Learning to ‘become somebody well’: Challenges for educational policy

This article argues that education has a role in promoting young people’s wellbeing. It draws on research on young people’s lives to highlight the changing world for which educators prepare young people. While older educational agendas such as literacies and numeracy remain significant, it is argued that education is increasingly important for its role in assisting young people to develop the capacities and skills that will enable them to live well and that will enhance social cohesion. Although these more recent social agendas are often acknowledged in significant policy documents, their enactment in schools is compromised by economistic policy imperatives that see young people primarily in terms of their capacities to attain labour market skills that will ensure Australia’s international competitiveness. I make a link between the work that young people do to make themselves, and wellbeing, highlighting the role that education plays in shaping identities — and in enabling them to ‘become somebody well’. The article concludes that health and wellbeing are marginalised in school curricula not because of a ‘crowded curriculum’ but because not all elements are given equal value within our current policy frameworks.     

Risking the future: Democratic participation in technological innovation

Drawing on the voices of students, parents and teachers from a secondary school located in a regional area of Australia in a township characterised by its high welfare dependency and Indigenous population, this article explores the tensions between how marginalised students see themselves and how they are seen by their peers, teachers and fellow community members, with reference to Bourdieu's concept of habitus. The article moves towards a theorisation of a reproductive habitus (those who recognise the constraint of social conditions and conditionings and tend to read the future that fits them) and a transformative habitus (those who recognise the capacity for improvisation and tend to generate opportunities for action in the social field). While some teachers appear to be attempting a transformation of students, the article concludes that instead, teachers should value and give voice to who students are, as they identify themselves. They should be more concerned to transform schooling; to provide educational opportunities that transform the life experiences of and open up opportunities for all young people, especially those disadvantaged by poverty and marginalised by difference.     

Teachers are digikids too: the digital histories and digital lives of young teachers in English primary schools

In this article I consider the digital lives of a number of young teachers. Some are confident, competent movers in digital worlds, some are not. I wonder why, and look back at the teachers' digital histories to see whether ways in which they learned about digital worlds affects their lives now. I identify three different routes to learning about digital worlds, and describe these with representative stories. Two are serious solitary journeys, one self‐taught the other school‐taught. Most teachers in these groups use digital technologies for work and for the business of life. The third route is playful social. Teachers in this group have experienced learning about digital worlds with fellow enthusiasts and in playful contexts. These teachers use digital technologies for pleasure as well as the business of life and work. I argue that it is important that young teachers and student teachers be given time on courses to think about and discuss their own digital literacy histories.     

‘Fitting in’ and ‘standing out’: the peer group and young people’s development of reader identity

Abstract

The benefits of reading for pleasure and positive reader identities have been well established in previous research. However, much discussion regarding young people’s reading is underpinned by a discourse of deficit, placing emphasis on what young people should be reading. In an attempt to move away from this discourse, this article considers reading in the context of young people’s broader social and cultural worlds, exploring the role of the peer group in young people’s development of a reader identity. The article argues that the reading practices young people engage in are part of their broader social and cultural participation and, consequently, part of a broader project of identity formation. By highlighting the complexity of young people’s development of a reader identity and the meaning ascribed to specific reading practices, the findings challenge deficit models of young people’s reading lives, which underpin attempts to redistribute cultural capital through educational and cultural policy.     

Reproduction and transformation of inequalities in schooling: the transformative potential of the theoretical constructs of Bourdieu

This article is concerned with the theoretical constructs of Bourdieu and their contribution to understanding the reproduction of social and cultural inequalities in schooling. While Bourdieu has been criticised for his reproductive emphasis, this article proposes that there is transformative potential in his theoretical constructs and that these suggest possibilities for schools and teachers to improve the educational outcomes of marginalised students. The article draws together three areas of contribution to this theme of transformation; beginning by characterising habitus as constituted by reproductive and transformative traits and considering the possibilities for the restructuring of students’ habitus. This is followed by a discussion of cultural capital and the way that teachers can draw upon a variety of cultural capitals to act as agents of transformation rather than reproduction. The article concludes by considering the necessity of a transformation of the field to improve the educational outcomes of marginalised students.     

