‘Upturned participation’ and youth work: using a Critical Utopian Action Research approach to foster engagement

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on how participatory processes inspired by action research hold a genuine potential for developing social educational work in a more democratic way. We present our concept of ‘Upturned Participation’, which is built upon the methodological framework of Critical Utopian Action Research. First Critical Utopian Action Research is introduced briefly, including a presentation of the core method of the action research approach. We then present an extract from an action research project aimed at creating space for participation for marginalized young people in the area of Copenhagen. On this basis, we reflect on how the ideas of the young people could influence the field of social work. The article addresses contemporary challenges and opportunities for creating development in the field of youth work or social work through participatory processes with marginalized young people.     

Adapting to the test: performing algorithmic adaptivity in Danish schools

ABSTRACT

Algorithmic practices are becoming increasingly more central within educational governance. By focusing on the mechanisms of a particular algorithmic testing system in Denmark, this paper highlights how such practices are implicated in the emergence of new accountability infrastructures. It adopts an STS approach drawing specifically upon Michel Callon’s concepts framing, overflowing, and re-framing. The paper examines how algorithmic adaptivity has become central in the framing of the Danish national test and traces the ways in which students, teachers, and schools respond to such proceduralized interactions. While algorithmic adaptivity was introduced as a way of providing students with an equal test experience, it also inscribes student adaptability into test practices, generating new student affectivities and teacher responsibilities in the process. The paper argues that this is a matter of adapting to the test and highlights how the mundane practices of testing situations also become a subject of governance.     

Teaching Trump: Student Recommendations to Ensure Safe Discussions in a Time of Polarized Political Divide

ABSTRACT

This article includes findings from a mixed method survey at a large, public midwestern university following the election of Donald J. Trump as the president of the United States. It examines student perceptions about effective engagement in political discourse within social work classes. Survey questions urged students to suggest how instructors might facilitate this dialogue fairly in the classroom given the passionate emotions and differing viewpoints surrounding the election, while acknowledging and educating about values espoused by the profession. Findings from this study illustrate the challenges that students face in having these conversations and outline their recommendations to social work educators for facilitating safe, sensitive, and inclusive classroom discussion about politics.     

Frailty in transition? Troubling the norms,boundaries and limitations of transition theory and practice

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on ‘transition’ and how it is understood within higher education. Drawing on data from concept map-mediated interviews at two institutions, we examine the conceptions of transition held by academic and professional staff, who work to support students’ learning into and through higher education. We suggest that normative understandings of transition often draw upon a grand-narrative that orchestrates and reiterates a stereotypic understanding of students’ experiences. Often this narrative involves students’ interpellation into a field of discourse where the subject is constructed as both homogeneous and in deficit: ill-prepared, lacking in independence, as vulnerable and in need of support. However, this study suggests that beneath this discourse lies a more nuanced picture: one where students’ experiences can be conceptualised as diverse and fluid. Moreover, we employ the concept of pedagogic ‘frailty’ to expose the significance of the environments and wider contexts in which students ‘transition’, and to explore the impact of systemic tensions upon students’ experiences. This article further argues that future research should shift discussions away from the deficits of students, and examine how we can make underlying environmental and systemic challenges more explicit, in order to widen our understanding and discussions of these constraints.     

Envisioning Our Practice: Examining and Interpreting Pedagogical Visions of Four Early Career Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how pedagogical visions inform our work as former classroom teachers and current teacher educators in rural and urban regions of the United States. Specifically, we explore the instructional decisions we make as we work to meet these visions in higher education. Teacher educators are charged with the task of fostering visionary teachers in today’s highly challenging educational landscape. We pose the question: How can teacher educators foster visionary beginning teachers without an examination of their visions for their practice? Using a self-study design, we examine the intersections of our pedagogical visions for teaching and the instructional actions we take to work toward our visions in higher education. Findings highlight specific instructional practices and strategies used to enact visions while providing a critical discussion of the lens of visioning within self-study research.     

Experimental work at Hellerup Seminarium,Denmark

Sloth, O. “Experimental work at Hellerup Seminarium, Denmark,” Revue ATEE Journal 3 (1980) 37‐42.

The author describes the approach of one Danish College of Education to a problem which is by now internationally known: in this age of integration into the normal class of all but the demonstrably and severely educationally subnormal or handicapped, how can we equip student teachers, during their initial training, to cope with these problems of Special Education. He outlines the attempt at Hellerup Seminarium, Copenhagen, to solve the problem by integrating and restructuring the compulsory pedagogic subjects and educational specialisms and so build up within the legal framework what he calls a Special Education Teacher Education (SPECTE).     

Integrated schools and intergroup relations in Northern Ireland: the importance of parents

Background: Integrated schools were established in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. With an explicit intention to build better relations between Catholics and Protestants, it has an intuitive appeal in a society which has long experienced sectarian division. Whilst the sector has attracted considerable research, less is understood about how parents’ perceive the approach adopted by schools to build intergroup relations.

Purpose: The present article seeks to address the gap in the literature by exploring parents’ views of integrated education. Drawing on theories of intergroup contact, the paper seeks specifically to explore how parents and head teachers perceive and negotiate the approach that the schools adopt to build intergroup relations.

