Through city students' eyes: urban students' beliefs about school's purposes,supports and impediments

Studying the ‘visible curriculum’ of city schools in the United States cannot begin with the assumption that students and teachers are, in fact, present in or graduating from these institutions. In the city setting in which this article's photographic investigation took place high school dropout rates have remained at or above 50% for better than three decades. Rather than concentrating narrowly on the curriculum of what can be seen in school, the research on which this article reports began with a photographic inquiry into urban youths' foundational perceptions of school itself, as well as the impediments and supports to school success of which these students are aware. This inquiry reveals some of the reasons behind the multi‐generational community disengagement that have led to the strained relationship to schools represented by these graduation rate statistics. Grounded in critical pedagogy, ‘new literacy’ and visual sociology traditions, this study looked to visually based mechanisms for research tools with which city students are already proficient. The findings presented here suggest that not only can these tools provide previously inaccessible data on school detachment, they can also supply insights into what school means to these youth and what might support their re‐engagement with these institutions.     

Why Research ‘by’ Children? Rethinking the Assumptions Underlying the Facilitation of Children as Researchers

Research ‘by’ children, where children conduct research as primary investigators, may be seen as an ideal form of children's participation in research. This paper examines the methodological and normative assumptions that underlie such research and identifies some ambiguities which require clarification and questions which need answering for better theorisations of its purposes and more robust evaluations of the associated research practices to occur. It concludes that tensions between these assumptions and the research practices mean the role of children as ‘researchers’ has been limited, while further explorations of the potentials of research ‘by’ children need stronger reflexivity.     

Balancing Autonomy Rights and Protection: Children’s Involvement in a Child Safety Online Project

Researchers who involve children in their research are faced with the challenge of choosing between differing theoretical approaches which can prioritise children’s autonomy rights or their ‘vulnerability’ and their need to be protected. Somewhat confusingly, ethical guidelines seem to reflect a combination of these approaches. Even when researchers have settled on their preferred approach, they may find that this then has to be modified in accordance with gatekeeper requirements. In the context of children’s involvement in a child safety online project, this paper highlights the difficulties encountered because of a tension between children’s autonomy rights, educational norms in a school setting and child protection concerns and considers whether an appropriate balance was achieved.     

Special issue: Training and Education for Residential Child Care

This paper begins by locating the (controversial) removal of the ‘minimum age at qualification’ regulation in 2003 within the context of wider changes occurring within social work education and the social work profession. This is followed by a report of a small scale exploratory study designed to gather data regarding the experiences of younger students within one undergraduate qualifying programme. The data are then discussed in relation to literature from within social work and allied disciplines in order to consider themes such as ‘identity’, ‘othering’ and ‘recognition’. It is suggested from data gathered during this project that although the gates to social work education have now been opened more widely to school leaving students, they have in effect become social work's new ‘non-traditional’ students and in some cases, inclusion is experienced as partial rather than complete. A discussion of the implications for further research as well as teaching, learning and group process issues on professional programmes concludes this paper.

The initial phase of the research for this paper was funded by an HEA SWAP ‘small projects’ grant.     

Why more ‘quality time’ is not on the top of children's lists: the ‘qualities of time’ for children1

For many years the everyday reality of working parents and their children has been captured in notions of ‘quality time’ versus ‘quantity time’. On the one hand it is suggested that what families need is ‘more time’ for parents to spend together with their children and less time working. On the other hand this has been countered with arguments saying that attention has to be paid to how parents spend their time together with their children. As a result quality time is often presented through idealised images of ‘happy families’. Quality time is seen as parents engaging with their children in particular activities or outdoor excursions that create and maintain family enjoyment, care and togetherness. However, such debates are based on assumptions of what would be ‘good’ for today's children and neglect the perspective of children themselves. This paper draws on field research carried out with 10–11‐year‐old children on their understandings and use of time in an urban and a rural setting in the north of England. The paper points to five ‘qualities of time’ identified by children. These qualities suggest that children's views of time spent with their families cannot be seen as separate from the time they spend with friends, at school and on their own. The paper argues that the quality/quantity time conundrum needs replacing by fuller and more representative accounts of the varied aspects of time that matter for children. These need to be situated in the processes through which family, school and work life take place on a daily basis and in relation to children's life course. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond the mirror towards a plurilingual prism: exploring the creation of plurilingual ‘identity texts’ in English and French classrooms in Toronto and Montpellier

In an age of transnational mobility, there has been a growing recognition of the need for both English and French mainstream classroom teachers to be trained to teach increasingly plurilingual student populations. In this article, I begin by describing the context for an exploratory comparative and collaborative ethnographic action research study in four English and French schools in Toronto, Canada and one school in Montpellier, France that engaged children as co-researchers of their lived plurilingualism. I analyse in particular the process of creating plurilingual multimodal books with students and teachers across the five different school cases. This paper focuses on the iterative ‘identity text’ creation process across all five schools by examining one plurilingual identity text from each case, along with students’ research conversations about their creative productions, and interviews with their classroom teachers and parents. Finally, I summarize five features of inclusive plurilingual pedagogy that emerged across the five cases and call for further collaborative research across English and French schools and scholarly communities investigating creative plurilingual language and literacy production in the twenty-first century.     

