Dr Jon Tan

Abstract The article examines supplementary schooling within ethnic minority communities in Leeds and Oslo. Through an analysis of original research involving visits to a sample of supplementary schools in both cities, interviews with teachers and pupils, and reviews of unpublished documentation, the article seeks to understand the scale of provision, variety of purpose and the nature of pedagogy in these schools. Following a brief account of contextualising literature, the article gives an overview of supplementary schooling in each country, and describes research design and the profile of the participating schools. The article analyses the case study data under the following themes: group solidarity as the overarching function; community vs. individual interests; and curriculum, pedagogy and links with mainstream schooling. It thus considers the positioning of supplementary schools, both in terms of their purpose and relationship with mainstream provision, and examines the assessments of value made by participants. In conclusion, the article discusses the implications for policy and the role of individuals and communities in negotiating social, cultural and educational frameworks.

This book foregrounds pedagogy in a way that challenges readers to reflect on themselves as teachers and learners, and to be reflexive about their own practices and contexts.

This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label ‘disadvantaged school’ and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different and diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The article will argue that there are flaws in the ways the school’s story is officially told where it does not acknowledge what is being done to address students’ experiences of immigration, poverty and deprivation, and the cultural barriers they often negotiate in coming to school. As a driver for change, practitioner research foregrounds the authenticity of school and classroom contexts and puts them under scrutiny as a means of informing strategic decisions. Utilising a case study design, this paper pulls together a range of data evidence to construct its narrative and tell the school’s story, working in collaboration with its university academic partner. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of practitioner research within challenging urban school settings, under pressure from centralised conceptualisations of achievement gaps and school performance. It puts many of these ideas under scrutiny and asks fundamental questions about curriculum, pedagogy and accountability.

The Chinese city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, is 5,474 miles distant from my place of work, Leeds, England. It is the sort of distance that would usually make one feel remote, disconnected and removed from the lives of the 11 million inhabitants in this far-off city. That is probably how many felt in the UK, and other parts of Europe and the West, when news of a new strain of coronavirus (denoted as COVID-19 or SARS-Cov-2) was reported in Wuhan in December 2019. Distant, remote, isolated – words that often make up our language of defence, separation and irrelevance. We use these words as protection against those things that we feel may put us in some sort of jeopardy. How many times do we hear the phrases, ‘I’d keep your distance’, or ‘it’s an isolated incident’, or even ‘It’s not something remotely relevant?’ They are words that both describe distance and create distance.

The role of the professional educator is undergoing fundamental change. Across Europe, national commitments to the development of internationalisation require a corresponding investment in the professional learning of students of initial teacher education (ITE). As Persson (2004) identifies, at a European level, the impact of internationalisation is a significant influence, manifest in a strong obligation to identify vital competences for the future teachers of Europe. The scaling up of associated policy expectations for teachers and teacher education across Europe has been evident, certainly in the years following the Bologna declaration of 1999. Yet, whilst there has been much encouragement of reciprocal international partnerships between European countries and their schools, colleges and universities, in the field of teacher education there has been limited systematic examination of students’ experiences. It is in the interests of extending research knowledge and informing future development that this chapter makes its contribution.

Service-Learning and Educating in Challenging Contexts explores the potential of service-learning identified as a way to integrate community service with academic study to enrich the on-going professional development of educators, especially in schools that are located in challenging contexts. This collection offers a further refinement of what typically comes under the remit of service-learning, switching the focus from the learning experience of the learner, to the educator and the deep and enriching professional learning opportunities that service-learning can offer. This approach to service-learning promotes collaborative practices amongst professional and in-service educators, and encourages an integration of theory and practice. The international contributors use their own experiences as well as current research to provide a thorough exploration of service-learning from national and international perspectives.

This chapter argues for the articulation of Service-Learning (SL) oriented approaches that are located within and close to practice rather than as supplementary to it. Drawing from developing work in the Carnegie Faculty of Education at Leeds Metropolitan University, this chapter considers the significance of critical dialogic approaches in the support and development of professional educators across the life-course of their careers. Conceptualizing schools in challenging social contexts as sites where practice and service intersect, it opens up a discussion of the ways in which equity and social justice can be anchored within the context to which it is applied. Two case studies are presented: the first involved a cohort of Education Studies students who were intending to work in the broad field of education. The second initiative involved a partnership between the university and a local school in a socially disadvantaged setting. At the core of these studies is a sense of two-way learning and collaborative knowledge-building for students, practitioners and academic partners alike. Most importantly, this chapter provides examples of the close coupling of practice and the theorization of practice that fosters participants’ capacity for critical thinking.

