Now that we are over halfway through the project, it’s exciting to see it taking shape - we’ve faced a fair few challenges so far! Most importantly, we’ve managed to move from planning to action, and just this morning have celebrated receiving our first set of survey results from a primary school in Cowley. It’s proven very useful to have such a clearly defined proposal that we all agree on, as it has made survey design and delivery very efficient. However, we have also realised the need to deviate from our proposal when circumstances change. For instance, as the vast majority of schools in Oxfordshire have broken up for summer holidays as of today, we have recognised that overstretched teachers and parents at the end of term are unlikely to want to fill out a survey on character qualities, so we have shifted our focus more to interviews with headteachers and education researchers, who have proven to be much more forthcoming. In order to collect enough data to produce valuable conclusions, we have also expanded the scope of our research to the entire county of Oxfordshire. We are also getting a first taste of academic writing beyond the undergraduate level as we write up our literature review this week.

This past week we got to take our learning outside the SDG lab once again as we went to Warwick on behalf of the Oxford Character Project to attend a conference on character education. It was invaluable to be able to discuss the literature we had read with the researchers who had written it; for me the most useful takeaways were twofold: firstly was understanding that the Neo-Aristotelian model of character was being used not as a claim to a fundamental truth of human nature, but instead an educational tool which would be familiar and acceptable to secular schools and governments, and secondly it was very useful to see the empirical basis of the efficacy of character education, through as-yet-unpublished data from the Jubilee Group from the University of Birmingham.

I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed developing critical research skills, especially through our workshops on Microsoft Excel, NVivo, Zotero and mixed methods. Not only are these useful skills for our current projects, but they will be useful in designing studies and analysing quantitative and qualitative data throughout our degrees and our future careers. I found mixed methods particularly enlightening, as it encouraged me to think for the first time about the beliefs underpinning the nature of reality and the philosophy of science, and it brought me to realise that I had several fundamentally contradicting ideas about subjectivity and objectivity that would benefit from further examination in future study.

As the workload increases, I have also been very grateful for the continued mutual support of the other Laidlaw scholars here in Oxford – especially for their openness in talking through their projects and sharing resources, as well as their relentless optimism and community spirit – I particularly enjoyed going punting together last week (and the ensuing spontaneous late-night picnic in Jesus!) – it was really heartwarming to see how rapidly we had built friendships which I hope will last long beyond the two years we have together as Laidlaw scholars.