On Monday, we were introduced to our fellow teammates who would also be working on our research project. We met up with our Graduate Advisor – Kristen, who was a wonderful help and helped us break down and understand what our task would be. Our research project was focused on exploring how curricular enrichment programmes may influence pupil's development and their experiences within schools and their sense of belonging and wellbeing. That same day, we headed to the SDG Lab where we were introduced to Alex Betts, a co-founder of the SDG Lab where we further learnt about the mission of the SDG Lab and the Laidlaw programme. Ben Margetts also gave a presentation which introduced us to the Theory of Change. The Theory of Change is a framework which is used to achieve long term goals and also consider the impacts and the outcomes of the actions we make when producing change.
On the next day, I worked alongside my team to further work on our project. Our research builds upon previous studies completed by another group from last year, and we will also be working alongside another group which are focused on policies surrounding education. We created a research proposal and broke down different tasks and gave each person a role. I was involved in creating a flow chart which showed our research strategy and what we would be doing with the data obtained and how our data could be used in the future to potentially implement co-curricular activities into schools across the globe to support student wellbeing and education attainment. I really enjoy working with my team as we are very open to taking on new ideas and we all engage well with each other’s ideas. We decided to create a presentation which will support our research proposal and clearly display our ideas.
The next day, we had training on how to use the NVivo software. NVivo is a programme which is used to work with qualitative data such as data obtained from interviews. I found this session very helpful because in our own research project, we would be conducting surveys and questionnaires to stakeholders which we need to obtain to support our project. The NVivo programme seemed a bit daunting at first, but with the teachers we had they broke it down and explained it us in a very easy to understand way, and I am quite eager to start using the programme when we conduct our interviews next week with the Oxford Sports Ambassadors in Blackbird Leys.
On Thursday, we met with graduate advisors – Mihaela, Kristen and Kevin who provided us with more context on our research project. This was a very helpful session, as our team had realised how broad our project was, and we were advised to focus on a specific topic area. With how adaptable and flexible our team is, we were very quickly able to alter our research proposal and make it more fitting to a specific topic. This enables us to gather much more rich and focused data. Finally, we had a lesson on Excel which would be especially helpful in manipulating and analysing our quantitative data – which is especially important for our research project.
Finally on our last day of the week, we were introduced to Anjali Sakar who spoke on the Oxford Character Project. On the Oxford University website, we have a page dedicated to our notable alumni, many of which are Prime Ministers. With Andy Burnham being likely to be the next Prime Minster, the UK’s consecutive run of 16 years of Prime Ministers studying at Oxford University will have come to an end (although he did attend another very prestigious university – the University of Cambridge). It can be argued that our university is not particularly the best at producing leaders who are compassionate, empathetic and produce positive change, this leads to the question: Are we producing good leaders? Whether you believe Oxford does or does not, the Oxford Character Project aims to produce better leaders working alongside those in higher education – ones that are have integrity, compassion and humility – underrated traits like these which are uncommon in the many leaders we have today. These are the traits we as scholars are being taught and through this programme will use in our daily lives to produce change. The conversation that we were able to have on this day was eye-opening as debates were being sparked on the topic of what being a good leader is, what metrics are used to classify a good leader? Is monetary success, status and prestige what we value and strive for as leaders? With that, what traits do you think a good leader must have?
Finally, we presented our research objectives, plans and strategies to Ben. It was a good opportunity to gain feedback and possible next steps for our project and what else we could include – a nice end to the week. I really had a great first week and cannot wait for what else is in store, and I am very proud of the work that my team have accomplished in a such a short span of time. Our next steps are preparing for our conversations with the Oxford Sports Ambassadors for our project and visiting the primary schools in the Blackbird Leys area. I have enjoyed exploring Oxford and discovering all the hidden gems and cultures. I am having great conversations, developing skills that I will continue to use in the future and having the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to my community.