Dr Michalis Kakos

The discussion in this paper is based on an analysis of interviews with eight Multilingual Teaching Assistants (MTAs) employed in English schools to support students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) to access the curriculum and pursue language learning. It focuses on descriptions of their roles and reflects on the pedagogies they apply and their interactions with students. The findings corroborate those from other studies, which demonstrate that MTAs assume multiple roles in schools while simultaneously maintaining a peripheral position. From this position, MTAs develop creative, individualised, and culturally relevant pedagogies (Ernst-Slavit and Wenger [2006]. “Teaching in the Margins: The Multifaceted Work and Struggles of Bilingual Paraeducators.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 37 (1): 62–82, 77). Using translanguaging in their communications with students, they describe how they develop positive personal interactions based on care, bridging home and school, and constructing pedagogical third spaces that challenge the power relations that force certain groups to marginalisation. The discussion concerns how such third spaces allow students to exercise a level of control and power, to collaborate with staff, and to co-construct hybrid cultures.The recognition and expansion of such places could be a project for inclusive education based on recognition and trust.

Grounded in the universal right to education, this article considers the collective findings of a selection of projects, conducted primarily by researchers from the SIRIUS Policy Network on Migrant Education arguing for a holistic approach to the educational inclusion of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee Students (NAMRS). The right to education demands access for all, including NAMRS, to a quality education that meets each individual’s learning needs, and supports and develops their own personal learning pathways. Moreover, a rights-based educational model should empower NAMRS to resist prescribed roles and identities, to define their own past, and liberate their visions of their futures from any constraints associated with their migration, so they can take ownership of the development of their future selves as active citizens of local, national and the global communities. The article sets out a holistic framework for an inclusive educational policy and practice that first considers, and then proposes ways to mitigate, the impact of several barriers to the attainment of this educational aim. Furthermore, the discussion explores the implications of the adoption of such a holistic model to guide educational practice, research and policy making when educating NAMRS.

The educational integration of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee (NAMR) children and youth in a host country is complex. It requires educational systems responding to their diverse needs. Some of these needs are exacerbated by NAMR young people and their families’ limited understanding of the host country’s policies, structures, and procedures. Amidst these complexities, policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders strive for guidance in developing effective interventions that are transferable across different settings. This paper builds on the good practices that were identified and exchanged between seven partnering countries from Europe and the UK in 2017–18 as part of SIRIUS network’s RefuEdu project. Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners shared good practices that were grounded in their knowledge, experience, and examples. A set of core principles and individual sets of good practices are highlighted with action steps from the contexts of Germany, Sweden and England (UK). This may assist policy makers and practitioners in comprehending the challenges and opportunities within the educational integration of NAMR children and youth. The implications are for strengthening their holistic integration alongside positive educational experiences and advancing further research.

This research note presents the key findings of a small-scale, mixed-methods international study which explored the challenges and opportunities of online schooling for the educational inclusion of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee Students (NAMRS). The study was conducted in 2022 in England, Germany and the Netherlands and the findings are based on the analysis of the experiences of NAMRS, their families and their teachers, of their engagement with online schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis reveals that the abrupt transition to online schooling exacerbated NAMRS and their families’ vulnerability to the widening digital divide in modern societies. Beyond the typical barriers faced by socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, such as limited access to technology and suitable study environments, NAMRS encounter additional challenges related to unfamiliarity with curricula, educational systems, and language barriers. Participants report that the efforts to address these barriers in the later stages of the pandemic coincided with the improvement of their educational experience and revealed some particular strengths of online education for NAMRS. The findings indicate that with appropriate preparation, online schooling has the potential to contribute to the educational inclusion of NAMRS when combined appropriately with school-based provision.

«This book is an opportunity to pay tribute to Professor Paul Cooper, whose long career in the field of young people with emotional and behavioral difficulties has made it possible to greatly influence the understanding of the difficulties of these children and the interventions that are implemented to them. I have never seen, in the same book, such a diverse collection of topics, but which nevertheless offers a very coherent and relevant whole.» (Caroline Couture, Tenured Professor, Department of Psychoeducation and Social Work, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) 　 «The originality of this book lies in bringing together a set of mature reflections by international authors on the understanding of the nature of SEBD and the challenges of equitable inclusive education in relation to students with SEBD.» (Paul Bartolo, Department of Psychology, Faculty for Social Wellbeing, University of Malta) 　 Paul Cooper dedicated his academic life researching and writing to advance theory and practice to nurture and enhance the wellbeing of marginalised and disadvantaged children, at a time when such children were not only voiceless and disenfranchised but frequently at the receiving end of punitive and exclusionary practices. In this book various colleagues share their work and insights into how Paul Cooper’s pioneering work was instrumental in advancing the field they were working on and inspired them to further extend and develop the area themselves through their research and publications. Social, emotional and behaviour difficulties, the perspectives of students, nurture groups, the biopsychosocial perspective to special educational needs and disability, the wellbeing of students, especially those most marginalised, these have become keywords endemically attached to Paul Cooper.

