St Mary’s Academic to Host International Engagement Research Conference

Academic at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, Dr Melissa Jogie, is heading up an Engagement Research Group and organising the 1st International Conference of Multidisciplinary Engagement (ICME), that will take place at St Mary’s University from January 15-17 January 2018.

The formation of an Engagement Research Group, which, by network publicity, has since attracted scholars from across the world USA, Europe, Australia as well as others across UK institutions inspired the first ever ICME event.

Using the ICME event is a pioneering step to inspire and revitalise engagement research, Dr Jogie is inviting scholars and research students to, “Substantiate the epistemology of engagement, while elucidating strategies that promote quality engagement across domains.”

She added, “I hope that through this unique event international colleagues can work together to devise a working plan for a serial publication and forge ideas for grant applications and further research.”

Since commencing her role a Lecturer in Education and Social Sciences (ESS) ten months ago, Dr Jogie has been awarded her PhD from the Australian National University and furthered the scope of her research, conceptualising the duality between engagement and the themes of power explored within her PhD.

Dr Jogie added, “In many ways ‘engagement’ is a subliminally seductive research topic as it transcends so many disciplines and continues to be a highly desired outcome of all human endeavours.

“Overall we heuristically ‘know’ that engagement leads to desirable outcomes, but we still cannot seem to clearly articulate what the common ground for engagement is, or the mechanics of quality engagement.”

Over the summer Dr Jogie visited the University of Tampere, Finland, through an Erasmus Mobility Grant. In her reflections, she was surprised to learn that Finland, a country noted as the world’s leading education system according to PISA (Programme International Student Assessment – the ongoing study administered to 15 year olds, once every three years, in reading, maths and science literacy across 73 countries), scores poorly on measures of engagement.

Dr Jogie commented, “It seems even the world’s plenipotentiary of education systems has an Achilles heel since their student engagement indicators have been sustained at low levels over several PISA reports (since 2003). There is certainly a need for attention to this space – Finnish students cognitively do well in PISA yet they are not engaging with school? What could this mean for other nations?”

“If anything my Erasmus visit to Finland proved to me that many different scholars and bodies are interested in engagement though we are not all operating from the same philosophical standpoint.”

For information on joining the Engagement Research Group, or ICME Conference 2018, please email Melissa Jogie at ICME@stmarys.ac.uk.