Pupil participation and playground design: listening and responding to children’s views

This article outlines a small-scale research project that attempted to involve primary aged pupils actively in the redesign of their school playground. The project stemmed from concerns raised by school staff regarding the frequency of problematic behaviours during unstructured times, particularly lunchtimes, and the decision to redesign the playground was one component of a larger scale research project. This article provides a critical account of this process, and an overview of the approach taken to involve children as co-researchers to ensure that their views were not only heard, but that they played a key role in decisions that would affect them. This offers an alternative way in which educational psychologists (EPs) can address teacher concerns regarding behaviour by attempting to involve and empower young people in the process.     

Children’s transitions to school: ‘so what about the parents’? or ‘so,what about the parents’?

Children progress through a number of life transitions and each is a pivotal point of development and growth for them, their parents and family members. Through a review of the literature, the Bioecological Model will be used to frame childhood transitions as highly social, contextualised and political. This paper will assert that governments, schools and educators have an increased role in supporting parents with their changing roles, responsibilities and relationships as their child transitions to school and that schools need to provide space for parents to share their own transition to school narratives in order to better understand the effect these stories may have on the transition process for them and their children. Finally, schools and systems will be challenged to engage in a strengths-based approach to support parents at this pivotal time in their own and their child’s growth and development and call for increased research to identify ways in which this can occur within respectful, collaborative and agentic relationships.     

Excellence and choice: Friends or foes?

This paper explores the contrasts dividing the excellence and choice movements to date. The orientations of both are examined, along with key features and impacts of each. Particular attention is given the predicament and the challenge of at risk youngsters. Yet there are developments suggesting a growing mutuality between the two movements. The elaboration of a conception of Excellence that makes educational sense reveals the centrality of motivation to educational accomplishment. This in turn exposes the choice principle as an important aid to the pursuit of excellence.     

Bourdieu and interprofessional education: what’s the relevance?

Interprofessional education (IPE) is perceived to be one strategy to reduce professional compartmentalisation and improve collaborative practices. The unequal power relations existing between the various professions who need to collaborate for IPE remains largely unexamined and it is only in recent years that sociological theories have been employed within the interprofessional field. This paper uses selected findings from an exploratory case study into IPE conducted at the University of Malta and then examines these findings from a Bourdieusian perspective. The first part of this paper introduces the breath of theoretical perspectives employed for IPE and then goes on to provide an overview of Bourdieu’s theories of social practices. The second part outlines the context of this case study and presents selected findings. The third section discusses how these findings were examined using Bourdieu’s concepts helping us demystify the various ways in which health care professions worked and interacted, and how this all made sense within a wider societal context. It also highlights the relevance of taking into account Bourdieu’s concepts during the development of IPE.     

Invited to labour or participate: intra- and inter-generational distinctions and the role of capital in children’s invited participation

This paper applies aspects of Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit related to capital, and analyses inter- and intra-generational relations of influence. Applying Bourdieu’s concepts to examples of case studies from a children’s parliament in Finland, and with reference to an adult resident forum, moments of continuity and disruption in the relatively stable patterns of distinction between children and adults emerge. Children in school councils (at times) are labourers for agendas set by teachers, but the children at the top of the structure’s hierarchy can benefit from cultural capital and a functional capital that enables them to set agendas and direct the work of others. The political capital of the person presenting views from the participation sphere and the dominant symbolic capital of market logics appear to have a greater impact than generation on the influence participants achieve. Unquestioned acceptance of this differentiation suggests that new approaches to invited participation structures are needed.     

Promoting participation at a time of social and political turmoil: what is the impact of children’s and young people’s city councils?

Youth councils are examined as spaces of citizenship education where young people are educated as political subjects. At a time of political and economic instability data were collected in a Catalan city through tests and focus groups involving 112 students, three teachers and two youth council managers during one academic year. Students’ political trust decreased and their cynicism towards politics increased; there were no changes in students’ anticipated future participation. The article avoids drawing simplistic causal links between students’ involvement in a council and the expression of their views. The participants also discuss the councils as performance sites. It is speculated whether, in students’ views, this metaphor of performance applies not only to the councils but to the wider political context in which they live. It is argued that youth councils are, in some ways, potentially valuable for promoting participation and recommendations are made in light of the findings.     

Now,what? Standing in one’s generation,taking consultation

ABSTRACT

I situate myself in the context of an evolving conversation in relation to what it means to be a woman. In my mother’s generation, the first wave of feminism forced a collision between traditional western female values grounded in a subversive authority and the desire to emerge from that type of repressive position. From the standpoint of my daughter’s generation, I may be tilting at windmills, trying to find my own authority in relation to a paternal authority that I feel deauthorises and devalues the voice I am trying to find. I take that consultation seriously, inviting me to think about relationships between what can and cannot be seen from any particular vertex. Given that maturation requires our ability to come to terms with difference and with limit, how can women more effectively enact and pass along the process of becoming oneself as a fundamental value?     

