally on creative curriculum design.
Her publications include Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom: An exploration of consensus across theory and practice (Critical Publishing) and Using the Visual Arts for Cross-curricular Teaching and Learning: Imaginative ideas for the primary school (Routledge), as well as a number of books on art for young people (Raintree and Heinemann Library).
Her doctoral study, focusing on the nature of teaching and learning when paintings are used as a central stimulus (exploring the National Gallery's Take One Picture project) and is available on the Oxford University Research Archive. A peer-reviewed article based on this research, titled Objects of Curiosity: How old master paintings have been used in the primary classroom to provide pupils with cognitive challenge and creative agency, is available in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity (Hosack Janes, K. (2021), Vol 41. DOI 10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100861) .
Whilst Head of Schools at the National Gallery, London, Karen led the Take One Picture scheme, from which she developed in 2003 a placement programme for primary teacher training students. This involved five universities and their regional museums, and was Government-funded as part of the National/Regional Museums Education Partnership. The current Cultural Placements at Oxford Brookes University have evolved from this programme to be an integrated element of the BA(Hons) Primary Teacher Education course, as demonstrated on this website.
Dr Jane Fletcher
Jane is currently working on the Initial Teacher Training BA programme where she is a Senior Lecturer and Subject Leader.
Before developing her career as a higher educationalist, she worked in a range of primary schools in the UK, Germany and Asia.
Jane is a member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA).
Dr Sarah Frodsham
Sarah is a Departmental Lecturer at the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, and a Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University.
Her PhD was obtained in January 2018 and relates to the development of creativity within primary school science. It is entitled, ‘Developing creativity within primary science teaching. What does it look like and how can classroom interactions augment the process?’. Prior to this Sarah spent a decade as a Structural Biologist having obtained her MSc from Birbeck College London and BSc From Oxford Brookes University.
When completing her PhD, and through subsequent post-doctoral research projects, described in more detail below, she published numerous peer-reviewed articles; chapters in edited academic books; presentations at national and international conferences and several external facing websites.
After completing a BSc and MSc in molecular and protein science and then subsequently traversed a paradigm shift into the social sciences she has been an Associate Researcher in numerous post-doctoral positions. These include:
Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) projects: - Examining and exemplifying Creativity in science, Science through story-telling and Using IPads in primary science classrooms.
Impact Case Study (ICS) project: - Innovative Pedagogy in Primary Science Education.
Independent Social Research Funding (ISRF) project – Oxford Brookes Staff and Student Experiences of teaching and learning during Lockdown.
Research Excellence Award (REA) project: - STEM through stories.
Brookes Teaching Excellence fellowship (BTEF) project - Thinking mathematically: does integrating mathematical mindset theory with coaching strategies develop more positive attitudes to mathematics in trainee teachers?
REA project – My primary school is at the museum.
She has also curated various websites to enable ease of communication and dissemination of the above research activities (see reference list). In fact these were informed from co-convening, generating, maintaining and promoting the STEAM research group website (click here) and other online conferences (e.g. click here). These websites are also hyperlinked to other, relevant research projects she and others at have been involved in, so they are easy to find for external on-line visitors.
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