First day at Birmingham City University! This was such an interesting day and I loved to be able to finally meet the BCU faculty. The university we are studying at holds nursing, midwifery, and social service majors. We toured the beautiful university building and then spent most of the day in the classroom. Also, they kindly provided us with high tea which was delicious! The rest of the day we listened to a couple lectures from professors, head teachers, and faculty of the school. I learned a lot about education, research, nursing, and BCU.
In the introduction given by the dean’s deputy of nursing, they gave us a brief overview of the healthcare system and nursing, which included many aspects I plan to use in my research. This included when she spoke about the NHS (National Health Service) which is a type of free access to healthcare. This program provides many major necessities to health like medicines, insulin, etc. But it also has its issues like long waits in the emergency room due to massive amounts of people going there for diseases that could be treated by a general doctor. There is also an extreme nursing shortage of 40,000. And the one nursing student we spoke to, Gemma, said in the hospitals the ratio of nurses to patients is 1:24. Also they have only 2 women hospitals in the whole United Kingdom which was a shock to me.
In addition, the deans deputy explained how the nursing school is predominantly women and the midwife program is all women. But there are a lot more males coming into the nursing program recently. BCU actually has the majority of nursing student graduates in Birmingham. One thing I found really neat was when they said that Birmingham nurses learn how to care for all different diversities because it is such a diverse city, which prepares them to work anywhere in the world.
Next, the student union president and vice president gave us an introduction to the BCU student union which I learned everyone is part of as soon as they enroll. This union is a charity that connects students to academic and liberation societies. They also are advocates of promoting students’ mental health and making sure the university is taking care of the students.
One of the first people who we spoke to was a BCU instructor in Physical education who is also pursuing his PhD. One of the main things he spoke about was research which was very useful for our research papers. One of the methods of research I learned that he teaches to his students is the “research forest.” This method is a really clever way to come up with a research question. He explained how it allows you to start with a broad topic and turn it into a very specific question you can research. First was the forest then the wood, tree, branch, and leaf. The leaf is the very specific final research question that you can begin to study.
Finally we spoke to many different types of faculty in education. This included a secondary and primary teacher. As well as a head teacher and assistant to the head teacher. We discussed that education here in the UK is structured mainly by the National Curriculum. This curriculum decides all the different techniques and prime areas that should be taught to all students. The curriculum is inspected by the Ofsted to make sure all schools are performing correctly and showing good progress. The prime areas they focus in primary education is communication and language, physical development, and personal/social development. They also take a mastery approach, which means they assume everyone can achieve the same thing. Recently they have focused on intrinsic rewards for primary students because they want them to achieve things because the students want to, not just for the reward. Secondary education starts at 11 and goes to 16. At 16 they take the GSEs which decides what college they attend. These college programs are specialized to what the students score on the test. After college they take the A-level which determines their university.
The teachers that spoke actually work in underprivileged and low socioeconomic status areas which is another important aspect of my research. For primary education they have clubs for underprivileged children. This includes breakfast clubs to make sure they are fed, and after school clubs to help them have more interactions in school. They also are very passionate about taking underprivileged schools on trips to beaches and other places because they do not get this experience at home. In secondary education all the students are given laptops for free, so they all can have the ability to access assignments. Also peoples premium is a government program that gives students money to help fund free lunch, pay for school trips, and textbooks. In addition, if the school’s Ofsted inspection requires improvement or is inadequate, the government actually gives the school funding and a good amount of time to improve the school. I find this very positive and helpful for the schools. In one day I already learned so much about BCU, nursing, and education and I am excited to discuss even more about all these topics tomorrow.