Banaji,Shakuntala & Buckingham,David (2013) The civic web MIT Press (Cambridge MA & London) isbn 978‐0‐262‐01964‐4 185 pp £20.95 https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/civic‐web

With the sub‐title “Young people, the internet, and civic participation”, The civic web recognises that youngsters are now well along the path to fully and seamlessly integrated offline and online lives. How can we ensure these young people become and remain fully engaged in their wider society and worlds now and throughout their lifetimes? It applies to teachers insofar as “digital media are part of the taken‐for‐granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, and social communication”. There is some relevance to formal learning technology here, but the recommendation is that you borrow a copy for thought‐provoking “spare‐time” reading. Eric Deeson     

‘You Norwegians think we female Muslims are not free’: enactment of gendered positional identities during transition stages

This article describes two young Norwegian ethnic-minority girls in their efforts to involve social networks and to position themselves as learners in the transition between lower and upper secondary school. The article explores how they experience future possibilities represented by education and how they use resources in negotiating their everyday lives. We use the concept of social gendered positional identities to study how educational choices are individually and collectively formed and enacted in these girls’ everyday figured worlds. The study builds on ethnographic data collected by following two classmates across multiple settings over two years. We develop biographical cases to demonstrate how cultural factors relevant to learning emerged in particular contexts. The article concludes that gendered positions and choices made in educational transitions are connected and that meta-reflections on personal identity can help students to make decisions about the future.     

‘The art of democracy’: Young people's democratic learning in gallery contexts

In this article the authors report on research which aimed to explore the opportunities for democratic action and learning in a number of artist‐led gallery education projects in the south‐west of England. The research takes an approach to citizenship learning and democracy that is less focused on citizenship as a specific subject in the formal school curriculum and the achievement of specific citizenship outcomes that can follow from it. Rather, it is more focused upon understanding how democratic practices that are embedded in the day‐to‐day lives of young people contribute to their democratic learning and participation as citizens. Drawing upon conceptual categories and concepts that illuminate the process, the authors demonstrate the nature and character of young people's democratic learning. An implication arising from this is the need for practice‐orientated research in other contexts (e.g. work, leisure and home) to fully understand the nature of democratic learning.     

Cultural historical activity theory and professional learning

In this article I will discuss the route by which I came to work with Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The brief tracing of my own biography will highlight theoretical and methodological milestones. I will then discuss my current work, with colleagues, on approaches to investigating and improving the learning of professionals who are involved in interagency work, which intends to reduce the risks of social exclusion for marginal groups. In this case I will consider those young people who become excluded from school and whose needs are complex and rapidly fluctuating. This project is concerned with the learning of professionals in the creation of new forms of practice, which require joined‐up solutions to meet complex and diverse client needs. We study professional learning in services that aim to promote social inclusion through supporting clients as effective actors in their worlds. At any given time in their lives individuals may take part in particular configurations of several, diverse social practices. In this discussion I will draw on recent developments in CHAT and theories of learning at work.     

Multi‐linear strategies for (re)presenting the complexity of young people in research

Within the current climate of unpredictability and constant change, young people at school are faced with a multitude of choices and contradictory influences. In this article, I argue that (re)presentations of young people in youth research need to reflect the complexity and multiplicity of their lives and changing priorities, and I attempt to (re)present a small group of young people in this particular milieu. I illustrate some of the competing influences in their lives, and I outline some specific strategies that are useful for (re)presenting these contextual worlds. The strategies I advocate disrupt the homogenous representations of ‘youth’ as a developmental phase and instead reflect the diverse spheres of influence which shape their subjectivities and practices.     

Exploring ‘learning lives’: community,identity, literacy and meaning

This article explores the term ‘learning lives’ by reporting on three research projects conducted by members of the Oslo‐based research group TransActions. By stressing the term ‘learning lives’ within a range of social ‘educational’ contexts, the article aims to look at learning within and across different learning sites exploring the positioning and repositioning of learner identity across these different ‘locations’. We emphasise how the individual learner relates to other people and objects, drawing on deeper trajectories or narratives of the self as it exists within and outside the immediate learning contexts. We pay attention to processes occurring between people which we find significant for the individual's identity, literacy and learning. By doing so we hope to make explicit the mobilisation of resources within and across specific contexts, in the ‘learning lives’ of Norwegian youngsters.     

Learning in a comfort zone: cultural and social capital inside an outcome‐based assessment regime

Despite numerous problems with outcome‐based assessment systems, claims that they enhance learners' motivation and autonomy resonate with research interest in how young people develop cultural and social capital. However, research has not yet explored the ways in which assessment systems affect the forms of capital embedded within them. This paper applies concepts from a growing body of work on social and cultural capital in education to data from a study of assessment policy and practice in the Advanced General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) in two further education colleges. It evaluates how norms, practices and dynamics created by the GNVQ assessment regime interacted with other factors in students' lives and the learning programme itself. These interactions shaped cultural and social capital inside a learning ‘comfort zone’ and affected students' motivation and attitudes to learning. The article evaluates the implications of these factors for the types of cultural and social capital that may be on offer in different assessment regimes. In particular, it raises questions about the extent to which social and cultural capital are empowering or constraining, and offers ideas for further research in this area.     

Restorying as political action: authoring resistance through youth media arts

ABSTRACT

This article explores the lived realities for young people growing up and learning in a climate of racial discrimination, religious intolerance, misogyny, and xenophobia, and how school-sponsored and school-supported uses of digital media can afford young people opportunities to navigate their experiences of social injustice and resist exclusionary discourses and practices. In a collaborative inquiry into the practices of two youth media producers, we explore how these counternarrative efforts are forms of restorying, in which young people write themselves into existence in ways that can reconfigure school spaces. Framed in Black feminist and critical cosmopolitan perspectives, this article considers how young people use new media tools in school to engage the narrative imagination and build the worlds they want to live in, simultaneously representing the political histories and realities of their everyday worlds and imagining alternative futures. We explore the ways schools can create opportunities for youth to engage in these new media practices that re-author themselves and the institutional spaces they encounter – and how these opportunities are situated within broader intersectional forms of systemic inequity and oppression.     

Hesitant hopes: How a comprehensive approach to learning impacts on the transition hopes of marginalised young people in an alternative learning programme in regional Australia

Concerns have been raised internationally about whether alternative learning programmes are producing low-skilled labourers for rapidly disappearing twenty-first-century jobs. Researchers claim that learners in alternative programmes are more at risk due to the focus on low-level vocational and basic skill attainment, with a lack of formal academic pathways available to them. This article questions whether and in what ways an alternative learning programme supports young people to achieve successful transitions to sustainable social mobility for informed citizenship through a holistic approach to learning; or if class stratification is being re/enforced through systems’ accountability discourses. Hesitant hopes in alternative learning are explored through an ethnographic study of one alternative learning programme across five sites in regional Australia. Contextually, not-for-profit community agencies provide physical infrastructures as well as youth workers and volunteers, while a publicly funded School of Distance Education provides teacher oversight of the curriculum. Findings suggest that the theme of ‘hesitant hope’ is constructed through the analysis of the discourses of supporting wellbeing, life skill development and academic learning. These discourses facilitate further analysis of the concept of social mobility, suggesting a conceptual starting point for an engaging critique of the differing perspectives on how support could be providing these marginalised young people with a sense of hope for a socially mobile future.     

