In this Issue:

Time for a Coffee Break?

For those of you about to grab a coffee, click here for an article of caffeine based discovery, enthusiasm and yes research submitted by our very own Dr Phil Stringer!

PALS Green Day success for EP Office!

For the keen gardeners out there, the sunflower seeds Eleanor planted in the EP office as part of the PALS Green Day on 24 March 2016 are doing incredibly well...the tallest plant of the three being 1 metre high and still growing...
Fingers crossed for some flowers over the summer!

Your News and Views are always welcome - please send us your comments

Spring/Summer 2016

New Faces, Promotions and Awards in the Group

In January 2016 we were joined by our eighteenth cohort of CPD Doctorate course members. A warm and very belated welcome to Anna Maria Cullen, Edel Higgins, Emily Hinson, Dilvender James, Sharon Johnston, Caoimhe McBay, Siobhan Mellor, Karen Morris, Susan Peters, Joan Riddel, Denise Thornton and Nigel Trory.

And many congratulations on behalf of the whole team to our recent CPD Doctoral graduates Dr Rachael Green, Dr Marian Prinsley, Dr Yvonne Kennedy, Dr Richard Egan, Dr Helen Connaughton, Dr Antonia Cobbald, Dr Fiona Kelly Meldon, Dr Judith McCall, Dr Therese Brophy, Dr Jenny Feinmann, Dr Rebecca Ashton, Dr Michael Cullinane and Dr Elizabeth Taylor. We look forward to seeing many of them graduating with the DECPsy 12-15 group in July 2016.

Our warmest congratulations also go to Dino Petrides who was recently promoted to Professor of Psychology and Psychometrics!

We are also delighted to report that during the 2016 DECP conference dinner on 7 January 2016, the inimitable Prof Norah Frederickson was presented with the Annual DECP Award for Outstanding Contribution to Educational Psychology. Norah gave a very interesting acceptance speech which was both equally moving and humorous, focusing on the changes and challenges to the profession and training during her long and rewarding career. A fitting tribute to someone who has contributed so much.

After twelve years in the role of Co-Director of the DEdPsy Course, Dr Tony Cline will be standing down from that role on 31st August this year. Dr Phil Stringer will be increasing his time at UCL and taking on the Co-Director role in collaboration with Susan. Tony will be cutting down on his time here but we are happy to say will continue to work on the DEdPsy as a tutor and to supervise the studies of the course members with whom he is working now. He will not take on any new tutees from this year. He is committed to offering supervision to the current group through to course completion if at all possible. He will also continue for the present to teach the topics that he has been responsible for on both the DEdPsy and DECPsy courses. He will also retain responsibility for organising DEdPsy assessment and examination procedures until July 2017 when that task will transfer to Phil. We all hope that these changes will be initiated smoothly and, through a combination of continuity and refreshment, will have a positive impact on course members' experience here.

UCL Educational Psychology Website and Communications Project

This may be the last edition of the Educational Psychology newsletter in its current form, as during summer - autumn 2016 we will be bringing the Educational Psychology website bang up to date and instigating some social media usage - including a UCL EdPsych twitter account.

In response to enthusiastic student feedback we wish to increase our visibility and bring our communications strategy up to date. It would be fantastic to get feedback and suggestions from our students, graduates, incoming students and other contacts regarding what they would like to see on our website and social media - also any volunteers to participate in video and photo footage (graduates from both programmes especially welcome!)

Please contact Cassie if you have ideas or suggestions, or would like to participate in this exciting project.

Personal News

As ever, we have heard of some exciting personal news in the Group, including the prerequisite new Ed Psych baby, wedding and sporting news!

Firstly, somewhat belated congratulations go to DEdPsy 2016 group course member Edel Higgins whose daughter, Anna O'Shea, was born on the 28th Janurary 2016 at Limerick maternity hospital, Ireland, weighing in at 8 pounds 1 ounce. Click here for a larger photo of the extremely cute baby Anna, who coincidentally was born hours after Edel's first UCL tutorial!!

In other family news, proud dad Dr Phil Stringer sent in this lovely photo from his daughter Cleo's graduation ceremony. Many tutors will know Cleo from her time working as a temp in the Educational Psychology office. At the time, she was also completing an MA in Arts and Cultural Management at King's College and was deservedly pleased to gain a distinction. Here she is at her graduation in February 2016, wearing one of the robes designed for KIng's by Vivienne Westwood. Since completing her MA, Cleo has had an internship at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and has a temporary job at the Royal Academy, where she is currently working as part of the team responsible for putting on the RA's Summer Exhibition.

Wedding news next, from DECPsy 15-18 cohort member Izzah Bistamam who tied the knot during Spring 2016. Izzah and Khairul’s wedding day started off with a Nikah ceremony at Regent’s Park Mosque, which was attended by family and close friends. The celebrations continued at a dinner reception in the evening held at The Berkeley, Knightsbridge. Izzah’s fellow trainees were also there to celebrate the happy couple! Click here for more lovely photos.