This chapter provides evidence for the strong association that can exist between engagement with service-learning-related activities and the fostering of skills related to critical reflexivity. It interprets the orientation to service-learning as a directed experiential learning (DEL) encounter or project. Directed experiential learning (DEL) projects provide open spaces for dialogue and enquiry that encourage the critical examination of existing paradigms. A semistructured questionnaire was designed and forwarded to each participant. The OSDE approach underpinned the process. At the core of the study’s approach, both methodologically and pedagogically, were opportunities for students to reflect on and interrogate practice. Drawing on research findings from both the English and Republic of Ireland contexts, the chapter provides evidence for the strong links that can exist between engagement with directed experiential learning activities and the fostering of skills of critical reflexivity in future professional educators.

Service-Learning and Educating in Challenging Contexts explores the potential of service-learning identified as a way to integrate community service with academic study to enrich the on-going professional development of educators, especially in schools that are located in challenging contexts. This collection offers a further refinement of what typically comes under the remit of service-learning, switching the focus from the learning experience of the learner, to the educator and the deep and enriching professional learning opportunities that service-learning can offer. This approach to service-learning promotes collaborative practices amongst professional and in-service educators, and encourages an integration of theory and practice. The international contributors use their own experiences as well as current research to provide a thorough exploration of service-learning from national and international perspectives.

Based on the belief that the current curriculum was not developing necessary skills or preparing pupils adequately for their next stages of education and for future employability, this research project documents the curriculum development journey of Castle School. The castle’s special story is told in an attempt to discover how teacher practitioners experience curriculum innovation against the backdrop of an externally configured National Curriculum and system of accountability. The research focuses on an innovative curriculum model, Mission Possible (MP) and adopts an ethnographic approach incorporating the use of participatory action research. This methodology was employed in order to gain an understanding of teachers’ views, perceptions and social interactions throughout the curriculum development journey. Telling the school’s story, it reveals the accounts of teachers, pupils and other members of the school community. It analyses the issues raised by teachers and explores their interpretations and explanations in relation to their own delivery of the curriculum model. It explores the tensions and risk associated with curriculum innovation, in relation to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment alongside teacher behaviours and a readiness and capacity to innovate. During this journey, the MP approach changed the interactional dimensions within the classroom, focussing on pupil collaboration. Driven by an ideology of learning and its measurement, contradictions then occurred between what was considered to be a good lesson, what good teaching looked like and how outcomes were assessed. Teachers found that learning could not be measured in the same way, as with written outcomes, resulting in assessment and curriculum coverage difficulties and a sense of uncertainty as the roles of both teacher and pupil changed. This challenged teachers’ professional identity in terms of control and performativity as their indicators of success were placed under the microscope.  The researcher tells the story as a personal, autoethnographic account of a participative, action research project in order to present a personal narrative of the ethnography of the castle’s inhabitants. This allows for teachers’ views, perceptions and social interactions to be explored subjectively. It places the researcher as narrator of the castle’s unique seven year, collaborative curriculum development journey.  The story of Castle School’s journey will support the curriculum development of future schools in their attempts to provide the type of education which will deliver vital tools for the future, more sophisticated skills which will prepare pupils for their next stage of education and subsequently employment.

At the start of 2022, the Centre for Race, Education & Decoloniality (CRED) at Leeds Beckett University was commissioned to take a look at the work that Open Doors Education & Training (ODET) have been doing with children and young people of ethnic minority Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities, namely, Irish Traveller, Romany Gypsy and Roma.

The impact of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students has accentuated longstanding disparities in education. These structural inequalities are well documented in terms of educational outcomes and transitions between sectors. • The intersectional ways in which these disparities occur mean that BAME students and their communities are affected indirectly via the economic and employment impacts of the pandemic, but also directly through increased health inequalities • Socio-spatial circumstances (e.g. housing and ʻspaceʼ to study; supporting other family members) impact disproportionately on families experiencing poverty. Structural inequalities and their tendency to intersect with race mean that many BAME children and young people are more likely to experience these barriers to learning. These barriers project into the future and impact significantly on children and young people ʻcatching upʼ. • Despite recent claims of no evidence for institutional racism in the UK, accumulation of evidence over several decades runs counter to this assertion and has significant implications for the ways in which BAME children and young peopleʼs educational outcomes are assessed. The pandemic has highlighted the important role of teachers in student assessment, particularly teacher-based assessments. Past research suggests teachers will require greater support in addressing the possibility of unconscious bias within the processes of assessment. This will be an important consideration in relation to teaching, learning and assessment in the post-COVID recovery period and beyond.