This chapter charts the evolution of a biopsychosocial approach to SEBD and emphasizes the synthesizing nature of this approach in relation to earlier models for understanding and dealing with SEBD.

This paper draws on a range of theoretical perspectives on the construction of new teachers’ professional identity. It focuses particularly on the impact of the development in many national education systems of a performative culture of the management and regulation of teachers’ work. Whilst the role of interactions with professional colleagues and school managers in the performative school has been extensively researched, less attention has been paid to new teachers’ interactions with students. This paper highlights the need for further research focusing on the process of identity co-construction with students. A key theoretical concept employed is that of liminality, the space within which identities are in transition as teachers adjust to the culture of a new professional workplace, and the nature of the engagement of new teachers, or teachers who change schools, with students. The authors argue that an investigation into the processes of this co-construction of identity offers scope for new insights into the extent to which teachers might construct either a teacher identity at odds with their personal and professional values, or a more ‘authentic’ identity that counters performative discourses. These insights will in turn add to our understanding of the complex range of factors impacting on teacher resilience and motivation.

The multidimensional crisis in Greece has influenced relations between the native population and the large number of ethnic, national, cultural and religious minorities currently residing in the country. Poverty, intolerance and an increase in political extremism contribute to a grim illustration of the position of minority groups in Greece. Convinced there is a role for education in responding to this social fragmentation, and in actively supporting the development of intercultural understanding, this paper evaluates the Greek State’s approach to, understanding of, and expectations in reference to overcoming divisions in society. Focusing particularly on the role of education in the development of students’ intercultural citizenship and identity, the study analysed four key documents outlining official strategies for the inclusion of minorities and the programme designed for Citizenship education. Our analysis suggests that although attempts have and are being made to improve intercultural communication, underlying these attempts is the problematic understanding underpinning Greek identity, which suggests Greece is an ethnically homogenous, mono-cultural society. The distinction between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ which is integrated into Citizenship and intercultural education programmes could act as a counter-force to tolerance, preventing the attainment of the objectives set out in these programmes.

In this paper the authors explore the phenomena of positive attitudes towards negative affect among young adolescent as reflected in the appearance and behaviours of ‘radical peer crowds’, such as Punks, Goths and Emos. The authors consider the significance of this in relation to the history of melancholy and theories of identity formation

The term ‘biopsychosocial’ is often considered to have originated in the later 1970s in work of Engel (1977, 1980), who argued for a ‘new paradigm’ in medicine that went beyond a purely biomedical approach to take account of the role of psychological and social factors in physical health. The approach has been developed to apply to a wide range of issues. For example, it has been used to develop understanding of interactions between psychological stress and physiological factors in the causes and management of physical illness, such as cancer, AIDS, and general pain management (Gatchel et al. 2007). The biopsychosocial approach has also been applied to psychological therapies (Stern 2002) and social work approaches (Corcoran and Walsh 2009; Wong 2006) in relation to mental health. It has also played a significant role in furthering understandings of the ageing process (Whitbourne 2005). In the broad area of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) among children and young people, the biopsychosocial approach can be seen at work as a underpinning to multi-systemic therapy (MST) (Henggeler et al. 1996; Henggeler et al. 1997), which has been found to be a highly effective multi-agency and multi-modal intervention for problems such as conduct disorder in older adolescents (Kazdin 2002).

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnography and Education.

This is the presentation of the results from an interactionist ethnographic study which examines the implementation of citizenship education in an English urban secondary school through an analysis of the interactions between students and teachers. It reports students’ and teachers’ claims that their interaction is guided by the expectations and the priorities set by a group of stakeholders (government, media, parents, management team) who are in position to influence the interaction between teachers and students although they are only occasionally present when this interaction takes place. Because of this invisible presence, this group is described in the paper as the ‘invisible audience’. The study argues that regardless of their scepticism towards the role of the ‘invisible audience’, teachers and students seem to actively support and respond to the audience’s expectations when they interact with each other. The study argues that this appears to be a result of a process which allows this interaction to function as a process of conformist (re)construction of roles though the construction of a new subjectivity in education. The participants in the study recognise that a consequence of the above is that their roles suffer from lack of humanity and flexibility, both of which are largely considered as essential elements of democratic citizenship education. In this context, the study suggests that the implementation of citizenship education is a cause of conflict of expectations attached to schools and of significant stress and frustration to the school community. The paper claims that this is a conflict between the school’s discourse as this is formed in the context of performativity and the discourse supported by citizenship education. Furthermore, it claims that the revolution in the English political culture advocated by Prof. Crick should have started with the establishment of an educational discourse more hospitable to citizenship education. citizenship education might have entered schools as a Trojan horse aiming to bring change, but ten years later, Troy is yet to fall.

