Rethinking sexual agency: proposing a multicomponent model based on young people’s life stories

Sexual health policies explicitly aim to encourage young people to take responsibility for their sexuality to prevent adverse outcomes such as unintended pregnancies, STIs and sexual assault. In Europe and North America, ‘choice’ has become a central concept in sexual and reproductive health policy making. However, the concept of choice is not unproblematic, not least because the cultural emphasis on individual responsibility obscures structural limitations and inequalities, and mutual responsibility between partners. Moreover, studies on the life stories of young people show how agency is forged and expressed within a social context and is manifested through responsiveness to others. This raises the question of how we can conceptualise sexual agency in a way that includes this sociality. How can we rethink sexual agency beyond autonomy? This article explores these issues using data from four separate research projects that shared the aim of exploring young people’s sexual agency in different areas. Drawing on findings from these studies, it advances a multicomponent model of sexual agency that connects individual choice to the social, moral and narrative context which young people navigate.     

Fearful symmetry: Palestinian and Jewish teachers confront contested narratives in integrated bilingual education

The present paper deals with Jewish and Palestinian teachers who work in an integrated school in Israel, and shows the challenges and possibilities from examining these teachers' powerful historical narratives in the context of in-service training sessions. It is shown how these teachers essentially remain firmly rooted in the hegemonic historical narratives of their own community, even when their attitudes are challenged and clearer alternatives are considered to the reigning narratives. The findings highlight predominantly the failures in terms of the potential of educational efforts to help overcome situations of intractable conflict even within contexts specifically devised for this purpose; yet, also some openings become apparent in the process of negotiating competing narratives and inventing new dialogic possibilities. The implications of this work suggest that schools and their historical tradition are difficult places to reach change or produce it—even in integrated schools in which partial structural change takes place—and teacher training may not always be the answer for the need to bring changes. However, it is also indicated that an ongoing agonistics of raising critical issues regarding one's identifications with hegemonic narratives does offer openings to take responsibility for both the challenges and the dialogic possibilities that are created in the process.     

Writing and becoming [a teacher]: Teacher candidates’ literacy narratives over four years

This paper explores narrative inquiry practices in pre-service teacher education program. Written dialogue by teacher candidates provided deep and long term reflection during a 5-year initial teacher education program. This 4-year longitudinal study with 30 teacher candidate participants considers participants’ knowledge formation in becoming teachers, through writing and sharing of letters (with peers) of personal lived educational experiences, and personal stories of theory related to learning, teaching, and teaching practice over a significant period of time. The study discusses letter writing as a narrative inquiry practice in teacher education programs and implications of pre-service letter writing over a significant amount of time.     

What's worth talking about? Meaning‐making in toddler‐initiated co‐narratives in preschool

To elaborate narratives, toddlers are dependent on adult co‐construction. Both children and teachers make meaning and learn together. This article examines what themes toddlers introduce in mealtime conversations in preschool. The object of analysis is 39 toddler‐initiated co‐narratives constructed by toddlers and teachers in 15 videotaped meals during a case study in Norway in 2003/2004. (In Norway children from one to six years old attend preschool.) The results unfold variations of co‐narratives about important life themes. Emotions not only influenced what was said and how it was said, they also constituted issues in children's lives. The stories were about anger, fear, loss and desire. The utterances and voices in the co‐narrations bear a polyphony of cultural meaning.     

Teacher counter stories to a citizenship education mega policy narrative. Preparing for citizenship in Chile

The present article focuses on the counter stories of two Chilean social studies high school teachers. Counter stories describe how teachers use their professional experience to confront those mega narratives composed of dominant educational policies that impinge upon their pedagogical practices. The mega narrative described in this study as a citizenship education mega policy narrative is composed by citizenship educational guidelines that have become influenced by other market-driven educational policies, and is not only present in Chile but has also been influenced by policies coming from countries such as England and the US. Therefore, the discussions that emerge from these counter stories on the nature of this mega narrative and the ways through which teachers can confront it through their teaching, and the implications that all this has for the field of citizenship education, do not only fill a gap in Chilean research but also contribute to discussions on counter and mega narratives in the field of citizenship education within a wider international scope.     

