About

Odd: feeling different in the world of education was a three-year research project (2018-2021) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The researchers were drawn from Manchester Metropolitan University and Sheffield Hallam University.

You can find an overview of the whole project, on the Manchester Metropolitan University website here.

Why 'odd'? 

 'Odd' is a difficult word, with multitudes of interpretations. In our project, ‘Odd’ is used to refer to several different kinds of experience that might come to influence children’s experiences and wellbeing in school. 

  • Oddness as an embodied experience in relation to an atmosphere, event, space, time that might be experienced as heightened in some way that could be negative or positive. 

  • Oddness as the illusive feeling of a counter-tendency, towards transgression. 

  • Oddness as a way to describe a trait or expectation that might ‘stick’ to someone and could begin to influence what their experiences become. There are many different ways children might be labelled ‘odd’, or they might themselves feel that they do not ‘belong’. For example, the child whose body is ‘out of tune’ (Dernikos et al. 2020: 4); the child-nomad who sees himself as ‘a member of the Outlaw Collective, not really a criminal, but not “normal” / normalised either’ (Leafgren 2013: 286); the learning disabled child (Ryan 2006); the gender non-conforming child (Gerouki 2010; Biegel 2010); children in-between cultures (Eekelaar 2004); the gifted and talented child (Geake and Gross 2008); children with ‘attention deficit’ (Harwood and Allan 2014), and so on. Some are identified as both lacking in some essential capacity and, simultaneously, too prodigal in others (Bohlmann 2016). See references here.

‘Oddness’ can be something invisible, an affective sensation, or inner feeling that has no outward signs but could place a toll on a child. 

This project is not about labelling young people but about how we all as human beings have to navigate surprising and sometimes unsettling things and experiences that seem or feel out of place, or different 

Image description: close up photograph of a surface, a texture of the school

Propositions about Oddness in Word format here

 

What has guided us in our research? 

The Odd Project takes an ethical approach that leans into and opens up the complexity of the power dynamics of school. 

We have embraced the different kinds of communication present in the practices of children. 

We seek to make visible / sensible the practices that already mitigate the challenges children face in the context of school, and offer experiences that seek to heighten the qualities of those practices. 

An emergent 'tool kit?' 

There are many tool kits and guides for educators and for practitioners who work with children. 

We want our research to feel helpful to people working with children. 

But we acknowledge that it remains a challenge to communicate some of the things we have experienced in our project. 

We want to develop resources that tune into affective, sensate and physical experiences that open up and stay with the movement, complexity and problematics of difference, and we are still finding out what forms they could take, what contexts work best, and how we can extend their reach meaningfully. 

 Community of practice 

Can a 'Tool Kit' inform without telling? Offer support without rushing to resolve? Stay with the complexities of living together with difference? We invite your help in answering these questions. 

We offer this prototype ‘tool kit’, which includes a range of playful questions and activities that are designed to stimulate feeling and thinking, contemplation and discussion about children’s experiences, and how children and the world of education interact. We'd love to hear from you as we evolve ways our research can create positive change. 

 

To build dialogue across our ‘community of practice’, we’re sending out occasional emails to update and connect those interested in this work. Sign up to receive Odd Notes here.

 

The Odd Team

The Odd associates

  • Karen Houghton

    Deputy Headteacher and SEND Co-ordinator,

    Alma Park School

    Website

  • Gabby Birelo

    Teacher,

    Alma Park School

  • Rebecca Wright

    Educational Psychologist,

    Catalyst Psychology

    Website

  • Anna Macdonald

    Dance and Moving-image Artist

    Website

  • Miles Umney

    Artist

    Website

  • Max Munday

    Digital Communications, Artist and Researcher

    Email

  • Shabnam Ashraf and Jessica May Worth

    Student researchers, 2019

    Manchester Met University

  • Sarah Ann Collins and Anna Elman

    Student researchers, 2021

    Manchester Met University