Expert views of children's knowledge needs regarding parental mental illness

Children of parents with a mental illness are at significant risk of developing a mental illness. This risk may be reduced if appropriate interventions are provided that include information and knowledge about mental illness. While there are some interventions for children of parents with a mental illness, research is lacking about the type of mental health information children need and why they need that knowledge. This study presents the perspectives of a purposive sample of international research experts in the field of parental mental illness about the kind of mental health literacy information children with parents with a mental illness need. Twenty-three participants completed a self-constructed short answer questionnaire about the knowledge needs of children of parents with a mental illness. The qualitative data indicates that ‘identifying information’, ‘making sense of parents behaviour’, ‘coping better’ and ‘respecting safety’ are key knowledge needs of children. Given the views presented, these findings suggest that health care professionals should advocate for policies that support individual-, peer-, and family-focused programs driven by strong evaluation and rigorous research. If this is done, children of parents with mental illness may experience ‘myth busting’ of incorrect information about mental illness.     

Conducting research with children: the limits of confidentiality and child protection protocols

This paper addresses the issue of child protection protocols within research conducted with children. Based partly on primary data this paper raises questions about the role of ethics committees in defining the limits of confidentiality in relation to child protection protocols within research, the perceptions of both children and parents about the meanings of confidentiality and notions of ‘harm’, and the role of the researcher in relation to legal and professional guidance about the protection of vulnerable people in society. We explore the concept of confidentiality within a research setting from a child protection perspective. In doing so we examine the legal and moral obligations of researchers to report child protection concerns, how children themselves perceive ‘harm’, and the need for much clearer guidance to researchers, as well as child participants and parents, about the limitations of confidentiality.     

Gender differences and anti-school boys

This paper explores and contrasts the gender value systems of two groups of anti-school boys. It suggests that cultural differences in specifically gender values can lead to (i) polarisation between anti-school boys and (ii) confrontation with school authorities in ways not explained by the traditional theory of culture clash between the working class pupil and the middle class school. It is also noted that the label ‘counter-school’used by Willis to convey the culture of some working class boys (‘the lads’) may need to be refined if the culture is reassessed in a way which acknowledges the commonality between the gender value systems of ‘the lads’and those of the school. In fact, the research reported in this paper found that another group of anti-school boys (not working class) was much more counter the gender value system of the school than ‘the lads’and did not uphold traditional masculine values.     

Support programmes for Roma children: do they help or promote exclusion?

This article critically examines current education programmes for Roma primary school students in the Czech Republic and the impact of these programmes. The research described here, based on in‐depth case studies, challenges popular beliefs in the ‘success’ of Roma oriented programmes, as well as the stereotypical negative images of Roma parents. The studies also explore the dilemmas experienced by teaching staff and their views of both Roma and the majority ‘non‐Roma’ children.     

Social exclusion,mobility and access1

Much of the literature on social exclusion ignores its ‘spatial’ or ‘mobility’ related aspects. This paper seeks to rectify this by examining the mobile processes and infrastructures of travel and transport that engender and reinforce social exclusion in contemporary societies. To the extent to which this issue is addressed, it is mainly organized around the notion of ‘access’ to activities, values and goods. This paper examines this discourse in some detail. It is argued that there are many dimensions of such access, that improving access is a complex matter because of the range of human activities that might need to be ‘accessed’, that in order to know what is to be accessed the changing nature of travel and communications requires examination, and that some dimensions of access are only revealed through changes in the infrastructure that ‘uncover’ previously hidden social exclusions. Claims about access and socio‐spatial exclusion routinely make assumptions about what it is to participate effectively in society. We turn this question around, also asking how mobilities of different forms constitute societal values and sets of relations, participation in which may become important for social inclusion. This paper draws upon an extensive range of library, desk and field research to deal with crucial issues relating to the nature of a fair, just and mobile society.     

School choice from a household resource perspective: Preliminary findings from a north of England case study

This paper seeks to widen the conceptual lens of school choice debate and analysis to account for multiple, intersecting economies, cultures, and infrastructures of daily life. Preliminary findings are presented in the case of primary school enrolment in the north of England city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The national context is one in which public service delivery has been influenced by the language of ‘choice’, notably a parent's ‘right to choose’ a school other than that nearest to their child's home, and ‘responsibility’ to exercise choice as self-determined consumer-citizens. At the metropolitan level this translates as market-led competitive enrolment and a tendency for more children to travel longer distances to school and for there to be greater variation in journey length, as some parents are able to use superior transport and personnel as leverage in their quest for a better choice of state school. Findings are presented from a multi-method pilot study combining daily diary, resource audit, and biographic analysis for a sample of 18 families drawn from two case study schools. One school (Town) attracts pupils from an area of low-income population, to which most children journey on foot; the other school (Woodland) attracts pupils from further away, situated within a largely middle-class area, to which most children are driven in their parent's car. The findings show how the market model assumes and rewards a particular mode of choice-making which fails to recognise that some parents seek less instrumentally for their child to be happy. Discussion combines theory, empirical findings, and critical analysis to expose the subtle inequities of school choice in relation to neo-liberal thinking.     