Listening to ‘the thick bunch’: (mis)understanding and (mis)representation of young people in jobs without training in the South West of England

Young people in jobs without training are ubiquitous but invisible, working in shops, cafes, and other low‐waged, low‐status occupations. Commonly elided with young people who are not in education, employment or training, they are positioned as the ‘thick bunch’ with empty and meaningless working lives. The main purpose of the research was to explore the experiences of this group of marginalised and socially disadvantaged young people through a deeper understanding of their interests and enthusiasms inside and outside work. These young people have been (mis)understood and (mis)represented. A more holistic and nuanced approach that is not uncritically founded upon a set of neo‐liberal stereotypes and assumptions, and instead recognises the complexity of their lives, would offer new opportunities for understanding and representation of their interests. Our findings challenge the conflation of identity with work and the notion that only certain forms of employment create meaning.     

Healthy meals,better learners? Debating the focus of school food policy in England

Abstract

Policy makers in the UK are trying to improve school meals, by focusing on eating well. This article explores the way policies are framed by academic performance and health as a reason for providing school lunches. Using Nussbaum’s capability approach we argue that the purpose of schooling should be to provide young people with the ability to lead a life of choice. We argue that school meals are an important social good, which allow young people to develop critical skills around food which they can then use throughout their lives. We draw on evidence from two ethnographic research projects on food in schools, conducted in England. We question whether the collocation between healthy eating and learning should be the focus of school food reform and contemplate the role of society and government to provide children with healthy meals, irrespective of learning outcomes. School meals are more than good exam results.     

New capitalism,educational modernisation and the new role of the professional student

Current times are witnessing multiple challenges in the economic, political and social domain, which modern citizens and professionals are required to address with an enterprising mindset. Young people have not been left intact by the spirit of new capitalism. In the face of ongoing educational changes on a European level, being a student transcends the boundaries of the school community. Young people thus oscillate between different identities: on the one hand, that of the child who lives in the here and now, and on the other hand, that of the pseudo-adult and in-the-make professional. In this light, the paper explores the new role of the professional student and discusses the implications of a neoliberal student model. It concludes by proposing a more humanistic understanding of the student role, which positions young people in a dynamic learning process and relationship with the world around them.     

Puncturing notions of precarity through critical educational research on young lives in Australia: towards a critical ethnography of youth

This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education – the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of ‘social waste’ and that allowing them to be unproblematically portrayed as constituting a precariat is an over-simplification if not a misrepresentation. In making the case for a different approach, conceived in terms of a critical ethnography of student disengagement, the paper invokes a political economy approach in which learning is seen as a political act engaged in by young people. The paper concludes with a series of propositions intended to provide a different and more critically ethnographic inflection on what is occurring.     

Constructing Meaning About Violence,School, and Community: Participatory Action Research with Urban Youth

In this paper, I describe how a group of young adolescents negotiate their daily lives within the seeming permanence of a toxic environment, limited social services, poverty, crime, drugs, and inadequate educational resources. The world that the young people described in this paper inhabit is a world of despair and hope, chaos and silence, violence and peace, struggle and possibility—a world in which they spend a good deal of time surviving violence while negotiating the psychosocial, economic, raced, gendered, classed, and sociocultural borders that inform and influence their lives.Through the use of participatory action research and community photography, we are problematizing those borders and creating spaces for young urban youth to engage in processes that position them as agents of inquiry and as experts about their own lives. As the data reveal, by listening to young people's stories, by giving them the opportunity to speak about their lives, and by collaborating with them in designing plans of action to address their concerns, we can more effectively frame research questions and teaching pedagogies around their understandings of violence and urban life. As important, by examining their lives via participatory action research, young people are provided with opportunities to take deliberate action to enhance community well-being.     

Superhighway or Road to Nowhere? Children's Relationships with Digital Technology

This article offers a critical overview of the cultural and educational benefits and dangers of digital media for young people. It argues that public debates on this issue have veered from utopian hype to moral panic. In contrast, the author argues for a more measured account of how young people appropriate such technologies in the context of their everyday lives. The article goes on to provide brief accounts of the author's previous research on children's engagement with computer games, and on their creative uses of multimedia in the home, which illustrate this approach. The article concludes with some broad principles which might guide future policy in this field.