Finally, providing the sporting interest for this newsletter is keen cyclist Dr Phil Stringer, who spent a holiday in May with his son Joe recreating some of the classic climbs used by the Tour de France. The intrepid pair rode up the iconic Alpe d'Huez, first raced in 1952 and won by Phil's cycling hero, Fausto Coppi. It reaches 1860 metres in just over 13 km, with an average gradient of just over 8%. Click here to see Phil and Joe recreating a famous photo from the 1986 Tour when Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond crossed the finish line together, hand in hand.

Shown right is a picture taken at the end of their subsequent ride up to Col du Glandon, first used by the Tour in 1947, at 1924 metres following a 24 km up and down climb, averaging around 5% but with some stretches at 11%. Phil describes it as a wild, spectacular climb with much snow on the mountain tops and at the Col du Glandon itself, where they had to carry our bikes across snow to get to the summit. For the less sporty of us, exhausting just to think about...

Publications and Research

Congratulations to our DEdPsy and DECPsy graduates on the following recent publications:

Dr Sinead Neal (DECPsy 11-14 graduate). Neal, S., Rice, F., & Frederickson, N. ASD Transition to Mainstream Secondary: A Positive Experience? Educational Psychology in Practice.

Neal, S.; Rice, F.; Ng-Knight, T.; Riglin, L.; & Frederickson, N. Exploring the association between interventions to support the transition to secondary school and child anxiety. Journal of Adolescence DOI: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2016.04.003

Dr Tara Midgen (DEdPsy 2015 graduate) published a paper on (un)ethical leadership in the December issue of Educational and Child Psychology. DECP Dec 15. pp83-93 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 32 No. 4 81 © The British Psychological Society, 2015

Dr Emma Gore-Langton (DECPsy 10-13 graduate) - Gore-Langton. E., & Frederickson, N. Parents’ experiences of professionals’ involvement for children with Pathological Demand Avoidance. International Journal of Developmental Disabilities

Congratulations also to DECPsy tutor Dr Gavin Morgan, whose latest publication is hot off the press:

Morgan, G (2016). Organisational Change: A Solution-Focused Approach. Educational Psychology in Practice 32(2).

Last but not least, we are pleased to report that Research Methods tutor Dr Andy Fugard has signed a book contract with Palgrave, "Understanding the evidence for psychological therapies", due for publication on April Fool's Day 2018! Some further details are below:
"Talk about evidence is more common than ever, but what kinds of evidence are available for therapies and what does it all mean? This book provides ideas and provocations to make evidence more accessible and to enrich conversations about whether therapies work. It fills a gap between academic texts about designing studies and practitioner guidelines stating which therapies are most likely to help whom. Common patterns in results are illustrated through high-profile research and reports, telling stories about how the work was actually carried out, exploring assumptions made and discussing their implications. Powerful political forces drive how evidence is presented and used, whether in the publish-or-perish world of academia or increasingly competitive tendering for services in the NHS and schools. These political forces will also be discussed, and it will be shown how they have a predictable effect on the claims made."

Congratulations again to Dr Andy Fugard who has been involved in a range of research activities recently. Firstly, since April Andy has been part of a team who obtained funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to evaluate school-based humanistic counselling. Andy's role is co-investigator on that, supporting research methods and statistics. Click here for the press release.

Andy recently worked on a pilot project 'PhysFeel' funded by the UCL Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing, jointly with the Institute of Making. The project aimed to explore how physical props and material stimuli can enable a different kind of conversation about emotions than that made available through verbal communication. The project team investigated whether emotions may be communicated non-verbally using sets of physical objects that vary in physical dimensions such as density, hardness, elastic modulus, thermal emissivity, surface roughness and luminosity; and what dimensions of emotions these physical properties might map onto. Andy presented his findings at the Eighth European Conference on Positive Psychology held 28th June 28 - 1st July 2016 in Angers, France with colleagues Sarah Wilkes (Institute of Making) and Praveetha Pataley (IOE). Click here for further information.

Last September, Buckinghamshire EP service and UCL Educational Psychology were jointly commissioned by Bucks Public Health to evaluate two universal programmes being rolled out in schools across the county: a Penn-based Resilience Programme and FRIENDS. Both aim to promote resilience and psychosocial wellbeing. Dr Andy Fugard, Dr Antonia Cobbald and Dr Susan Birch from the course team are co-investigators, working alongside Emma Watson and Sam Hinds, psychology assistants (who both happen to be joining us at UCL as part of the new cohort of DECPsy trainees in September!). The project runs until 2018.

In the first year, the team has designed and piloted an online survey to evaluate the impact of the programmes, using a combination of standardised measures of mental health and wellbeing, and open-ended questions to find out more about children and young people's experiences of the programmes. To date, 25 schools are running the programmes and 14 have participated in the evaluation. We are also currently running focus groups with children in primary and a secondary school to gather their views.

It's going to be a busy summer with various qualitative and quantitative analyses to complete before a dissemination event in the Autumn in Aylesbury. We'll keep you posted!