Method: In an attempt to probe the deeper meanings that participants attach to integrated education, a qualitative research approach was adopted; semi-structured interviews were carried out with 17 parents and 2 head teachers in two integrated primary schools.

Findings: Through the data analyses, three main aspects were evident. Firstly, the study reveals something of the relational dynamic between head teachers and parents and the significance of this relationship for determining how intergroup relations are pursued in integrated schools. Secondly, it highlights the nebulous nature of identity salience and the practical challenges of making identity salient within mixed identity contexts. Finally, the study suggests the value of qualitative approaches for exploring intergroup contact initiatives.

Conclusions: Overall, the paper demonstrates the inherent challenges of establishing an integrated school where good relations will be developed when multiple interpretations of what constitutes an appropriate response to difference and diversity prevails.     

Bring your own device – a snapshot of two Australian primary schools

Background: The use of 1:1 and Bring Your Own Device strategies in schools is in its infancy and little is known about how mobile devices such as tablets are being used to support educational practice.

Purpose: In this article, two suburban primary schools in Sydney, Australia were focused on with an aim to understand how mobile device strategies were developed and implemented and how the devices were being used in the schools.

Design and method: This qualitative study uses a case study method. It draws upon questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations, and builds upon previous research in English and Australian schools.

Findings: Results of the research indicate that the devices have only recently been incorporated into the school and suggest that their usage has been generally embraced by both school staff and parents. Key issues highlighted by these two schools included the importance of the school’s vision and uncertainty about the differences between models of provision. Participant responses also referenced some positive impacts on classroom practice, which amplify constructivist pedagogy: there were examples of device use extending student learning by supporting peer assessment, collaboration, research skills and projects.     

Empowering Students in a Feminist Social Work Practice Course

Abstract

Since 1993, a faculty collective has team-taught a feminist social work practice course. The course, designed to heighten student knowledge of feminist practice, was expected to empower students. An overview of the course is presented with an analysis of its impact on student perceptions of personal and professional power. Pre and post measures of empowerment were analyzed and used to derive outcome measures of change in student views of themselves as empowered persons and practitioners. Findings indicate that students had significantly higher perceptions of their personal and professional power upon completion of the feminist practice course than before. Implications for social work students and practitioners are discussed.     

Expressing community through freedom market and visual connections

ABSTRACT

Building on a long-term university/community research partnership, this article examines how different ways of conceptualizing, interpreting, and producing murals impacted how an urban community saw itself. Using a participatory action research design, university researchers worked alongside community researchers to ethnographically document the transformation. Findings indicate that the mural project constructed pathways for building relationships and community in ways that made neighborhood transformation possible. The mural project embodied this transformative goal by providing a space where people gathered with shared attention to talk and to envision how their lives and their community could be different.     

Utilising place-based learning through local contexts to develop agents of change in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research was to consider how young children could develop an education for sustainable mind-set, through place-based learning within a local context. This research built upon the development of an Early Childhood Education for Sustainable (ECEfS) framework (Boyd, D., H. Hirst, and C. McNeill. 2016. Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Framework 48 (ECEfS). https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2017/09/environmental-sustainability-resources/). The place-based research focused upon Dewey's theory of experiential learning and by engaging in offsite longitudinal community-based projects, where young children become familiar with their own locality. This familiarity encourages children to develop an ecological self within place by being submerged in an ever-changing natural environment through the Forest School Philosophy, with an emphasis upon regular visits conducted over an extended period. Over a period of a year children and adults in different and diverse settings experienced opportunities for place-based learning to develop their Education for Sustainability perspective. Observations focused upon children and adults considering how they both started to become more aware of local critical issues and related them to their own reality. The research received ethical approval by LJMU and all involved chose to take part and could withdraw at any time.     

Caregiving as refusal in the academy*

Abstract

Literature on American Indian student support in postsecondary education illustrates the importance of relationality in creating a positive college experience for Native students. That said, much of the literature examining ‘care relationships’ in Indian education focuses on student outcomes, with less attention given to the experiences of practitioners. Thus, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the author examines where and how American Indian higher education practitioners learned principles of communal care for supporting Indigenous students in non-Native postsecondary institutions. Second, she explores how these principles act as homesteads of mutuality to love, transform, resist, and enact refusal within the academy. She draws upon the literature on American Indian student support in postsecondary education, which illustrates the importance of relationality in creating a positive college experience for Native students.     

Empirical validation of a modern genetics progression web for college biology students

ABSTRACT

Research in learning progressions (LPs) has been essential towards building understanding of how students’ ideas change over time. There has been little work, however, into how ideas between separate but related constructs within a multi-faceted LP relate. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the idea of progression webs to model connections within and between related constructs simultaneously, and to explain and demonstrate the efficacy of path analysis towards validating a hypothesised progression web for understanding of modern genetics. Specifically, we evaluate strength of evidence for a progression web based upon multiple related constructs within a multi-faceted LP describing undergraduate biology students’ understanding of genetics. We then utilise the progression web to generalise theory around how undergraduate students understand relationships between related genetics concepts, and how they use simpler concepts to scaffold those which are more complex.     

