Inclusion and Social Justice Special Interest Group
The Special Interest Group on Inclusion and Social Justice was the first SIG to be launched in the School of Education, in 2010 by Dr Paty Paliokosta. It has built a research- and scholarship-friendly environment through opportunities for practice papers, invited talks, and CPD events for staff and students. This Special Interest Group (SIG) alongside other SIGs that were developed later, formed the core of the Education Research Group (ERG). SIGs are catalysts for the development of conceptual, theoretical and empirical-based knowledge generation, with dissemination through a range of publications, including books, book chapters, journals in addition to conferences, seminars and workshops.
The activity of the SIG has enabled and supported the Department of Education's strong and long-standing commitment to continuing professional development and practitioner research and a portfolio of award-bearing programmes. Of note are the Inclusive Curricula Award (2018); the TEAN Commendation for Effective Practice in Teacher Education (2019) and the AdvanceHE Connect on-boarding grant (2020).
The SIG's activity and its dissemination through social media has attracted the interest of an increased number of requests by external collaborators, prospective PhD students, local schools, multi-academy trusts and the voluntary and charity sector. It is very pleasing that this network is growing.
The SIG is led by Dr Paty Paliokosta, who can be contacted on p.paliokosta@kingston.ac.uk
Members:
Most recent publications
- Nash-Patel, T., Anderson, E., O'Donaghue, B., Paliokosta, P. and Morrow, E. (2022) StoryAID : nursing student relational learning with young people with intellectual learning disabilities. Journal of Nursing Education, ISSN (print) 0148-4834 (In Press)
- Paliokosta, Paty and Nash, Theresa (2019) Fighting for our rights: perceived gains from transforming the curriculum through a narrative of activism. International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education, 10(2), pp. 4041-4047. ISSN (online) 2042-6364
Conferences
- Paliokosta, Paty, Lipsedge, Karen, Cunningham, Matthew, Barker, Christopher, Calabrese, Gianpiero, Mulrooney, Hilda, Groves, Konami, Davies, Rachel, Burden, Penny, Bailey, Joanna and Topcu, Mel (2021) The value of the Personal Tutor Scheme (PTS) as a mechanism of supporting belonging in an online world. In: Horizons in STEM Higher Education Conference: Making Connections, Innovating and Sharing Pedagogy; 29-30 Jun 2021, Milton Keynes, U.K. (Held online). (Unpublished)
- Paliokosta, Paty, Lipsedge, Karen, Cunningham, Matthew, Barker, Christopher, Calabrese, Gianpiero, Mulrooney, Hilda, Groves, Konami, Davies, Rachel, Burden, Penny, Bailey, Joanna and Topcu, Mel (2021) The value of the Personal Tutor Scheme (PTS) as a mechanism of supporting belonging in an online world. In: Festival of Learning 2021; 25 Jun 2021, Kingston upon Thames, U.K. (Held online). (Unpublished)
Please refer to the Research Repository for further information on publications and outputs.
Projects
Fighting for our Rights
With a grant of £76,900 from Heritage Lottery Fund, between 2016 and 2018 Kingston University's School of Education and School of Nursing worked with Kingston Centre for Independent Living, Heritage2Health, St Philip's School, and Kingston Archives to examine how a user-led group formed in 1967 to campaign for equal rights, acceptance, more choice, and control, eventually became the Kingston Centre for Independent Living. We collected and shared the oral histories of 23 disabled activists, who fought for change in the 1960s to live independently and have access to education and employment.
Seminars/events
The SIG has invited presentations, two mini-conferences, twilight talks and a centenary talk that entailed presentations by prominent national and international activists and academics in the field of SEN/Inclusion:
- Richard Rieser (Internationally renowned disability activist)
- Professor Gottfried Biewer (Lead academic on the field of SEND at the University of Vienna)
- Professor Lesley Saunders (Oxford University),
- Professor Sonia Blandford (AfA CEO and visiting professor at UCL)
- Local charity representatives (Kingston Eco-Op, KCIL) have also joined more recent SIG meetings to scope future collaborations.
- Dr Alan Benson (London Metropolitan University)
Enquiries
For further information, please contact Dr Paty Paliokosta
The Inclusion and Social Justice Special Interest Group is part of the Educational Research Group.
