Current Student news

It's been a busy year for our students in the School of Education, here's news from current students

Maira Klyshbekova

Congratulations to Maira Klyshbekova, one of our PhD students, who was successful in securing a grant from the Turing scheme. The grant enabled Maira to create links with the University of Calgary in Canada, including a study visit, where she was able to observe successful implementation of multilingual education policies first-hand. The visit has given her lots of inspiration for her own research, exploring the trilingual education policy in Kazakhstan. You can read about Maira's visit below.

Having completed the data collection process for my thesis I was given the opportunity to conduct a research visit to Canada. This opportunity came from a Touring Scheme at the University of Sheffield that allows PhD students to undertake a research placement abroad. Upon receiving my supervisor’s consent I was able to apply for the scheme and receive the grant for the duration of my stay in Canada.

Over the course of my visit to Canada, I was able to conduct two school visits where I observed lessons and got to talk to the teachers. Since the Canadian school system is known for its French immersion, I was interested in how the schools are approaching this program. My thesis research looks at a similar program in Kazakhstan where the students are exposed to the English language. Moreover, Canada just like my home country Kazakhstan is multicultural and multinational where different ethnic groups live in peace and harmony and speak different languages. Seeing how Canadian schools teach students with different communicative repertoires was a great opportunity for me which in fact could serve as a model for the policy that I am looking at.

It was truly an amazing experience for me both in terms of personal and academic progression. I was able to meet like-minded PhD students and connect with them. I also expanded my network and met teachers and school principals with whom I still keep in touch. I was also able to disseminate my early research findings and present them to the teachers and researchers who were very interested in my research. Most importantly, this visit gave me an opportunity to establish a strong connection with the teachers and researchers from Canada and I am sure that this will lead to exciting projects and collaborations.

Student Community Mentor - Hannah Raine

In the academic year 2021-2022 I worked as the Student Community Mentor for the students across the School of Education. In this role, there were two main responsibilities:

designing, promoting and delivering a combination of online and in person community building events and activities;
signposting students to University resources and support and actively promoted central University support services.

I conducted this role part time alongside my PhD study and other roles I took on with the department, including Academic Representative for the and PGR Representative within the Faculty of Social Sciences.

I liaised with students to identify the types of activities they would find beneficial for community building and promotion of student wellbeing. I did this in a variety of ways, including via questionnaires, departmental social media or by liaising with student reps and student committees. I also worked with department staff to design events and initiatives to build strong departmental communities and find ways to support wellbeing amongst students. For example, I was responsible for initiating the Peer Assisted Learning scheme for the BA students, supported by staff within the department who wanted to provide this opportunity. I hope that this will be a success in providing students with support to gain new skills and work collaboratively with each other over the coming years, and will continue to develop.

I really enjoyed the challenge that this role involved, as well as the opportunity to meet with staff and get to know students. I believe that it is important for each department to facilitate conversations between students and staff, and to ensure that there is someone within the department specifically responsible for this. The School of Education cares deeply about the students and their wellbeing, but it is not an easy task to represent so many diverse experiences and requirements at once, so working to streamline this process and build effective relationships is really valuable and the role of Student Community Mentor was one way of doing this.