Anne Convery
Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences
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Biography
Anne Convery taught French and German in secondary comprehensive schools for 10 years before joining the School of Education as a lecturer in 1991. She has contributed to the 1 year full-time PGCE since then, as well as being course leader for the two year part-time PGCE in Modern Languages in the 1990s. Anne was responsible for introducing Japanese as a language on the PGCE course in 1993, and since then over 80 teachers of the language have been trained, the majority of whom have gained employment as teachers of Japanese in the state secondary sector in the UK.
Anne was involved in a European Teacher Training Programme between 1992 and 2005, and coordinated the visit of student teachers to Nottingham from France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Portugal during this time under the Erasmus scheme. She also led an EU Socrates-funded series of Intensive Programmes (IPs), bringing student teachers from six different EU countries to work together with pupils in local schools. The IPs, to develop the themes of European and global citizenship, were held in Leipzig (1998), Vienna (1999), Groningen (2000), Angers (2002), Vienna (2003) and Lisbon (2004). The research she carried out at this time was part of her PhD thesis,completed in March 2002, entitled, "Changing attitudes to Europe: British Teacher Education and the European Dimension".
Anne is a member of the Unesco Centre for Comparative Education Research (UCCER), where she has acted as mentor to visiting scholars and chaired seminars at the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission research colloquia in 2004 and 2006. She teaches on MA and EdD programmes for the Centre and her research is located within it.
Research Summary
Anne's research interests include the European dimension, citizenship and teacher identity.
She is currently involved in two research projects. The first is a collaborative project with a colleague from the University of Pamukkale, Turkey, Dr Necla Koksal, which is a comparison of the standards and competences required of beginning teachers in England and Turkey. The first stage of the research was reported at the European Education Research Conference at the University of Vienna, in September 2009, in a paper entitled "Examining the usefulness of teacher standards and competences in England and Turkey: a comparative study amongst pre-service teachers". Anne and Necla hope to report on the second phase of their research at the EECR at the University of Helsinki in August 2010.
Anne's second project is also a comparative study to investigate the identities of beginning teachers in England, Ireland and Turkey. Data were gathered between February and June 2009 from a series of focus groups carried out with pre-service teachers in the Universities of Nottingham, Limerick and Pamukkale. Data analysis is currently being carried out, and an initial report will be presented at the EECR at the University of Helsinki in August 2010.
Recent Publications
- ATKIN, C, CONVERY, A., eds., 2008. Adult Learning in Lincolnshire and Rutland: voices from practice: Practitioner-led research projects. Volume 2. The University of Nottingham and the Learning and Skills Council.
- CONVERY, A.E. and KERR, K., 2007. Acting locally to have global impact: citizenship education in theory and practice in England. Children's Social and Economics Education: An International Journal, 7(3).
- CONVERY, A.E., 2006. Student teacher attitudes to Europe: responses from policy to practice. In: POPOV, N., WOLHUTER, C., HELLER, C., KYSILKA, M., eds. Comparative education and teacher training. 4. Sofia, Bulgaria: Bureau for Educational Services under the auspices of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, pp. 199-206
- CONVERY, A.E., 2006. Inspired by Vygotsky - Developing Teacher Autonomy.