MA STEM Education Celebration Event 2023: Wipro Best Dissertation Prize Awards
On Saturday the 18th of November staff and students on the MA STEM Education programme met to celebrate the achievements of graduating students.
The start of the academic year had seen the completion of 12 dissertations, the welcoming of 24 new students, including 15 Wipro scholars with 13 students moving into their second year of part-time study.
The programme co-director, Richard Brock, described the excellent dissertations that had been submitted. Titles include:
• Exploring the ongoing influence of an informal STEM engagement event on the positive attitude towards engineering: a case study
• Improving equity in secondary mathematics education by using microworlds to teach graph sketching to Year 9 students
• Teacher perceptions of STEM Habits of Mind: How do these influence the strategies used to support students to develop STEM Habits of Mind in an inner London comprehensive school?
Richard reported the work of the first STEM Education Hub. The hubs are a project funded by the philanthropy of Wipro which sees networks of schools collaborate with MA STEM education alumnae to disseminate good practice from the programme to teachers. The first hub is a collaboration with the Halley Academy, Greenwich. STEM MA alumnus and Wipro Scholar, David Mensah (2019-2021), Director of STEM at Halley Academy has been implementing the research on integrated STEM curricula to develop a new school STEM curriculum focused on the theme of artificial intelligence.
CRESTEM doctoral students, Sophie Perry and Shirin Hine, introduced their new book of reflections on environmental education, Heartwood. The text brings together voices from practice and academia discussing themes related to the environment.
Lulu Healy, co-director of CRESTEM, introduced the four nominees for the Wipro Best Dissertation Prize:
• Riccardo Galbiati: What Are the Perspectives of Highly-Successful STEM Neurodiverse Students on Their STEM Learning Experience?
• Kavita Krishna: Climate change education in Indian schooling: perspectives of environmental educators – an exploratory study.
• Katy Manisier: Not missing their targets! Exploring the impact of mock examination grades and feedback practices on student self- efficacy, behaviour, and motivation – a case study in a boys’ independent school.
• Rachel Sawle: Exploring children’s affective attitudes towards plants in an urban primary school in England
Lulu reported the challenge she, and her co-judge, Andri Christodoulou (University of Southampton, the MA STEM Education’s external examiner) faced – all the nominated dissertations were of outstanding quality.
The judges decided to award the Wipro Best Dissertation Prize to Kavita Krishna. They commented that:
The study presents clearly formulated research questions, with the significance and rationale for such a study strongly supported by relevant literature and evidence. The study is methodologically strong, with clear justification of methodological decisions, and a reflective positionality. The relevance of using indigenous knowledge systems to address socioenvironmental challenges is an innovation and should be considered more widely in order to create personally-relevant and contextualised learning experiences that can result into pro-environmental action.
Applications are now open for the MA in STEM in Education for study from September 2024. See here for more details:
