Conference Agenda

Contemporary societies are facing new and persisting challenges. Lack of trust in democratic processes, increased globalization, migration, economic inequalities, climate change, populism and the rise of illiberal democracies are among the most relevant issues that are shifting the concept of citizenship. This in turn implies changes to the ways citizenship education is conceived and the re-evaluation of its objectives and contents as well as the values and attitudes within traditional notions of nation-state-defined citizenship and global perspectives (Osler & Starkey, 2005; Alviar-Martin, 2018).

In the last decades, citizenship education has been the object of renewed attention at both national and international levels, considered as a means for providing students with the knowledge, awareness and skills to develop a deeper understanding of current issues and to act responsibly in contemporary societies (Eurydice, 2017). Promoting citizenship education at school has been an enduring aim of the educational policies European Union (European Parliament 2022, and the Council, 2006, 2018), with active citizenship recognized as one of the key areas that need further development in the education and training systems across Member States to achieve the European Education Area by 2025 (Council of the European Union, 2021). This is further exemplified by the work carried out by the Council of Europe, namely the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018).

The research in the field of citizenship education has continued to grow in academia and research centres and institutions, for example how citizenship values are taught across subject areas, philosophical bases for citizenship education, digital citizenship education, global citizenship education and its contestations, environmental education and action-competencies, and the challenges related to neutrality and impartiality in learning opportunities and teaching related to controversial issues.

In this space, the IEA (International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement) International Civics and Citizenship Study (ICCS) is investigating the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens. As a curriculum-oriented study, ICCS gathers data on system, school and classroom-level antecedents, processes, and outcomes of citizenship education, including students’ knowledge and understanding, attitudes and engagement (Schulz et al., 2016; Schulz et al., 2018). ICCS 2022 is the third cycle of the study, involved 22 countries and two benchmarking participants - most of these from Europe – and takes recent developments and challenges into consideration, e.g. sustainability, engagement through digital technologies, diversity, views of the political system, and global citizenship notions (Schulz et al., 2022). Results will be released in November of 2023 and are expected to be discussed in depth at ECER 2024.

At a more global level, global citizenship education and education for sustainable development have received increased attention in the academic and political discourse, related especially to Target 4.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015). Within Europe, the recently adopted Dublin Declaration (Global Education Network Europe, 2022) links directly, yet goes well beyond, these advocacy initiatives.

The panel aims to discuss research developments in the area of civic and citizenship education and its desiderata, tackling issues related to its monitoring and evaluation, global influences, as well as European and national perspectives on research for policy and practice (e.g. Malak-Minkiewicz & Torney-Purta, 2021). It convenes experts on the importance of civic and citizenship education in democratically troublesome times and the study’s necessary evolution for the next cycle in 2027, examples of fruitful secondary analyses and interesting findings, and the way that research can support the monitoring of SDG thematic indicator 4.7. Importantly, the EERA’s mission in this space will be explored to ultimately present the motivation and intention to originate a new citizenship education research network within EERA.

Innovation in Teacher Professional Learning in Europe Research, Policy and Practice is a book due to be published by Routledge in 2023, providing an overview of teacher professional learning and development in 14 European countries. The authors participating in this symposium will provide an insight into current policy and practice relating to PLD in their countries. Taken together, the three symposia in this series will enable an up-to-date commentary on the state of PLD in Europe.

During recent decades we can track a path going from teacher education as In-service training (INSET) to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to Professional Learning and Development (Ostinelli and Crescentini, 2021). The first is usually conceived as an occasional complement to initial teacher education; the second is a continuing process typified by transmissive approaches (Timperley, 2011); the third, finally, includes learning under the form of evolutionary processes capable of generating professional expertise and mastery (Dreyfus and Dreyfuss, 2008), focusing on the teacher as an individual professional but forming part of a network of professional learners capable of providing adequate answers to the rapid and sudden changes affecting contemporary schooling.

Teacher professional learning in every country analysed here has been classified as pertaining to one or other of these categories. However, each school system also has its particularities, both in defining its approach to teacher professional learning and from a cultural/structural point of view. Moreover, the countries participating in this study are also different in terms of population, going from small nations like Wales to larger ones such as France or Italy.

The information here proposed can give a good background for future deepening and more precise studies on various issues concerning teacher professional learning. Questions of relevance for all the countries include the increasing prominence of informal professional learning, the incentives for participating in teacher professional development, (including leadership development (Jones 2022) and how these may be aligned with needs, conditions and resources, and the issue of compulsoriness, in particular, the balance between prescription and option. Coaching (Kise, 2017), mentoring (Geeraerts et al., 2015) and professional learning networks (Handscomb and Brown, 2022) are associated practices that also deserve attention. Another important issue is how to balance and integrate in a lifewide-oriented organized approach what is performed autonomously and informally by teachers as professionals who take responsibility for their own learning.

The critical inquiry proposed here was intended as an exploration of how conceptualizations of learning, responsibility and change have been articulated through the pandemic crisis. Issues framing teachers’ professional learning and development, along with the dynamics of roles and architectures of temporality shaping the meaning-making and the policy-making processes, were rendered visible. In discussing their normative implications for teachers’ professional learning and development (PLD), I proposed taking a more complex view (Strom, Mills and Abrams, 2021) of the multiplicity of co-evolving conditions and factors explaining the dynamics of change during crisis (Rikowski, 2020; Sayed et al., 2021). This meant looking for historical, systemic, structural, political and cultural connections with the context of continuing professional development in Romania. A number of 66 policy documents and policy statements issued by government actors, NGOs, experts (local members of the academic or non-academic community), stakeholders (professional bodies, trade unions, etc.) and market actors have been sampled for analysis. Analytically, positions theory (Davies & Harré, 1990) and critical frame analysis (hereafter, CFA) (Dombos et al, 2012) have been employed to look at how issues of teachers’ professional learning and development have been articulated in the education policy debates in Romania between March 2020 and June 2021. The analysis resulted in unpacking conceptual and processual factors constraining innovative approaches to teachers’ PLD that the pandemic crisis might have harboured. Some of these constraints have systemic and structural roots. Others are epistemic and could remain concealed, should the inquiry abide by linear models of framing the research design, as Kennedy (2016) warns. The greater risk associated with linear approaches to conceptualizing learning, responsibility and change through crisis, rests with hindering the ethical and political responsibilities conjoined with innovating teachers’ PLD. The pandemic crisis has provided great opportunities to see that innovating the teachers’ professional learning is not only about asking what or how, but also by whom and towards which horizon of possibilities. These questions demand that we recognize the complex multitude of factors and agencies cutting into post-pandemic innovative approaches to PLD, and that we place this recognition more in service of developing solidarity and socially just educational practices, than in serving neoliberal agendas of performativity, progress and competitiveness.

Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the theory of social behaviour, 20(1), 43-63. Dombos T, Krizsan A, Verloo M, Zentai V (2012) Critical Frame Analysis: A Comparative Methodology for the QUING Project. Working Paper Series, Center for Policy Studies. Central European University. Hungary: Budapest. http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00006845/01/cps-working-paper-critical-frame-analysis-quing-2012.pdf [downloaded April 2020] Kennedy, M.M. (2016) How does professional development improve teaching?, Review of Educational Research, 20 (10), pp. 1-36. DOI: 10.3102/0034654315626800 Rikowski, G (2020). Crisis: critical reflections on the language of neoliberalism in education. Routledge. Strom, K., Mills, T. and Abrams, L (2021) Illuminating a continuum of complex perspectives in teacher development, Professional Development in Education, 47 (2-3), pp.199-208, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2021.1901005 Sayed, Yusuf, Cooper, Adam, & John, Vaughn M.. (2021). Crises and disruptions: Educational reflections, (re)imaginings, and (re)vitalization. Journal of Education (University of KwaZulu-Natal), (84), pp. 9-30. https://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i84a01

This paper analyses policy and practice related to teachers’ professional learning (PL) in the Republic of Ireland (RoI). Like other European contexts, Ireland developed a national framework (called Cosán = pathway) for teachers’ PL. The Teaching Council of Ireland (2016) developed Cosán in consultation with teachers and other key stakeholders. While the framework acknowledges the importance of teachers as learners (Evans, 2014) and highlights the centrality of PL in teacher professionalism (Kennedy, 2014), it was also initially linked to teacher registration with the Teaching Council as is the case with the professional update in Scotland (General Teaching Council Scotland, 2014). Only teachers registered with the Teaching Council can teach in state-recognised schools. However, the idea of mandatory engagement with PL for registration was met with resistance. While the Teaching Council argues teachers have a responsibility to engage in PL , they are questioning the value of making PL mandatory. As highlighted by the OECD (2009) there is a fine line between professional responsibility and accountability with the latter being perceived as managerialism. This paper will explore the policy context and rationale for the development of Cosán before tracing its journey through the consultative process with teachers which was a unique approach in the context of the Irish policy landscape. Challenges to enactment (Bell and Stevenson, 2015) will also be explored including the socio-political environment of teacher PL, governance and strategic direction, mandatory PL , and developing a strategic approach to teachers’ PL across all education stakeholders. Finally, this chapter will propose a way forward for the enactment of Cosán emphasising the importance of a common understanding of PL, contexts and considerations for PL, and leadership for PL at the macro, meso and micro levels of the system.

Evans, L. (2014). Leadership for professional development and learning: enhancing our understanding of how teachers develop. Cambridge Journal of Education, 44(2),179-198 General Teaching Council for Scotland (2014). Professional update. Available at: https://www.gtcs.org.uk/professional-update/professional-update.aspx# Last accessed (4, May 2021). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2009). Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/berlin/43541636.pdf. Last accessed (4, May 2021). Kennedy, A. (2014). Models of Continuing Professional Development: a framework for analysis. Professional Development in Education, 40(3), 336-351 King, F., and Holland, E. (2022) A transformative professional learning meta-model to support leadership learning and growth of early career teachers. International Journal of Leadership in Education, DOI: 10.1080/13603124.2022.2037021 Teaching Council (2016b). Cosán: Framework for Teachers’ Learning. Maynooth, Ireland: Teaching Council. Teaching Council (2018). Common Ground in a Crowded Space. Maynooth, Ireland: Teaching Council.

In France, teachers’ continuing in-service education, as currently designated (formation continue in French) has been the subject of numerous national and international studies, research and reports which regularly and consistently highlight its deficits (Cour des Comptes, 2017; IGEN, 2017). A long-standing top-down conception of in-service teacher training is part of a uniform vision of the educational system that has long neglected a genuine diagnosis of needs and an engineering approach that would enable the implementation of training activities that are well thought out and geared to specific educational contexts. In accordance with our previously published article (Malet, 2021 & 2023; Ostinelli and Crescentini, 2021) France shows a centralistic influence that contributes the use of innovative forms of PL testifies to the fact that some innovation at least starts to appear in the system. Yet, a programmatic reorientation of in-service training policy from the perspective of steering training activities centred on the professional development of teachers is underway in France. It is inspired, often explicitly, by foreign examples of the promotion of an human resource management policy governed by the concept of CPD for teachers. It is driven by a concern to implement a genuine human resources management policy, which is lacking in the French education system, and which is likely to increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession and the prospects for career and professional mobility in the course of employment, and to restore the image of the profession and the motivation of serving staff and their commitment to a lifelong learning approach.

Cour des comptes (2017). Gérer les enseignants autrement : une réforme qui reste à faire. Paris : Ministère de l’Education Nationale. IGEN – IGAENR (General Inspection of the French Department of Education) (2017). Rapport n° 2017-037, L’évaluation sur la politique publique de formation continue du premier degré, June 2017. Malet R. (ed.) (2021). De la formation continue au développement professionnel des personnels d’éducation. Situation nationale, comparaisons internationales, état des recherches. Paris : Conseil National d’Evaluation des Systèmes Scolaires (CNESCO). Malet R. (forthcoming). Teachers’ Continuing professional Development in France. A Systemic Transformation in Progress. In Ken Jones, Giorgio Ostinelli, Alberto Crescentini (Eds). Innovation in Teacher Professional Learning: Research, Policy.and Practice in Europe. Routledge. Ostinelli G., Crescentini A. (2021). Policy, culture and practice in teacher professional development in five European countries. A comparative analysis, Professional Development in Education, 1-17.

The current debate on how a national or local institution can implement teacher professional learning (PL) and development has resulted in significant shifts in the conceptualization, design, and delivery of continuing professional development (CPD) programs. Despite the specific policies and models adopted at the national or school level, CPD is one of the critical issues of the European Education Area (EEA) strategic framework (Council Resolution 2021/C 66/01). The EEA framework gives a platform of shared European initiatives, which underlie the need to promote CPD opportunities for a good quality of teaching and learning. Teachers’ professional quality directly impacts the educational outcomes of all students; consequently, there is a relevant demand for continuous development. Given the complexity of this policy and research scenario, we can assume that a CPD plan, at the school or system level, can help in understanding how students’ educational outcomes relate with teachers’ PL (Earle & Bianchi, 2021). CPD is not the current label for teacher PL in Italy, where it is called “continuing teacher education” (CTE). The CTE is implemented through a three-year national plan that combines school and teachers’ needs with national priorities (MIUR, 2016; 2017). It represents a) an educational policy challenge - one of the weakest points of the educational system - (Foschi, 2021); b) a teachers’ need, and a spending priority of significant weight (OECD, 2019). The proposal’s primary focus is to figure out which indicators, literature-based categories, and criteria of professional learning were considered during the design, implementation, and evaluation of teacher PL in Italy. If country adopts the concept of PL, it is necessary to examine those policies, organizational models, and practices which have put teachers’ learning needs at the core of school improvement (Korthagen, 2017; Cirkony et al., 2021). The national CTE model could fail if poorly informed by current literature on teacher education and professional development (Kennedy, 2019). For that reason, the paper suggests a set of literature-based indicators that could help in understanding the Italian CTE policy at a large-scale policy level and at local professional development initiatives: how much time is needed to foster teachers’ professional changes? How to learn about teachers’ learning? How to design studies and CPD policies to promote teachers’ PL? How can we provide guidance to improve teachers’ practice and enrich their thinking about teaching? How to understand the changes in student learning due to teachers’ participation in CPD activities?

Cirkony, C., Rickinson, M., Walsh, L., Gleeson, J., Salisbury, M., Cutler, B., Berry, M. & Smith, K. (2021). Beyond effective approaches: A rapid review response to designing professional learning. Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2021.1973075. Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030) 2021/C 66/01. (2021). Official Journal, C 66, 1-21. Earle, S. & Bianchi, L. (2021). What role can professional learning frameworks play in developing teacher agency in subject leadership in primary science? Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2021.1942142. Foschi, L. C., (2021). Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development in Italy: An analysis of the results of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Italian Journal of Educational Research, 27, 52-64. Korthagen, F. (2017). Inconvenient truths about teacher learning: Towards professional development 3.0. Teachers and Teaching, 23 (4), 387–405. Kennedy, M.M. (2019). How we learn about teacher learning. Review of Research in Education, 43(1), 138–162. MIUR (2016). Piano per la formazione dei docenti, 2016-19. Roma: MIUR. MIUR (2017). Orientamenti concernenti il Piano Triennale dell’Offerta Formativa. Roma: MIUR. OECD (2019). TALIS 2018 Results (Volume I): Teachers and School Leaders as Lifelong Learners. TALIS. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Changes and challenges in, and expectations of society call for ongoing professional development of teachers. However, in many schools this cannot be taken for granted (Burner, 2018; OECD, 2020, Timperley & Parr, 2005). Many governmental, local or institutional policies aimed at stimulating teachers’ professional developmenthave a limited impact, resulting in professional development that for many teachers depends on unconscious, fragmented, informal and unplanned learning activities (Korthagen, 2017; Koffeman, 2021; OECD, 2019).

To reach a deeper understanding of the causes and complexities of this problem, casual loop diagrams (Salmon et al, 2022) can be a helpful tool, as they visualize how different elements and processes in an organisation are interrelated and either strengthen of weaken one another. Causal loop diagrams originate from the field of system thinking where they are used to understand wicked problems in complex systems (Bore & Wright, 2009; Groff, 2013; Vermaak, 2016). Causal loop diagrams can illustrate how elements like the structure of the profession and of schools, cultures in schools, collegial dynamics, etc are interconnected and can reinforce one another in either positive or negative ways.

From our observations in schools and from many discussions with teachers and school leaders, we developed causal loop diagrams that evolve around teacher professional learning, and we validated these in the literature. Our next step was to validate the causal loop diagrams in practices in schools through focus group discussions in a variety of schools and across school sectors.

The resulting causal loop diagrams illustrate what the key elements in school structures and school culture are and can how these elements and structures are interrelated. While the diagrams illustrate the complexity of the process of professional development in schools, at the same time the visual representations of the causal loop diagrams can support teachers and schools to identify patterns that hinder a systemic approach for ongoing professional development, thus strengthening awareness and opening up opportunities for addressing these patterns in schools.

Recognizing social and cultural diversity in educational research requires a shift from perceiving phenomena as simple linear processes to complex and unique assemblages of diverse actors (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). For example, the concept of intersectionality—that interacting sociocultural factors shape identity and experiences—reflects complexity (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). If teachers are to support students’ complex, intersectional identities they must learn to see and accept this complexity rather than generalize students by gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or other characteristics. In other words, shifting perspectives towards complexity enables space for diversity. In this paper, I describe a case study of teacher professional development (PD) that highlights the difficulties teachers have in perceiving and accepting a specific aspect of complexity: indeterminacy. The findings have implications for the skills and support teachers need to be successful in diverse classrooms.

In the study presented here, I considered interactions with complexity from a design lens. As a designer, a teacher learns and practices in a classroom amidst complex nested systems. Design calls for seeing beyond traditional, linear practice, experimenting with new approaches, and adjusting those approaches in response to feedback.

Theoretical Background

Scholars have called for considering teaching practice from a complexity lens (e.g., Clarke & Dempster, 2020; Sherman & Teemant, 2021; Strom & Viesca, 2021). Instead of simplifying teaching practice in an effort to find “best practices” or implement an intervention “with fidelity,” complexity demands a recognition of the multitude of factors that interact and affect teaching and learning. Rather than standardizing practice to serve the majority, complexity highlights difference, including working with intersectional identities of teachers and students (Warr & Wakefield, 2022). Working effectively amidst complexity requires accepting that it is impossible to obtain complete information on a situation and that there is no “right solution” or “right action” to take: the situation is “indeterminate” (Buchanan, 1992). Design hinges on this indeterminacy.

Many scholars have turned to design as a way to frame the type of learning and practice teachers are asked to engage in (see Warr & Mishra, 2021). Designers thrive in complexity because of the responsive nature of their work; a designer develops their practice in response to a particular situation, adapting as it changes (Schön, 1983). They operate in complexity through cycles of action and reflection which Donald Schön described as “reflection-in-action.” Designers “construct a theory of a unique case” (Schön, 1983, p. 68) and place the theory on the situation, beginning a “conversation with the situation”. The situation consists of “a system of actants in interaction that is experienced by the subject as a unique and inseparable whole” (Clarà, 2013, p. 119) akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) assemblage. As a system of agentic entities, the situation “talks back” to the designer, providing feedback that informs future moves. This type of experimentation becomes a kind of inquiry where thinking, doing, and learning come together. A similar perspective can be seen in Jahnke’s (2011, 2013) critical hermeneutics, where design is seen as an act of interpretation and meaning making. Jahnke’s view emphasizes the dynamic relationship between the designer and the situation as well as a consideration of how the designer is changed in the process.

This contribution presents a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design (Creswell & Clark, 2017) focused on training conditions to support teacher capacity for assessing, in both a descriptive and formative approach, student's learning outcomes as a way to enhance professional development.In recent decades, researchers have shown an increased interest in professional development (Kennedy, 2016); most recently, several reviews have been written and several meta-analyses (Kennedy, 2016; Sims et al. 2021;) have been conducted in an effort to identify the ideal conditions for effective professional development (PD) (Kennedy, 2016a; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012) and to clearly define the term "professional development", which is often used as an umbrella term to refer to any opportunities that serve to enhance teachers' knowledge. In this contribution, PD specifically refers to a “structured, facilitated activity for teachers intended to increase their teaching ability” (Sims, 2021). This definition allows us to include a wide range of skills and abilities, but at the same time is useful in its exclusion of PD activities and programmes consisting of mere updates for teachers on general topics.

Results of the meta-analyses reveal that several design features (Kennedy, 2016) and factors (Sims et al., 2021) characterize effective PD and that these can be divided into two main categories: external factors, namely features established before the intervention (content knowledge; program intensity and length; role of the instructor; mandatory/voluntary participation; online/presential); b) internal factors, namely features developed during the intervention (feedback; goal setting; self-monitoring).

This contribution seeks to place the teacher's ability to collect educational evidence (firstly, to make student’s learning visible; secondly, to analyze and assess it) at the center of PD, starting from the consideration of the aforementioned factors in designing a formative intervention. The hypothesis, to be explored in this contribution through an empirical study based on the evaluation of the formative impact of a training program, is consistent with Guskey’s model of teacher change (2002) and the idea that professional change primarily occurs as the result of gaining evidence of students’ learning rather than as the result of a change in teachers’ attitudes and beliefs. The feedback, in the form of an analysis of the students' learning process, that teachers receive on their educational practices is intended here to be an effective motivator toward PD. In continuity with Guskey's theory, the purpose of this contribution is to provide a qualitative exploration of the formative impact of a training program focused on supporting the teacher’s capacity for making students’ learning visible. In particular, the study aims to identify a) the set of professional skills enhanced through the training program as perceived by teachers; b) the training program methodologies and conditions that best foster the development of these skills.

The skills we are considering belong to the area of teacher professionalization, identified as “pedagogical-didactic,” and relate to the ability to design activities consistent, as well as the gathering and analysis of evidence of learning outcomes, the formative feedback provided to students. Most of these skills can be associated with the professional profile of the so-called “teacher-as-researcher”. This connection between PD and the definition of teacher as researcher relies on the idea that teacher professionalization is dependent on the teachers ability to a) adopt an inquiry-based approach to his or her own teaching and, b) use this approach to observe and to collect data on the educational process and then to reflect on it.

The paper presents a study on Swiss teachers' workplace learning which explores workspace learning processes of experienced teachers. More specifically, a qualitative research approach is used to explore how teachers' professional learning occurs in practice, triggered by a continuous professional development program.

Workplace learning of teachers is seen as learning embedded in daily classroom activities in order to cope with the demands. Both formal and job-embedded workplace learning are considered (Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020). The latter has become more important in a knowledge-based society that is constantly changing due to technological and societal developments (Lecat et al., 2020). Research on workplace learning is a rather young field that has expanded considerably since the 1990s due to the changes in work and is now broadly based and interdisciplinary. Initially more at home in workplace education (Dehnbostel, 2018), there have been an increasing number of studies on teachers' workplace learning in recent years (X. Huang & Lai, 2020). An important topic is the distinction between formal and informal learning (L. Huang & Liew, 2021). The consensus is that both forms play an important role, with Workplace Learning focusing on informal learning (Tynjälä, 2008). Studies in the school field have become more numerous in the last decade. They refer, for example, to learning activities and learning outcomes of usually experienced teachers as well as to conditions that promote learning in the work process (e.g. Louws et al., 2017)). A central aspect of the debate on teachers' workplace learning is the question of how to further develop teachers' professional competences in a sustainable way, with much attention being paid to the link between formal and informal learning (Geeraerts et al., 2018).

The continuous professional development program mentioned is a comprehensive and practice-based procedure for data-supported teaching development called STEEV (simultaneously teaching and evaluation that is effective and visible; in german: LUUISE) (Beywl & Odermatt, 2019). STTEV draws on research on teaching (e.g. Helmke & Weinert, 2021) and further education (e.g. Lipowsky & Rzejak, 2021). In addition, it fosters "evaluative thinking" (Dunn & Hattie, 2021): teachers plan ahead thinking about how they can check and also pro-mote the success of their teaching by means of own data collections. The change of perspective, "seeing through the eyes of the learners" (Hattie, 2009), is crucial: Questionnaire results are made visible to everyone in the class as soon as possible. The STEEV process strengthens the expertise of teachers by supporting them to address pedagogical challenges effectively and to achieve high teaching goals. STEEV is applicable to all subjects at all levels of education. Specific features of the programme are the high practical orientation and the close support of the participants by coaches during the planning of a data-based teaching intervention, the implementation in the classroom, which usually lasts several weeks, and the collegial reflection.

The presentation is based on (a selection of) the results of a doctoral research study that explored the professional development and learning of teachers working in Hungarian VET schools and the related individual and organisational factors (Bükki, 2022). The importance of teacher continuous professional development is confirmed by research that showed an important link between student achievement and the quality of teaching (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, Scheerens, 2010, Chetty et al, 2014). While there is a rich literature on this topic regarding teachers working in general education, we still know relatively little about those who work in vocational education and training (VET, Orr, 2019, Broad, 2019), and there was particularly little previous research on this topic in Hungary.

The doctoral research studied teacher professional development as participation in professional learning activities (PLAs). The theoretical framework was built on situational learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991, Wenger, 1998) and Billett’s (2002) “synthesising” interpretation, which defined workplace learning as participation in any activity that is work-related and potentially leads to cognitive and/or behavioural change, regardless of its form (formal, non-formal or informal). The categorisation of PLAs and the selection of individual and organisational factors to be studied were based on the literature of workplace learning in general (Tynjälä, 2008, 2013, Fuller & Unwin, 2004) and of (informal) teacher learning in particular (Kwakman, 2003; Hoekstra et al., 2007, 2009a, 2009b; Meirink et al., 2007, 2009a, 2009b; Kyndt et al., 2016, Opfer et al., 2010, 2011, Louws et al., 2017). This framework was supplemented by incorporating the special, unique features of vocational teachers’ professional development and learning identified in prior research. Most importantly, it built on the concept of dual identity and dual professionalism. In many countries, vocational teachers typically come from the industry but even after they start teaching, they often retain and value their original vocational identity as it provides them with the expertise and credibility needed to teach and socialise students into professional norms and practices (Robson, 1998), and this also shapes their understanding and practice of professional development (Orr, 2019). Furthermore, studies suggest that only continuous boundary crossing between the communities of practice of VET and of the vocation taught can guarantee vocational teachers’ up-to-date professional knowledge and the appropriate quality of vocational pedagogical practice (Broad, 2019, Andersson & Köpsén, 2015, 2019). However, it is not easy to maintain this dual identity and practice dual professionalism, and, depending on local policy measures as well as organisational conditions, maintaining industrial currency or developing pedagogical-methodological competences may be prioritised by VET teachers themselves or primarily expected and supported by their school or the state (Robson, 1998, Fejes & Köpsén, 2014, Broad, 2016, Schmidt, 2019, Tyler & Dymock, 2019).

The doctoral research study aimed to explore the practice and views of Hungarian VET teachers’ professional development and learning and the related unique, VET-specific individual and organisational factors, trying also to find the similarities and differences compared to findings of previous research conducted in other countries, in often very different national contexts. The current presentation is based on an analysis that aims to answer the following three research questions:

Q1: What types of professional learning activities (PLAs) do vocational teachers and trainers working in Hungarian VET schools participate in and which PLAs do they value most? Are participation and value-beliefs influenced by the length of vocational work and of teaching experience?

Q2: How do they understand the concept of teacher continuous professional development and does this reflect dual identities?

Q3: What do they perceive as the most significant barriers to their professional development?

In this study, we explore the topic: How can teacher specialists in Building and Construction strengthen their role as teacher specialists at their school through an experience-based master's degree?

Teacher specialist for vocational education is a position that has been tested for five years in Norwegian schools, and the scheme has drawn inspiration and knowledge from several other countries that have similar functions in their schools. In parallel with the piloting of the function, an experience-based master's degree for teacher specialists has also been offered. This education has been structured around three thematic pillars: vocational subjects, vocational didactics, and school development/organizational development. The education has been developed and carried out by an interdisciplinary team at the university.

The teacher specialists contribute to school development at their school and within their subject discipline. By being professionally updated on theory, research and new teaching methods, the intention is that they should be able to function as a local resource that builds a bridge between theory and practice, and between the management and other teachers at the school (Kringstad & Lønnum, 2021).

Research on school development often addresses questions related to knowledge, relations, and leadership/management for new teacher roles (Helstad & Mausethagen, 2019). Our analysis is based on these three dimensions as a theoretical framework.

The knowledge dimension is characterized by several factors. Lortie (1975) demonstrated that teachers continuously alternate between experience-based knowledge and theoretical and pedagogical knowledge. Traditionally, teachers have freedom to make their own choices of didactic and methodological approaches, and teachers often feel that their knowledge development is their own responsibility (Hopmann, 2015). The profession has been characterized by an egalitarian culture where all teachers have the same responsibility. However, teachers today experience an expectation of the use of evidence-based knowledge and that test results should be a basis for their teaching (Coburn & Talbert, 2006). This can lead to needs for new and more specialized roles.

The dimension of relations is mainly about how interaction develops in different contexts in the school, such as in classrooms and laboratories, amongst the teachers and in the entire school organisation. The principal has overall responsibility for the relationships at the school, but all teachers must contribute to develop the relationships with students and colleagues (Møller & Ottesen, 2011). It is important to focus on developing relationships to succeed with school development.

The dimension of leadership/management in school development includes giving directions, creating visions, and establishing relationships that support the work (Leithwood & Louis, 2012). Irgens (2013) claims that leadership is created in relations, when mutual trust characterizes the interaction between people, and we experience that others can be trusted. In this perspective, we see that power, trust and relationships are closely linked in the community. Accountability is also important in this dimension, where quality systems and indicators to promote students’ learning are developed (Helstad & Mausethagen, 2019). Traditionally, management has been linked to the principal as an individual. However, this is now regarded as a matter where more of the staff participate, with or without formal leadership positions. To succeed with school development, leaders must create conditions for professional learning communities where as many as possible contribute (Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2018; MacBeath et.al, 2018). They do not always succeed in this (Morud & Rokkones, 2020). The term distributed leadership is well established and refers to a practice where leadership is created and executed by people together (Spillane, 2006).

Based on these three dimensions, we have analysed our data material with the aim of identifying how the education has contributed to the teacher specialists' development and role performance.

The research field on Tertiary Vocational Education is limited in Norway and in Europe. This paper is part of the efforts that the Oslo Metropolitan University has set in place to accommodate the intentions of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research as presented in the strategy for Further and enhanced quality – strategy for tertiary vocational education. (Ministry of Education and Research, 2021).

Tertiary vocational Education (TVE) has a relatively weak position in the Norwegian education system (Høst & Tømte, 2016). As the only level in the education system, there is currently no national pedagogical competence requirements for TVE teachers by law. One assumption could be that the weak position in the education system has led to less attention to TVE teachers’ competence needs. It is up to each TVE institution to set their own qualification requirements for teachers. The only requirement thus far is that TVE must employ teachers with sufficient professional competence within their own specialty field to ensure high quality teaching.

This stands in contrast to all other levels of education which by law requires a minimum of 60 ETCS in formal pedagogical qualifications. Also Universities require by law a course in pedagogy adapted to higher education (Wittek, 2017). This study further builds on data from Statistics Norway (2019) and a report by OsloMet (Lyckander & Grande, 2018), 30% of teachers employed in TVE have no formal pedagogical qualifications.

In 2019 OsloMet developed a further education programme worth 30 + 30 ECTS: Practical Pedagogic for Teachers in TVE 1 and 2 (PPF1 and PPF2). The programme stands out in Norway as it represents a pioneering and exclusive national endeavour, with its curriculum placing significant emphasis on adult education (Knowles 2016, Illeris 2012, Wahlgren 2010), professional practice, methodologies for lifelong learning, and the recognition of prior learning (RPL) (Andersson & Fejes 2005, 2010). In line with the white paper titled "Skilled Workers for the Future — Vocational College Education" (2016–2017), the objective of PPF1 and PPF2 is to enhance the qualifications of TVE teachers. The study programme seeks to contribute to an enhanced comprehension of dual professional practice and strengthen collaboration with the industry, as mandated by the Vocational Education Act (Fagskoleloven, 2022).

The PPF study programme has been specifically designed for educators employed in both public and private TVE institutions. This inclusive approach aims to encompass all stakeholders involved in delivering professional excellence at the tertiary education level.

We aim to find out and better understand the changes that take place by attending the study PPF1, in motivation and self-perception (Ryan & Deci, 2000) (Skaalvik et al., 2021), of own competence needs as well as understanding of the dual professional role that is necessary in the TVE in Norway.

The Research questions are.

• What motivates TVE-teachers to enrol in the study PPF1 and perceived competence-needs.
• What changes take place in the participants' self-perception as TVE-teachers.
• How do they describe themselves as TVE-teachers?

The data was collected in two surveys conducted within a time space of 8 months apart and has been analysed.

The study is based on thirty-three respondents, twenty-one men and twelve women. The average age is 44 years, and no one has formal practical teaching skills from the past. Most of the respondents have been working as teachers in TVE less than 2 years.

This work reflects the importance and responsibility of the school to respond to the needs of the entire school population. Specifically, a research paper is presented that focuses on the rural school setting, with the purpose of exploring inclusive education practices in this type of school.

Rural schools have great value for their environment since they constitute an important element within the institutional structure of a certain territory. In addition, families in rural communities generally collaborate in everything that the school makes them participate in. However, in order for this relationship of cooperation and complicity to occur, teachers must feel really committed to the social and natural framework that surrounds them and become aware of the need to incorporate it into their pedagogical work (Boix, 2014). Achieving this commitment of teachers is an important challenge for the management teams of rural schools with a high rate of variation of teachers since this fact poses an important handicap to design and carry out educational projects for the center due to the lack of continuity of the team that has to implement them.

The construction of an inclusive school, which ensures the presence, participation and success of all its students requires promoting, also in rural settings, changes in various fields: cultures, policies and practices. An inclusive school, which is oriented to an inclusive society, also needs to establish measures for the protection and training of people and groups that are in a situation of greater vulnerability and at risk of educational and social exclusion by reason of origin, ethnicity, language, economic and social situation, sexual orientation, gender identity or sexual characteristics, discrimination or violence, which are subject to exclusionary pressures or that encounter barriers in access, presence, participation and learning.

These changes should have teachers as an axis and engine. There are several studies on teaching competences (Cano, 2005). From an inclusive education approach, the competences we consider appropriate to train teachers are strategic competences, along with innovation and creativity, reflection and self-criticism (Fernández, 2013). For this, we have to take as a reference a permanent training and reflection of the skills to investigate, update, energize, employ creativity, lead, promote self-concept, open to change, etc. It is about improving the quality of education with equity, to respond to the demands of the educational field, through innovation processes and the implementation of projects and tasks based on active methodologies.

All these competences are related to the empowerment of teachers and shared teaching leadership, key factors for the improvement of teaching-learning processes, school results and the relational climate of educational institutions. Teacher empowerment must be enhanced and promoted by the management teams (González et al., 2019). All this involves training reflective and critical professionals in their daily tasks, capable of implementing changes to improve the center and its educational practice. It is about linking the teaching profession not only with a series of rights, but also responsibilities. Our proposal aims, from continuing education, to generate teacher empowerment through a better knowledge of their educational reality, the implementation of more innovative methodologies from action research, promoting the inclusion of all students in the center, reflection on practice, the preparation of a reception plan for new teachers, with the intention of generating a structure that enhances the sustainability of the project in the long term, enhancing the connection with the community environment.

The current project aims to identify examples of innovative and inclusive pedagogical practices and analyse how they cand be grouped into focal areas in VET excellence centres. The analysis is made in the frame of a large scale project: Governance for Inclusive Vocational Excellence (GIVE): 621199-EPP-1-2021-1-IT-EPPKA3-VET-COVE. www.thegiveproject.eu

Innovative pedagogies are focused on creating a stimulating and conducive learning environment that facilitate the learners to experience good, relevant and robust learning. When attempting to understand and define this concept, we notice a certain degree of fuzziness. Some opinions emphasize the creative and generative potential of teaching practices and environments, others are focused on the use of creative methods and techniques or, in some cases, on technology-enhanced learning (Ciolan et all, 2020), while other are focusing on evidence for impact.

Innovative and inclusive approaches are being used with increased frequency related to learning outcomes (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values) that are needed for today's learners to thrive and shape the world, create and contribute to a better future of themselves and their communities. Short-term and long-term employability based on the resilience and creativity founded by the key competences are essential for each learner.

A good quality education that ensures the maximum valorisation of the individual potential of each student must be centered on the students, on their needs and their characteristics. The need to individualize the learning process is more obvious in the case of education for students belonging to vulnerable groups (learners with special education & training needs, learning disabilities, coming from disadvantaged areas, at risk of exclusion or with a migrant profile).

In the GIVE project we focused exactly on innovative and inclusive pedagogies in VET excellence centres, dealing with a number or even all the at risk groups mentioned above.

Our analysis is a two way process, starting concomitantly from two directions: literature review of different approaches and taxonomies and analysis of innovative practices from the field, attempting to ”meet in the middle” in trying to answer the questions: what works (and what does not work so well) in terms of pedagogical innovation in VET excellence centres focused on inclusion of vulnerable groups.

Among the analysed taxonomies, we investigated the OECD perspective (2018, 2019), Open University (2020, 2021, 2022), Istance & Paniagua (2018) etc.

In the practice identification and analysis, we focused on the four vocational centres of excellence involved in the GIVE project, under the leadership of Cometa Educazione from Italy and we have collected examples from these centres, but also from 5 companies, closely working with them.

In designing the possible future scenarios of education (2020), OECD identified the “Schools as Learning Hubs” as one of the evolutions of the learning ecosystems. TVET is often already a clear example of this scenario. In both IVET and the CVET area, links between VET centres and companies, and research centres in some cases, are standard way skills are identified in the market, integrated in the curricula and implemented in the training courses.

The “learning hub” solution has been promoted by several international initiatives as the core of platforms for developing and promoting excellence. Both the concept of “learning hub” and “excellence” can be different, although some golden threads can be highlighted.

This research aims at providing evidence of how such Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) are structured, developed, even supported and the perspectives of their role in the future VET sector.

Many international organizations have already proposed literature review on this topic, highlighting the dimensions of quality of training and relevance in terms of skills for the market, “addressing innovation, pedagogy, social justice, lifelong learning, transversal skills, organisational and continuing professional learning and community needs [including introduction of measures of] rationalisation, restructuring of governance, cost reduction, heightened accountability or greater competition” (ETF, 2020). In a nutshell, albeit inevitable differences among different contexts (ETF, 2020), Vocational Excellence can be considered a combination of two elements (GIVE, 2022b):

1. innovative and inclusive pedagogies;
2. agile, anticipatory and entrepreneurial functional governance

A preliminary study by the European Commission offered an interesting overview on the possible types of CoVEs, mainly from an institutional point of view, underlining also a specific taxonomy of categories of excellence, adapted to local and sectoral needs in terms of structures, stakeholders and activities (EC, 2019: 5):

“1. ‘purpose built’ or designated entities as part of national/regional arrangements for vocational excellence, and;

2. individual VET providers, functioning as CoVEs for a region, sub-region or sector”.

Beyond desk-research, several initiatives were promoted at international level to identify, promote and possibly scale-up excellent examples in VET. Among the others, UNESCO-UNEVOC promoted the Skills for Innovation Hubs (i-Hubs) in order to identify and support 10 pilot institutions worldwide which could be considered excellent in terms of organizational practices, institutions’ engagement with external stakeholders, learning and teaching processes; an evaluation process was implemented, Guided Self-Assessment (GSA), based on two tools: 1) Balanced Scorecard to assess and document, through quantitative and qualitative data, the i-hub’s internal readiness to innovate 2) Skills and Innovation Ecosystem Map to assess and document how favorable to innovation the i-hub’s ecosystem is (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2019).

The European Training Foundation, since 2020, has activated its ETF Network of Excellence (ENE) including almost 300 TVET centres based in its area of action (EU and neighbouring countries). The ENE includes VET centres with an enhanced range of activities and objectives over and beyond the provision of initial vocational training: for example, research, continuing vocational training, local economic development, greening of skills and technology transfer [aiming at being] engines for systemic improvement but their capacity to perform this role depends upon their character as organisations, the capabilities of their leaders and staff, their relationships with their ecosystems and their capacity to collaborate with other vocational schools and centres” (ETF, 2021).

Since 2019, the European Commission has been the stakeholder which, by promoting a specific program (EACEA 33/2019), has activated more than 20 CoVEs characterised by adopting a systemic approach through which VET institutions actively contribute to co-create skills ecosystems, together with a wide range of other local/regional partners, including activites listed under three clusters: Teaching and learning; Cooperation and partnership; and Governance and funding).

Times of global change and increasing diversity are associated with transitions that individuals encounter when first engaging in and then continuing to participate in working life. Understanding, elaborating and responding productively to these transitions is salient for at least three reasons. These are the conceptual importance, their methodological adroitness and procedural worth.
Conceptually, most explanatory accounts of human learning and development across the life course acknowledge transitions variously explained through maturation, societal roles, moral and/or cognitive development. The stages of development associated with paid work and participation in it is no exception and is central to adulthood and adults. Much of working age adults’ sense of self, social purpose and engagement with community is premised upon employability, for instance. This process commences with transitions to working life, often for young adults identifying and preparing for specific occupations and then continuing across working life associated with a personal project of employability. That employability is sustaining employment, advancing or broadening occupational engagement or seeking new lines of employment. However, despite its importance as a stage of ontogenetic or lifespan development, explanatory accounts of transitions across working life remain an area requiring more empirically informed and conceptual inclusive accounts, to do justice to the diverse learning and development for working age adults that it comprises.
Methodologically, these transitions offer bases by which that learning and development can be illuminated and elaborated. Whilst learning arises constantly through lived experiences, it is perhaps most intentionally enacted in and through goal-directed activities such when transitions are negotiated. Hence while incremental learning and development remains difficult to capture, those moments of transitions provide experiences that can be captured more readily and provide data that are grounded in those events. Hence, these transitions offer the prospect of securing insights into that learning and development. This can be because these events are often salient to the individual, memorable and reportable, and provide instantiations of how the individual engages with others, institutions, aspects of materiality in negotiating those transitions. In this way, these transitions provide access to insights and explanations that might not otherwise be accessible.
Procedurally, transitions provide insights into how best both younger and working age adults’ learning and development can be guided and supported against the backdrop of increased recognition of diversity. Such insights can be used to identify, trial and validate the range of educative experiences in educational, workplace and community settings that can support these worklife transitions – whether it is about sustaining their current employment, advancing further their capacities in that field or advancing a different and new occupational or career trajectory.
These premises are elaborated through presentations and discussion of empirical research derived from distinct conceptual orientations, from diverse national and cultural situations and stages in adult development: The contributions explore the perilous transitions of young adults from vocational education to working life (1), the different types of learning and changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions (2), career changes in the context of sustainability along with the associated transformative learning experiences (3), and migrants’ learning as they confront labour market barriers (4). The shared concern and goal of these four presentations is to engage diverse perspectives in order to deepen our understanding of transitions to and through working lives.

This paper discusses Finnish vocational upper secondary students’ and graduates’ perceptions and experiences on working life transition(s) in the context of changed adulthood and labour market. It is interested in the changed demands of the labour market that make young adults’ working life transitions more complex than before: scholars (e.g., Sennett 1998; Beck 1992) have claimed that the contemporary market-driven labour market has transformed to be more uncertain, increasingly demanding self-reflexivity, flexibility, responsibility, and efficiency especially from young adults who are starting their working life paths (Kelly 2006). Youth researchers have pointed out how young adults struggle with the expectations of education and employment policies because these policies rely on a very narrow ideal of working life transitions at the same time, when the promises of their education do not meet with the realities of labour market and adulthood they face after graduation (Wyn et al. 2020). In this context, vocational upper secondary education’s aim to improve young people’s employability skills and to educate future worker-citizens is particularly interesting, especially if vocational students learn during their education to interpret their value in society through worker-citizenship (Isopahkala et al. 2014; cf. Farrugia 2021). This paper will discuss with two qualitative datasets, how young adults studying in vocational education (12 group interviews) or who have graduated from vocational education (interviews with 21 young adults) perceive worker-citizenship and how they negotiate with worker-citizen ideal, maintained by vocational education, within the contemporary Finnish labour market (see Author 2021, 2023). The paper will illustrate the importance of worker-citizenship for these young adults as a position that improves their sense of belonging to the work community and society and enables them the adult and independent life they aspire for. However, it will also illustrate how, in line with claims in youth research, some of them struggle when their aspirations, life situations, work experiences and actual chances to do work-related choices do not fit with the worker-citizen ideal. From these perspectives, it ponders vocational education’s worker-citizen ideal in relation to the possibilities of these young adults to feel valuable in society and to make choices that support their life situations and well-being in the contemporary labour market from the perspective of Nussbaum’s (2013) ‘human dignity’. It will show how shaping worker-citizenship is inherent part of vocational graduates’ contemporary adulthood and points out vocational education’s role in supporting these young adults’ senses of societal belonging (see May 2011).

Beck, U (1992) Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications. Farrugia, D (2021) Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Isopahkala-Bouret, U et al. (2014) Educating worker-citizens: visions and divisions in curriculum texts. Journal of education and work 27(1), 92–109. Kelly, P (2006) The entrepreneurial self and ‘youth at-risk’: exploring the horizons of identity in the twenty-first century. Journal of Youth Studies 9(1), 17–32. May, V (2011) Self, Belonging and Social Change. Sociology 45(3), 363–378. Nussbaum, M (2013) Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sennett, R (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Wyn, J et al. (2020, eds.) Youth and the New Adulthood: Generations of Change. Singapore: Springer Singapore Pty. Ltd.

Migratory transitions are periods of uncertainty with learning opportunities and demands. One challenge facing adult migrants is the recognition of prior training and work experience. However, even when recognition of prior learning succeeds, challenges to labour market access remain through exclusionary practices. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Canada, this paper explores the requirement to possess Canadian Experience (CE) as one such challenge: How do people deal with the oblique and circular challenge of possessing CE to find work in Canada? Newcomers are expected to possess CE to gain full labour market access. It represents a canon of tacit knowledge to be acquired (Sakamoto et al. 2010). Whereas the exclusionary effects of CE have been well-documented, less is known about how individuals learn to engage with CE. This paper thus aims to elucidate this aspect of learning during transitions into new work contexts and to draw conclusions for policy and practice. To study learning during life course transitions, I adopt a doing transitions framework which asserts “that transitions do not simply exist but are constantly constituted by practices” (Walther et al. 2020:5). Accordingly, I draw on a doing migration perspective which views migration as the result of social practices that “turn mobile (and often also immobile) individuals into ‘migrants’” (Amelina, 2020). Against this conceptual backdrop, I conducted biographical-narrative interviews with 20 adults who moved to Canada as ‘skilled migrants.’ Aimed to investigate how individuals learn during migration, the data have been analyzed within a grounded theory framework using the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2014). I identified three modes of engaging with CE: Replay and readjust is marked by repeated setbacks, frustrations, and – seemingly – resignation. Reset and move forward is marked by a lowering of aspirations and an alignment of future life course decisions with the need to acquire CE. Research and pro-act is characterized by excelling at knowing the rules and playing the game. The analysis of the engagement with challenges point to different approaches to learning and its social embeddedness. These findings have relevance for theorizing learning and build on considerations about subjective learning theories (Säljö, 2021).

Amelina, A. (2020). After the reflexive turn in migration studies: Towards the doing migration approach. Population, Space and Place, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2368 Bohnsack, R. (2014). Documentary method. In U. Flick (Ed.), SAGE knowledge. The SAGE handbook of qualitative data analysis (pp. 217–233). SAGE. Sakamoto, I., Chin, M., & Young, M. (2010). “Canadian Experience,” Employment Challenges, and Skilled Immigrants: A Close Look Through “Tacit Knowledge”. Canadian Social Work Journal, 12(1), 145–151. Säljö, R. (2021). The conceptualization of learning in learning research: From introspectionism and conditioned reflexes to meaning-making and performativity in situated practices. In G. R. Kress, S. Selander, R. Säljö, & C. Wulf (Eds.), Foundations and futures of education. Learning as social practice: Beyond education as an individual enterprise (146-168). Routledge. Walther, A., Stauber, B., & Settersten, R. A. (2022). "Doing Transitions": A new research perspective. In B. Stauber, A. Walther, & R. A. Settersten (Eds.), Life course research and social policies. Doing transitions in the life course: Processes and practices (pp. 3–18).

In the past decade, Sustainable development (SD) has taken much importance in the life of (western middle class) individuals. Sustainability for some has become personal; something to justify changing practices of everyday life, one’s diet, consumption or mobility. This contribution though argues that applying SD in a work-related context, handling it as something professional includes additional complexity. Indeed, making sustainability a priority in one’s working life comes with much (re)negotiations about one’s initial vocation and related competencies, one’s professional ambitions and one’s understanding and relationship to work in general. This paper will present results of an investigation interested in the diverse ways of learning, understanding, and implementing sustainability in one’s professional activity. The empirical research is based on semi-directed interviews with individuals in western Europe as they prepared, were in the middle of, or had conducted a professional transition in the context of SD. Career transitions are favorable life course phases for rethinking and reshuffling life priorities (Ebaugh, 1988), for learning to (re)adjust, (re)position, (re)assess oneself with regards to the constantly evolving job market. These individuals are drawn to deliver a personal story about how and/or when to make sustainability something important in their lives, how this change manifested and how it is turned into a professional project. They all seem to agree about wanting a more sustainable society, but the ideal destination, the way to get there and the things that have to change differ grandly. To counter the highly individualized narratives and seemingly individualized career life projects, this research uses a practice theory approach (Reckwitz, 2002). Through this theoretical lens, human and non-human participants, sayings, doings, artifacts, and affects are equally appreciated (Schatzki et al., 2001) and used to describe practices. The interviews were analyzed using the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2010), from which emerged four ways to approach sustainability through work. Three types that range from abandoning a previous profession to practice sustainability in a highly committed way (Exemplary approach), to repurposing competencies of a former profession and make them shine under a new light (Indispensable approach), to juggling between former professional aspirations and new ecological values (Interposition approach). Finally, with Sustainable Development at the heart of this investigation, precise learning experiences embedded at the intersection of work and sustainability emerge that can inform about the way adults are currently navigating and negotiating their professional paths.

Bohnsack, Ralf; Pfaff, Nicolle; Weller, Wivian (Hg.) (2010): Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international educational research. Opladen: Budrich. Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an ex: The process of role exit. University of Chicago Press. Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European journal of social theory, 5(2), 243-263. Schatzki, Theodore; Knorr-Cetina, Karin; Savigny, Eike von (Hg.) (2001): The practice turn in contemporary theory. New York: Routledge.

The transitions adults negotiate across their working lives as they secure, maintain and develop further employability through their learning are of interest to governments, workplaces, and workers themselves. Governments and their supra-governmental counterparts are concerned about working age adults respond to changing work and occupational requirements to sustain their employability across lengthening working lives (OECD, 2006). Through analyses of worklife history interview data with 30 working age adults, distinct kinds of changes comprising these transitions have been delineated as representative of changes that have person-particular meanings and impacts. This delineation represents understandings of processes and outcomes for adults’ learning and development. These transitions have specific kinds of scope, duration, and impacts in terms of continuity/discontinuity with individuals’ earlier activities and knowing. Transitions can be observed, captured, and represented by a complex of personal, institutional, and/or brute factors. Understanding the changes comprising these worklife transitions and how they can be supported and facilitated requires accounting for societal factors as well as individuals’ personal histories and legacies and impacts of maturation These transitions were identified as being of six kinds: i) life stages, ii) employment status, iii) occupations, iv) relocations, v) health, and vi) personal preference or trajectories (Author et al 2021). The changes can be seen as being a product of societal factors (i.e., institutional facts) or those arising through nature (i.e., brute facts) (Searle, 1995). Amongst these are those that arise through individuals’ personal histories or ontogenies, referred to as personal facts (Author, 2009). Moreover, learning for and through these transitions were of five kinds and about: i) language and literacy; ii) cultural practices; iii) world of work; iv) occupational skills; and v) worklife engagement. These findings suggests explaining the processes of learning that support sustained employability in times of change and uncertainty need to account for the complex of factors comprising what is suggested by the social world (i.e., the social suggestion - e.g., opportunities, barriers, invitations, , close-distance support, et cetera) and how individuals engage with and shaped by their subjectivities (i.e., sense of self, relations to others), capacities (i.e., what they know, can do, and value), and personal epistemologies (i.e., how they make sense of the world and respond to it). Such findings point to a broader range of educative experiences than those privileged in lifelong educational provisions and the importance as viewing curriculum as being a personal, rather than institutional pathway.

Andersson, P., & Köpsén, S. (2018). Maintaining competence in the initial occupation: Activities among vocational teachers. Vocations and Learning, 11(2), 317-344. Bocciardi, F., Caputo, A., Fregonese, C., Langher, V., & Sartori, R. (2017). Career adaptability as a strategic competence for career development. European Journal of Training and Development, 41(1), 67-82. Bradley, H., & Devadason, R. (2008). Fractured transitions: Young adults' pathways into contemporary labour markets. Sociology, 42(1), 119-136. Olesen, H. S. (2016). A psycho-societal approach to life histories. In Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history (pp. 214-224). Routledge. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD.

The overall aim of this paper is to explore and theorize on local school governance. In Sweden, as in many other decentralized school systems, extensive responsibility and autonomy has been delegated to Local Educational Authorities (LEA) concerning school management; as well as attaining and securing educational quality. However, ages of declining student achievement and deficient equality between schools have spurred extensive criticism against the Swedish school system. This criticism has resulted in a recentralisation trend, where the state has successively taken a stronger control over schools' outcomes in terms of, for example, an establishment of a Swedish School Inspectorate in 2008 with the aim to strengthen the national audit and monitoring of schools; ii) a reformation of the Education Act in 2010, emphasizing local authorities’ responsibility for educational quality, student achievement, and equality; iii) the initiation of a number of national professional development programs; and iv) a national curriculum with strengthened national knowledge standards, assessment criteria, and a predefined knowledge corpus. Considering such a ‘re-centralization’ movement, new conditions between the state, the LEA and the schools has emerged (Wahlström & Sundberg, 2017a; Adolfsson, 2018). In the light of such a changing governing landscape, questions linked to local school governance can be raised concerning how the LEA navigate and handle the tension between strengthened state regulation and LEA’s responsibility for educational quality. Based on results from two research projects, conducted in two large-sized Swedish municipalities, the following research question is guiding this paper:

In the light of an emerging re-centralization movement in Sweden, what governing strategies and actions do the LEAs apply to control and manage the schools with aim to attaining and securing educational quality?

Considering a ‘classical’ perspective of school governance (Lindesjö & Lundgren, 2014) four aspects of governance is often mentioned: regulation, economy, ideology (content) and evaluation. This paper offer a complementary perspective on school governance. In this paper, school governance are understood and studied in light of an organizational and neo-institutional theoretical framework (Orton &Weick, 1990; Scott, 2008). The school system is considered as a coupled system composing of different subsystems. From that perspective, school governance is understood as an effort to strengthen the couplings between these different subsystems (e.g. the national curriculum and the teaching practice) to attain a more coherent school system. In light of such coupling aspirations, three dimensions can be highlighted regarding how institutions try to control and affect other institutions, respond to external pressure, and seek legitimacy: regulative (rules and sanctions), normative (prevalent norms, expectations and ideals), and cognitive-cultural/discursive (shared conceptions and frames of sense-making) (Scott, 2008). These theoretical concepts enable to explore and distinghuish the character of different strategies and actions that LEA undertake concerning the local governance of the schools.

Despite the commitment by governments and educational leaders to high-quality and high-equity systems, the defining features of contemporary schooling in liberal democracies are increasing inequality and the uneven distribution of educational opportunities and outcomes (OECD, 2022). Given the challenges of the twenty-first century and the complex set of crises facing young people as they move through the world (Riddle, 2022), it is imperative that we develop new concepts of curriculum, which are committed to providing young people with the best chance of success, but especially for those who have been most marginalised by society’s economic, social and cultural structures. Therefore, it is timely to consider what the concept of curricular justice means for schooling in the twenty-first century (Mills et al., 2022).

This paper argues for a rich, common curriculum that provides all young people with learning choices that have relevance to their worlds, contribute to the preparation for work or further education, alongside opportunities for engagement with a broader knowledge base connected to critical understandings of culture and society. To that end, we have developed a curricular framework of ‘knowledge+plus’, which is committed to the tripartite social justice principles of redistribution, recognition and representation (Fraser, 2004), and brings together powerful knowledge (Young, 2008) and young people’s community funds of knowledge (Moll, 2019) in a common curriculum (Fielding & Moss, 2011; Kelly, 2004). A rich, common curriculum is not an identical curriculum for all students, but rather is developed from a set of common elements, in which ‘young people engage with important disciplinary concepts, are intellectually challenged, and enabled to critically frame knowledge, which is connected to their lives and experiences, while also drawing on broader cultural and social meaning-making practices’ (Mills et al., 2022, p. 350). Such a common curriculum is essential for an inclusive schooling, which can deliver on the promise of a high-quality and high-equity education system for all young people.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) (e.g., Scottish Executive, 2004; Scottish Government, 2008) has been widely acknowledged as the most significant educational development in Scotland in a generation (Priestley & Humes, 2010). Implemented from 2010, the holistic, competency-based curriculum for those aged 3-18 years seeks to prepare children and young people for the workplace and citizenship in the 21st century (Scottish Government, 2009).

Previous studies have examined how the breadth of the Scottish secondary curriculum (defined as the number of entries to National 5 qualifications in year 4 of secondary education in Scotland, S4) narrowed under CfE (Shapira & Priestley, 2018, 2019) and investigated the relationship between CfE breadth and attainment in school (Shapira et al., 2022).

Given the four capacities framework of CfE, one might assume that students exposed to a broad upper secondary curriculum would not only attain better academic results and move to positive destinations, but also develop skills and competences that indicate they have a better understanding of the complexities of modern societies, awareness of the world and its contemporary problems, cultural openness and sensitivity, self-awareness and resilience, and active citizenship. In other words, it seems that the breadth of the secondary curriculum could be linked to measures of the OECD global competencies.

This paper aims to explore the relationships between the measures of competence of 15-year-old students in Scotland, available in the 2018 Scotland’s PISA dataset, and the breadth of the secondary curriculum experienced by 15-16 year-olds in state-funded secondary schools in Scotland.

Neurodiversity means that we are all different in how we think, feel, and learn, because our brains process information differently. This paradigm provides a positive framework for talking about diagnosed conditions and other differences that impact learning, and for celebrating differences while still recognising needs [1]. It rejects categorisation of some needs as being “extra” or “special”, instead drawing attention to all people having cognitive, social, sensory, and support needs, which may be met to different degrees in a given environment--such as a classroom.

While neurodiversity is receiving increased attention in educational research and practice, it is starting from a low baseline of awareness. Training and classroom activities related to individual diagnoses or learning needs are still more common. It is extremely rare for neurodiversity to explicitly feature in curricula or policy, or to be included within broader conceptualisations of diversity or disability. Even where teachers or educational leaders wish to teach about this paradigm, there is an almost total lack of positive, age-appropriate educational materials.

The LEANS project (2020-2022) developed the first English-language programme to introduce neurodiversity and neurodivergence to children aged 8-11, focusing on UK and Irish mainstream primary school contexts (i.e. school provision not specialised for children with disabilities). It aims to increase pupil and teacher understanding of how differences in cognition, interaction, and sensory processing impact everyone’s school experiences, and to promote inclusive actions and attitudes. Unlike psychoeducation programmes focusing on neurodivergent children only [2] or teacher training about specific diagnoses, LEANS is not an intervention for perceived problems or deficits, but upskills all pupils and staff members through whole-class work focused on understanding and acceptance. It stresses that every classroom will be neurodiverse.

The LEANS programme was iteratively developed by a neurodiverse team of researchers (n=7) and a participatory design team of experienced educators with professional and lived experience of neurodiversity (n=8). LEANS was explicitly funded as a participatory project, and did not pre-commit to key definitions, factual content, or resource format/structure of the resources. The group developed these over multiple design and reflection cycles, in addition to completing more detailed planning around specific activities and delivery guidance for teachers [publication in preparation]. The final LEANS resource consists of 7 topics: introducing neurodiversity, classroom experiences, communication, needs and wants, fairness, friendship, and reflecting on our actions. It uses a mixture of hands-on activities, discussions, and storytelling about a neurodiverse class.

LEANS was evaluated in primary schools using mixed methods, as detailed in the methodology and conclusions/findings sections below.

An updated LEANS, incorporating pupil and teacher evaluation feedback, was publicly released June 2022 [3], with 4,300+ downloads worldwide across the following 11 months. Follow-up data collection is ongoing to systematically measure LEANS adoption and delivery during the 2022-23 school year, though educators have been anecdotally reporting adoption via social media and e-mail.

Given the practical relevance of the neurodiversity paradigm and general lack of resources (across languages), we propose that the methodologies of the LEANS project are a valuable proof-of-concept and template for other neurodiverse groups who wish to collaboratively develop teaching materials for their local contexts. In addition to a forthcoming design publication, we plan to release our design process materials as a free OSF project, to better enable use of LEANS-as-template. Alternately, the existing LEANS content could be licensed, translated and adapted into other languages. A Flemish-language translation is already in progress (projected release 2023).

Abstract

We report research findings from a unique tri-national project whose focus is the experiences, needs and strengths of autistic teachers in Poland, the UK and the US, with important implications for understanding how to facilitate inclusive school environments for both pupils and staff.

While it has long been established that school can be a difficult environment for autistic children and young people, and that their participation, overall inclusion and outcomes can be poor (Speaker 1, 2019), minimal attention has been paid to the perspectives of autistic educators. This is despite the existent research into autistic academics in the UK (Martin, 2020) and internationally (Jones, 2022), teachers with dyslexia in further and higher education settings in Finland and England (Burns and Bell, 2010), and schoolteachers with range of disabilities in the US (Valle et al., 2004), Israel (Tal-Alon and Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2019), Ireland (Keane et al., 2018), Poland (Bogusz, 2019) and countries beyond the global north (Singal and Ware, 2021). Indeed, while the focus of education research in the autism context has been almost uniquely on pupils, studies into autism and employment pay little attention to the school sector and the insights that could be derived from autistic teachers (Speaker 1 et al., 2022).

In this joint presentation with the Polish and UK study leads, we share research findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with autistic teachers in Poland (n = 10) and the UK (n = 21). We also provide additional insights from the US context in relation to teacher education, and draw out some parallels with the experiences of autistic children and young people in schools.

In summary, we found that in both Poland and the UK, autistic teachers can experience a) severe sensory impacts in the school environment b) communication and social differences and difficulties with colleagues, senior leaders and parents c) a lack of support and understanding from managers d) anxiety about revealing an autism diagnosis at work, particularly if autistic pupils are discussed in a derogatory manner e) difficulties with the training and recruitment processes in the school sector and e) difficulties with change (which intersects with agency). In Poland, particular issues are experienced with a heavy administrative burden, that can constitute a further professional barrier for autistic teachers.

More positively, we found that in Poland, autistic teachers consider they a) have a unique method of working which is more structured than approaches used by their non-autistic colleagues and b) have particular skills in creative activities. We also found that in the UK, autistic teachers consider they can a) communicate well with pupils, especially those who are autistic or otherwise neurodivergent b) sometimes have positive experiences of sharing their autism diagnosis with colleagues, pupils and parents c) be a role-model for autistic pupils and d) facilitate inclusion in school.

We set out some of the unique differences between the national contexts in order to underscore the need for culturally specific understandings in this area. This applies in particular to teacher education, for which there are different systems in Poland, the UK and the US. In addition, we discuss the implications of our findings for autistic children and autistic teachers from Ukraine, given the particular role Poland plays in relation to the current conflict and the direct experiences of Speaker 2 in this area.

We argue that understanding better how to value and support autistic teachers will enable progress to be made in the inclusion of autistic children and young people in schools. We will therefore make specific recommendations for future improvements in this area, drawn from our research.

The development of an inclusive environment in schools depends in its core on the identification and reduction of learning barriers . This results in ‘reasonable accomodation’ as UN-CRPD (Art. 24) demands.
According to recent findings in the field of autism research educational success and social participation of autistic students relies on the removal of barriers.

Our presentation will show the development of a diagnostic tool that is capable to highlight the subjective perception and potential individual affectedness by sensory and social barriers of students at school. We will also present statistical findings on the overall perception of barriers in inclusive education for autistic and non-autistic students. (We use the term ‘autistic’ with respect to its self chosen character in accordance to Walker (2015))

We follow a research approach that is based in the neurodiversity concept (Walker 2014). Autisic persons are recognized as a neuro-minority in a society that is adjusted to meet the needs of the neuro-majority (Singer 2022). For this matter we will not regard autism from clinical or pathological perspective. We much rather apply a social model of disability according to UN-CRPD. Consequently, we focus on diagnostics of barriers in the environment rather than of differences in individuals.

Furthermore, it is emphasized that the project originated as a participatory research project (Farin-Glattacker et al. 2014; Unger 2014). The project team consists of autistic and non-autistic researchers with different backgrounds. Thus the project is able to use the self-expertise of autistic scientists for a better understanding of barriers. Because of this collaboration we can benefit from a deeper understanding of the research topic, as barriers affect the everyday lives of the researchers involved in the project. Autistic expertise is used in all phases of the project, from planning, impelentation, up to publication.

For autistic persons around the world various barriers impair everyday participation. These barriers can be validly identified as will be shown in our presentation. For the project we develop questionnaires adjusted to students understanding to be used in inclusive education. To this point we were able to show differences in the individual perception between autistic and non-autistic students. More importantly we could see that all students are disturbed by barriers. However, the extent to which an individual was affected was higher for autistic, than for non-autistic students. We can derive, that autistic students have to cope with more individual barriers at school and as a result experience a higher cognitive workload for just being at school. This reduces their capabilities to participate in learning and social activities. The projects aim is to enable schools to identify and understand individual barriers. The questionnaire is intended to be a low-threshold and practical help.

This presentation will feature the development of this questionnaire from its original form of general barriers for autistic persons in society through multiple pre-tests until the validation in two phases with 19 schools and 1024 students from grades 1, 5 and 7. We will also highlight statistical findings on the overall experience of barriers in inclusive education especially for autistic students. Finally, we will reflect on our experiences with participatory research especially the benefits for a mixed methods approach like the one we conduct.

Considering the importance of systemic and process-related change to realize inclusive education, this paper explores the practices that inform assessment processes and in how far these are guided by ideas of inclusion and inclusive education (e.g., Bourke & Mentis, 2014). This paper sheds light on the significance of pedagogical processes and stakeholders informing inclusive assessment in different cultural contexts. Data for this presentation stems from two corresponding projects that are engaged in promoting inclusive education based on inclusive assessment processes. However, both projects approach the issue from different contextual and methodological directions and thus raise diverse perspectives.

Based on focus group discussions and interviews with stakeholders such as teachers, students, and educational administrators from Austria, current challenges, needs, wishes, and requirements for assessment within an inclusive framework have been collected to develop an alternative assessment tool, the Inclusive Assessment Map (Erasmus+ project, I AM). In correspondence to that, a web-based application for inclusive assessment (Inclusive Assessment Map, 2022) has been developed and piloted in four countries. With the application, it is intended to assist practitioners to better recognise and support their students’ needs for suitable learning environments. Thus, it is targeted to stimulate a shift from person- and deficit-centred perspectives towards a classroom- and resource-oriented perspective in educational assessment (Europa Büro, 2021). The I AM project accordingly approaches the issue from the direction of inclusive assessment, steering towards inclusive education.

The second research context (the PhD project Inclusive Schooling Practices of Teachers Worldwide (InSpots)), however, proceeds the other way around and approaches the issue from inclusive education towards inclusive assessment. It explores teachers' solutions for designing inclusive learning environments in diverse contexts around the world. The InSpots project follows a transcultural and grounded theory-based research approach (Charmaz, 2017) in which asynchronous narrative audio-messages of teachers around the world are collected (Kleinlein, 2021). Based on this data, teachers' inclusive education approaches will be systematized alongside suitable and inclusive assessment categories. In line with Ainscow and Sandmill (2010, p. 411), the project is thus built on the belief “that education practitioners in resource-rich countries can learn some very useful lessons for their own practice if they engage with experience of efforts to promote inclusion in the South” - and the other way around. Even though cultural embeddedness must not be neglected or underestimated, the project aims to promote the understanding that it is possible and valuable “to learn in one country from practices and forms of provision developed elsewhere” (Artiles & Dyson, 2005, p. 42)

Europe has played a strategic role in supporting disability inclusion internationally. In the last decade, the European Disability Forum and other European organisations have supported policy development and interventions in disability inclusion in India (EEAS, 2021). This support would continue to be essential in promoting programmes and high quality research on disability-inclusive education in low- and middle-income countries for the foreseeable future.

While there is significant literature on disability-inclusive education in India (Das et al, 2012; Shah et al, 2013; Sharma & Das 2015; Singal, 2019), not much attention has been paid to primary research on inclusive learning assessments in India. Research on disability-inclusive school education conducted by two of the authors of this paper has highlighted this key gap in evidence on inclusive learning assessments and related professional learning in the context of LMICs in the Asia-Pacific region (Chakraborty et al, 2019; Ahmed et al, 2022).

Although India became a signatory to the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action in 1994 and made significant progress in improving the education of students with disabilities (SWD), it still has a long way to go before educational institutions can be called inclusive. While the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) and Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 establish legal opportunities for advancing disability-inclusive education, the degree of inclusion of SWD is unequal across different types of schools in different regions. The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) proposes further strengthening of India’s commitment to inclusive education.

This paper looks at the role of assessments as a point of interaction between educational policy, school culture, and teachers’ perceptions of ability. Specifically, it focuses on formative assessments which have substantial impact on student learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998). The paper addresses the key question: ‘What is the experience of conducting inclusive formative assessments in classrooms for teachers in India?’. It uses a case study of a private, inclusive, co-educational school in New Delhi to arrive at an understanding of the possible reasons affecting the inclusion of SWD in assessments and studies how changing assessments can help realise the objectives of the RTE Act and the NEP 2020.

In the current system, mainstream examination boards governing the school leaving examinations and the National Institute of Open Schooling confine themselves to a timed, pen and paper examination, with the areas examined largely restricted to prescribed textbooks. This means that students have to memorise large amounts of text/information and complete examinations of five different subjects within a set time period of 20 days. Because of the nature of the examination, it effectively excludes students who cannot perform to a speed or pattern, or those who cannot memorise or retain information for long.

The Board examinations have a tremendous washback effect on the syllabus, classroom methodology, and assessments that percolates to the primary and even pre-primary levels. Children are subjected to ongoing weekly assessments to prepare them to meet the standards of the Board that are intended to be formative but end up becoming summative. Results of the examinations are used to establish popularity and competition among schools.

Against this background, it is important to understand how formative assessments are designed to be inclusive – taking into consideration the special needs of children with different abilities, the time/form, and the overall environment in which assessments are conducted – for improving learning. Since there is no single way of assessing students formatively, this study captures teachers’ experience of conducting formative assessments and assessment methods, as opposed to judging teachers’ ability or knowledge to assess SWD (Trumbell & Lash, 2013).

The use of (social) media can be very entertaining but presents challenges for educators of adolescents that are not that media-literate yet^1,2. How adolescents with an intellectual disability (ID) can benefit from the opportunities of (social) media safely, responsibly, and ethically, is internationally an urgent but poorly studied educational issue³. For these adolescents assessing online information as fake or real often is troublesome, due to deficits in intellectual functioning (e.g., reasoning, problem solving, making judgments, learning from instruction and experience, and practical understanding)^4,5. Consequently, they are often involved in online incidents like fraud, manipulation, sextortion, and cyberbullying, and hence to sense a feeling of online exclusion impacting their education and wellbeing^6,7,8.

The issue of online exclusion of adolescents with an ID is addressed in three consecutive studies, which together aim to answer the general research question of what these adolescents need to benefit from the opportunities of (social) media? First, via 7 peer-to-peer interviews the needs regarding adolescents’ experiences with online incidents were recorded⁹. The adolescents, aged 13 to 20, foremost indicated having difficulty with assessing the authenticity of online information, for example: “I don’t want to believe online fake stuff, but I do”, “I don’t want any more miscommunication with guys”, and “I once won a price, but lost all my money when I wanted to claim it by phone”. In a focus-group meeting about the input derived from the interviewees, they unanimously indicated the need for an application that could help them assess whether online information is fake or real.

In order to meet this need, in a successive study such an application was developed, applying the principles of participatory action research (PAR)¹⁰ with adolescents with an ID and educators that guide them in their media use. The app, named Fake Real! (in Dutch: Nep Echt!^11,12) provides information, actual examples of fake and real information, check lists, user guidelines, and hyperlinks to assess the authenticity of online information that can be found on a broad range of platforms (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Messenger, Telegram, Vinted, TikTok, Marketplace, Discord, Omegle, Tinder, and Grindr). The Fake Real! app meets the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)¹³ to make web content accessible to people with an ID.

A final study addressed the experiences of the target group with the use of the Fake Real! app. By using the app, adolescents with an ID are expected to become more media-wise and mentally stronger, suffer less from online incidents, feel more safe online, enjoy media use more, and experience an increased sense of online belonging. Since these adolescents often struggle with standardized tests, resulting in unreliable outcomes¹⁴, and because suitable media literacy tests are not available⁷, a custom made method was needed to bring together their experiences. Again using PAR, two measurements were developed for this purpose: the questionnaire ‘How are you doing online?’ and an art-based evaluation tool.

The presentation at the ECER is intended to address and discuss the process-related as well as the substantial outcomes of the second and third performed studies. These outcomes include: a) the input from the target population and the educators that guide them in their media-use during the app development process; b) an impression of the content and functioning of the app; c) the lessons learned from the PAR process towards the app and the evaluative instruments; and d) the implications of the app for adolescents with an ID for introduction and use in educational settings.

This paper explores new boundaries relating to comparisons of German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and South African publications in a systematic literature review of research publications related to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (World Health Organisation, 2001, ICF) and education. New ground-breaking methodological approaches are required when comparing multi-language data from an international systematic review, similarly there are practical issues when working globally relating to cross-cultural understandings, work practices and time-zones.

This study is the outcome of a systematic literature review on the use of the ICF and its Children and Youth version (WHO, 2007, the ICF-CY) in the field of education and specifically education for children with disabilities, special educational needs and those requiring additional support in school. In 2010 Moretti, Alves, and Maxwell (Maxwell et al, 2012; Moretti et al., 2012) carried out a similar review and set the scene for how the ICF is used in the education field. In the intervening decade much has developed with the ICF and it is time for another measure of the situation. Throughout this paper we will refer the “ICF” as both the ICF (2001) and the ICF-CY (2007), unless otherwise specifically indicated.

The ICF is a bio-psycho-social classification framework developed by the World Health Organization based on a non-categorical approach to human functioning contextualizing the functioning of an individual in their current environment without the use of ‘traditional’ categories or diagnoses. The framework incorporates 'all components of health described at body, individual and societal levels’ (WHO, 2007). The ICF is intended for all people but is particularly applicable and appropriate for persons with disability.

The term education in this article means the “development of human potential...personality, talents and creativity as well as...mental and physical abilities” (United Nations, 2006) made in a formal context, usually a school or other setting in which the main aim is not medical or clinical rehabilitation. All education levels are taken into account, from early years, compulsory schooling, further education, and lifelong learning of persons with disabilities and those working with persons with disabilities in a formal educational setting. The educational environment or setting is of importance both in terms of setting the scene in which an activity occurs and as a factor that can facilitate or hinder participation in a setting. The environment can be represented as dimensions that relate to the availability, accessibility, affordability, accommodability and acceptability of the participation situation or experience (Maxwell, 2012). By investigating the educational environment, we can shed more light on effective inclusive practices by providing more accurate representations and measures of the participation of children.

The current paper explores the methodological challenges and consequences of carrying out an international, multi-lingual, cross-comparison in-depth review of the main findings from a systematic literature search. Data come from systematic database searches using selected search terms in different languages in national databases in the partner countries. Searches were carried out in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, English, Afrikaans, German, and Mandarin.

The main literature review aimed to explore how the ICF is currently situated in the field of education in different global contexts with a specific focus on children with disabilities, Special Educational Needs (SEN) and those requiring additional support in school. With a comparison of how the ICF is applied a different levels and processes in various global contexts, this paper aims to:

• Explore the methodological consequences of carrying out an in-depth systematic review of the ICF and education in different global contexts.
• Describe the practical implications of carrying out the review.

7.02% of students are diagnosed as having special educational needs (SEN) in Europe (EASNIE, 2020). Germany thus represents the European average with 7.2% of students with SEN. Austria is below the average at 5.3%. This ranks both countries in the middle of the field. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the national action plans show that inclusive structures are neither comprehensively implemented in Austria nor Germany yet. Data as well as the evaluation results indicate that the ratification of the CRPD – by Austria in 2007 and Germany in 2009 – is thus not synonymous with the actual implementation of the right to inclusive education.

As all European countries, Austria and Germany operate with assessment strategies to categorize students regarding their abilities. The organization of (inclusive) education and learning in both countries indicate that school type and curriculum are determined based on categorizing students by disability. The procedure to examine SEN itself is an administrative act operated by the school authorities. Classification systems like ICD-10 are used that are primarily medical and deficit-oriented diagnostic instruments (Buchner & Proyer, 2020; Gasterstädt et al., 2021). Thus, the organization of education and learning is shaped by traditional disability categories rather than an inclusive understanding guided by fostering participation, empowerment, and self-determination (Florian, 2014; Prengel, 2016). Based on an inclusive understanding, both scholars and practitioners proclaim the organization of assessments that consider environmental factors, are conducted by multi-professional teams, and include inclusive classifications like ICF (Moretti et al., 2012; Sanches-Ferreira et al., 2014). This requires shifting the focus from diagnostics to pedagogics and thus organizational measures with bottom-up rather than top-down approaches.

It results in the trilemma of organizing (inclusive) education and learning regarding the impact of (1) (inter)national policy conditions, (2) the bureaucratically located top-down approach at the exo and macro level, and (3) inclusive bottom-up approaches at the micro and meso level. Researching this trilemma opens the following questions:

1) To what extent do SEN assessments organize inclusive education (in the German and Austrian school systems)?

2) To what extent is the idea of inclusive education reflected in the educational policy agendas for the organizational implementation of inclusive education in Germany and Austria?

The paper contributes to the broad debate on policy-making to implement inclusive education and resulting from this organizational implication to foster social inclusion and diversity, using Austria and Germany as examples.

Theoretically, Lipskys’ (1969, 2010) Street-Level Bureaucracy (SLB) Theory frames desk research. The theory deals with “how people experience public policies in realm that are critical to our welfare and sense of community” (S. xii). It is investigated by researching the micro level of how bureaucratical procedures are contextualized within the interaction of street-level bureaucrats (teachers and educators) and their clients (students). The research topic focuses on the SEN procedure and its impact on inclusive education and teaching. On this basis, Brodkin (2011, 2016) developed another perspective of SLB theory by focusing on the meso level and “those organizations and agencies that directly bring policies and programs to people” (p. 444). Both theoretical approaches are relevant for my work in order to triangulate the findings of the desk research against the background of a holistic systemic view.

There are different ‘accepted’ research methods, tools and procedures used in research. However, many of these may have been developed by researchers and for participants in the Global North¹. Research in the field of inclusion and diversity has particularly made visible the importance of having approaches that engage with voices from different backgrounds. Due to common aims and values, participatory approaches in recent years have become closely associated with inclusive education research. Participatory research contributes to the development of democratic and inclusive contexts by enabling the participation of those who are underprivileged, challenging existing power relations and fostering development of competencies needed for social change^2,3.

This discussion panel will start from Santos’ concept of Global South: ‘The global South is not a geographical concept (...). The South is rather a metaphor for the human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism on the global level, as well as for the resistance to overcoming or minimising such suffering. It is, therefore, an anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-imperialist South. It is a South that also exists in the geographic North (Europe and North America), in the form of excluded, silenced and marginalised populations, such as undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, ethnic or religious minorities, and victims of sexism, homophobia, racism and islamophobia’⁴.

We will consider the challenge of doing research in the Global South following traditions and ethical procedures developed by and for the Global North. The ethical procedures currently in place in the Global North are a result of historical processes (e.g. Milgram Experiment, Jane Elliott's exercise), and we will argue that they are not appropriate to develop participatory/ inclusive approaches to research, particularly in Global South contexts.

The panel will bring together researchers who have worked with Syrian and Eritrean refugees, mothers of autistic girls in Algeria, refugees in Turkey, disabled and ‘disadvantaged’ children/ young people. We will take into account the dominant and counter-dominant views of research ethics, with a shared understanding that research ethics is always situated in the specific socio-political-historical context, dialogic in its nature and political in its intentions⁵. The panel will discuss the need for:

1) culturally sensitive approaches to research, given the threatening nature of Global North ethical procedures. The ‘ethical’ research procedures including consent forms, participant information sheets, and privacy notices create feelings of uneasiness and anxiety for some (e.g. when researching Syrian families’ opinions of education in Scotland, some families withdrew due to concerns about their citizenship applications, despite being told that their data would be anonymous and confidential). So, some aspects of an ‘ethical’ research process could result in the exclusion of the participants from the Global South, who are already disadvantaged and marginalised in the societies they live in. We will also problematise research that seems to not only document but reinforce the present growth of prejudice and hate in Turkey towards refugees^7,8 by making local participants (non-refugee) feel neglected.

2) questioning ethically approved research as ‘There is no direct or necessary relationship between ethics committee approval of a research project and what actually happens when the research is undertaken (...) responsibility falls back to the researchers’ themselves – they are the ones on whom the conduct of ethical research depends’⁹. And more importantly, we will question ethically approved participatory/ inclusive research considering individualistic, extractionary approaches, failure to address issues of knowledge production, ownership, and (re)distribution of power, epistemology, researcher positionality, research integrity (e.g. an Eritrean refugee stated: ‘We narrate our stories in the hope that a solution would be found to our suffering. The truth is that, often nothing happens’).

The lack of time when working with preschoolers is a massive problem that not only places a burden on educational professionals, but also has a significant negative impact on the quality of the educational process in preschool work (Sheridan, 2007; Ugaste & Niikko, 2015) and on parental work, which is important for children's development (Ma et al., 2016). And that’s an international issue.

International evidence shows that individual support for children's educational processes in inclusive settings plays a key role in determining their long-term school success and the course of their educational biography (Petriwskyj et al., 2014; Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2008). At the same time, studies show that educational professionals do not always succeed to the necessary extent in responding to each individual child, in grasping his or her individual learning situation in the various domains, in picking up on his or her educational aspirations and in even being able to perceive as such educational opportunities that are important for the individual child (Hasselhorn & Kuger, 2014; Smidt, 2012). This is in clear contradiction to the inclusive understanding of education as well as to the rights of the child to the development of their personal potential and the promotion of their individual education as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In the course of the educational disadvantages of children, which have once again drastically increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Kuger et al., 2022; Quenzer-Alfred et al., 2022), and the massive challenges in educational work with children with refugee experiences, this is an unacceptable current state.

So far, various causes for the insufficient individual support of children in preschool have been identified: These include, on the one hand, low domain-specific knowledge, inadequate support attitudes and a lack of diagnostic skills (Kluczniok et al., 2011; Vaz et al., 2015). Only recently has the lack of time and staff been discussed in this context, which, according to the latest findings, leads to a de-professionalisation of the field as well as to a negative influence on the pedagogical process quality. Recent studies show that a lack of time leads to a massive restriction of the ability to act, a chronic overload and thus to a successive limitation of the options for action (Rosenkranz, Schütz & Klusemann, 2023). In this respect, there is a desideratum with regard to the theoretical modelling and empirical testing of a competence model for the activation of domain-specific professional and methodological competences of inclusive educational support in settings where time is scarce.

Two research questions will be answered:

1) What influence does the lack of time have on the competent use of observation and documentation procedures in inclusive educational work in preschool to record the learning situation and the concrete support of the individual child derived from this by educational professionals (Study A)?

2) What requirements for competence development and professionalisation in dealing with time constraints can be derived from best practice as well as worst case examples of inclusive educational work in the use of observation and documentation procedures and the support of children (Study B)?

From the findings of the empirical examination of both research questions, the components of the competence model for the activation of domain-specific subject and methodological competences of inclusive education work are derived and their interdependencies are described.

In England, the DfE White Paper (2022a, p. 16), proposes that by 2030 ‘every child will be taught by an excellent teacher trained in the best-evidenced teaching method to help (each) child reach their full potential’. This document also identifies a commitment to training on behaviour management, adaptive teaching, and curriculum design, with the intention of helping every teacher and leader to support all pupils to succeed, including those identified with SEN/D. This is situated in a context where reviewing and evaluating the progress of pupils with SEN/D has been found to be the least developed aspect of schools’ SEN/D support (DfE, 2021), where staff do not always know pupils well enough to take an informed pupil-centred approach when identifying needs and planning provision (Dobson & Douglas, 2020), where schools may be teaching a curriculum to pupils that is not properly sequenced or well matched to their needs, and where questions exist about what ‘success’ looks in terms of supporting children with SEN/D in mainstream school (Ofsted, 2021).

Within this context, consultation around the SEND Review: Right Support, Right Place, Right Time (DfE, 2022b), identifies the need for schools to change their cultures and practices to be more inclusive and better at identifying and supporting needs, and to improve workforce training (NASEN, 2022). However, a significant barrier to implementing the reforms is professional development of the workforce. Whilst training for SENCos in non-statutory school-age settings is being extended, the SEND review (DfE, 2022b) proposes to change mandatory SENCo training from a master’s level post graduate certificate (PGCert) to a National Professional Qualification (NPQ), where project work can be signed off by a school principal. This is relevant to the European context, since broader trends, including SENCo training and retention (Hammerness et al, 2005; Dobson & Douglas, 2020), and leadership in inclusion (Lindqvist & Nilholm, 2014; Fitzgerald & Radford, 2022) apply beyond the UK.

This presentation will report on a small-scale project that captured the experiences, explanations and impacts of students completing the mandatory National Award for Special Education Needs Co-ordination (NASENCo) course at a West Midlands university. The purpose of the research was to identify the impact the NASENCo had on student’s knowledge, skills, confidence and practice, as well as student perceptions of the current course and proposed changes, so as to inform future development and evolvement of courses, be they a more work-based NPQ or Level 7 (L7). The research questions created to drive the study were:

RQ1: What main impacts do NASENCo students identify L7 study has had on their professional practice as SENCos?

RQ2: What are NASENCo students’ experiences of studying at L7 as part of their SENCo training?

RQ3: What are the perceptions of NASENCo students of the possible links between L7 study and outcomes for SEN/D pupils?

The research adopts a post-structuralist approach. Post-structuralism argues that ‘true’ meanings, as derived from the universal systems behind them, including dominant discourses do not exist since language and culture themselves are constructed by humans, meaning they are subject to influence and modification, often based on experience or the impact and interaction of multiple factors present in the settings SENCos work within. This contrasts with structuralism which proposes that rules and approaches are applicable regardless of context and that they are thus ahistorical and non-ideological. Utilising Foucault, educating SENCos is viewed by the researchers as a political and ethical task, conceptualised as ‘a care of the world, the “true life” calling for the advent of an “other world”’ (Gros in Foucault, 2012, p. 355).

The principle of inclusive education is central in Norwegian policy documents and equity, equality, diversity and inclusion are terms and standards of Norwegian educational policy (Norwegian Education Act 1998; The Norwegian National Curriculum 2017). Norway has a public school system which follows the social democratic model of a “School for All”. Due to increasing diversity in schools there is an ongoing need to discuss inclusion and equal opportunities in education. Adapted education is a strong educational principle, rooted in the Norwegian Education Act (Norwegian Education Act 1998) and still a great challenge for teachers to fulfill (Backmann & Haug, 2006). Giving all pupils the right to take part in ordinary learning activities according to their learning capabilities, where diversity is to be understood as enrichment, seems to challenge teachers the most. Pupils who do not benefit from the ordinary education are referred to The Norwegian Educational Psychological service (EPS) and their needs of special needs education (SNE) are assessed. EPS`mandate is embedded in the Norwegian Education Act (1998) and their tasks require both individual and systemic approach towards pupils' learning outcomes. In 2019 the Norwegian Ministry of Education announced the intention to introduce a number of measures to enhance pupils with special needs chances to be taught by professionals with the relevant competence (Ministry of Education 2019). This follows cooperation between universities and municipalities to examine which competence is needed for municipalities to be able to accommodate education for all through inclusive practices.

The present study is part of a development project between Østfold University college and one Norwegian municipality. In this study we investigate how internal systems in schools can be developed by improving organizational structures in the municipalities. Further we look into how the Norwegian Educational Psychological service (EPS), an independent expert authority, and schools as an organization can be seen as fellow participants in professional learning communities. To better understand how municipalities in Norway can approach more inclusive education and inclusive practices, we seek to understand how professional learning communities can contribute to school leaders, teachers and professionals within the EPS, to work together, share and question their practice in critical ways (De Neve et. al 2015). This has led us to the following research question:

How can professional learning communities be a contributor to strengthening internal systems in schools aiming to develop inclusive practices?

The theoretical framework is based on social cognitive theory proposed by Bandura (1997). This theory emphasizes the psychological perspective on human functioning that highlights the critical role played by the social environment on motivation, learning, and self-regulation (Shunk & DeBenedetto, 2020). A premise of Bandura’s theory (1997) is that individuals strive for a sense of agency, or the belief that they can exert a considerable degree of influence over important events in their lives. In this context, the concept of efficacy beliefs is central. Defined as a future oriented judgment about capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments in specific situations or contexts (Bandura, 1997). In recent years research has added an organizational dimension to inquiry about efficacy beliefs, referred to as perceived collective efficacy (Goddard, Hoy & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004; Goddard & Goddard, 2001; Voelkel & Chrispeels, 2017). Within an organization, perceived collective efficacy represents the beliefs of group members regarding "the performance capability of a social system as a whole" (Bandura, 1997, p. 469). Research (Voelkel & Chrispeels, 2017) has also shown that high collective efficacy beliefs can advance better professional learning communities (PLC).

Seminal global summaries of inclusive practice have highlighted the need for both improvement and consistency of approach towards educational equity for young people with disabilities (Antoninis et al., 2020). Students with Complex Additional Support Needs (CASN) are an exceptional group with multiple, overlapping and significant (dis)abilities. The heterogeneous nature of their presentation means that the question of labelling and definition is ambiguous (Anastasiou & Kauffman, 2012) and their educational experiences often contingent on the attitudes of education staff. Students with CASN have been historically marginalised in many ways including omission from policy, lack of participation in research and denial of access to certain educational subjects, as a result of such agentic restriction, both in the UK (Imray & Colley, 2018; Slee, 2018) and internationally (Male, 2015).

This research aimed to illuminate the experiences of pupils with complex needs, and the factors that impacted on their educational experiences, within a Scottish ASN school. Using subject choice as a lens, consideration was given to the relationship between staff attitudes and pupil agency in decision making. The research questions were as follows:

1. What are the experiences of students with CASN in relation to subject choices across the curriculum?

2. What are the views of teachers of students with CASN in relation to pupil choices across curricular subjects?

3. Do teachers’ views on educating students with CASN affect the agency of those students when making curriculum choices?

Attitudes of others are influential in restriction of agency because there has been a historical focus on remediating perceived deficits for this group (Adams, 1998), with adults often making decisions on behalf of pupils. Using pupil and staff interviews, my research aimed to uncover influences upon the educational experiences of pupils with CASN and illuminate ways forward to reduce marginalisation. Furthermore, wider attitudes were sought through an online teacher questionnaire. Data was analysed thematically.

I found that there were many additional factors that influenced pupils’ experiences and impacted on their agency to make choices across the curriculum. These will be presented in a multiple cause diagram but include school ethos, policy at local and national level, teacher training and teacher commitment to inclusive pedagogy.

In the school studied, both pupil and teacher interview data highlighted that pupils could make choices, and a sense of agency was evident. However, this was based on pupil experiences in that particular setting hence, this research comes from a relativist position. This research was undertaken in the Scottish context, however, the findings are applicable globally.

The fact remains that there can be variability across settings, staff, time, and country. A charter of 'educational rights' for young people with CASN, as well as standardised training for all staff, is proposed. This huge, unaddressed population of exceptional young people with CASN will go on to become exceptional adults whose lives could be improved through increased recognition of their capacity and ability to make decisions. This research gives students a voice and proposes how exclusion and restriction of agency can begin to be rectified.

The long-standing principle of inclusion in Norwegian education policy, dating back to the introduction of unified schooling more than one hundred years ago, was strengthened in legislation from 1975, which provided for adapted education within the framework of the local school for all children, and has been reinforced by the Salamanca Declaration (1994) (Faldet et al., 2022). Despite this, many students lack access to meaningful participation, belonging, and mastery in accordance with the criteria of inclusive practice (Barneombudet, 2017), the completion rate of upper secondary education is cause for concern (Reegård & Rogstad, 2016), and researchers have identified significant challenges related to the support system established to support those who are struggling in school (Nordahl, 2018). To address these issues, PPT (Eductional and psychological counselling service) has been granted a central role by law both as an expert body for decisions on special education and as a support service for competence and organizational development in kindergartens and schools. In response, several strategies have been developed since the turn of the millennium, primarily focusing on the enhancement of PPT and their collaboration with kindergartens and schools, research has focused on the development of ordinary pedagogical practices in order to prevent the need for special education, while also improving the connection between ordinary and special education (Andrews et al., 2018; Hustad & Fylling, 2012). To this end, there has been support provided to various municipal school development initiatives in collaboration with research environments, where PPT has participated to varying degrees. For instance, the SUKIP project (Cooperation on the Development of Competence for Inclusive Practice) is an innovation project funded, in part, by the Research Council of Norway, and is being carried out between 2019-2022 in collaboration with PPT, as well as a kindergarten and school in two different municipalities (Mjøs et al., 2023 - in press). The aim of the SUKIP project is to develop and investigate a new infrastructure for collaboration between the PPT and the kindergarten/school, which is suitable for the desired competence and organizational development.

This project was conducted using a case study approach (Yin, 2014), whereby researchers and practitioners collaborated (Ainscow et al., 2004) and the practice field itself prioritized and designed the innovations; a total of four cases. This process falls in line with the new national strategy for local competence development in the education sector, known as the Competence Boost for special pedagogy and inclusive practice (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2021).

Based on the White paper titled “Early intervention and inclusive community in kindergarten, school and after-school care”, the strategy has been implemented with the primary focus on the general education offer in kindergarten and school as responsible for a more inclusive practice, requiring cooperation from the "team around the children and pupils". Drawing from the data of the SUKIP project and the educational policy guidelines, this study will explore the research question: how can PPT serve as a central agent to the further development of an inclusive practice in kindergarten and school, and what seems to promote or inhibit such a role?

Provide a clear description of the theme/s the panel discussion will address, referring research question, theoretical framework, methodological approach, and intended purpose of the discussion. Bear in mind that the European/international dimension is vital to the success of your submission.
Length: up to 600 words

National and international research has highlighted that outcomes for adults with disabilities are poor across a range of domains, including access to learning and employment (Kelly and Maître, 2021). Longitudinal data highlights that students with disabilities are less likely to be prepared to progress beyond school into further education, training and employment than their non-disabled peers, and are also less likely to actually progress to post-school options (Lipscomb et al., 2017). In the Irish context, SILC and Census data show that a much smaller percentage of people with disabilities have a third-level qualification compared to working age people without disabilities and this education gap between people with and without disabilities has remained over time (Kelly and Maître, 2021). Previous research has identified the lack of transition support from second level to further education and training or employment as a big issue (Scanlon et al., 2020). Research drawing on Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data also shows how earlier educational experiences, including engagement, attendance, expectations and attainment, are important in shaping later educational transitions for disabled adults (Carroll et al., 2022).

While a number of studies describe the post-school educational options for students with special educational needs (Scanlon et al., 2020; McAdam et al., 2021), less is known about how many students progress to different settings when they leave school, their reasons for choosing particular paths and their experiences of these paths. Internationally, much of the published literature has focused on mainstream higher and further education (see for example McGuckin et al., 2013 in the Irish context), with less attention on vocational training and rehabilitative services (Duggan and Byrne, 2013).

This study addresses these gaps by capturing a more comprehensive range of pathways taken by young people and centring the student voice to understand how and why they chose these pathways and how they fare once they leave school. The study features two cohorts, one comprising students in their final year at mainstream and special schools and the other recruited from a range of post-school settings.

Across the settings, the key research question is how young people decided on their post-school pathway, or indeed whether it was decided for them. Using a self-determination theory approach, we explore the balance of autonomy, competence and relatedness in young people’s decision-making. The role of key factors like young people’s level of impairment/complexity of need, their school context and their socioeconomic background in this decision-making process is also considered.

Assesing attitudes of students toward their peers with disability can emerge as an important step for the accomplishement of social participation of all indepedently to their difficulties and the implementation of inclusion policy of students with disablities in the general school system (Bossaert et al., 2011).

According to previous research, general school students expressed posistive attitude toward their co-students with disability (Rosenbaum et al, 1986). Especially, students show high score in the affective and behavioural subscales of attitudes and lower score in cognitive domain (Tirosh, Shanin & Reiter, 1997; Vignes et al. 2009). Research (Rosenbaum et al., 1988) showed that girls adopt more positive attitude in all of the three subscales (coginitive, affective, behavioural) in comparison with boys. Furthermore, friendship with a friend with disability exerts a positive role on students' attitudes toward their classmates with disability (Tirosh, Shanin & Reiter, 1997). A person with disability who belongs to the close family environment has a positive effect on the formation of attitudes (Vignes, et al., 2009), a finding that contradicts with other study (Gonçalves & Lemos 2014). Communication in frequent periods with a person with disability leads to positive attitudes (Thomson & Lilly, 1995). Additionally, students who present a severe disbality are more acceptable compared to students with mild disability (Cook & Semel, 1999). Also, place of residence showed to be a discriminated factor of attitudes, where students who stay in urban areas express a higher level of positive attitudes unlike to chlidren who are staying in rural areas (Gash & Coffey, 1995). The same study showed that children in the beggining of adolescence express a higher level of social interest for students with disabilities in contrast with other research (Rosenbaum, Armstrong and King, 1988). Furthermore, a pupil with disabilities who attend a general school positively affects the formation of attitudes (Alnahdi, 2019).

Bullying is a widespread phenomenon, internationally defined as repeated violence against victims with difficulties in defending themselves (Olweus, 1993). Bullying is increasingly seen as the result of a group phenomenon, in which several students are involved (Salmivalli, 2010; Saarento & Salmivalli, 2015). This phenomenon operates according to a discriminatory and exclusionary logic, which hinders the possibility of the emergence of respect for diversity among students.

Respect for diversity is more difficult to work on during the period of adolescence, because of the need for students to be socially accepted and recognized by other peers as one of their own (Ragelienė, 2016; Hernandez & al., 2014). Therefore, bullying rates tend to increase during this period (Salmivalli, 2010), especially its verbal form (insults, mockery, etc., Moody & al., 2020). This need for social acceptance and recognition can be explained by the loss of bearings that students may feel, due to their identity development and the changes of school, teachers, and friends they must deal with during their transition from primary to secondary school. This loss of bearings among students accentuates their tendency of conform to each other to increase their chances of being socially accepted and recognized. Conforming means that students observe each other and gradually adapt their ways of thinking, doing and being to those of their peers (Harkins & al., 2017).

Bullying then becomes a means of compensating for the loss of bearings, by bringing students together around a common goal and making them conform. This gathering reinforces the social cohesion between some students, i.e., the strength that emerges from their interactions and keeps them together as a group (Schachter, 1951), making a social function of bullying emerge (Salmivalli, 2010). Bullying then becomes a driving force for social learning among students, highlighting that they learn through discriminatory logic which is opposed to the aims of an inclusive school.

In conjunction with the increase in primarily verbal bullying in adolescents (Moody & al., 2020), it is interesting to note the emergence of a language specific to adolescents, described as « youth talk » (Singy, 2014). This language is characterized notably by the frequent use of insults, particularly those that operate on the principle of social categorization (racist, homophobic insults, etc.). This specificity raises questions about the limits between normality and violence between students, but also invites further study of the function of bullying, particularly in its verbal form. As Delalande (2003) notes, students lose a lot of energy in subjecting each other to the social norms in place, i.e. to what can or cannot be done at each age (Verhoeven, 2012; Prairat, 2012). Bullying can therefore have an educational function, allowing students to show each other and even learn what is expected of them. This contribution aims to analyse and describe this educational function, with a particular focus on verbal bullying, and the challenges it poses to an inclusive school.

The rate of out-of-home placement in Israel for residential care settings (and not for foster families) is among the highest in the world (Kosher et al., 2018). Most of the children and youth who experience out-of-home placement, referred to as “at-risk youth,” are usually from low socioeconomic status (SES) families. These young people are referred to therapeutic or educational boarding schools. Therapeutic boarding schools (termed “residential care” in English-speaking countries) are offered to high-risk children (e.g., those suffering from neglect and abuse). The educational boarding schools (also known as “youth villages” in Israel) are offered to low SES youth who are characterized by living under “other risk,” that is, “problematic” living conditions (poverty, social marginalization, and geographical periphery) that may impair their life prospects. At-risk youth who are educated in therapeutic and educational boarding schools, therefore, experience a myriad of exclusions and structural vulnerabilities. Moreover, as a consequence of their out-of-home placement and removal from their biological families, these young people experience external intervention in their self-concept (Schutz & Luckmann, 1974). Removing a child from his or her home also means loss of attachment figures or “ambiguous loss” (Boss, 1999). Ambiguous loss describes situations and events in which the loss is unclear or unresolved. This loss, in turn, has been found in several studies to be related to stress and anxiety. This distress “can manifest in problematic behaviors, such as aggression, delinquency, and depression” (McWey et al., 2010, p. 1339). Studies also show that at-risk youth experiencing out-of-home placement are more likely to adopt risk behaviors as well as have psychological difficulties (Sulimani-Aidan, 2015). It is against this background that phenomenological examinations of the daily lives of at-risk youth are particularly important.

This article presents an interpretative examination of the future orientation of 28 boys and girls who attend educational boarding schools in Israel, and who had been removed from their families as a consequence of their families’ extreme poverty and not due to other possible risk factors (e.g., sexual abuse, drug-addicted parents, immigration). We propose to dissociate from the elasticity (Lubeck & Garrett, 1990) that characterizes the umbrella concept of risk, which comprises many risk factors without discerning among them. The empirical examination of future orientation of a specific population of at-risk youth––i.e., educational boarding school students––is important in light of the characteristics of this disadvantaged population living under multiple social exclusions.

Thus the primary research question of the current study is what characterizes future orientation among educational boarding school students in Israel who experience multiple social exclusions. An empirical response to this question may contribute to several fields of knowledge: the study of future orientation among youth living under social exclusion and experiencing structural vulnerability; the study of culture, inequality, and future orientation; the long-term effects of out-of-home placement; the study of the linkage between SES and self-concept, or what Reay (2005) called, “the psychic landscape of social class.”

The current study presents an intervention program that was implemented in kindergartens to empower preschool children from low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. In each classroom, a speech-language therapist (SLT), occupational therapist, and psychologist collaborated with the kindergarten teacher to evaluate children's needs and plan activities to achieve the goals. The language program that was delivered by the SLT aimed to improve the children’s vocabulary, enable them to develop pragmatic skills, and develop age-appropriate morphological and syntax structures. The purpose of the present study was to examine the outcomes of the language intervention program.

The language program was developed for preschool children from low SES families, that as a group, tend to have delayed language abilities compared to children from higher SES in various language domains (Hart & Risley, 1995; Fish & Pinkerman, 2003). Many of these children begin their studies at school with language delay (Fish & Pinkerman, 2003; Ginsborg, 2006; Hoff & Tian, 2005) and the gaps between children from different SES increase over the years of school (Schiff & Lotem, 2011). In addition, studies indicate that the incidence of specific language impairment among children of parents with lower levels of education was 16%–29%, compared with only 8% among children of highly educated parents (Dollaghan et al., 1999).

A common assumption is that early educational interventions during the preschool years lay the foundation for future educational and social success (Kaiser & Roberts, 2011). Moreover, intervention programs that use natural activities in a social context optimize social and verbal interaction, helping those with language delay to improve their communication and language skills (Vilaseca & Del Rio, 2004). Thus, the current language program was developed as an activity-based intervention, founded upon the naturalistic approach, which enables the clinician to set up opportunities for children to learn through age-appropriate interactive processes in natural settings. The clinician uses activities that allow the children to incorporate modeling and reinforce therapy targets within contexts that are meaningful to the child (Fey, 1986). The intervention was conducted in small groups that allow the child a greater variety of natural opportunities with peers and caregivers than do “one-on-one” interactions. Studies have shown that young children with language delay or impoverished language benefit from language interventions in a small group (Hutchinson & Clegg, 2011; Justice et al, 2005; Nielsen & Friesen, 2012).

As part of the program, a short language assessment was conducted for all children at the beginning of the year. The goals of the screening test were: 1.) To identify children with poor language skills, and to refer them to further comprehensive developmental language assessment. 2.) To identify children who need to work in small groups, and to divide them into small groups according to their linguistic level.

In the current study, this screening test was used to test the language level at the end of the year, as well. In addition, the same screening test was delivered to kindergartens in low SES neighborhoods, that did not participate in the program. The goal of the current study was to examine whether children enrolled in the program had different gains in language development compared with children who did not enroll in the program.

Social structure in the classroom could be formed by the interactions among people and the social norms shaped by those interactions (Martin, 1976; Giroux, 1983). Thus, peers and peer relations can function as the hidden curriculum in school or classroom contexts, given that many studies are also carried out to support this assumption. Regarding social links of peers in school or the classroom, peer relations have been proven to be the primary impact factor of positive or negative classroom climates (Çengel and Türkoğlu, 2016). Peers of students who act as peer leaders also share the roles of teachers in the classroom, which has been proven to encourage teachers and students to work interdependently (Giroux and Penna, 1979). The context of learning and the social relations used by teachers and students are also addressed in another research focusing on the norms and values shared as the hidden curriculum in a Cambodian context (Bray et al., 2018). Hence, it is evident that peer relations in school could be understood as the hidden curriculum.

The left-behind children (hereinafter "LBC”) are viewed as children under 18 whose parents are migrant workers (primarily internal migrants) in China who usually spend less than three months a year with their parents (Ye et al., 2013) . Families with migrants have skip-generation childrearing arrangements to support the left-behind children, which requires grandparents to take care of the LBC (Ge et al., 2019). Most of the LBC in rural areas board at school, given that relevant policies have been launched to protect them from risks caused by insufficient childcare caused by the childrearing arrangements during after-school hours (Zhao, 2011) . According to my data analysis experience and the lifted one-child policy (Feng et al., 2016), many LBC have peer siblings who are also under the supervision of the surrogate parents. In those living conditions, peer interaction and its impact are believed to be active.

Meanwhile, research has linked the LBC’s living experience in school with the concept of the hidden curriculum by viewing Chinese socio-political ideological forces on daily pedagogical practices and what LBC experienced as the hidden curriculum (Ren et al., 2020). In the Chinese cultural context, it has been proven that the value of collectivism, called moral education (in pinyin: de yu), has been embedded in the dominant curriculum through educational policy-making (Zhu, 2021). In this study, the concept of moral education defers from what Durkheim argued (Prus, 2019). On the contrary, in this study, I view the value of moral education in the Chinese context as the dominant curriculum (McCarthy, 1994) rather than the hidden curriculum considering the cultural diversities in different research contexts. Overall, it remains a knowledge gap regarding whether LBC's peer relations and social norms among peers are considered the hidden curriculum in school.

Based on prior research regarding the relational forms of the hidden curriculum, the social-economic impact on schooling that is identified as the hidden curriculum for the LBC in China, and the shared collectivist cultural norms of peer relations in the Chinese school context, I argue that the social norms and practices among LBC and peers in school can also be viewed as the hidden curriculum. Based on the above assumption, I collected data regarding peer relations and interactions of LBC in the Chinese context while using the theory of the hidden curriculum to answer the research questions: 1) how LBC interact with peers in school, and 2) what peer interactions can be viewed as the hidden curriculum in school?

In Australia, the key concepts of media literacy education are the subject specific organising framework of the Media Arts strand of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. Media Arts is considered part of the The Arts, alongside Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts. Students from the first year of school up to Year 10 (approximately 5-16 years) should have access to Media Arts, although how this occurs varies greatly between schools. The curriculum documents offer a flexible way to teach Media Arts. Although there are achievement standards that indicate what students should be able to do at each year level band, teachers are able to select the types of media to study based on their students interests and access to technologies. The Media Arts curriculum is underpinned by the key concepts of media education. In Australia, these are technologies, representations, institutions, audiences, languages and the recent addition of relationships.

Key concepts

The key conceptual approach has a history in Australia that aligns with media literacy education in the UK and Canada (Buckingham, 2003; Jolls, Walkosz, & Morgenthaler, 2013). Instead of a set of processes, skills or competencies for students to achieve, the key concepts offer a lens through which forms of media past, present, and emerging media can be studied. Exploration of the media through the key concepts can occur through both media production and analysis (Partington & Buckingham, 2011). The concepts are non-hierarchical and although it can be helpful to understand them discreetly, the concepts often intertwine and overlap.

Technologies as a concept

Although the key concepts are connected, it can be useful to understand each one and examine how it is applied in situations where media literacy education is occurring. This research explicitly examines the concept of technologies. Technologies can be understood in multiple ways. We can consider how to use technologies, digital and non-digital, for media production. We might examine the types of technologies that are used in media production and learn how to use specific equipment and software. This is an important aspect of the concept of technologies. However, if this is the only aspect of technologies students explore, they miss out on developing nuanced understandings of how technology shapes, and is shaped by, our everyday social lives.

Through the concepts of technologies we can critically examine how technologies shape production practices through the social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which media productions are produced (Buckingham, 2019). The technologies used for media productions are not neutral and have biases (Stoddard, 2014), affordances and constraints built into them that shape users behaviours (Lüders, 2008; Williamson, 2017), whether these are purposeful or incidental.

This research aims to explore the research question ‘How is the Media Education key concept of ‘technologies’ enacted in classroom practice?’ I seek to discern how primary school teachers understand the concept of technologies and the kinds of learning experiences students undertake that advance their understanding of the concept. While this research occurred in the Australian context, the importance of the concept of technologies is relevant for media literacy educators internationally. This research offers insights into how to consider this concept in a deep and nuanced way.

It is currently becoming clear that the social meta-process of digitization transforms the areas of culture and especially of education. For many young people, digitization, and algorithms represent an abstract and non-transparent black box whose properties as well as their personal and individual consequences can hardly be estimated (DIVSI 2014 & 2018). At the same time, their everyday life is strongly influenced by digitization and algorithms. Young people use the Internet and smartphones mainly in commercial online environments whose business models are based on online advertising, data collection, and data sale. The EU General Data Protection Regulation creates a legal framework for children and young people that can only partially enable a protected online space of use for young users (Livingstone 2107). In addition to large platform companies that are behind the most popular services for young people (which store, process, and evaluate data in non-EU countries), one of the major challenges is the high social relevance of these services and a general ambivalence of knowledge and action of young people.
From an educational perspective, there are high demands on the skills of young people in dealing with online advertising, personalization, and data protection (Livingstone & Helsper 2006); on the other hand, the current competencies of young people in this area have so far been marked by inequality (Hargittai 2010, Zillien 2006, Livingstone et al. 2017). Research shows that in the frist place one of the major challenges from a media education perspective is to make transparent that young users are affected by this structures. And to make this problematizable to enable a reflective discussion (Schulze 2013, Dreyer et al. 2014, Iske & Wilde 2017).
The current project „Im Netz – Alles umsonst?“ (In the Web – All for Free?) aims to work and reflect on the abstract and non-transparent black box of digitization and algorithmization with young people (13-17 years) in an action-oriented and lifeworld way. Furthermore, it promotes the target groups digital skills and online advertising skills.

Doctor's appointments, hairdresser appointments, ticket purchases and banking transactions are increasingly being shifted to online platforms. Information concerning the children's school or even the workplace is announced by e-mail or on the corresponding homepage. The basic ability to use digital media is just as much a prerequisite as their permanent expansion.

There are 6.2 million people living in Germany who are classified as low-literate (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen, 2020). These people are at risk of being excluded from society because they do not have sufficient digital skills (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen 2020; Koppel & Langer, 2020).

A recent study on literacy in Germany highlights that low literacy skills predominantly affect the use of work-related technologies. Individuals with low literacy exhibit a lower frequency of computer usage and email composition in comparison to the general population. On the other hand, insignificant differences are observed in the utilization of smartphones, tablets, and short message sending. These individuals, however, demonstrate a higher frequency of voice message sending, video calling, and social network usage compared to the general population (Grotlüschen et al., 2019, p. 31).

Some of these low-literate people attend basic education courses in which they acquire digital skills in addition to reading and writing. In this way, course instructors in basic education courses support participants on the path to digital inclusion, helping them to learn to swim in the digital ocean. For this to succeed, course instructors should take the learners' individual preconditions into account. The limited digital equipment of the participants (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen, 2020; Boeren et al. 2020; Evers, 2020), as well as their heterogeneous learning abilities and limited digital skills (Koppel & Langer, 2020; Evers, 2020), should be taken into account when designing courses. If these individual prerequisites are taken into account, digital course content that is suitable for learners and can be mastered can be offered and supplemented by appropriate support measures. The teachers' own digital skills should also be taken into account (Rohs, Schmidt-Hertha, Rott & Bolten, 2019). Last but not least, the framework provided by the educational institution should also be taken into account in the teaching concept. Thus, teachers play a key role, as they are responsible for the conception and design of lessons (Strauch & Radtke, 2010).

The question for the presentation is:

How can successful instructional designs in basic education courses with the inclusion of digital media be developed by course instructors?

In order to answer this question, the presentation will first provide theoretical perspectives, including the aforementioned prerequisites on the part of the learners, the course instructors themselves, and the educational institutions. These will be combined with the research results from the GediG project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and will converge in a model of "Swimming in the Digital Ocean". The symbol of the ocean is transferred out of the European Reference Framework for Digital Competences DigComp2.1, in which learning to swim in the digital ocean is used as a metaphor (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017, p 14-15). Finally, recommendations for action are compiled for the design of individualized course concepts for basic education integrating digital media.

Researching diversity and inequality relations within inequality relations brings with it various difficulties. Our projects are situated in different regions of Europe, thus what combines us and our projects is that we are facing very similar struggles while trying to find ways of navigating the multiple dilemmas when researching in hegemonic orders of knowledge. How can we try to widen or intervene in the boundaries set by eurocentric and powerful orders in academia and research? What forms of knowledge production can contribute to its democratisation or at least open up spaces for its critique? How can we deal with the issue that every speaking in academic settings reproduces colonial orders of knowledge which we aim to overcome? Taking up these questions we will use our projects to think about different ways of dealing and failing with/in these contradictions. Specifically we draw on two traditions: PAR (Participatory Action Research) and (biographical) reconstructive approaches. In both traditions, the claim of a bottom-up and power critical science (Fine & Torre, 2021; Dausien 2015 and 1994) which tries to intervene in hegemonic single stories, can be found. In the reconstructive tradition, however, this claim tends to be associated with the goal to a trained break-up of societal constructions and social conditions, which as a presuppositional working mode then remains reserved for a smaller circle of scholars. Does that leave only the role of informants for the marginalized, for those who do research ‘from below’? PAR on the other hand, relies more on the participation of non-professional researchers in as many phases and areas of research as possible - but with the danger of not going "deeper", of not being able to break one's own entanglements in social conditions due to limited time and financial resources in the fields?

How do our projects position themselves in relation to these questions and contradictions? What can we contribute to this debate with a methodological critique (from within) and possibilities for change?

Diren Yesil’s research on anti-Kurdish racism in Germany, in which she conducts narrative-biographical interviews with Kurds, is concerned with the question of how a decolonial research practice can not only shift the content of hegemonic knowledge orders, but also contribute to a recognition of different ways of articulation.Teresa Dias brings in contributions of participatory action research processes with young people between 12 and 16 years old in Portugal. She works on how young athletes develop projects in/with the community through sport. Based on the training actions, young people realised how they could get to know their community spaces better and identify the problems that exist there assuming a "problem-based solution” approach. Michael Doblmair asks as an activist researcher from the perspectives of the social movement research how to combine research and political activism in the field of educational protests in Austria. Particularly is he interested in the research processes understood as educational processes from teacher-activists. In her presentation, Grete Erckmann focuses first on the difference and relationship between the “co-researcher principle”, other participatory research approaches and reconstructive research methodology. To then discuss possible connections and potentials of these epistemological and methodological approaches based on her PhD research project “Living Youth in a Migration Society” in a German City. Marlene Märker and Jacqueline Hackl will discuss modes of combination of biographical-reconstructive and participatory approaches while reflecting on the restrictive conditions of PhD projects which set boundaries to their research in various ways. Focussing on the dilemmas which arise specifically with these approaches they will speak about their ways of navigating these issues when designing and working on their projects in Austria.

In the fall of 2020, amidst widespread pandemic closures and ongoing international protests in response to racialized police violence, a public conversation emerged about whether and how teachers ought to teach students about race and racism. The conversation was propelled by a political messaging campaign, which involved the intentionally decontextualized repurposing of the term “critical race theory” (CRT) as a “shock phrase” (Bartolomé & Macedo, 1997, p. 237) with considerable political utility that suggested radical indoctrination by educators. By February of 2021, in a pattern reflecting national trends in political polarization, 36 U.S. states had undertaken legislative efforts or executive actions to “restrict education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics” while 17 states had seen efforts to expand the same; seven states witnessed efforts in both directions (Stout & Wilburn, 2021). In states where restrictive legislation or executive orders were enacted, the chief mechanism for enforcement was the threat of legal action against schools and districts as well as disciplinary action against individual teachers alleged to have taught “divisive concepts.”

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the experiences of five white educators with self-identified commitments to social justice education as they navigate teaching in New Hampshire (NH), a state in the US that at the time of data collection, had recently enacted a law prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts.” The paper is guided by two research questions: 1.) How do teachers and administrators in one predominantly white school district describe their work in the context of the recent passage of divisive concepts legislation? 2.) How do these educators see legislation prohibiting the teaching of divisive concepts as shaping their practice and leadership?

Like many teachers, those we include in this analysis cited moral commitments to the well-being of young people and to improving the world for future generations as central reasons for their decision to enter the profession. The strong thread of moral concern that runs through the accounts of the teachers highlighted in this study bears many similarities to the concerns expressed in Santoro’s (2018) study of teachers’ demoralization. We draw on Santoro’s theoretical framework which defines teacher demoralization as a loss of access to the moral rewards of the work. Teachers experience demoralization when they are confronted with moral concerns they cannot resolve or avoid. These fall into two broad categories: concerns relating to harm to students and those relating to the degradation of their profession. First, demoralization may arise from demands that teachers engage in practices they suspect are “developmentally inappropriate, pedagogically ill-advised, or damaging to students’ social-emotional well-being" (Santoro, 2018, p. 62). Second, teachers may become demoralized when conditions in the school and the broader community make them accomplices in processes that degrade the profession of teaching.

While demoralization is primarily an effect of the conditions of teaching and not, as is often suggested about burnout, a consequence of insufficient or systematically depleted internal resources of the teacher, Santoro (2018) argues that teachers may find means with which to prevent or rebound from demoralization. Santoro presents five categories of strategies observed among teachers striving to re-moralize their teaching practice: professional community, voice/writing, activism, teacher leadership, and student-centered action. Together, demoralization and re-moralization situate our understanding of the experiences and actions of the educators in this study. While our study is situated within a US context, it has relevance abroad as schools throughout Europe consider how to teach topics related to race and colonial histories.

The UK currently hosts around 605,130 international higher education students in the 2020/21 academic year, hitting its 600,000 target a decade earlier than hoped (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2022). Of the international students in the UK in 2020/21, almost 25% were recorded as EU students, while the rest of 75% were from non-EU countries.

How are we coping with the growth of international students? To respond to this growing demand and preparing our students as global citizens, what can be done to improve the student experience of both international and home students?

Recent studies indicate that academic and social integration of international students in the destination country often plays a major role in their academic performance, employability outcomes and integration into the wider community (Spencer-Oatey et al, 2017). Alongside the overall strategy to achieve a continual upward trajectory in international student numbers, it is important to build a diverse, culturally rich and engaged community where both international and home students benefit from the presence and integration of international students in the community.

Research has shown that there are cultural differences in teaching and learning of staff and students from a diverse range of ethnicities and nationalities (Montgomery, 2010; Trahar and Hyland, 2011). This paper intends to investigate these issues in depth, aiming to improve understanding of the international students’ academic, well-being and sociocultural adaptation. At the same time, it is also essential not to compromise the needs of home students.

Aims and Objectives:

• Foster cohesion and enhance understanding between international and domestic students
• Consider social, cultural and education impacts of international students on domestic students
• Enhance interaction and integration between international students and host communities
• Implement strategies and activities to promote intercultural integration and intercultural competence
• Improve academic staff’s ability to interact with students from culturally diverse background

Western society values free will, equal chances, and self-expression, especially when there is economic prosperity [1]. Choice is essential to free will, but more choices make a decision more substantial, leading to more risk, and more responsibility. This makes choosing a study field a big step in someone’s identity development. It is part of who they will become and how other people will see them [2].

When people have the freedom to pursue their dreams, they conform more easily to gender stereotypes in their study choices. They search for a sense of belonging, by following their gender identity [1]. A society where academic fields come with stereotypes of who belongs and who does not, impacts someone’s choice according to their gender or background. Looking at engineering for example, white males dominate the field [3]. This can influence the feeling of belonging to engineering for someone that does not identify as white or male. It is likely that they will choose a different study field, or have more difficulties with persisting once entered [4].

The sense of belonging is defined as ‘one’s personal belief that one is an accepted member of an academic community whose presence and contributions are valued’ [5, p. 701]. Having a strong sense of belonging is related to higher motivation, more academic self-confidence, higher engagement, and higher achievement [5]. When someone does not see themselves represented in a study domain, or do not conform to the stereotypical image that society has of that domain, it decreases the chances of a positive identification with this domain [6]. In some cases, it entails modifying their identity or narrative to fit it. For example, some women described themselves becoming less feminine during their STEM education. Archer et al. [7, p. 23] theorize that this is partially out of a need to be taken seriously in their field of study that has a strong link with masculine traits. When the identity that is needed to belong in the study field diverges too far from the own identity, this can lead to drop out [8].

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the discipline-specific identity is related with the feeling of belonging with the related study programme. The focus is on the field of engineering that is typically dominated by (white) men [3]. For example, of all the new students enrolled in the Bachelor Engineering Technology at the KU Leuven (Belgium), 10% is female, and 8% have a migration background [9].

Looking at Belgium, we see that female students and students with a migration background face different barriers. While intake for students with a migration background is low, they are already underrepresented in secondary education tracks that prepare for engineering programmes in university [10]. After completing these secondary education tracks, they face less hurdles in choosing engineering. Conversely, female students are not underrepresented in secondary education tracks, but do not make their way to engineering [11]. However, once they enter the program, students with a migration background struggle more with persistence than students without a migration background. For female students, we see that they often do better than male students [12], something we do not see in several other university, for example in Germany [13] and the US [14].

Although they face different barriers, both female students and students with a migration background, seem to have difficulties to identify with engineering. This study asks how engineering identity is related with the feeling of belonging for first-year students of engineering programmes, and how this relationship is different according to their gender or migration background.

Situations of poverty have been rising in Europe for some time, with the risk of widening inequalities (digital divide, school dropout, employment). With the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has only deteriorated (European Commission, 2021). Among the families most at risk from increased living costs and social exclusion are those of people from a migrant background. As reports from several European countries indicate (Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain – Eurochild 2022), young people from a migrant background are among those at greatest risk of poverty/social exclusion (alongside young Roma people and children of single-parent households – StC, 2021). In these groups, we find many of the traits that characterise at-risk families: large families, (under)employment in low-paying work, minority. Intersectional theory (Cho et al., 2013) posits that the presence of multiple forms of diversity amplifies the experience of exclusion and subordination faced by certain categories.

Alongside childcare, healthcare and housing, education and school are key battlegrounds in the fight against the increasing risk of social exclusion and poverty among youth. Indeed, “education is one of the key deliverables expected under the NRRP, in 2022/2023. The plan calls for comprehensive reforms and substantial investments to strengthen education and improve primary and secondary education outcomes” (Eurochild, 2022, 70).

While the EU’s Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan recognises the value of education in promoting inclusion (“everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education” – European Commission, 2021, 44) young people’s school experiences remain a “mixed bag”. The school is an arena for mutual recognition, empowerment, and capacitation, but also one in which students can experience discrimination, isolation, and negative forms of selection. With the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes that underpin hierarchical relationships between social groups, the socioeconomic inequalities of the outside world are frequently reproduced within the school system. Children from a migrant background, in particular, are overrepresented among school dropouts and under-achievers (Eurochild 2022, 52).

Students from minorities encounter numerous difficulties in Western education that are often comprehended through the lens of deficit thinking (Yosso, 2005). Students whose strengths differ from those recognised by the curriculum and in society are considered in terms of what they do not know, relative to the education system’s established standards (Levinson, 2011).

Deficit thinking provided a theoretical-scholarly underpinning to a compensatory (and assimilationist) approach to practice involving students from “different” social or cultural situations. In earlier days, in Europe, it was this compensatory approach that characterised the relationship between the school institution and students from a migratory background.

Despite the fact that, at a legislative-policy level, the compensatory mindset was superseded decades ago by an intercultural approach, day-to-day experiences of school and real-life socio-cultural contexts present a more complex, multi-faceted reality. Lacking training in the hidden dimensions of culture (Hall, 1990), well-meaning teachers often regard such students – with their “different” competences, socioeconomic status, and family background – as somehow “lacking”, and end up contributing to the reproduction of existing inequalities.

Drawing on authors working from a decolonial standpoint (Quijano, 1992; Dussel, 2000; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), the present contribution seeks to set out a theoretical explanation of the academic difficulties faced by these students (author, 2022), and to re-examine the theoretical underpinning of the deficit thinking that characterises the encounter with students from minority and low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds across the Global West (see Anzaldua, 2012; Dei et al., 2000; Zoric, 2014).

Inspired by the concept of the “coloniality of knowledge” developed by Anibal Quijano (1992), which is central to the decolonial literature, is our guiding research question: is there a connection between the deficit-thinking approach to education and the "coloniality of knowledge"?

In this paper we present parts of our book about diversity of opinion in the classroom. The book is based on empirical examples from two qualitative studies of teachers and students in junior high and high schools in Norway. One of the studies investigates students’ understandings of and associations to prejudice and stereotypes tied to minority groups and identities in school, while the other explores teachers’ practices in working with awareness raising and prevention of prejudice. Norwegian schools are responsible to facilitate for diversity of opinions and to equip students to manage it (KD, 2017), and teachers have a central role in managing the school’s educational mission related to awareness of attitudes and values among students. The empirical material from the two studies, however, suggests that discomfort and uncertainty in relation to diversity of opinions in the classroom can affect teaching situations for both teachers and students. The teachers’ narratives appear to be closely linked to contextual factors and the social dynamics in the classroom, and their practices seem to largely be shaped by their own choices and assessment in each situation. In the students’ stories, on the other hand, discomfort and uncertainty related diversity of opinions are emphasized. Their uncertainty and discomfort seem linked to both specific educational topics as well as contextual factors and the social dynamics, which in turn can affect the possibilities of diversity of opinions in the classroom.

In what is referred to as the «pedagogy of discomfort» (Boler & Zembylas, 2003; Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017), discomfort is understood as a prerequisite for the development of critical thinking and democratic formation (Røthing, 2019). Against this background, discomfort plays a central role in our discussion of the empirical material, and we take as our starting point the following questions: In what ways can relational aspects in the classroom influence the possibilities for diversity of opinions in teaching situations? To discuss this, we will draw on perspectives on discomfort in the teaching (Boler & Zembylas, 2003; Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017) and the idea of ​​the classroom as a «safe space» for students (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Barrett, 2010; Flensner & von der Lippe, 2019; Callan, 2016).

This paper explores school attitudes to child poverty in England and interrogates these through a wider European frame. Often, research about education uses the term ‘schools’ but means ‘teachers’. However, whilst the attitudes of the teachers matter, so too do the attitudes of others within the school community. The attitudes to poverty of teaching assistants, senior leaders, lunchtime supervisors and governors have a profound effect on how children and families living in poverty experience school life.

Despite a body of scholarly research suggesting poverty is not a simple concept but is messy, complex and complicated, revealing itself as amorphous and highly contextualised (Gorski, 2017; Emery, et al, 2022), discourses associated with poverty in education have been historically packaged into neat and simplified solutions to overcome gaps in attainment in order to ‘fix the problem’ of poverty, see for example the work done by the OECD.(Salinas,2018). Addressing poverty and social inequalities has long been the responsibility of schools, as ‘engines of social mobility’ (Gibb, 2016), accountable for the success of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds as part of a contemporary, common-sense aim of education, based on meritocratic narratives of the last twenty-five years (Owens and St Croix, 2020).

For schools, extant education policy responses, linked to crude indicators of poverty, such as Free School Meals (FSM) in England, have been associated with individualised interventions and overcoming barriers to learning for a seemingly homogenised group of pupils. Concomitantly, levels of accountability and the ‘standards agenda’ have fixated schools work on attainment, progress and an ability ‘to deliver’ within an increasingly apparent performance culture (Ball et al, 2012). The contemporary education policy, therefore, with its onus on progress and commitment to attainment no matter the economic status of pupils, does not acknowledge the larger, societal barriers that might affect those living in poverty nor recognise potential deficit views and myths associated with a broad, decontextualised ‘culture of poverty’ (Gorski, 2017). For too long, reductive education policy responses to poverty have made invisible the deeper histories, stories, emotions and relationships the child resides in (Emery et al, 2022).

Research, mostly from America (Ullucci and Howard, 2015) but also emerging in England (Hayes et al, 2017) and Europe (Strbova, 2012), tells us that this ‘culture of poverty’ ideology has shaped schools and teachers’ attitudes towards pupils living in poverty. Yet in reality, outside of the USA, we have little to no knowledge of what these attitudes are beyond broad brushstrokes. Certainly, in England, beyond the work of Simpson et al (2017), there is a paucity of either tools or data regarding school attitudes. Commensurately, we need to gain a clear understanding of what attitudes are held by those working within schools in England towards children living in poverty.

Adopting a critical frame and building on the thinking of Gorski (2017), we consider three, interrelated questions: How are social mobility discourses reflected in schools' attitudes to poverty? What do these attitudes say about the contemporary, professional identity of staff? To what extent can social mobility, as the normative education poverty discourse, be considered ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2010)?

Democratic attitudes and behaviour are indispensable for the maintenance of democracies. Consequently, young citizens have a decisive influence on the success of the (re-)creation of democracies. Nevertheless, young people are excluded from many key forms of political participation that would encourage attention to young political views. Yet political attitudes develop primarily during the youth phase - shaped by the experiences of individuals in their social and political contexts (Eckstein 2019, S. 417). To ensure that democratic values are passed on to the next generation, it is important to integrate citizenship education into the daily lives of young people.

Young people participate less often in elections, have less interest in political issues (Eckstein 2019; Weiss 2020) and less trust in political institutions (Eckstein 2019, S. 405). Against this background, young people have repeatedly been accused of withdrawing from politics and lacking engagement. However, the relationship of young people to politics is much more ambivalent as a result of these developments. Studies also show that young people are interested and engaged in many political issues, but that this engagement does not take place in the traditional spaces of politics and is subject to different dynamics than the engagement of older generations. The consequences of this development can be seen in the numerous youth movements that have developed (Eckstein 2019, S. 405; Syvertsen et al. 2011).

The current young generation is particularly shaped by crises - with the Corona pandemic in 2020 and the war in Europe in spring 2022 as current climaxes. The crises not only have an impact on young people’s school education and career paths, but also have the potential to significantly shape the political attitudes of these people and thus strongly influence the future of democracy in Germany. However, it remains unclear how these consequences manifest themselves in the political attitudes of young people. At the same time, it has been scientifically confirmed that crises and conflicts can lead to serious changes in public opinion (Schoen 2006). Already for the Corona pandemic, it was found that interpersonal and institutional trust in the population decreased, economic uncertainty reduced support for welfare state services (Daniele et al. 2020) and certain narratives in social media promoted the generation of rumours and conspiracy theories (Freeman et al. 2022; Shahsavari et al. 2020).

With the war in Europe, the crisis situation increasingly intensified. Images and stories about the war were published via social media and news, the sources of which could not be verified for a long time, and the various political measures and reactions were widely and vociferously discussed among the population. This uncertainty and the lowered confidence due to the crisis-ridden period of the previous years paved the way for extreme political positions. Against this background, the article examines the following questions: Which types of young people can be found with regard to the evaluation of political reactions to the war in Ukraine? What influence do features of vertical and horizontal disparities have with regard to the formation of types?

The article uses the current example of crisis to highlight the direction in which young people's political opinion-forming is developing in Germany and which target groups can be addressed to promote or curb diplomatic or radical attitudes. With regard to political developments in many European countries, the results are not only relevant for Germany and can be translated into other national contexts.

This paper presents two educational actions developed in a Catalan prison (Spain). Specifically, it analyses the impact of the Dialogic Scientific Gatherings and Scientific Workshops in a prison. Previous research highlighted the consequences of educational inequalities leading to social exclusion in different forms, nevertheless, more anecdotal research has focused on showing actions to overcome the exclusion of the most vulnerable groups. One of the most crucial tasks of social sciences is to study the different levels and types of inequality and, especially, to define strategies that reduce them (Flecha, 2022; Soler, 2017).

The education gap between the incarcerated population and the general population is enormous. For example, studies in the United States show that less than 5% have a college degree, and only 15% of incarcerated adults obtain a postsecondary degree or certificate before or during incarceration. In comparison, almost half (45%) of the general population have completed some postsecondary education (PIAAC, 2014). At the same time, scientific literature highlights the existing gap between the most vulnerable students and their access to science (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003). Several studies show that young people who feel more attracted to and are more proficient in scientific activities are precisely those who have participated in scientific activities besides scheduled school classes (Thiry, Laursen, & Hunter, 2011; VanMeter-Adams et al., 2014).

Even though scientific literacy is essential for individuals to participate in democratic societies fully, inequalities in accessing scientific knowledge still exist worldwide (Diez-Palomar et al., 2022). Specifically, scientific literacy refers to “the ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen” (OECD, 2013, p. 7). Despite the growing interest in the democratization of science, little research has been done to involve specific groups in scientific advances. A particular case is the prison context (as example: (LeRoy et al., 2012, Nalini et al., 2013), where more research needs to be done in relation to successful actions that fosters awareness of and interest in science in these contexts.

This paper presents an educational action carried out in the context of a project funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). The project's main objective is to implement actions to promote scientific vocations among children, adolescents and adults in highly vulnerable situations. Specifically, in this paper, we focus on the results obtained in the training of adults in a penitentiary centre through Dialogic Scientific Gatherings (DSG) and Scientific Workshops. These are evidence-based actions, an optimal ground for developing educational theory, actual practice and policy-making (Flecha, 2015; 2022). It is a case study in Catalonia (Spain), and the action was carried out in the men's module between January and April 2022. During these four months, the DSGs were carried out, which consisted of reading a scientific article selected by the researchers and sharing the arguments with the group. This reading was complemented by a training session in a workshop format conducted by expert researchers on each topic.

This paper addresses one of the different ways of understanding diversity in educational research with a focus on a Catalan prison. Therefore, in line with the conference this paper aims to highlight the successes (impact) and challenges resulting from the commitment of educational researchers and educational research to address and include diversity in all aspects of what we do. The results show that the participants perceived the activities as a useful resource for social reintegration, as the increased motivation to participate in dialogical learning environments brought meaning to their learning and transformed their educational expectations.

Introduction

This study explores the role of the teacher in working with student health in high school. Teachers have been identified as crucial in promoting student health and wellbeing but it is traditionally not considered a teacher task. The article presents findings from an empirical study in which the views of the teachers are in focus.

School is considered a suitable and vital arena for working with the health of children and young people. This can be done by implementing various programmes and initiatives lead by teachers or other professionals, or in a more informal way in the everyday school practice.

Student health has been and still is a concern for the Student Health Services (SHS). It is however with the teacher that the students spend most of their time in school. A good relationship with the teacher, support from the teacher in meeting academic demands and classroom participation has proven beneficial to student health. There is also a well-documented reciprocal relationship between health and academic achievement. Overall, the same factors which promote learning, also promote health.

In Sweden, where the study is set, student health work “shall be primarily preventive and promoting” (Education Act, 2010:800). Teachers are not explicitly tasked with health promotion but stipulated to cooperate with the SHS regarding student health. While the teacher is not presented as a central actor in the Education Act, other guiding documents highlight the teacher as important for student health. Teachers thus have a role in working with student health but what this role entails is not clear in the governing documents.

The aim of the article is to contribute knowledge about how Swedish high school teachers describe their role(s) in working with student health.

Brief Previous Research

Student health work has been empirically explored before but the role of the teacher in this work is a field in need of further empirical investigation. Much of the research regarding teachers’ involvement in student health work examines various programmes and initiatives implemented at the respective schools. The focus of this article is how teachers describe their role in the informal, everyday student health work, not in a programme or an initiative.

Teacher involvement in health promotion has been criticized. Student mental health promotion can be regarded as an additional task to the existing abundance of teacher tasks. Expanding the role of the teacher is criticized as it can cause added stress and pressure. Lastly, teachers’ increased awareness of mental health problems among children and adolescents, can result in teachers starting to identify many behaviors and experiences previously deemed ordinary or understandable, as indicative of mental health problems

This study contributes knowledge about how teachers describe their roles in student health promotion. This knowledge can be used to improve student health promotion further and contribute added understanding of the complex professional role of the teacher.

Theoretical Points of Departure

The study is based on theories of social constructivism in which social phenomena are understood and become active deeds by means of human interaction; people interpret, reinterpret, negotiate, and use various strategies to influence which interpretation takes precedence, thereby influencing how a phenomenon is understood.

The teaching-learning process and academic achievements in schools are significantly shaped by the relationship quality between teachers and students and therefore by teachers’ relational competence (Juul & Jensen, 2017). Furthermore, relationships among teachers, other pedagogical staff and school leaders are important for the social environment at a school (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Research has shown that good relationships are positively associated with various health outcomes and promotes mental health and well-being (Chernyshenko et al., 2018; Durlak et al., 2011). Conducive elements for positive relationships are interpersonal competencies such as empathy and compassion as well as self-regulating skills helping to deal with challenging situations (Flook et al. 2015; Singer & Klimecki, 2014).

These competencies can be enhanced through professional development programs preferable whole school interventions (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). It is assumed that teachers who increase their own social-emotional competencies as a result of participating in training will thus not only positively influence the interpersonal atmosphere and the way of relating to each other, but this will – directly and indirectly – also benefit the social-emotional development of the students (e.g. Jennings et al. 2017).

To date, social emotional interventions have mostly been investigated in quantitative experimental studies. However, due to the complexity of these interventions’ implementation, it has been argued that a mixed-methods approach is feasible and enables tracking more closely the multi-level changes (Nielsen et al. 2019). Hence, this study included interviews with school staff and leaders to investigate their lived experience of their relationships at school during the program implementation.

This study focuses on the “Empathie macht Schule“ project – a whole-school approach targeting all educators and other school staff, including leaders. The program bases on the work of Juul and Jensen (2017) aiming at the cultivation of educators’ empathy, mindfulness, compassion, and relational competence at three elementary schools in Berlin, Germany. Central features of this program have previously been carried out in various European countries, including a Danish teacher training (Jensen, E., Skibsted, & Christensen, 2015, Lund Nielsen, 2016) and an ERASMUS project (Nielsen at al., 2019). The training comprises six modules focusing on topics of wellbeing and mindfulness, relational competence and empathy, self-regulation and working with conflicts, challenging relationships, and children with special needs, bereavement and loss, collaboration with parents, and collegial reflection practices.

Although there are some important indications from the research to date, it remains rather unclear how qualitative and quantitative data sources analyzing the process and various outcomes are able to depict the overall picture of a social-emotional intervention effect and careful implementation practices in elementary schools.

Research question

In this presentation, we aim to relate the findings from the qualitative interviews to the individual quantitative data and finally embed them on a quantitative level in the dataset of sample of Cohort 1 collected to date, focusing on aspects relevant for relationship quality on the one hand and on self-regulating skills and distress on the other.

• How do teachers experience their relationships in their professional context, especially important change moments following the training?
• How does the perceived relationship quality change as a result of the training?
• How is this related to various aspects influencing the interpersonal self-efficacy – such as mindfulness and self-compassion as well as perceived stress?
• To what extent can the qualitative data be used to inform the understanding/interpretation for the quantitatively collected data and vice versa?

Children’s individual characteristics, such as temperament, play an important role in a successful transition to school. Temperament’s role has been found to be important especially in skill development, but it has also been suggested that the association between children’s temperamental characteristics and their further success in school might, actually, be related to the interaction between teacher and student (Viljaranta et al., 2015). Previous research has shown that students’ temperament is associated with the quality of teacher-student interaction (Curby et al., 2011), and that it evokes certain kinds of instruction and other educational responses among teachers (Coplan & Prakash, 2003; Keogh, 1986). However, not much is known about the relations between temperament and teacher-student interaction in the very beginning of students’ schooling. Based on previous studies showing that certain temperamental characteristics are perceived as more acceptable than others by teachers (e.g. Martin, 1989), it is possible that students’ temperament plays a crucial role in the way how teacher-student interaction starts to form during the first grade. For example, when students are showing more acceptable characteristics, teacher-student interaction is more likely to be adaptive than when students are showing more difficult or demanding characteristics.

In this study we aimed to examine, first, whether students’ temperamental characteristics are related to the ways how teachers and students interact with each other and, second, whether students’ temperamental characteristics are related to the variation in daily interaction between teachers and students. The study is carried out in Finland.

Health is closely intertwined with social class: people at the top of the social hierarchy have fewer diseases and live longer than those less privileged, even in a society with low levels of inequality and a well-developed welfare state like Norway (Dahl & Elstad, 2022), the empirical context of this paper. Although youth is one of the healthiest periods in life, and generally marked more by equality than inequality in health (Friestad & Klepp, 2006), it is a key period for lifestyle establishment and therefore particularly important to understand (Burdette, Needham, Taylor, & Hill, 2017). Habits formed during youth also accumulate over the years in ways that gradually and powerfully increase social inequalities in health (Power & Matthews, 1997).

What determines differences in health practices is a complex question. Structural conditions are clearly important, but so are health cultures, i.e. distinct moralities and sets of practices related to the body, particularly physical exercise and diet. In previous research, what is explored is primarily parents’ perspectives on and investments in their children’s health. This can be a fruitful inroad to the issue of intergenerational transmission of ‘healthstyles’ – embodied notions and practices of health – but it may give the impression that it is a straightforward process to mould children’s health dispositions, which may not be the case. In the present paper we take the perspective that children also exercise agency in matters of health, especially as they enter adolescence and often are allowed more freedom to make decisions on how to spend their time and when and what to eat, and move in between school, peers, leisure activities and the family. In this paper, we ask how young people assume, engage in and navigate classed health practices as they move through youth, and what their parents’ roles are in shaping the conditions for young people’s health practices.

This warrants a focus on how children negotiate, rather than passively receive, the health culture they are socialised into. We build on Bourdieu’s understanding of the socialised body (Bourdieu, 2007). In his thinking, the socialised body or ‘habitus’ is built up of the ‘active residue or sediment’ (Crossley, 2001, p. 93) of past experiences, and functions like a scheme that shapes people’s actions, perceptions and thoughts. As people who occupy similar positions in the social space will experience the world in similar ways, habitus is always classed. Mollborn et al.s’ (2021: 577) concept of ‘collective health habituses’ refers to ideas of health that are shared and incorporated among people in particular contexts. We take the view here that the transmission of health dispositions is located within broader – and classed – parenting ethoses, what Lareau (2003, 2015) calls child care logics. Lastly, we propose that relational resources (Eriksen, Stefansen, & Smette, 2022) in the family can add to our understanding of how health practices are nurtured.

Rapid Automatized Naming, (RAN, a measure of the ability to name aloud objects, colours, digits or letters) and phonological awareness are two reading-related measures that are shown to predict early reading ability strongly and reliably (e.g., Moll et al., 2014; Caravolas et al., 2019). However, the relevance and predictive power of each individual measure is still under debate. This study focuses the influence of RAN on early reading ability, problematizing to what extent RAN contributes to assessments aiming to predict reading ability. The main aim, however, is to problematize how this knowledge is best to put into practice. Thus, when is RAN relevant to use as an indicator of reading ability and when are other indicators more relevant?

Because of the efforts being made to identify children, at an early stage, who are at risk of reading difficulties children are in school screened for their reading ability. But screening children is both time-consuming and costly, and therefore it must be well thought out what is being screened for, how to interpret results, but also how are the results to be used and implemented in the school's operations? Thus, given that children's time in school is limited, any activity that focuses on reading achievement must in one way or another be based on knowledge established to improve reading. Hence, the time it takes to screen children needs to be balanced against the time it takes from teaching.

In previous research, RAN is claimed to be a measure of phonological processing time and reflects how fast representations can be retrieved from long-term memory (Bowey et al., 2005; Torgesen, et al., 1997). Further it has been debated whether RAN and phonological awareness each contribute unique information to early reading, or if the measures will be merely two ways of measuring one ability, phonological processing. For example, Chiappe et al. (2002) found that most of the variance contributed by RAN to reading ability is shared with phonological awareness. Further, and in line with the understanding of RAN and phonological awareness being two sides of the same coin, it is claimed by Ziegler et al. (2010) that RAN will only become the dominant predictor when phonological awareness tasks are not challenging enough.

However, another view is that RAN and phonological awareness are two distinct measures predicting early reading ability (Torppa et al., 2013). In a cross-sectional study de Groot et al., (2015) compared reading disabled children with more skilled readers and found that for the reading disabled children the combination of RAN and phonological awareness showed the highest predictive values. When comparing the effects of phonological awareness and RAN on reading ability phonological awareness appears to be the best predictor of reading disability whilst RAN is indicated to be the best predictor of above-average to excellent reading ability (de Groot et al., 2015).

Other longitudinal studies show that the predictive power of RAN and phonological awareness on reading appears to change by age (e.g. Kirby at al., 2003; Vaessen & Blomert, 2010) and hypothesized by some researchers to be connected to the reading strategy used (Vaessen & Blomert, 2010; Rodriguez et al., 2015). Reading development is assumed to shift from a slow sequential phonological decoding to an automatic orthographic processing (Ehri, 2005).

In order to investigate the relevance of RAN in reading assessment, the present study measured RAN repeatedly among a group of children who were followed from kindergarten through their time in elementary school.

An abundance of research has established that phonological awareness skills are important prerequisites for early reading acquisition (for a review, see Melby-Lervåg et al., 2012). Early develop­ment of phonological awareness implies that a child moves from implicit to explicit control of the sound structure of language, and this explicit control is critical when a child learns to understand and handle the alphabetic principle (e.g., Caravolas et al., 2013; Lundberg et al., 2010). Accordingly, there has been a long tradition of research on phonological training to prevent failure to acquire reading skills. Early examples of such studies are Bradley and Bryant (1983) and Lundberg, Frost and Petersen (1988), and results from later training studies have been summarized in several meta-analyses (e.g., Bus & Van Ijzendoorn, 1999, National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). However, even though the results of the training studies show positive effects, Torgesen (2000) found that around two to six percent of the participants in phonological interventions could be defined as “treatment resisters”. Thus, some children do not grasp the idea of phonemes as discrete entities, and they do not seem to enhance their phonological skills to an acceptable level by the training.

Most phonological interventions have been carried out in combination with, or just before, formal reading instruction starts, and studies have typically investigated development over short periods (Kjeldsen et al., 2019). In the present study phonological awareness training was carried out when children were four and five years old (school starts at age 7 in Sweden). The intention was to begin the study at this early stage when children’s explicit awareness of the structure of speech starts to emerge (Wolff & Gustafsson, 2015; Dodd & Gillon, 2001). The training addressed different aspects of phonological awareness, gradually moving from games and exercises with morphemes and syllables to phonemes. Explicit training of phoneme/grapheme mapping (National Reading Panel, 2000) was later introduced when children were six years old, one year before formal reading instruction started. This training was given to all children regardless of whether they belonged to the experimental or control group. Thus, since everyone received the six-year-old training, the potential effects in this study are derived from the early training at ages 4 and 5.

General fluid intelligence (Gf) is a core concept in the field of intelligence. It is interpreted as the capacity to solve novel, complex problems. Gf is highly correlated with phonological awareness in 4-year-old children (Wolff & Gustafsson, 2015), and both phonology and Gf have been found to relate to early reading ability. de Jong & van der Leij (1999) found that when Gf was controlled for, the relation between phonology and reading decreased, and the direct effect of Gf on reading decreased over time. These findings support the hypothesis that the influence of Gf on early reading skills is mediated through the development of phonological awareness. Thus, we may expect that children with high Gf typically will have a more favorable development of phonological awareness skills. One important question here is if the phonological training will decrease or increase this putative influence.

The research questions are: 1) Does structured phonological awareness training starting at the age of 4 affect reading related skills ten years later in grade 8? and 2) Are there differential effects of phonological awareness training as a function of children’s cognitive abilities? The present study thus aims at extending on the rich knowledge of effects of preventive phonological interventions preceding reading instruction. As to our knowledge there are very few previous studies which investigate long-term effects of phonological awareness training during a ten-year period.

A high percentage of students have considerable reading deficits, not only in Germany, but also in other European countries (Betthäuser et al. 2023; Wallner-Paschon et al. 2017). Therefore, formative diagnostics are essential to record the current learning levels of students so that specific interventions can be shaped at an early stage. This discourse has been intensified in Germany as a result of the significant increase in heterogeneity at primary schools and the disconcerting learning deficits of a large number of primary school children after the COVID-19 pandemic (Stanat et al. 2022). As a result, the German Standing Scientific Commission of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal States recommends the early intensification of nationwide diagnostics and the "provision of scientifically based, quality-assured diagnostic instruments and related support instruments" as formative diagnostics to ensure basic competencies (Köller et al. 2022, p. 74). Additionally, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), is not only conducted through a computer-based assessment since 2016, but also has a focus point in digital forms of reading (Mullis & Martin 2019).

In the collaborative BMBF-funded project DaF-L (digital everyday integrated supportive diagnostic - reading in inclusive education) an adaptive, digital and competence-oriented reading screening with adapted reading packages, consisting of reading texts and reading exercises, is being developed, tested, standardized, and subsequently made available as OER on the online learning application Levumi for the third grade of primary schools in Germany. For the project partners of four German universities an essential component in the development and improvement of digital applications is the cooperation between practice and research. Interviews with experts will be conducted in order to advance the reading packages as well as Levumi. The goal is to ensure a direct transfer of research to practice by examining the ecological validity and usability of the instrument as well as the professional development of the partners in the schools with regard to this unique form of the adaptive approach. Ensuing this, the objective is to enable low-threshold, data-based, and effective reading support, to identify conditions for the success of everyday support-based diagnostics and to improve the conditions for inclusive education in primary schools.

The reading packages for promoting reading comprehension in inclusive classes contain reading texts on three ability levels and reading tasks tailored to them. The reading packages are intended to promote the reading skill reading fluently and the reading abilities reading comprehension and strategies for reading comprehension. The ability to read fluently implies that the students can read “quietly, aloud, automatically, accurately, meaningfully, and quickly (KMK 2020, p. 16).” The students have to read texts and solve reading exercises; therefore, they read both repeatedly (Mayer 2018) and a lot (Kruse et al. 2015), thus promoting reading fluency. In the case of reading comprehension, the students read texts that correspond to their ability level and understand the meaning. Skills involve students identifying textual information at the local level, either explicit or gleaned through simple inferencing. In doing so, they also pay attention to linguistic means to ensure the context of the text as well as link text information, draw conclusions, and construct an overall understanding using their previous knowledge (KMK 2020). In the case of possessing strategies for reading comprehension or reading strategies, the students know to use basic cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies after reading. They work with after-reading strategies such as central text statements (KMK 2020).

The global question of how students can benefit from digital reading packages and how the usability of the application can be improved through collaboration between educators and researchers will be explored.

The educational inclusion of children with chronic disorders – such as developmental and physical disabilities – is a well-studied area, across Europe and globally. The siblings of these children, however, are less studied, particularly in relation to their educational experiences and outcomes. Siblings of children with chronic disorders have divergent, and often adverse, life experiences. Some siblings may experience positive outcomes, such as increases in prosocial functioning (Orm et al., 2022). Overall, however, siblings are at risk for negative psychological effects including emotional and behavioural problems (Havill et al., 2019; Vermaes et al., 2012). Reduced psychological well-being, in turn, can affect siblings’ educational experiences, functioning, and outcomes (Gan et al., 2017).

Studies of siblings of children with chronic disorders (herein “siblings”) tend to utilise mainly parent and self-ratings on measures of psychosocial well-being (Hayden et al., 2019). While these perspectives are important, they offer limited insight into the functioning of siblings within a school environment, particularly in the case of parent-rated measures. Given the centrality of school to children’s daily lives and the importance of education outcomes to later life outcomes, it is essential to consider the perspectives of teachers on sibling well-being. The present study aims to address this gap by examining:

1) Teacher ratings for siblings on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

2) Agreement between teacher and parent ratings on the SDQ, and

3) Factors that may explain disagreement between raters.

Previous studies of child psychosocial functioning – generally, rather than specific to siblings of children with chronic disorders – have found low to moderate levels of agreement between teacher and parent ratings on the SDQ (Murray et al., 2021). This pattern is also found across different measures of child psychosocial functioning. Across these studies, teachers tend to report fewer problems than parents, particularly in the case of internalising problems. Rather than signalling poor reliability of measures, however, the discrepancy between teacher and parent ratings suggests that children’s behaviour is context and rater-specific. Teacher and parent ratings may be seen as complimentary pieces of a larger picture and understanding differences can facilitate better targeted interventions (De Los Reyes et al., 2015). A number of factors may explain a lack of interrater agreement on the SDQ and other measures of child psychosocial functioning. Factors of the home environment, for example, can influence the level of agreement between raters; family stress has been found to be associated with less agreement between teacher and parent ratings while positive parent-child relationship is associated with more agreement (Cheng et al., 2018).

Overall, little is known about the educational experiences of siblings of children with chronic disorders. Furthermore, the SDQ is widely used across European countries and globally. A better understanding of the conditions under which teacher – parent agreement tends to be higher and lower will help researchers and practitioners to interpret SDQ ratings and target solutions and support accordingly.

As the education agenda of global agencies changed after 2015 to emphasise minimum standards of quality for all countries to be delivered by 2030, the OECD has sought to expand its most successful comparative instrument, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), to include low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In 2014, it introduced PISA for Development (PISA-D) as the means to establish PISA as a universal measure of learning, and in 2020, it declared PISA-D a success. The most innovative feature of PISA-D was that the assessment included out-of-school youth (OOSY); that task was sub-contracted to Educational Testing Service (ETS). The OOSY population is a geographically dispersed group which present considerable challenges to any researchers seeking to access them. Given this, we ask: who did the OECD assess? More specifically, how did the OECD define the target population of PISA-D out-of-school assessment, what was the sampling frame, and were they accurately represented in the PISA-D OOSY sample?

Much of the existing literature on the OECD influence is based on different theoretical positions. These differences in perspective have real consequences, however, often determining which legitimation dynamics researchers see and which they overlook. In this paper, we seek to adopt a holistic approach by drawing on Suchman’s (1995) framework for analysing the multiple sources of organisational legitimacy and the means by which it is promoted and repaired.

In applying Suchman’s framework, we argue that PISA-D was a macro level exercise designed to legitimate the OECD’s extension of PISA into LMICs and to establish its role in a new arena. The incorporation of OOSY in the assessment was a key micro level endeavour which would allow the OECD to achieve that end and, if not done properly, would challenge aspects of its legitimacy. For example, not assessing sufficient OOSY would debase the quality of the OECD’s products and services; this would also damage the OECD’s moral claims with regard to monitoring the attainment of the SDGs and promoting an inclusive approach. In parallel, at the cognitive level, this would challenge the whole logic of the novelty and value of PISA-D. Overall, the successful identification and assessment of OOSY was vital to ensuring its legitimacy. This would require the OECD to either address the considerable difficulties of accessing OOSY or find a tactical solution which obscured the many challenges to its legitimacy.

Suchman (1995) also analyses how organisations respond to challenges to their legitimacy and identifies three broad approaches: (a) offer normalising accounts; (b) restructure, and (c) don’t panic. He suggested that although legitimacy crises may coalesce around performance issues, most challenges ultimately rest on failures of meaning, where ‘audiences begin to suspect that putatively desirable outputs are hazards, that putatively efficacious procedures are tricks, or that putatively genuine structures are facades’ (1995, 597). Consequently, the initial task in mending a breach of legitimacy usually will be ‘to formulate a normalising account’ that separates the threatening revelation from larger assessments of the organisation as a whole. He identified ‘justifications’ and ‘explanations’ as the two main types of normalising accounts. Suchman also noted that organisations may also re-establish legitimacy through micro-level strategic restructuring, in the sense that ‘narrowly tailored changes that mesh with equally focused normalising accounts can serve as effective damage-containment techniques’ (ibid., 598).

PISA has become the “world’s premier yardstick” against which the “quality, equity and efficiency” of national education systems are evaluated (Gurría in OECD, 2018a, p. 2). PISA claims to be able to compare, on a single scale, the performance of education systems around the globe. These comparative measures have “contributed to the constituting of a global commensurate space of educational performance” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 135), regardless of the varying political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of participating nations. Data from PISA are being used by countries to identify “gaps” in their education systems and to develop policies to “move up” on the league tables (Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Wiseman, 2013). A recent development in this space has been the OECD’s development of an internationally comparable measure of Global Competence.

The use of PISA measures as benchmarks for shaping global policies and governing education makes it important to examine the process of how “PISA knowledge” is arrived at. Developing a set of measures requires normative decisions about what the concept encompasses. The assessment of global competence provides a useful example of examining the development of this particular form of global knowledge. Given the multifaceted definitions and understandings of this term, this paper empirically examines the challenges such efforts at stabilising the definition faced, and the ways in which these were negotiated. Locating our study in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and deploying the concept of tinkering (Knorr Cetina, 1981), we attend to the practices that stabilised the assessment of Global Competence in PISA 2018.

To make globally acceptable knowledge, various epistemic, cultural and political perspectives are brought together in relations of mutual learning and construction, and through iterative processes of expert consultation, country feedback, committee endorsement, etc. These encounters, where diverse perspectives are brought together, have the potential to be hijacked by more outspoken or forceful participants. Moreover, these processes typically take several months during which a range of unexpected events may occur or challenges posed to the successful completion of the endeavour. Tinkering is the way in which actors and events are managed – through cajoling, placating, compromising, modifying, etc. to ensure that the project does not collapse.

Drawing on empirical data relating to the development of the assessment of global competencies, we provide examples tinkering in the development of PISA’s tests of global competency. We highlight three key tinkering moves by the OECD during the process of developing the assessment. In the first move, the OECD replaced the initial Global Competence Expert Group with another group of experts to placate the PISA Governing Board, which objected to the heave economic slant of the first expert presentation. In the second tinkering move, the OECD retrospectively aligned the PISA assessments of global competency with the global competence framework with the UN SDGs. This enabled the OECD to gather more (of the right) allies to support its efforts, and provided “a moral legitimacy the OECD has not enjoyed with the traditional PISA initiative and its narrow economic focus” (Auld & Morris 2019b. p.11). A third tinkering move was the push by the OECD to administer the assessment even when only a minority of the countries decided to participate, arguing that more nations might join subsequent rounds.

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) are playing an increasingly important role in decision-making and reforms, both nationally and internationally (e.g. Grek, 2009; Lindblad et al., 2018). One of the most influential ILSAs is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Given the impact PISA has on educational debate and policy, it is crucial that results are trustworthy. Yet, parallel to an increase in the number of ILSAs, there has been growing validity concerns regarding for example the content being tested, the influence on national educational systems and potential bias due to lack of sample representativeness (Grek, 2009; Jerrim, 2021; Meyer & Benavot, 2013). Relatively few studies, however, have focused on whether students are motivated to do their best in ILSAs as compared with high-stakes tests.

A motive for our research is international evidence suggesting that tests of low stakes impact student motivation and effort (Finn, 2015; Wise & DeMars, 2005). Whereas the relation between high- and low-stakes testing has been studied previously, findings are inconsistent, and we know little about this relationship in Sweden. Therefore, the following study examines whether there is evidence for the hypothesis that the lack of personal consequences may bias PISA test scores downwards. Indeed, self-reports from Swedish students indicate that they do not do their best in PISA (Eklöf & Hopfenbeck, 2019). However, PISA test scores have not yet been compared to external criteria such as national test scores. The theoretical framework used to interpret the results of the present study is the expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), postulating that test motivation depends on the student's expectations of succeeding at a particular task, the value the student places on the task, and the interaction between the two (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). The expectancy-value theory has successfully been used in previous studies to explain the test-taking motivation construct (e.g., Eklöf & Knekta, 2017).

Previous research on the relationship between national tests and PISA/TIMSS revealed moderate to high but imperfect correlations (Skolverket, 2022; Wiberg, 2019; Wiberg & Rolfsman, 2019). One possible explanation is that ILSAs have low stakes for students while national tests have high stakes. In order to test the assumption that motivation influences student achievement, we will examine whether test motivation moderates the relationship between PISA scores and the national test scores. Skolverket (2022) found a correlation of .61 between the two measures but our hypothesis is that the relationship is different for different levels of motivation to take the PISA test. With reference to the expectancy-value theory we assume that the average level of test motivation is higher for national tests since this is a test with higher stakes. For students that were particularly unmotivated to do the PISA test, the correlation with their national test scores could therefore be lower. Consequently, the study examines the following research questions: (1) What is the correlation between test motivation in PISA and PISA achievement? and (2) Is the relationship between low-stakes PISA test scores and high-stakes national test scores moderated by students’ test motivation in PISA?

The effectiveness of initiatives in an educational context is often interpreted in terms of their impact on learning outcomes for every unit of investment. Governments invest a significantly high amount of money and effort in large-scale assessments (LSAs) with the intent to provide data-driven evidence to policymakers and researchers. Such evidence indicates the quality parameters of the education system in terms of learning level, equity, sustainability, and other predefined dimensions. Validity of such information is paramount due to its crucial role in decision-making for inputs, functional strategies, and goal setting for intended outputs, which if implemented as intended are most likely to lead to improvement in learning outcomes. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that the effectiveness of LSAs can also be interpreted in terms of gain in learning outcomes or other dimensions, like any other measure. However, measuring and demonstrating effectiveness of LSAs remains a challenge due to multiple reasons besides the complexities involved in efficacy and effectiveness research, like the notion that assessment data themselves offer solutions. Authors make a compelling argument that data including assessment data do not provide solutions, rather they assist the policy and research community by providing valid evidence and insights enabling informed policy formulation and implementation decisions. Rich data and information provided by large-scale assessments can further be used to analyze the impact of those policy decisions.

The paper consists of three major parts. The first part reviews existing initiatives and proposes a logic model based on reasoning to estimate the effectiveness through evidence and/or counterevidence. A logic model depicts how an initiative is expected to make a difference, using explicit statements of the activities that are likely to bring about the intermediate changes and the impact the initiative intends to make. The proposed model postulates that if evidence generated by LSAs at T1 point of time were utilized to make appropriate modifications in policy and interventions regarding inputs, processes, organizational functioning, governance, monitoring mechanism, and outputs can lead to lead to learning gains per unit of investment at T2 point of time.

The second part builds on policy research and secondary analyses of large-scale assessments conducted in India to generate insights into the policy and practice that emerged from large-scale assessments. While the study primarily uses the assessment data and information from the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), it makes an effort to corroborate the findings with International and national LSAs in a similar context.

The third part recommends a policy implementation framework consisting of a series of steps to design system-specific strategies and monitor efforts. These steps are organized into two main phases: i) a ‘diagnostic’ phase to identify priority areas or enabling outcomes; ii) an ‘action’ stage to devise, implement and evaluate concrete policy interventions. The diagnostic stage mainly consists of cost-effective action-oriented surveys with a tiered approach, while the action stage consists of evidence-driven developmental goals and action plans for various levels of the system, alignment between all actors involved, customized interventions at school level with continuous monitoring in the cycle of 'assess-act-assess'

Education systems around the world have emphasized the need to transform assessments to improve learning. Proposed framework and model may be vital in designing learning systems to improve learning outcomes through effective systemwide assessments. However, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all policy mix. Feasible policy choices depend on contexts, social preferences, and political constraints. A robust and independent institutional framework, stakeholder engagement, and credible communication strategies are vital to enhancing the effectiveness of LSAs and eliminating learning poverty to achieve sustainable development goals.

Institutions of formal education in Europe are characterised by increased cultural and linguistic diversity when it comes to the student population. Considering that such a trend is only expected to grow due to transnationalism and globalisation, teacher education programs must be continuously re-evaluated and redesigned in order to remain relevant and responsive to sociodemographic changes. More specifically, teacher education programs must be able to prepare teacher candidates to work effectively with heterogenous groups of students in ways that support the learning of all students and affirm their identities within growing neoliberal and neoconservative discourses (Alford, 2014). In Norway, classroom composition has also become more diverse, primarily due to a higher number of students of a transnational background, whether through forced or voluntary immigration (Hilt, 2017). Indeed, this and other pressing trends have been identified by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research (2018) in a report titled Teacher Education 2015: National Strategy for Quality and Cooperation in Teacher Education that includes key areas for the improvement and development of teacher education in Norway.

This paper explores teacher candidates’ experiences of preparation for the changing nature of the teaching profession that is informed by increased student diversity. The guiding question for this paper is as follows: What are teacher candidates’ perceptions and experiences of the preparation they receive from their Norwegian teacher education programs in relation to teaching in diverse classrooms? To answer this question, this paper draws on a case study with four teacher candidates from a teacher education program at a Norwegian institution of higher education. A conceptual discussion of some of the fundamental tenets of a socially responsive teacher education program will be presented by considering Darling-Hammond’s (2006) conceptual work on teacher education. This includes two main areas: the “what” and the “how” of teacher education.

