Alison Oldfield MEd
Learning Researcher
Alison Oldfield is a learning researcher with experience in inclusion and disability, young people’s participation processes, action research projects, and youth work practice. Her research interests also include the co-design and development of learning spaces, including online spaces, and the development of services through participatory, rights-based processes. She is experienced in practitioner-led and interdisciplinary qualitative research in a range of settings, including schools, online spaces and more informal learning settings like youth centres and voluntary agencies. She has written and presented to policy, academic, industry and practitioner audiences.
Research Interests
- Rights-based approaches to learning and education in theory and reality
- Social inclusion, particularly related to disability
- Potential use of assistive technologies for developing communication and person-centred planning strategies
- Working with young people and practitioners as co-researchers
- Co-design and development of learning spaces, including online spaces
- Young people’s use of social media
- Workshop approaches and evaluation
- Impact of public service ‘innovations’ on those who use them
Current Projects
Greater Expectations is a 3-year project (2008-2011) that explores the issues that matter to young people in their lives and learning, asks how they can feel empowered and motivated to achieve their aspirations, learn about their entitlements and create change, and examines what role digital technologies can play in that process.
The project will deliver a free-to-use, learner-centred resource that aims to support young people to have a voice and take action around the principles and issues important to them. To accommodate a wide range of users focusing primarily on young people aged 14-19, but secondarily involving supporting adults in young people’s lives, this resource will provide possible links, examples, tools and gateways that illustrate how young people can be confident, engaged and supported agents of change and how technology can enable and facilitate that to happen.
Futurelab is carrying out learning spaces workshops and consultancy with schools and local authorities to support innovative thinking around school redesign. These activities are aimed at the pre-engagement or visioning phase of redesign programmes such as Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme.
Through working with staff, pupils and other key stakeholders, the aim is to challenge schools and authorities to think differently in creating a compelling vision of a transformed educational future and to explore the possibilities of space, curriculum and school redesign in order to develop approaches to education appropriate for the 21st century.
Previous Posts
- Deputy Project Head, KIDS Young People’s Inclusion Network, UK, 2005-2008. Managed national project covering 5 UK regions that worked alongside Disabled young people to define what social inclusion meant to them and pursue partnerships with youth and leisure providers in order to create and develop services that were more inclusive and met young people’s requirements on their terms.
- Youth Programme Area Director, Camp Fire USA, Portland, Oregon, 2002-2004. Managed 4 youth programmes that included academic support, life skills and community service development.
- Mentoring Programme Grant Evaluator, US Department of Education, 2003.
- English Teacher, Unidad Educativa Modelo Tomas de Berlanga, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, 2000-2002.
Publications
- Close the Gap - a review of UK policies affecting inclusion of Disabled young people, September 2008
Conferences/Presentations
- ‘Greater Expectations’, NEXUS Conference, University of Newport, Wales, 2009.
- ‘Learning on Inclusion’, KIDS Conference - Inclusion into Practice, 18 September 2008
- ‘Case Study: Participation in Practice’, Directory of Social Change Conference – The Lottery Funding Conference, 29 February 2008
- ‘Working with Disabled Young People towards Access, Inclusion and Participation’, Capita Conference - Positive Outcomes for Young People 28 February 2008
Professional bodies
2008 – present: Visiting Fellow at University of Bristol (Graduate School of Education)
alison [dot] oldfield [at] futurelab [dot] org [dot] uk
0117 815 8210