This assessment is worth 50% of the overall module mark The task Imagine that yo

This assessment is worth 50% of the overall module mark
The task
Imagine that you have been commissioned to write a report (research summary) for a major national or international organisation concerned with childhood or education. You do not have to specify this organisation in your report, but it might help to have one in mind (e.g. the UK Department for Education, Save the Children, or UNICEF).
Your report should be based around one of the key themes from the module (use the themes for each week to help you).
The report has three aims:
to present ‘state-of-the-art’ geographical literature on your chosen theme in a way that is rigorous but accessible;
to review evidence and/or data on your chosen theme from at least one secondary dataset;
to provide recommendations that the organisation could take forward in their work.
Guidance on structure and format
Your report should follow the indicative structure below (you may deviate from this but we strongly recommend following this structure, and discussing with us if you wish to do something different).
Title page (not included in word count): separate page with report title and your details.
Contents page (not included in word count).
Introduction: include the aims and objective of the report and a brief executive summary (200 words).
Critical engagement with the geographical literature (1,100 words).
Draw on the key geographical literatures which theorise children’s geographies/geographies of education in relation to your chosen topic.
Remember to make this review accessible – avoid or explain jargon or complex theoretical terms and focus on what a policy-maker or charity might need to know.
End with a summary of key questions or issues that evidence from existing datasets could help address – i.e. linking to the next section.
Review of evidence from at least one dataset relevant to your topic (500 words – figures/tables/quotations not included in wordcount).
You can choose the dataset(s) yourself, but reflect carefully on the reliability and robustness of the source (i.e. try to use government, charity, and/or established international datasets).
We recommend the following sources as starting points: the UK Data Service (UKDS); the Office for National Statistics (ONS); the Mass Observation archive; the Timescapes project and National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) websites; the UK General Household Survey; ILOSTAT (the International Labour Organisation statistic service) and the UNESCO Observatory on the Right to Education. All are available to access free-of-charge and can be found via a Google search.
We have no preference as to whether you use quantitative or qualitative sources and you will not lose marks for using only the sources we suggest above.
You should carefully select key pieces of evidence – e.g. figures, tables, statistics, quotations, key findings. Try to be selective and to create a ‘narrative’ – an argument – from the dataset(s) that responds to the issues identified at the end of the literature review.
Make sure that you fully reference all data sources you use in a caption and in your reference list. In your caption, please note if you have adapted the data (use the caption data ‘adapted from organisation x (date)’ or ‘data sourced from organisation y (date)’. If there is no date available, state this in the caption. Include the full reference to the webpage or report in your reference list.
You should present the evidence and then explain/interpret in accessible language what you are presenting so that readers understand what they are reading, and why. You may refer back to issues in the literature review, but we do not expect to see lots of references in this section.
Conclusion and recommendations: a brief conclusion followed by 3-4 recommendations, informed by a geographical approach to the topic (200 words)
References cited in the proposal (no word limit): use the School’s standard referencing guidelines, provided during tutorials, to format your references.
Other key points to note
Your topics for assignment 1 and 2 need to be different i.e. you cannot focus on the same topic in both assignments; you need to be drawing on different literatures
Your report should have a title which reflects the content (be creative/imaginative)
Your report should be supported by at least 15 academic references (not included in the word count)
Your recommendations should be brief and formatted in bullet points
Word counts for each of the sections are indicative (but for the whole assignment the wordcount is set)
Present this piece of work as a report. We will discuss report-writing during the seminar in week 10 (i.e. two weeks before the deadline). However, if you wish to start earlier, we have four pieces of advice.
Look back at previous report assignments you undertaken during your studies (and look at feedback to see what you got right and what could be improved).
SEE THE MESSAGE
Ask us if you have any questions!