We are excited to announce the launch of the Winter Season of G-EPIC Online Seminars, hosted by the University of Roehampton, Faculty of Business and Law. This series will bring together experts, researchers, and thought leaders to explore pressing topics in education and gender equality.
Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Guest Speaker | Topic | Short Bio | Link to register |
4th November 2024 | Eva Kosberg | Exploring cooperative learning as a tool in civic education | Dr. Eva Kosberg is a political scientist currently employed as an assistant professor in educational science at Oslo Metropolitan University. She has broad experience as a social studies teacher at different educational levels, and as a writer of curriculum in social sciences at the upper secondary level. Her fields of interest are political participation, citizenship education and political efficacy, social studies didactics, and assessment as part of social studies education. | |
| 2nd December 2024 | Kelly Siegel-Stechler Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University | “Conversation is everything”: How teachers and students create environments where open discussion can thrive | Dr. Kelly Siegel-Stechler is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. She is primarily focused on projects that advance civic learning and development in K-12 education, as well as questions related to youth political and electoral engagement. Before joining CIRCLE, Kelly received her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and worked in educational programming and youth outreach and engagement at the Interfaith Center of New York, the Louis August Jonas Foundation, and the United Nations Foundation. | |
| 17th February 2025 | Dorien Sampermans KU Leuven | Teachers’ concepts of good citizenship and associations with their teaching styles | Dorien Sampermans is a researcher and educator with a focus on citizenship education. She holds a Ph.D. in this field and has a background in educational policy. Currently, she is program responsible for the social science teacher education at KU Leuven. Her research interests include citizenship education and inequality. | https://forms.office.com/e/5UifdGBRXR
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| 3rd March 2025 | Dimokritos Kavadias | The Miscalibrated confidence of boys and the undervalued knowledge of girls in politics: Understanding the gap between political self-efficacy and assessed knowledge and understanding on politics.
On average girls tend to outperform boys in school results at the secondary level of education. This is also the case for political knowledge. The consistent cross-country picture across available citizenship studies between 1999- 2022 is that girls (again on average) typically have higher levels of knowledge on politics than boys. At the same time however, girls exhibit lower levels of confidence in their understanding of politics. This difference remains even after controlling for social and economic characteristics. Nevertheless, research that explores the gap between assessed knowledge and confidence or self-efficacy in politics is scarce. The aim of this paper is to address this gap by looking at this “miscalibration” between knowledge and confidence from a gender and an intersectional perspective. In addition, we identify factors inside and outside school that can help to reduce this gap. Using the ICCS2009 data that contains both measures on confidence in knowledge and understanding on politics and a sophisticated test of political knowledge and skills, we show that the gap between confidence and ability on politics is the largest for middle class native girls and surprisingly low for less advantaged and migrant students for whom knowledge and skills on politics is lower. Schools can have an effect and it is perceptions of the classroom climate and the spread of this experience across the class that are associated with smaller gaps. Parents make the most difference with their levels of political interest particularly their mother’s interest having an important association with lower levels of the gap. The results of the research suggest that we should tailor teaching interventions towards students’ needs with a greater focus placed on learning knowledge for disadvantaged groups whilst methodologies focused on middle class girls should concentrate on increasing their levels of confidence in what they already know. | Dimokritos Kavadias is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and member of the VUB Centre for Democratic Futures . He teaches methodological seminars, ‘Political Psychology’ and ‘Citizenship and Participation’ at undergraduate level. His research activities are at the interface of political science, educational sciences and sociology and focus on social inclusion, selection and socialisation. He was/is involved in research projects on political socialisation, political psychology, education, civics and Brussels as a researcher and supervisor. He is especially interested in the political effects of socialisation and schooling, using large-scale samples of students, in schools and, more recently, using international comparative micro-data on students, political psychology experiments and agent-based modelling. Since February 2015 he is the director of the Centre for Information, Documentation and Research on Brussels. | https://forms.office.com/e/pL4cZYp2gD
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| 7th April 2025 | Camila Jara Ibarra | The meaning of citizenship: Identifying the beliefs of teachers responsible for citizenship education in Chile | Camila Jara Ibarra is an Associate Researcher at the Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación (CPCE) at Universidad Diego Portales (UDP). She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Leiden University, an M.Sc. in Statistics with a focus on Quantitative Analysis in the Social Sciences from the Catholic University of Louvain, and a Diploma in Organizational Strengthening, Collaboration, and Civil Society from the University of Chile. Her research interests include political participation, citizenship, political socialization, civil society, and civic education. Dr. Jara Ibarra has been involved in various research projects, such as "Socialización política y formación ciudadana en el contexto escolar chileno: un análisis desde el enfoque de género," co-authored with Cristián Cox Donoso and Macarena Sánchez Bachmann in 2021. | https://forms.office.com/e/3agQXewDfx |
| 5th May 2025 | Fernanda Gándara | Literacy Girls Education with Gender Perspective | Fernanda Gándara is the Director of Research, Monitoring, and Reporting for Room to Read's Girls' Education Program. She holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a Ph.D. in Research, Educational Measurement, and Psychometrics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her career encompasses leading innovative evaluations and research studies across historically low-income countries, conducting extensive psychometric analyses to enhance data measurement, and presenting findings to policymakers to inform decision-making. Passionate about gender equality, inclusivity, and justice, Fernanda has spearheaded studies focused on gender and girls' education. | https://forms.office.com/e/LRgYr8pPar |
Save these dates in your calendar and ensure you register in advance. We look forward to your active participation and insightful contributions to these discussions!