This article uses a purposive sample of 43 Secondary school (pupils aged 11-18) teachers to explore perceptions of including children with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities in mainstream secondary Physical Education. Findings suggest that teachers’ conceptions of inclusion are based primarily around the level of participation children with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities could achieve and that this could be affected by the activity area, level of support and training opportunities avail able to them. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this research for teachers’ professional development and school organization and specific implications for the future practice of PE teachers and Teacher trainers are suggested.

New technologies for representing and communicating autoethnographies make it possible to be publically visible in new and interesting ways that weren’t possible prior to the digital revolution. An important ingredient in this process is the internet platforms that can make the digitisation of performances accessible across the world, even for short, modest creations from less experienced digital storytellers and film makers. As an illustration of the potential applications of digital technologies for ‘taking’ autoethnographic research to the ‘public,’ and making our research accessible to a wider audience we share ‘Reverberations,’ a collaborative autoethnography exploring bullying, homophobia, and other types of sexual harassment and associated feelings of shame, embarrassment and fear which often surround these topics.

Introduction Recent research with UK students in Higher Education (HE) suggests that whilst they have a prevailing interest in other cultures and recognise the benefits of working in the ‘international classroom’ their experience is not tied more widely into learning or skills acquisition and benefits are often incidental, of low yield and not contextualised. Some students also feel that it is the institutions’ responsibility to review policy, procedure and pedagogical practice to better facilitate communication between different student groups (Harrison and Peacock, 2007; Peacock and Harrison 2006; Peacock and Harrison in this volume). Arguably this process of review is well underway and at some institutions it has prompted notions of internationalisation which embrace the concept of global citizenship (Bourn in this volume; Caruana and Spurling, 2007). At the institutional level the rhetoric of global citizenship is manifest in mission statements and internationalisation strategies that trumpet internationalised, intercultural and inclusive curricula (Caruana and Spurling, 2007). However, internationalisation is not a clearly defined, absolute set of ‘best practices’ but rather a nuanced construct which is highly context specific. In other words internationalisation will manifest in different ways depending upon disciplinary perspectives, whether it is viewed from an academic or administrative stance, from an institutional, faculty or department vantage point or from staff, student , employer and other stakeholder perspectives. However, the crucial factor determining the possibilities for intercultural dialogue within the student learning experience is academics’ attitudes towards, and the ways in which they understand, the process of internationalisation (Hyland et al, 2008; Schoorman, 1999). This chapter draws on research undertaken at a UK University with graduates of the institution’s Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice and Research (PGCHEPR), the first component of a Masters level programme, compulsory for all new academic members of staff. The programme is informed by a philosophy of transformative learning and critical pedagogy that provides a counterweight to the conservative (rather than expansive), instrumental (rather than evidence-informed), common-sensical (rather than scholarly) approach to teaching and learning often encountered in the immediate practice setting (Knight, Tait and Yorke, 2006). This study shows that discussing internationalisation strategy as part of a formal programme of study or encountering it within the informal operational context of disciplinary practice are equally lacking when it comes to understanding the complexity of the internationalised curriculum and global citizenship. This probably reflects the assertion made at the start of this chapter, that internationalisation is a construct rather than a set of ‘best practices’. Internationalisation strategy is correct in anticipating a long process of evolution and development but more important is the form which the process will take. It is likely (particularly in light of Australian experience) that assigning curriculum development exclusively to individual schools and departments will not deliver the internationalised curriculum which will benefit all students. Rather institutions need to encourage the broad based cross-faculty dialogue characteristic of the PGCHEPR in shaping institutional strategy and broadening staff and students’ horizons beyond a traditional outlook based on periods of study or placement abroad. Development is likely to be iterative, if not incremental and a ‘diffusionist’ or ‘middle-out’, centrally co-ordinated and facilitated approach encompassing ‘the bringing together of faculty and students for discussion of processes…’ in the spirit of collaboration and insider perspectives characteristic of action research seems to offer more potential for authentic engagement than either of the tried and tested top-down (from senior management) or ‘bottom-up (from students) approaches to internationalising the curriculum (Campbell, 2008; Caruana and Hanstock , 2008; Chang et al, 2004).