Drivers of learning for the low skilled

The drivers of learning for mid-career workers with few initial qualifications from the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy and Poland are examined. The focus in this article is upon the learning pathways and experience of the low-qualified drawn from empirical research which gathered and analysed the strategic career and learning biographies of 105 low-skilled individuals, mainly aged between 25 and 40, in the 7 countries, using semi-structured narrative interviews. The five drivers for learning evident in the interviews were enhancing self-efficacy; self-improvement; labour market-orientated learning; significant others motivating learning; and work-related practical learning. The interviewees were divided between those who wanted tangible and immediate learning outcomes and those who saw learning primarily as a means of self-improvement. Some interviewees with negative experiences of initial education were motivated to re-engage by a positive experience with continuing education, encouragement of significant others or through an experience of mastery of challenges at work which led to an increase in their self-efficacy. For the majority of interviewees, practical learning was particularly appreciated, whether undertaken to secure or enhance their current labour market position or undertaken to increase their self-efficacy.     

源于叙事理论:浅析叙事探究

叙事以传述事件为主，经验成为传述的内容。叙事作为人类研究生活的基本手段，随着时代发展而不断获得新的功能。并应用于不同领域。在“范式转换”中叙事应用于教育研究领域，形成叙事探究这一新的研究方法。叙事探究将参与者与研究者结合，把生活性质的理论思想引入到教育经验中，促进人们对于教育及其意义的理解。     

Teaching ancient Greek history in Greek compulsory education: textual and ideological continuities and discontinuities

The reality of Greek education presents a dissension in relation to the global trends regarding the existence and use of a single textbook per school subject. This reality also influences the orientation of education research. Thus, the international trend to study how textbooks affect the uptake of knowledge by the student, which is followed by Greek researchers as well, starts from a different basis, given the free choice between numerous school textbooks. However, what even Greek teachers ignore nowadays is that the one-textbook policy has not been unique in the Greek education reality; since 1969/70 the politics of multiple textbooks was dominant, at least in primary school. This paper attempts to present the particular Greek education policy related to the publication of school history textbooks, and secondly embarks on diachronic, historical research of school history textbooks that have been used in primary and secondary education from 1952 to 2010 and their inherent ideological discourse, both its continuities and discontinuities which form the cornerstones of the modern Greek identity.     

Enacting the role of special needs educator – six Swedish case studies

With the increasing focus on inclusion, special needs educators (SNEs) are now expected to share responsibility for pupils with teacher colleagues and to lead school development, but it is a challenge to enact this role in schools. The aim of the study was to explore how professional roles of Swedish SNEs are enacted in local school contexts. From a survey of SNEs in 10 Swedish municipalities, six participants whose work tasks were expected to correspond to the degree ordinances for their university training were chosen. The participants were followed at work, and data were collected through observation of the participants at work, participants’ diaries and interviews with the participants, their teacher colleagues and their school principals. The analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, based on the researchers’ observations of the participants at work, categories of SNEs’ tasks were discerned, and the amount of time devoted to those categories of tasks was summarised. Second, case study narratives of the SNEs’ work were constructed to describe how the participants, their teacher colleagues and their school principals view the SNE role and to describe how the work is enacted in various school contexts. The results revealed seven categories of work tasks practised to varying degrees by the six SNEs. The case study narratives exposed large variation in how the SNEs conceptualised their role and how it evolved in relation to local school contexts. The results of the study are discussed with regard to the role of the SNE in relation to policies of inclusion.     

Lebanese youth narratives: a bleak post-war landscape

To identify the themes that define the lives of a generation living in a conflict-ridden post-war society, I explore the changing views of Lebanese students through an analysis of the personal narrative texts that they created during my creative writing workshops over a 16-year period (1997–2012). Increasingly, young Lebanese feel trapped in a violent past, a threatening present and a hopeless future. As traditional forms of stability and loyalty (family and state) become more dysfunctional, modern alternative sources of education, employment, security and public discourse remain absent, creating an ever-widening disjunction between expectations and disheartening lived realities. Since 1998, student texts have focused on three salient thematic groupings: Idealism (1998–2005), Activism (2005–2008) and, most recently, Disillusionment (2008–present). In an atmosphere of escalating intolerance and hostility, it is hardly surprising that students are currently escaping to spaces of indulgence and personal gratification. As ongoing regional conflicts fuel local sectarian rivalries, I argue that reengaging educated young Lebanese in non-confrontational narratives that challenge dysfunctional systems can play a vital role in disrupting a dangerous sectarian narrative that is fast threatening to entangle Lebanon in yet another brutal war.