By Aimee Cole
Academic placement with the Nationwide Literacy Belief
After I started my Psychology course at Sussex again in 2019, I wasn’t in any respect certain the place I needed my diploma to take me. My pursuits had been broad, starting from psychopathology to sports activities psychology. I additionally had a eager curiosity in social justice and knew I needed to work in a task the place I felt I might make a constructive contribution. I simply couldn’t image how these pursuits might culminate in an fascinating and acceptable job function. Amongst this, I additionally skilled a variety of anxiousness, and couldn’t think about feeling assured in an unfamiliar office. Little did I do know that my placement on the Nationwide Literacy Belief would rework me from a nervous pupil right into a assured, printed researcher and convention presenter.
The Nationwide Literacy Belief is an impartial charity that empowers youngsters, younger folks, and adults with the literacy expertise they should succeed. My academic placement sat throughout the analysis staff, who (to massively simplify the work that they do right into a sentence) conduct bespoke analysis within the subject of literacy and past, in addition to inner and exterior evaluations of literacy-related programmes.
Working with the analysis staff enabled me to strengthen the talents I had developed as a part of my diploma, together with growing literature opinions and writing experiences, but in addition led to new expertise together with knowledge evaluation utilizing SPSS, and amassing analysis knowledge for inner programmes. The position required me to collaborate with groups throughout the organisation and constructed on my confidence to advocate for the significance of our analysis and analysis work each internally and externally.
My dissertation
When it got here to deciding on a dissertation subject, I knew that I needed to make use of knowledge collected by the Nationwide Literacy Belief. The charity’s Annual Literacy Survey asks youngsters and younger folks throughout the UK about their literacy behaviours and attitudes, amongst different areas of curiosity, and is the most important survey of its form. In 2022, the survey included further questions on youngsters and younger folks’s consciousness of environmental points, and any behaviours they engaged in to help or defend the atmosphere.
In mild of the local weather disaster, environmental points are one thing I care deeply about, and I’ve spent a variety of time researching and studying in regards to the issues that we will do to help our surroundings. This analysis usually materialised in studying blogs, articles, or books- I had not too long ago devoured ‘Hothouse Earth’ by Invoice McGuire. Studying in regards to the local weather disaster on this method bought me thinking- Was I extra prone to, say, change into vegan, as a result of I learn extra commonly in regards to the atmosphere? How would my environmental consciousness differ from somebody who, for instance, didn’t devour a lot textual content in any respect?
The analysis
In the end, my dissertation examined the connection between younger folks’s studying engagement and each their environmental consciousness and pro-environmental motion. This was not associated to studying particularly in regards to the atmosphere, however any studying in any respect, and included enjoyment, confidence, and frequency of studying. General, knowledge from 50,238 youngsters and younger folks aged from 11 to 16 was included within the evaluation.
The outcomes confirmed a constructive correlation between studying engagement and each environmental consciousness and motion. This recommended that the upper you scored on the studying engagement rating, the upper you scored in your consciousness of environmental points, and the variety of actions you engaged in to help the atmosphere.
Extra in-depth evaluation additionally discovered that environmental consciousness might partially clarify the connection between studying engagement and every day environmental motion (e.g., ‘I do issues to help the atmosphere in my on a regular basis life’), however not exterior environmental motion (e.g., ‘I’ve written to somebody in energy in regards to the atmosphere’).
As such, my analysis discovered that studying might act as a pathway to enhancing younger folks’s consciousness of environmental points and engagement in actions to guard the planet. The research was the primary to research and supply proof of such a relationship within the UK.
Making analysis accessible
The Nationwide Literacy Belief goals to work in the direction of a extra equal society, and a key factor of that’s via making our work accessible to as many individuals as doable. As such, along with my analysis report being printed on the Nationwide Literacy Belief’s web site (see Cole, 2023), I labored carefully with the charity’s Social Media Supervisor, Hannah Riley, to search out artistic methods to show the findings. As you will note beneath, I felt it did the trick in pulling some robust key messages from a posh report!
What’s subsequent?
General, my analysis highlighted the significance of selling studying engagement in younger folks to reinforce environmental consciousness and motion. This can be via academic initiatives, or public campaigns which leverage the hyperlink between studying and environmental engagement, to lift consciousness, and encourage motion. For instance, groups throughout the Nationwide Literacy Belief are already starting to include studying about environmental points into their programmatic work with youngsters and younger folks, and the report is already getting used throughout the organisation to help the work we do with companions which have an curiosity within the atmosphere and sustainability. Given the shortage of analysis on this space throughout the UK, I hope that this analysis sparks curiosity for others, and results in extra work on this area.
You may learn the total report, right here: Can I learn to avoid wasting the planet? | Nationwide Literacy Belief
With particular because of Christina Clark, Anne Teravainen-Goff and Irene Picton from the Nationwide Literacy Belief, and Jane Oakhill, from the College of Sussex, who supervised this analysis dissertation.
Aimee Cole is a 2023 first-class graduate of the College of Sussex’s Faculty of Psychology. After finishing her third-year placement with the Nationwide Literacy Belief, she continued working for his or her analysis staff and was promoted to a full-time place as Analysis Supervisor upon finishing her diploma. She is especially within the hyperlink between literacy engagement, environmental consciousness and constructive psychological wellbeing.
