Skip to content

Faculty of Education and Language Studies > People Profiles > Sarah Crafter

Sarah Crafter

Lecturer in Developmental Psychology

The Open University Faculty of Education and Language Studies Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning


Profile

When taking into account my teaching and research interests my background encompasses interdisciplinary areas of education, cultural psychology and developmental psychology. My degree in psychology covered a broad range of psychological subjects but my interests always lay in education/developmental psychology. My PhD combined education, cultural psychology and developmental psychology. My work is strongly informed by sociocultural theorising from a Vygotskian and cultural developmental position.

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests are in the area of developmental and educational psychology, and qualitative research methods. I currently work as part of the team who put together the module Child Development (ED209). Before coming to the Open University I worked on undergraduate and postgraduate programs in psychology.

Research Interests

My broad areas of interest are around children's learning in culturally diverse settings (particularly mathematics learning), constructions of childhood (including children who work, young carers, language brokers and concepts of money) and issues within the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. My doctoral work mainly focused on home and school mathematics learning in multicultural schools. This research explored conceptual issues around transitions, past experience and cultural identity. More recent work has been on a study evaluating the opinions of the build and space environment in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). I am currently involved in a project piloting an electronic risk assessment tool using cloud technology for the South Essex Partnership Trust CAMHS.

I am involved with a number of professional societies and research groups

The British Psychological Society- I belong to the Developmental, Qualitative and Psychology of Women’s Sections.

Newsletter Editor for SIG 21- Teaching and Learning in Culturally Diverse Settings (part of the European Association for Research in Learning Instruction - EARLI).

SIG 10 and SIG 21: "Patchwork. Learning diversities", that will take place in Belgrade, August 30-31 & September 1st 2012. http://www2.unine.ch/patchworks2012

EMiCS group member(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) – Educació Matemàtica i Context Sociocultural (mathematics education from a  sociocultural perspective) and led by Professor Núria Gorgorió

Working Group Leader in CERME(Conference of European Research in Mathematics Education) Diversity and mathematics education: Social, cultural and political challenges/issues group. I maintain further International sociocultural links through my membership of ISCAR, the International Society for Cultural Activity Research.

 

Current Research

Cline, T., & Crafter, S. Child language brokering in school. (£47,869.32). Nuffield Foundation.

(with N. Gorgorio) Mathematics learning trajectories of immigrant students: conceptualizing personal and sociocultural processes. Funded by Dirección General de Investigación, Ministerio  de Educación y ciencia, Spain. EDU2010-15373. (2011- 2013;  € 81.000) – Advisory capacity 

Excalibur: CAMHs Multi-Agency Intervention and Support Barometer. (£20, 082) NHS: South Essex Partnership Trust (SEPT) 

Northants Partnership - Examining drinking cultures: motivations and Behaviours of young people who binge drink in Northamptonshire. Centre for Health and Well Being and Centre for Children and Youth 

Crafter, S., & Horton, J. Understanding the experiences of parents who are HE students (£5999.21) DeltaE Widening Participation – University of Northampton.

Crafter, S., & Stein, S. Evaluating the clinical environment for users of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. NHS Estates Research and Development Fund, Department of Health (£73,019).

 

Publications

Book Chapter
Crafter, Sarah (2012). Making sense of homework: parental resources for understanding mathematical homework in multicultural settings. In: Hjörne, Eva; van der Aalsvoort, Geerdina and Abreu, Guida de eds. Learning, Social Interaction and Diversity - Exploring Identities in School Practices. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 53–68.
Crafter, Sarah (2011). The social construction of home and school learning in multicultural communities. In: O'Dell, Lindsay and Leverett, Stephen eds. Working with Children and Young People: Co-constructing Practice. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan in association with The Open University, pp. 131–142.
Conference Item
Abreu, Guida de; Crafter, Sarah; Hale, Hannah and O'Sullivan Lago, Rita (2011). Teachers' representations of immigrant students and their home cultures: a dialogical self analysis. In: European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), 30 Aug - 3 Sep 2011, Exeter, UK. (Unpublished)
Crafter, Sarah and de Abreu, Guida (2011). Teachers discussions about parental use of implicit and explicit mathematics in the home. In: Seventh Conference of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, 9-11 February 2011, Rzeszow, Poland. (Unpublished)
Crafter, Sarah and De Abreu, Guida (2010). The mediating role of a minority ethnic teacher's past experiences as a tool for understanding mathematical learning and teaching. In: European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) Special Interest Group 21: Learning and Teaching in Culturally Diverse Settings: Moving through cultures of learning, 2-3 Sep 2010, Utrecht, The Netherlands. (Unpublished)
Crafter, Sarah; De Abreu, Guida; Cline, Tony and O'Dell, Lindsay (2010). Using the vignette methodology as a tool for exploring cultural identity positions. In: European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) Special Interest Group 21: Learning and Teaching in Culturally Diverse Settings: Moving through cultures of learning, 2-3 Sep 2010, Utrecht, The Netherlands. (Unpublished)
Crafter, S.; O'Dell, Lindsay; Cline, T. and de Abreu, G. (2010). Researching children and young people's lives: the problem of interpretation in vignette methodology. In: BPS Qualitative Research in Psychology Section QMiP conference, 23–25 Aug 2010, Nottingham, UK. (Unpublished)
Crafter, Sarah (2008). Parental re-sources of understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse settings. In: European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction Conference: 1st SIG 21 (Learning and Teaching in Culturally Diverse Settings) Meeting, 19–20 May 2008, Gothenberg, Sweden. (Unpublished)
Journal Article
Crafter, Sarah and Maunder, Rachel (2012). Understanding transitions using a sociocultural framework. Educational & Child Psychology, 29(1), (In Press).
Crafter, Sarah (2011). On gaining a cultural identity and 'being white': reflexivity and moments of (dis)connection. Psychology of Women Section Review, 13(2), pp. 13–19.
Crafter, Sarah (2011). Parental cultural models and resources for understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse school settings. Educational studies in Mathematics (Onine First).
Cline , Tony; Crafter, Sarah; O'Dell, Lindsay and de Abreu, Guida (2011). Young people’s representations of language brokering. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 32(3), pp. 207–220.
O'Dell,, L.; Crafter, S.; De Abreu, G. and Cline, T. (2010). Constructing 'normal childhoods': Young people talk about young carers. Disability and Society, 25(6), pp. 643–655.
Cline, Tony; De Abreu, Guida; O'Dell, Lindsay and Crafter, Sarah (2010). Recent research on child language brokering in the United Kingdom. MediAziono: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies on Language and Cultures, 10 pp. 105–124.
Crafter, Sarah and Abreu, Guida de (2010). Constructing identities in multicultural learning contexts. Mind, Culture and Activity, 17(2), pp. 102–118.
Cline, Tony; Crafter, Sarah; de Abreu, Guida and O'Dell, Lindsay (2009). Changing families, changing childhoods: changing schools? Pastoral Care in Education, 27(1), pp. 29–39.
Crafter, Sarah; O'Dell, Lindsay; Abreu, Guida de and Cline, Tony (2009). Young people's representations of 'atypical' work in UK society. Children and Society, 23(3), pp. 176–188.
O'Toole, Sarah and de Abreu, Guida (2005). Parents' past experiences as a mediational tool for understanding their child's current mathematical learning. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 20(1), pp. 75–89.