Children’s and adolescents’ moral emotion attributions and judgements about exclusion of peers with hearing impairments

Children and adolescents with hearing impairments are at risk of being excluded from activities with hearing peers. Moral emotion attributions may represent important indicators for children’s identification with the moral norm not to exclude peers based on disability. Against this background, we investigated how 10-, 12- and 15-year-olds (N?=?215) feel and judge about social exclusion of peers with hearing impairments. Emotion attributions and moral judgements were assessed using four different hypothetical scenarios about the exclusion of peers with hearing impairments (school vs. leisure time, group vs. dyad). Moreover, children’s and adolescents’ inclusive behaviour was assessed by a peer nomination procedure. Results revealed that moral emotion attributions differed as a function of exclusion context and grade. Moreover, participants with inclusive behaviour attributed moral emotions more often than participants with less inclusive behaviour. Implications of the results for moral education are discussed.     

Roma women’s higher education participation: whose responsibility?

There are striking gaps between Roma and non-Roma higher education (HE) participation rates, with less than 1% of Roma possessing a tertiary-level qualification [United Nations Development Programme, World Bank and European Commission. 2011a. “The Situation of Roma in 11 EU Member States.” Accessed 3 April 2015. http://issuu.com/undp_in_europe_cis/docs/_roma_at_a_glance_web/1#download]. As the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005–2015) closes, this renders the present a salient moment to reflect on Roma students’ HE experiences. Widening educational access for marginalised groups raises specific questions about where responsibility for doing so lies – with tensions between individualised articulations of raising aspiration and notions of collective responsibility framed in a social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews with five Roma women students, this paper unpacks the contradictions between desiring access to HE for individual self-betterment and concurrent pulls towards educating for the wider benefit of ‘improving’ Roma communities. Using Ahmed’s [2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press] work on institutional belonging, we explore the specifically gendered nature of these narratives in how ‘doubly’ marginalised bodies are positioned as outsiders, in receipt of an educational gift.     

Choosing one’s future? Narratives on educational and occupational choice among folk high school participants in Sweden

This article poses these questions: How do participants on two different courses in folk high schools in Sweden, a basic course and a theatre course, motivate their educational and occupational choices, and what similarities and differences can be identified? We analyse interviews with students drawing on a narrative approach. Five trajectories emerge: desire to get away; desire to get back on track; desire for employment; desire to change occupation; and desire to realise one’s dreams. We argue that these trajectories reproduce existing social stratification in society, whereby certain futures are available to some people, and not to others.

     

Using one’s own professional activities to promote research and publishing

This paper explores issues related to teacher educators publishing in journals. They do so for obvious reasons such as tenure, career advancement, personal satisfaction and university prestige. In order to offer an extra means of helping teacher educators achieve these publishing goals, the paper explores how using one’s own professional experiences in a number of spheres may offer substantial opportunities for publishing. Using a Grounded Theory analysis, the author presents an analysis of his own publications. These are laid out in five categories in which his professional pursuits with teacher trainees have led to a considerable number of publications, 34 of which have appeared in international journals, 25 of them in international Grade A and B journals. The author calls for academics to examine their own practices, suggesting that there is much in one’s own professional experiences that can be of worth to the international community.     

Working with teachers to promote children’s participation through pupil‐led research

Enabling children and young people to act as researchers is increasingly viewed as useful in supporting their increased “participation” within settings where they live, work or receive services. This paper reports upon a project conducted by two educational psychologists (EPs) with two primary school class groups, in which the children and their teachers were provided with direct teaching and guidance to develop and undertake their own school‐based research projects. The work of each class group produced significant developments of educational provision across the whole school, showing that the EPs’ work had directly enabled the children to “make a positive contribution”. In addition, teachers and psychologists observed several social, cognitive and personal benefits to the children brought about by their engagement in the processes of questioning, data gathering, analysis, knowledge generation, and dissemination. The authors emphasise the potentially valuable contribution of EPs in promoting children and young people’s understanding and application of research skills, and in working directly alongside teachers within the classroom. Furthermore, the project represents a successful example of EPs and teachers engaging in joint direct work with children.     

Learning to listen and listening to learn: one student’s experience of small group collaborative learning

The dialogic nature of small group collaborative learning requires verbal contributions from students to progress individual and group learning. Speaking can become privileged over listening as a collaborative act, and an imbalance in these values can become embedded in the classroom culture to the degree that the core value of listening can be invisible to students new to the learning contexts. The focus of this paper is a single case study of the experience of an international Asian-background student (Korean), learning in a Western (Australian) problem-based learning (PBL) physiotherapy context. Video data and interviews highlight his difficulty with learning to listen and listening to learn, and his privileging of speaking over listening. We question whether failure to signal the importance of listening is the result of the current shift in emphasis to learning through speaking, leading to a subsequent loss of attention to the role of listening in collaborative learning. Further, we question the cultural inclusivity of the PBL educational paradigm and recommend specific tutor training on scaffolding students?? listening skills in this dialogic learning context.     