Parental Perceptions of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The research presented in this article analyses 242 written responses to interview questions conducted with families who live in the United States to explore parental perceptions of disabilities. The data were analyzed through a case study methodology and discourse analysis. Findings from this study illustrate how parents drew upon both medical metaphors and sociocultural factors to discuss their perceptions of their or their children’s perceived learning disabilities.     

Part of the assignment: student–teachers’ planning instruction within/across activity systems

ABSTRACT

Looking closely at lesson plans as mediating tools, this study examines preservice teacher learning. By using activity theory in our analysis of lesson plans and other data collected in a student-teaching course, we uncovered tensions within/across the contexts of university teacher education program and secondary school field placements. This study serves to further understandings of how new teachers learn to appropriate the genres of teaching and to explore contradictions between a university preparation program and secondary school contexts. Findings provide an account of the student–teachers’ lesson planning and an explanation of how disruptions in those plans provided insight into points of tension. By viewing these tensions as contradictions within/across activity systems, we identify them as opportunities to better understand teacher learning and ways we might support new teachers in navigating tensions in their classrooms and schools.     

Exceeding expectations: scaffolding agentic engagement through assessment as learning

Background: The active involvement of learners as critical, reflective and capable agents in the learning process is a core aim in contemporary education policy in Australia, and is regarded as a significant factor for academic success. However, within the relevant literature, the issue of positioning students as agents in the learning process has not been fully examined and needs further exploration.

Purpose: This study aims to explore ways in which aspects of self-regulated learning theory may be integrated with the concept of agentic engagement into classroom practice. Specifically, the study seeks to scaffold students’ self-assessment capabilities and self-efficacy by using a formative assessment-as-learning process. The research examines how scaffolded planning, as part of the forethought phase in the Assessment as Learning (AaL) process, influences self-regulation and student agency in the learning process.

Sample: 126 students from school years two, four and six (student age groups 7, 9 and 11 years), and 7 teachers at an independent (co-educational, non-religious) primary school in the Northern Territory, Australia, participated in the study.

Design and methods: Conducted as a one-setting, cross-sectional practitioner research study, the data sources included students’ planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers and email correspondence with teachers. The data were analysed for emerging themes and interpreted from a framework of social cognitive theory.

Findings: In this study, students were given the opportunity and support to exercise agentic engagement. Findings suggested that, in particular, students who were identified by their teachers as low-achieving and/or with poor motivation, were perceived by the teachers as exceededing expectations by demonstrating relatively greater motivation, persistence, effort and pride in their work than would be the case usually.

Conclusions: The findings from this formative AaL study suggest that AaL has the potential to help scaffold primary students’ development of assessment capabilities.     

The fluid infusion of musical culture: embodied experiences in a grade one classroom

ABSTRACT

Children’s daily, embodied music experiences are integral to how children live and function in the world. Growing out of a line of work focusing on the interplay between elementary children’s daily experiences of music, both in- and out-of-school and the impact on elementary music education curriculum, this research is nested within the theoretical discourses of experience, children’s musical culture, and children’s agency. Building upon this work, findings from a two-phase, 6-month inquiry, situated in an urban, Canadian, Grade 1 French Immersion classroom, draw upon the tools of ethnography and narrative inquiry, with the intention of deepening understandings of how informal music-making and sound function in children’s lives. Phase one findings highlight: (1) the frequency and spontaneity of children’s daily music experiences, both in- and out-of-school, (2) the nature of how music and sound function fluidly in a variety of contexts as integral to children’s experience, and (3) the power of musical behaviours in assisting young children to acquire French vocabulary and literacy skills. Important considerations for teacher education include: the necessity of creating space in elementary curriculum to engage children in music-making, integrating and infusing the Arts fluidly across the curriculum, and encouraging children autonomy in their musical engagement.     

The importance of the advisor’s relational and professional competence and formal power in meetings with farmers

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to explore how advisors’ relational and professional competence influences inter-subjectivity and farmers’ perceptions of farm visits in a setting where advisors have formal power.Methodology: Advisors from the dairy company Tine, which is owned by farmers in collaboration, visit farmers at least once a year. The aim of the visit is to assist farmers in managing the farm and to control the production conditions in the cowshed. In a case study, we attended 10 such mandatory advisor visits and interviewed both farmers and advisors.Findings: Together with advisor style, our findings show that the power relation leaves room for advisors to define their roles widely, ranging from inspector to coach. Advisors have different perceptions of what their jobs are and when they have done a good job. These differences determine the degree of inter-subjectivity and how satisfied farmers are with visits. Furthermore, advisors’ relational and professional competencies are crucial for achieving high inter-subjectivity and satisfied farmers.Theoretical implications: This paper contributes to the theory by identifying factors that influence farmers’ perceptions of advisor visits, as well as by showing the importance of the advisor’s relational and professional competence in a setting where they have formal power.Practical implications: Partly as an outcome of this study, Tine has started a process to separate the control function from farm visits. Tine has also decided to let farmers choose advisors themselves. Originality/value: The power relation in our study differs from most consultant–client interactions in the literature.