Calling forth disability in the classroom

Disability theory discusses the interplay between impairment and disability as though they can be identified separately. More recently, scholars in the field have sought to move beyond the dichotomy to an interactional model. This article uses evidence from a longitudinal ethnographic case study to demonstrate how notions of interaction and relation need to be understood within context. Socio-cultural theory makes explicit a situated understanding of participation and experience and demonstrates how classroom environments ‘call forth’ disability. Findings reveal how classrooms as educational contexts mediate the experience of a student with a learning impairment. The evidence shows how a classroom draws on the wider regimes of competence at the institutional level to create particular experiences for students. The challenge for teachers and other support staff in schools is to reflect on and influence the dynamic of impairment/disability within their classroom and school context in order to support appropriate participation and learning.     

Visual methodologies,sand and psychoanalysis: employing creative participatory techniques to explore the educational experiences of mature students and children in care

Social science research has witnessed an increasing move towards visual methods of data production. However, some visual techniques remain pariah sites because of their association with psychoanalysis; and a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed approaches outside of therapy-based settings. This paper introduces the method of ‘sandboxing’, which was developed from the psychoanalytical approach of the ‘world technique’. ‘Sandboxing’ provides an opportunity for participants to create three-dimensional scenes in sand-trays, employing miniature figures and everyday objects. Data are presented from two studies conducted in Wales, UK. The first, exploring mature students’ accounts of higher education, and the second, exploring the educational experiences of children and young people in public care. The paper argues that psychoanalytical work can be adapted to enable a distinctive, valuable and ethical tool of qualitative inquiry; and illustrates how ‘sandboxing’ engendered opportunities to fight familiarity, enabled participatory frameworks, and contributed to informed policy and practice.     

Interculturalism in Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students

The present article focuses on quantitative research carried out on a statistically representative sample of Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students. Research data show that schools with a higher number of immigrant students offer a greater number and a wider variety of intercultural initiatives. The presence of immigrant students serves as an effective stimulus in enhancing intercultural approaches. Furthermore, the opinions of head teachers about the proposal of ‘separate classes’ for immigrant students and the proposed ‘limit of 30% on the presence’ of immigrant students are negative. These judgements do not change in a statistically significant manner in relation to concentration of immigrant students: in particular, higher rates of immigrant students are not related to more positive opinions. Continuing education on intercultural issues is widely adopted, mainly on behalf of teachers and less often on behalf of head teachers and other school personnel. Finally, activities by ‘linguistic facilitators’ and ‘linguistic and cultural mediators’ are not significantly related to a decrease in perceived concern regarding problematic situations.     

‘Oh they drink here harder I think’: young people and alcohol consumption at three New Zealand secondary school formals

The New Zealand media sensationalises the issue of teenage drinking. It also frames school formals (balls or proms) and associated after parties as problematic sites, since young people may drink to excess at such events. This article explores the alcohol consumption patterns of a group of year 13 students on the night of their school formal. Adults' permissive attitudes towards their own and young people's alcohol consumption on the night are discussed to highlight how drinking is almost necessary for socialisation in a New Zealand context. The majority of student participants reported that they drank in moderation on the night and some were intolerant of intoxicated peers. This poses a challenge to New Zealand media depictions of the school formal and after party as ‘drunken affairs’. Some international students did drink to excess at unofficial after parties organised by students and/or parents in two of three participating schools. Rather than this reflecting negatively on the students concerned, such behaviour can be read as a reflection on New Zealand's binge drinking culture. This article concludes with suggestions for how schools can create safer after parties which may reduce the chances of young people engaging in ‘risky’ drinking behaviours at such events.     

Diversity without difference: modelling ‘the real’ in the social aesthetic of a London multicultural school

This article analyses the social aesthetic of the visual displays of a multicultural London primary school. It shows that the social aesthetic of the school models the school as a site of the ‘real’ in Baudrillard's sense of a ‘real’ that is a simulacra of the real, one from which the violence that is produced within and is constitutive of capitalism is expelled. In this view ‘race’ is not a division of humanity caused by racism, it is simply a cultural sign marking diversity. Difference, in the sense of racialised inequalities or racism, can be expelled from the system without ‘race’ itself being expelled. By the same logic, nationalism, as an exclusionary ideology, is separated out from national identity, which becomes simply one of a range of cultural resources that children can draw on in assembling the self.     

Research with Children and Young People: The Issue of Parental (Proxy) Consent

This study examines the potential problems with the parental consent requirement, substantiated with examples mainly from healthcare and social research studies. This will illustrate how the parental consent requirement, instead of promoting high ethical standards, may result in some instances of children’s rights and ethical considerations being ignored or receiving cursory attention. The ‘blanket’ requirement of parental consent for all research involving children under the age of 18 years needs to be challenged as it fails to recognise children’s capacities and accord children due respect as persons in their own right. Flexible ethical guidelines should be developed that take cognisance of children’s competence in contemporary society and at the same time protects children from inappropriate research and procedures.