Basic education in China’s rural areas: a legal obligation or an individual choice?

This study takes a close look at the whole cycle of the 9-yr compulsory education in two communities in north China. It reveals that although there are nearly 100% enrolment and completion rates at the primary level, dropouts constitute a serious problem at the secondary level, thus rendering the 9-yr compulsory schooling an unfinished cycle. Through interviewing 30 dropouts’ families and using rational choice theory as a theoretical framework, the study concludes that the current landscape of rural schooling in the area studied is a result of local people’s rational choices rather than that of the compulsory educational law.     

Assessment and student participation: ‘choice and voice’ in school principal accounts of schooling territories

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decision-makers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced through interrelationships, where youth participation is associated with power, voice, democratic citizenship, legal entitlement, empowerment, motivation and self-confidence. Recognising the growing pedagogical emphasis on locating students as responsible for their own learning, we consider how assessment practices constitute enabling and constraining schooling territories. Assessment for learning (AfL) can be linked with emancipatory practices in schooling territories where learner agency is co-produced through socio-material classroom relations. We use principal comments to map a range of interrelated schooling territories as a relational cartography of spatialised practices and student participation in AfL. Mostly, these territories are teacher imagined and defined, constructed through schooling and policy frameworks, and determined through the use of student achievement and student voice data. These conceptualised schooling spaces are interrogated to consider the positionality of students within AfL-related territories. While choice and participation may seem emancipatory, we reveal that AfL practices can serve a rarely acknowledged process of affirming territorial power.     

‘It’s just semantics?’: investigating a school district’s decision to respect or value diversity

Value diversity and promote understanding—so read a heading in a school district’s strategic plan. The phrase was to initiate six months of controversial community debate that was eventually encapsulated into the single question: Should our schools respect or should they value diversity? This question polarized the community, ultimately shaping the final outcome of the debate. Such localized deliberations reflect and reconstruct societal discourses about diversity and democracy, ultimately influencing educational policy decisions and schooling practices. Understanding how participants navigate these discourses is crucial for formulating more inclusive educational policy and for transforming societal discourses about democracy and difference. In this essay, it is argued that two discursive practices limited the democratic potential of the Boulder, Colorado school district’s debate and undermined the transformation of dominant discourses about diversity. It is suggested that these two linguistic tools appear frequently in public deliberation and identify implications for developing educational policy around diversity and for retheorizing the relationship between difference and democracy.     

‘Twilight or Middlemarch?’ A Teacher’s Refusal to Choose

What should children and young adolescents read? Recent changes in the English curriculum have once again shifted the focus towards more canonical texts, but does featuring such texts on the course necessarily equate to rigorous teaching and in-depth learning? Through a self-examination of her own reading history, the author argues for a dialogic approach to reading and text selection instead, so that students may negotiate better understandings of themselves and their own socio-cultural contexts.     

Conflict between peers in infancy and toddler age: what do they fight about?

Although much psychological research has been conducted on children's conflicts with peers from as young as one year, very little attention has been paid to the question of the motivation underlying these conflicts. Nevertheless, what a child tries to achieve in a conflict can be highly relevant for understanding his/her conflict behavior, conflict resolution strategies, manner of coping with the outcome of conflicts, and impact of pedagogical intervention. Most researchers suppose that young children fight mainly over the possession of objects. In a longitudinal study, children were filmed during free play in daycare centers at ages 8, 14 and 22 months. Analyzing the film material employing qualitative methods, two different motivational themes at 8 months and an increasing variety of motivational issues at 14 and 22 months were identified. It was found that the earliest manifested and consistently dominant motivation is the need to explore, not to possess.     

A meta-analytic review of interventions to improve children’s attitudes toward their peers with intellectual disabilities

Children’s biases toward their peers with intellectual disabilities tend to have negative developmental and social consequences for those with intellectual disabilities. As a result, researchers developed intervention programs to reduce biases toward children with intellectual disabilities. This meta-analysis is a quantitative summary of 59 studies and 144 hypothesis tests involving intervention programs to change children’s attitudes toward their peers with intellectual disabilities. Results revealed an overall significant effect (d = 0.44): following intervention programs, children’s attitudes toward their peers with intellectual disabilities increased. Moderators indicate that the most effective interventions were those that occurred over multiple sessions, involved active engagement in multiple strategies and social interactions, emphasized equal status contact that was unstructured or indirect, and had little adult guidance. Interventions had no effect on changing children’s perceptions of competence and participants in junior high had more negative attitudes following the interventions. Findings provide guidance for researchers, educators, and counselors who seek methodologies to reduce biases toward children with intellectual disabilities.     

Teacher training: what’s needed

This article offers insight into teacher training that needs to be occurring in the preparation of teachers. The focus is on the preparation practices and one Canadian institution is used to forward concerns. The institution is left anonymous as the intent is not to critique this particular institution but to bring attention to a more general issue in the preparation of teachers within the university setting. A personal view of specific issues is offered in the hope that it will contribute to the dialogue about future practices and research on teacher preparation.