Martina Mbale De Burgos has won the best poster in the Prosperity & Resilience research theme, and was one of the two overall winners in the University of Reading’s annual Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP) awards presentation recently.
UROP is the University’s initiative to offer undergraduate students in their middle year of study the chance to gain hands-on research experience on projects covering all disciplines across University.
Martina is in her final year of a Politics degree and she worked with the Institute of Education’s Dr. Nasreen Majid (Associate Professor of Education) and Professor Holly Joseph (Professor of Language and Literacy Development) on a project called Teachers Like Us.
The project involved running focus groups in local secondary schools with students of colour to find out how they viewed their teachers, whether they would like to be teachers and what (if any) barriers they saw to becoming a teacher or going to university. Martina transcribed and analysed the data and drew out the main themes. These are currently being written up and Martina will be an author on the paper. Ayishia Jones, a third year BA Education Studies student, also helped with the transcription and analysis of data. Thank you and well done to both Martina and Ayishia!