The range of empirically based evidence on interventions for meeting the needs of students with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) in mainstream schools is rich and varied. This paper is based on an international literature search and review of studies that were published between 1980 and 2012. Particular attention is given to evidence that define the qualities and skills of effective teachers and the value of behavioural and cognitive behavioural interventions.

From existing research, we know segregation in poverty-intensive and immigrant-dense suburban spaces cannot be easily dissociated from educational inequality and exclusion. Our aim in this paper is to explore the link between urban segregation, social deprivation, migration and education by bringing together the findings from several ethnographic studies conducted in Europe. The starting point for our discussion is the findings from one meta-ethnogaphy which examined youth experiences of territorial stigmatisation, ethnification of poverty and educational inequality in economically challenged residential areas in Nordic cities. Our analysis has attempted to synthesise the findings from that study with those from ethnographies conducted in England and Germany. Results show how formal education is not only failing to contribute to the disruption of the processes which sustain social segregation, poverty and territorial stigmatisation but it is itself subjected to those. We argue that the value of education when this is conceptualised as commodity and promoted in the context of a market economy cannot but be at least partially dependent upon the inequality in its provision.

This paper reflects upon our experience gained from engagement in a meta-ethnography of two studies on interactions between teachers and students in schools situated in England and Germany. Starting with a short overview of Noblit and Hare’s (1998) conceptualisation of the method, the paper outlines the meta-ethnography we undertook especially focussing on the process of translation. We present the findings of our study which show teachers’ understanding of the pastoral aspect of their role as incompatible with demands related to their performance and to those associated with their institutional responsibilities. We show also how attempts to develop personalised interactions with students may reinforce students’ vulnerability. Our final discussion contributes our own deliberations about the potentials and challenges of the method, especially in relation to the role of the ethnographers and their relationship to the meta-ethnographic field.

Scholarly discussions about performativity in education have implied or explicitly suggest that performativity has been imposed upon teachers and educational communities as an external force which ‘alienates who they are’ (Ball, 2003: 215). This chapter presents the findings from a case study of an English secondary school which set out to examine the effects of performativity on the interaction between teachers and students and on the incorporation of democratic, participatory pedagogies which schools have been encouraged to adopt as appropriate for the implementation of the citizenship education curriculum. The findings suggest that the regulatory framework currently monitoring schools’ and teachers’ performance has led to the interaction between students and teachers operating in the shadow of an invisible audience which scripts the objectives and restricts the content of this interaction. This seems to be detrimental for the incorporation of practices and of content which are of high educational value but do not compliment directly the attainment of these objectives. However, I will suggest that the depersonalisation of this interaction which contributes to the alienation of teachers from their role and which is attributed to performativity may be an inherent trait of schooling. Performativity may be what currently occupies the vacuum generated because of this depersonalisation.

From the Brexit debate to the Covid-19 pandemic, public service news sources, such as the BBC, have been criticised for platforming extreme opinions with the rationale of balancing public debate. The most extreme examples of the imperative for ‘neutrality’ come from some southern American states, where school boards have instructed teachers using books about the Holocaust to also provide access to material with an ‘opposing’ perspective. In the UK, the new Political Impartiality in Schools guidance published by the Department for Education in February singles out youth-led activism under the Black Lives Matter banner, and criticism of Empire, as being contentious and in need of ‘balancing’ with opposing views. Straying into teaching about solutions to, rather than basic scientific facts about, climate change is said to be ‘political’ and therefore inappropriate and teachers ‘should avoid expressing their own personal political views to pupils unless they are confident this will not amount to promoting that view to pupils’. How then are schools expected to negotiate discussion of an ongoing war in Europe, which cannot be depoliticised? Even describing it as a ‘war’ is taking a side, since the Russian government refuses this description. A purely humanitarian response, let alone a show of blue and yellow solidarity, would offend the neutrality imperative as it is modelled for schools. How might young people develop their ideas about citizenship as they seek to reconcile the immediacy of knowledge sources they consume and participate in outside school with the supposed political vacuum of the classroom?

Community education sustains the academic trajectories of many refugee and migrant learners, yet this essential work is often under-recognised within the formal frameworks of school-family partnership agendas. This disconnect creates a cycle of misrecognition, eroded trust, and what this study terms “parallel working”: schools, families, and community groups strive to provide support but do so in disconnected silos. Drawing on a Constructivist Grounded Theory study with families, students, school staff, and community groups in Northern England, this article theorises community actors as “structural mediators” who repair trust but whose support remains unevenly distributed, creating a “lottery of opportunity”. In response, this article introduces the Partnership Empowerment Model (PEM), a model for empowerment and co-design. The PEM reframes engagement as a four-way partnership between the school, the family, community organisations, and the students themselves. Guided by the core principles of recognition, reciprocity, and trust, the model is designed to formalise collaboration, reduce stress on teachers, and integrate structural mediators into a cohesive educational ecosystem. By moving from parallel working to shared responsibility, the PEM offers a pathway to improve academic access and outcomes in diverse contexts.