alfred 2 - University of Winchester

Conference Report: The International Student
Conference, Riga, Latvia, 18th-21st May 2010.
Harriet Bellotte, Rachel Moore and Lucy Fox
In May 2010 four undergraduate students (Harriet Bellotte,
Rachel Moore, Lucy Fox and Mark Harris) from the University
of Winchester’s Faculty of Education, Health and Social
Care travelled to Riga in Latvia to present the findings of
their FYP research at a conference, accompanied by two
members of staff from the faculty, Emma Morley and Honor
Houghton. This was an opportunity for these undergraduates
to participate in the international arena and take part in
discourses about education, learn about the global dimensions
of pedagogical thinking and debate, and to raise the profile of
student research in the Faculty.
The presentations
Lauren Fox presented a paper on “Multisensory Story Bags: An
examination of making Storysacks®”. The aim of the research
was to explore whether children gained confidence in oral
storytelling, rather than story writing, using story bags. In the
research children made their own multisensory story bags to
use while telling their story, and were then interviewed after
telling their stories in order to determine their thoughts on the
storytelling process and what they learnt.
Rachel Moore presented a paper that explored the question
“What are the most valuable activities for assessing the
scientific concept development of second language learners?”
This focused on a case study of an 11 year old girl of Kurdish
origin, involving the child taking part in two linked scientific
investigations with three other English speaking children in
the same class.
Harriet Bellotte’s presentation was entitled “An Exploration
of Role Play and Talk to Support Writing”, which discussed
the role of talk to support a piece of writing by ten and
eleven year olds. The project involved a class of 28 children
participating in a dragon hunt role play, and there was also
a case study group which critically examined the writing
produced. The aim was to explore children’s attitudes and
enjoyment of writing as a result of role play and to consider
the attainment achieved.
Review of, and reflections on, the conference
Our main emotion on being given the opportunity to present
papers at this conference was excitement; about meeting
students from other cultures and finding out about education
in other countries. However our anticipation was tempered by
nerves – we all felt anxious about the prospect of presenting
the individual findings of our FYP research in front of an
audience of non-English speakers, with some parts of the
presentations having to be translated. Our nerves settled after
speaking for a few minutes, and the pleasure and satisfaction
of sharing our enthusiasm and interest in our research projects
took over. The presentations lasted about 15 minutes each,
followed by questions. The experience turned out to be not
as daunting as we thought, as the audience was smaller than
expected, most of the students spoke fluent English and many
showed their interest in the research through their questions
at the end of the papers. In fact the comments and questions
were really appreciated, they showed that the audience had
really engaged with our ideas, and this took forward our
understanding of our work. The conference was attended by
people of nine nationalities which meant that many of the
ideas we discussed were new to the audience.
There were several noteworthy presentations given at the
conference. Speakers who were students from Austria
were very informative about their education system which
5