Conferences and Events

The 2016 DECP conference in Bloomsbury, organized by DECPsy tutor Dr Gavin Morgan in his role as DECP conference lead, featured input from graduates on both programmes. From the DECPsy 12-15 cohort graduates we saw Dr Emma Sheffield (Labels of SEN – Perceptions and Experiences of Young People with a Classification of BESD); Dr William Bulman (Helping Secondary School Teachers to Strengthen Relationships with Students); and Dr Alicia Crane (The Use of Technical Terms in Exemplar EP Reports). This year's DEdPsy symposium was organized by Dr Phil Stringer, with graduates Dr Jane Williams, Dr Jessamine Chiappella and Dr Rachael Green, on the topic of Antidotes to Labelling. Aditionally, workshops were held by DEdPsy graduate Dr Klair Norman (Reframe or Remove: What Should EPs do with Psychiatric Labels?) and Programme Co-Director Dr Tony Cline (Child Language Brokering in School: Whose Interests does it Serve?).

And look out for DECPsy 14-17 trainee Juliet O'Callaghan, who will be presenting at the TEP DECP conference on 15th July entitled "A Day in the Life of a Trainee Educational Psychologist", focusing on the 'opportunities and challenges of post 16 casework'.

This photo of Dr Sandra Dunsmuir and Dr Tony Cline with their spouses was taken in May at the Annual Reception held by the charity Changing Faces, held at the Mall Galleries near Trafalgar Square. Each year the Royal Society of Portrait Painters holds an exhibition there of the work of its members. During the exhibition Changing Faces, the national charity that supports those with facial disfigurement, gives a prize in the form of a commission to produce a portrait of a person with a disfigurement for the Changing Faces collection. A reception is held to celebrate and publicise the work of the charity and to thank the many volunteers who support that work. This year a major theme of the evening reception was work undertaken by Changing Faces in schools. Strategies for inclusion were under the spotlight. The work of one North London school with Year 5 pupils around "Wonder", the children's novel by R.J. Palacio, was featured. As Tony is a member of the organisation's Board of Trustees, the Educational Psychology Group team was well represented at the event. As well as Tony and Sandra, others were Shama Ali, Susan Birch, Roger Booker, Eleanor Callen, Andy Fugard and Beverley Graham. There is more information on the educational, support and advocacy work of the charity on its website

In other professional news congratulations go to DEdPsy 2015 graduate Dr Tara Midgen, PEP in Wandsworth and to DEdPsy 2016 graduate Dr Rachael Green, now a research supervisor on the Tavistock initial training course.

CPD Leading Edge Psychology Day - 19 April 2016

''Austerity: How Should Educational Psychology Respond?'''

This year's Leading Edge Day was devoted to the theme of an EP response to austerity, in particular to the increased numbers of children projected to be in schools from impoverished families over the next 5 years. Dr Roger Booker introduced the day with data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (see chart - left) and then passed over to Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, assistant professor of social psychology at the LSE who is developing a framework for the psychology of low economic status. She presented evidence that the experience of resource Browne, J and Hood, A. Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK, 2015-16 to 2020-21. Institute of Fiscal Studies, Report R114, February 2016. scarcity impaired executive functioning, in particular working memory, inhibitory control, planning and attention. Although the research evidence comes predominantly from adults the impact on family culture and parenting was evident. Families from poor backgrounds also have more conscious status and survival concerns all of which leads to 'present based' decisions and risky behaviours.

Dr Sherria Hoskins, Head of Psychology at Portsmouth University, focused on 'growth' as opposed to 'fixed' mindsets (implicit theories of intelligence) following the work of Carol Dweck. She argued for high expectations by pupils of themselves and from parents and teachers – drawing a contrast with the much politicised idea of 'aspiration'. She presented evidence that pupils with growth mindsets progressed faster and outperformed pupils with fixed mindsets and suggested that fixed mindsets were more likely in negatively stereotyped groups such as children in low socioeconomic groups. She argued that teachers (and EPs) should be promoting high expectations, enabling pupils to overcome negative feelings about difficult tasks, celebrating mistakes and giving 'process' praise.

In the afternoon Danielle Mason from the Education Endowment Foundation described the Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit which provides schools with the basis for deciding which interventions to increase attainment in children from poor families are best evidence based. There is a particular focus on making the best use of teaching assistants. EPs should be aware of this and supporting schools in the use of the Toolkit, much available on line.

The day concluded with an open discussion on EPS implications for EPSs of the three presentations; this was kicked off by Dr Phil Stringer, followed by Tasnim Kapasi and Elaine Killerby. While the subsequent plenary provided an opportunity for a range of impressions the strongest conclusion was that EPs should be arguing that the social condition of poverty and resource scarcity has negative psychological consequences for families which affects the executive functioning and implicit theories of intelligence of children, and that there are evidence based and resource efficient interventions that can begin to address these.

More information on the day and about future Leading Edge Day conferences is available on our CPD website.

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