In the first area, the focus lies in knowledge on the part of (future) teachers that is tied to the improvement of the learning experiences of students. This includes knowledge about learners, how they learn in different contexts, what the curriculum constitutes of in terms of content and expectations, and what teaching skills should be prioritised to teach the content to students of diverse backgrounds, in diverse situations, and with different needs. The second area goes beyond simply the design of a teacher education program in terms of course selection and sequence. Opportunities for teacher candidates to integrate, reflect upon, and apply their knowledge continually and meaningfully in the classroom are of great consequence for how and why teacher candidates become teachers.

This paper will also present a review of the Norwegian context of (teacher) education. Subsequently, the methodological design of the study will be introduced. This paper is concluded with a discussion of the findings and their implications for teacher education programs in Norway and similar contexts.

Even though the notion of disadvantaged schools or schools in disadvantaged areas is widely used in educational research and administration, the ways in which disadvantaged schools are characterised as well as the indicators that are used to classify them as disadvantaged differ largely by theory and between education systems (McCoy, Quail & Smyth, 2014). Once a concrete notion of disadvantaged schools is established within an education system, it is possible to conceptualise remedial educational policies. In this regard, teacher education is a prominent policy area consisting of different fields of action (Hall, Lundin & Sibbmark, 2020). One of these fields is providing professional support for novice teachers through adaptive mentoring (van Ginkel et al., 2016). However, novice teachers only have inadequate access to mentor support in many education systems (OECD, 2018). The lack of structured mentoring for novice teachers seems to contribute to high attrition rates among teachers in the first five years of their careers. Supporting novice teachers who work at disadvantaged schools is especially relevant. Teachers are more often placed at disadvantaged schools at the beginning of their career (Allen, Burgess, Mayo, 2018; Long et al., 2012) and their academic teacher qualification often does not adequately prepare them for the teaching challenges at disadvantaged schools. Therefore, they can be expected to benefit even more than others from a mentoring approach that is tailored towards their needs.

In this paper, we aim to establish a basis for the design and further development of mentor training programmes aimed at supporting novice teachers to deal with challenges they face at disadvantaged schools and to facilitate their remedial efforts. To this end, we explore the multifaceted nature of disadvantage and how it is perceived by different stakeholders. To set up any pedagogical measure it is important to understand the terminology used in the specific context, especially if the context is possibly socially tabooed. In the development of a mentor training programme tailored to the specific needs of novice teachers at disadvantaged schools it makes sense to consider the perspective of different stakeholders. We hope to gain a deeper understanding of teacher professional development needs in these settings, ensuring that the specific needs of the school community are met and the various challenges faced by teachers are addressed.

Three main objectives guide our study:

First, we examine the perspective of policy makers in education by studying the terminology used to characterize disadvantaged schools and the indicators used to classify a school as "disadvantaged" in the respective education systems. Through a comparison of the indicators used in the various education systems, we show different vantage points of disadvantage and consequentially different potential approaches of how to set up pedagogical measures such as an adaptive mentoring programme.

Second, we investigate the perspectives of novice teachers who work in schools that are classified as disadvantaged and gather insight on their perception of these school contexts. This perspective allows for a better understanding of the challenges novice teachers face in disadvantaged school contexts.

Lastly, we discuss how these analyses can inform the development of pedagogical interventions such as mentoring programmes tailored to the disadvantaged school context

Social-emotional competencies are increasingly recognized as vital for children’s positive development, for their well-being, positive relationships, academic and future career success, and ability to cope with changes and related challenges (Lang et al., 2017). Consequently, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) efforts are increasingly entering classrooms (CASEL, 2013), with positive impacts increasingly noted (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009).

Similarly, social-emotional skills have been recognized to be highly important for teachers (Nias, 1996; Anastasiou, 2020), contributing to teachers’ overall professional effectiveness (Mérida-López & Extremera, 2017); wellbeing; their ability to cope with work-related stress (Fernández-Molina et al., 2019) and with classroom challenges (Poulou, Bassett & Dunham, 2018); positive teacher-student relationships (Brackett et al., 2011); and a positive and psychologically-safe classroom climate (Harvey et al., 2012). These, in turn, impact students’ emotions, behaviors, learning capabilities, academic outcomes (Lang et al., 2020) and social-emotional skill development.

Teachers can cultivate social-emotional skills in their students both informally, by establishing positive teacher-student relationships (Brackett et al., 2011), promoting a supportive classroom climate (Harvey et al., 2012), modeling emotionally intelligent behaviors, and using daily interactions and everyday classroom events as learning opportunities (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Morris et al., 2013), and formally, through SEL programs.

It follows that teachers, and in particular pre-service teachers, should be provided with suitable SEL training and with opportunities to practice newly-gained SEL knowledge, skills and tools in real educational settings, in order to improve learning and internalization processes.

In particular, most SEL programs to date do not take into consideration cultural diversity among students )Jagers et al., 2018). Yet the complex task of developing pedagogies and programs that support and sustain individual cultural competencies while offering access to dominant ones is fundamental to the social and emotional well-being of children and youth in the education system (Mahfouz & Anthony-Stevens, 2020). In order to implement and facilitate effective SEL programs within diverse and multicultural settings, policies and practices related to SEL school programs need to consider the backgrounds and needs of the children, families, and communities that are being served (Hayashi et al., 2022).
In the absence of culturally sensitive SEL programs in Israel and given the diversity and multi-cultural nature of Israeli society, guided SEL practice may allow students to better implement SEL in diverse cultural settings.

The current qualitative study followed education students of diverse backgrounds who participated in a semester-long SEL training program, as part of their third-year academic studies. The program was aimed at developing students’ social-emotional skills as well as their ability to integrate EI into their educational work. In line with this latter goal, the students were asked to practice their newly-acquired SEL knowledge, skills and tools as they engaged in a year-long internship program in their respective communities, in parallel with their academic studies.

Ways by which they applied their newly-acquired SEL knowledge to their work in diverse cultural backgrounds were examined.

Several Norwegian studies show that the number of youths with suicidal thoughts is increasing, and that there has been an increase of 28 percent in referrals to treatment for psychological health problems (Helsedirektoratet, 2022). To meet these challenges, dialogue and relationship building are seen as vital (Spurkeland, 2011).

The approaches and techniques used in communication are important when it comes to dialogues with vulnerable students and their families. The quality of such dialogue is to a large extent dependent on the teachers’ ability to ask questions, listen actively and to use other communication methods to build and nourish crucial relationships (Spurkeland, 2011). Indeed, it is widely accepted that relational competency an important factor that contributing to learning in school, and that communication is one of the key competencies of social and relational competency.

Teacher education in Norway consists of both lectures on campus and student teaching in primary and secondary schools. All teacher education is carried out in 5-year programs resulting in a master’s degree. Mentor teachers at schools are considered an important part of teacher education, as they provide supervision during the student teaching, and the students must pass both practice periods at schools and the exams on campus to become teachers.

Some schools have applied to become teacher training schools, which means that all the teachers at these schools become mentor teachers and supervisors for student teachers during their final student teaching practice. Regulations Relating to the Framework Plan for Primary and Lower Secondary Teacher Education for grades 1-7 and grades 5-10 require that mentor teachers have at least 15 (ECTS) credits in the field of guidance and supervision (Bjerkholt, 2017). This is a quality assurance to ensure that students receive professional supervision. Supervision- competency is referred to as professional skills in teaching, observation, methods, and analytical competency while also including certain personal prerequisites (Mathisen & Høigaard, 2021).

The University of Agder offers courses in mentoring to all mentor teachers on teacher training schools that receive student teachers. The education comprises three semesters. The second semester focuses on methods, strategies, and structures in communication. More specific: question types, body language, listening, strategies that provide progression in supervision, reflection, paraphrasing, interruption, and feedback. All education takes place in the teacher training schools, not on the university campus.

A large part of teachers’ work is communication within the school, and with parents or guardians and external collaboration partners. Despite the importance of this topic, there is little focus on this during the lectures on campus. Rather this is knowledge the students acquire during school practice. Subsequently, the teachers are dependent on learning how to interact and communicate with both children, youths, parents/- guardians and other collaborators at different schools during their teacher education. The students are, so to speak, at the mercy of each mentor teacher’s skills.

The aim of this study is to gain insight into whether education for mentor teachers in guidance and supervision can affect crucial communication with vulnerable students, their families, and other collaborators. The diversity of pupils in school will be taken into consideration with respect to which students might be considered vulnerable at any given point in time.

Our research question is: How can education in supervision and guidance theory, methods and strategies strengthen the mentor teachers’ communication skills when interacting with vulnerable students and their parents/ legal guardians?

Social background still plays a major role for “educational success”, this is particular true for countries like Germany and Austria. Critical knowledge about and the reflection of social inequality is therefore a central challenge for teacher education and is increasingly demanded by students and experts as part of critical professionalization (Mecheril et al., Messerschmidt 2013, Czejkowska 2018). In the presentation I draw on results from the project “Habitus.Power.Education – Transformation through Reflection” that was conducted at the Department of Educational Research and Teacher Training of the University Graz from 2019 to 2021. Together with students in teacher training the project team researched experiences of privilege and discrimination in educational settings. One of the main objectives of the project was to develop Open Educational Resources for higher education, in particular teacher training, that support processes of critical professionalization. A central concept in the project is habitus reflexivity. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social inequality habitus reflexivity is not so much about an individual exploration of one’s habitus, but rather about the question of how one is involved in unequal power relations as an educator as well as the question of how institutions like the school or the university are involved in the reproduction of social inequality.

Often pedagogical perspectives on social inequality are reduced to conceptions of diversity in which all inequalities are treated almost interchangeably. But issues of race, class, gender or disability have specific, though interwoven, histories, operate differently, though in the context of each other, and ask for different pedagogical perspectives and positions (e.g. Prengel 1995). The focus of the presentation is on the rather neglected category of class, understood in its intersectionality with other categories of social inequality. In the project we draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of class as economic, cultural, social and symbolic relational concept as well as to his theory of the subtle mechanisms of power in educational settings (Bourdieu 1985, 1993, 1997,2001). We also refer to bell hooks’ intersectional conception of class (hooks 2020) and the concepts of classism by Andreas Kemper and Heike Weinbach (2009). Invisibility seems central in relation to class and classism (e.g., Wellgraf 2014). Experiences of classism are often articulated indirectly through emotions like fear or shame. In particular the myth of meritocracy renders discrimination invisible because it suggests that inequality in a consequence of achievement and thus fair and rational. However, making classism visible is an ambivalent pedagogical endeavor. In the presentation I will discuss some of the challenges when dealing with class and classism in higher education and briefly present the Open Educational Resources (Froebus et al., 2021) developed in the project.

Teacher training for moral education / education in values is a topic discussed in the scope of Philosophy and of Education Sciences, namely in studies on curriculum and didactics, varying its orientation according to the adopted foundations, both of ethical order and referring to psychological research on moral development.

Portuguese curriculum provides since 2017 the Citizenship and Development subject as a space for discussion of issues related to the development of personal, social, and civic competencies According to the National Strategy for Citizenship Education (2017), “Citizenship Education is a mission of the whole school; it is proposed that the implementation of the curricular component of Citizenship and Development follows a framework of Whole-school Approach based.” (p. 6).The change of curriculum requires the need for training to which teachers did not have access.

This communication intends to present the results of a project in the Portuguese context which aimed to explore the questions, difficulties and needs of training by teachers of Citizenship and Development of children aged between 10 and 12 years old. The training contemplates 25 hours, divided into six modules, where the themes of citizenship and moral development have been worked on, and 25 hours of implementation of the activities with their class.

The training project was based on Rest's integrative model of moral development (1979; 1984; 1986). While named neo-kohlberguian (Rest et al, 2000), Rest model of moral development is rather different from Kohlberg approach. Faced with the question "What processes or functions must have occurred in order for an individual to perform a moral act?" (Rest, 1986, p. 3), Rest identified four components of moral development (Rest, 1979; 1986), each of which corresponds to a different psychological process, being moral behavior the result of these different processes and not just the logical or affective consequence of a single process, as follows: moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation and moral action, each of which can be studied separately. By moral sensitivity, it is meant that the person is aware of the moral dimension of the situation and so s/he’s able to interpret the situation in terms of how his/her actions will affect the welfare of others. Moral judgment is the ability to formulate possible moral courses of action and a plan of action that applies a moral standard or ideal in that specific situation. Moral motivation is the capacity to decide for one course of action by evaluating if it serves moral values. Moral action is the ability to accomplish what one has decided to do, by identifying and validly overcoming obstacles and difficulties. (Rest, 1984; 1986) Several studies have been made on moral judgement of college students and professional groups by Rest and his research group, namely using the DIT (Defining Issues Test) (Rest, 1979; 1986). Also based on this model, between 1998 and 2002, the Department of Education of the University of Minnesota (Narvaez et al., 2004) developed the community voices and character education project (CVCE), a moral education project, addressed to children from 10 to 12 years old, in collaboration with middle school teachers.

Our collaborative project also involves researchers and teachers. It does not have in view the training and evaluation of predefined behaviors, but rather the flexible articulation with other components of the school curriculum and the development of transversal ethical competencies of the children (Narvaez et al., 2004).

The presentation looks at anti-Semitism in schools. Specifically, the focus is on educational practices of teachers when they meet anti-Semitism in school.

Anti-Semitism is interpreted as a phenomenon of exclusion. It is thus diametrically opposed to the claim of recognising diversity. Anti-Semitism is a complex phenomenon, which is addressed in different forms and by different groups of actors (Koerrenz, 2021). Anti-Semitism can be explicated as a permanent and latent structure of hostility towards Jews. On the individual level, it can manifest itself as a form of emotional beliefs, on the cultural level in the form of myths, (conspiracy-) ideologies, stereotypes, and so on. On the practical level, these manifestations can lead to discrimination and political mobilisation against Jews, among other things (Benz, 2015). Contemporary anti-Semitic phenomena relate to the national state of Israel: these phenomena are constituted in certain political and religious collectivities (Taguief, 2004). Recent empirical research shows that there has been a Europe-wide increase in anti-Semitic incidents since 2001 (EUMC, 2004). These have their origins in developments in a globalised world (Holz, 2010): For example, the global financial crisis of 2008 is used to reactivate the image of so-called "Jewish financial elites" (Bergmann, 2016).

Anti-Semitism and its various manifestations also affect the learning venue school (Bevelander & Hjerm, 2015; Vogtländer & Voth, 2015; Greene & Kingsbury, 2017). Studies focus on Jewish young people affected by anti-Semitism. In addition, the extent to which anti-Semitism is represented among non-Jewish young people is taken into account (Mansel & Spaiser, 2013). In the context of "Holocaust education", adolescents are explicitly sensitised to anti-Semitism and its manifestations (Wetzel, 2019). In this context, analyses of textbooks and curricula (Kößler, 2006) also provide recommendations for schools that should lead to attitudes that promote democracy.

In addition, a discourse on the professionalism of educators in the context of anti-Semitism has been established (Gläser, Hentges & Meier, 2021). In particular, there are studies on how open youth work educators deal with anti-Semitism (Radvan, 2010 & 2011). In the context of schools, studies have been conducted that explore anti-Semitism among students and the relationship of teachers to anti-Semitism (Haynes, 2003; Fechler, 2006; Moulin, 2016; Thomas, 2016; Bernstein, 2020). Recently, Rüb was able to show that teachers at German schools attribute a high relevance to anti-Semitism. In this context, teachers show very different orientations of action by means of which they counter anti-Semitic statements by pupils: These orientations of actions range from trivialisation and externalisation to a historicising perspective of the anti-Semitic incident (2023, i.E.).

A desideratum exists with regard to the question of what educational practices teachers display when they encounter anti-Semitism at school. This study addresses this desideratum. It explores the educational practices of teachers in the context of anti-Semitism. Specifically, it focuses on the following questions: How do teachers exert educational influence on the development and behaviour of pupils in order to counteract anti-Semitism? How do teachers shape these educational processes? What concrete values do they try to instil in students to counter anti-Semitism? In which situations where anti-Semitism occurs do teachers take educational action?

The concept of Populism has been identified as a challenge to democracy, tolerance, and European values (Bugaric, 2020). This joint paper explores the context, curriculum and teaching methodologies related to addressing issues associated with the rise of populism in Europe.

The paper describes the interim findings of a research initiative hosted by CitEdEv, a pan-European research network, which is supported by the European Commission’s Jean Monet Programme. The research project team consists of researchers from the UK, Ireland, Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia. The larger research network brings together experts from 28 institutions from across 19 European countries concerned with and committed to developing all children’s and young people’s active citizenship in line with fundamental European values. The project seeks to make EU citizenship education relevant to a context in which many children and young people are anxious and concerned about their futures in the face of populism, xenophobia, divisive nationalism, discrimination, fake news and misinformation, as well as the challenge of radicalisation.

Schools are considered to play an important role as institutions educating young people about democratic principles and serve as niches for the development of civic engagement (Hüning, 2022). The broad conceptualisation of civic education is often used to describe ‘the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that children are expected to learn to be virtuous and civically productive members of society’ (Levinson, 2014, p.1). Echoing this year’s ECER conference theme (The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research) this timely research outlines the views and perspectives of educationalists working with young people in the classroom. As Biesta (2020) states 'education for democracy raises awareness of ourselves and others, how we act in society, our freedom and the limits that our living together poses to our own freedom’ (p.96).

Contribution to the European dimension – As part of the Jean Monet network this research project aims to contribute to the will operationalising of the Paris Declaration of March 17 2015 (Eurydice, 2016) agreed upon by EU Education Ministers and Commissioner Navracsics promoting citizenship and common values through education, which identified the ‘urgent need to cooperate and coordinate, to exchange experiences, and to ensure that the best ideas and practices can be shared throughout the European Union. Using the Paris objectives as a framework, CitEdEv will compare and contrast the definitions, perceptions and implementation of European values in formal and informal education settings and in their different national and institutional contexts and identify ways to enhance best practices.

The aim of the research is to view the initial findings in the context of international and pan-European trends. The research aims to include a comparative element taking in parallel research by the CitEdEV partners in a number of EU member and accession countries. The research will recognise that best practices must reflect the experiences and voices of all.

School-based civic education is given a crucial role in developing youths’ democratic competences (Galston 2001). A large body of research examined effects of civic education in general school education, whereas civic education at vocational schools is so far hardly investigated (Busse et al. 2022). In many European countries, vocational schools provide not only learning opportunities for trainees’ vocational education and training (VET) but also civic education. In Germany, the educational administration recently emphasized the need of a stronger civic education at vocational schools. In many German federal states, this emphasis resulted in educational tasks for vocational schools aimed at the promotion of students’ democratic competences by the whole school staff (e.g., Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Lower Saxony 2021). Although all teachers at vocational schools are explicitly addressed by this task, those who specialized in civics or political science may have particular responsibilities.

So far, little is known about how civic education is conceptualized by the school staff at vocational schools. This is of particular importance as teachers’ education-related views influence how they teach (Reichert et al. 2021). Teachers’ views may affect the selected topics and classroom activities for students’ learning (e.g., Fives/Buehl 2012). Thus, this study assumes that what teachers think about the aims of civic education matters to their teaching (Martens/Gainous 2013). Given the missing empirical knowledge regarding vocational teachers’ views on civic education, this study investigates the following research question:

How does the school staff at vocational schools vary in their understanding of civic education?

Ukrainian education used to be part of the Soviet system and partly preserved its legacy with teacher-centered approaches and reproductive methods. Even after decades of independence, it was still knowledge-oriented and hardly connected with real-life experiences. It was evident that education did not prepare students for lifelong learning, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and other 21st-century skills; therefore, radical long-term reform was on the agenda and it started in 2016. The New Ukrainian School (NUS) Reform was planned at all levels for decades ahead and was driven by the idea that teachers were the primary agents of change.

Primary school was the first to welcome the change and to encounter challenges. New Primary Education standards came into use, requiring dramatic changes in approaches to teaching and learning with inquiry-based learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, and problem and project-based learning as its main drivers. In the Standards, we do not find the terms “playful pedagogies” and "learning through play." Still, they are implicitly communicated through the attention to their characteristics and the skills to develop: “the ability to express one's own opinion orally and in writing, critical and systematic thinking, creativity, initiative, the ability to logically justify a position, the ability to constructively manage emotions, assess risks, make decisions, solve problems, and cooperate with others” (Cabinet of Ministers, 2018, p. 3).

Achieving all the ambitious plans is impossible without “motivated teachers who enjoy the freedom of creativity and professional development” (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, 2017, p. 7). The scope of work with primary school teachers included many offline and online courses, exchanging ideas, and learning from Ukrainian and international partners.

Learning Through Play at School is a partnership between the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the LEGO Foundation. The Ukraine Educational Research Association (UERA) implements the research study in-country. This study is part of the larger research project involving 30 Ukrainian teachers participating in a two-year professional learning program to support their understanding of playful learning and their implementation of playful pedagogies in the classroom.

To be successful, professional learning programs designed to promote teacher change need to consider not only what teachers do but also how teachers’ existing beliefs may influence the process of professional learning. The relationship between teacher beliefs and teacher practice is undeniably complex and has been the subject of considerable attention in the research literature for several decades. Broadly speaking, teacher beliefs act as filters for interpreting new information and experiences, frames for defining problems or situations, and guides when deciding on what actions to take (Fives & Buehl, 2011). In relation to pedagogical reform initiatives, teacher beliefs have the potential to influence what the teacher chooses to focus on and how they interpret it, what they perceive is required of them, and their decision-making when it comes to taking action. As part of a two-year professional development program focusing on playful learning at school, this study explored the initial beliefs held by participating teachers in relation to the reform agenda and the concept of playful learning at the start of the program and answered the research question: What are challenges and enablers in introducing Learning Through Play at Ukrainian School?

Understanding the contributing factors to (un)successful interventions is vital for designing/adapting a Teacher Professional Development Programme that develops teachers’ positive views, skills, and knowledge regarding playful pedagogies.

The investigation reported in this paper continues and deepens a study initiated several years ago (Lameul, 2008, 2016; Eneau, Lameul, & Bertrand, 2014) aimed at understanding the construction of a subject in his or her personal as well as professional posture - the two being intimately related. To date, our research has defined the notion of posture as "the physical or symbolic manifestation of a mental state, shaped by our beliefs and oriented by our intentions, which exerts a guiding and dynamic influence on our actions, giving them meaning and justification" (Lameul, 2006). This can be studied from the following structuring dimensions: biographical, psycho-sociological, sensitive socio-cognitive, pragmatic, and ethico-cultural. Within the framework of a phenomenological approach, posture is situated at the heart of the professional development process at the interface of two axes: one that goes from the subject to the social and another in which the personal and professional dimensions of the process meet. This is what leads us today to question the work and training environment of beginning teacher-researchers. We will take an eco-anthropological approach and focus on the conditions that are more or less favorable to their development.

Our paper will report on a study conducted with 15 teachers at the beginning of their careers who were involved in training within the framework of the project Développement d'un Enseignement Supérieur Innovant à Rennes (DESIR), in response to the call for projects Développement d'Universités Numériques Expérimentales (Development of Experimental Digital Universities) and financed by the French National Research Agency. The training of these new lecturers, known as "Training for the first position", combines pedagogical, political and scientific aspects in its structure in three elements :

1. A compulsory training module of 32 hours in accordance with the national training framework (decree of February 8, 2018) aimed at deepening the pedagogical skills (general or specific to the disciplinary field) necessary for the exercise of the profession of teacher-researcher.
2. A time of discovery of the different activities and services of the university: meetings and dialogues with the vice-presidents of the university concerned (18h).
3. The design and implementation of an innovative teaching project, situated in the professional environment to which the student belongs (teaching team, disciplinary department) and accompanied by the educational engineers and researchers of the DESIR Living Lab.

Within the framework of this DESIR project, an empirical survey has been set up for the last three years at the end of the training course which accompanies the new teacher-researchers when they take up their duties. Its objective is twofold: to understand the informal learning that takes place when a new teacher takes up his or her post, accompanied by pedagogical training; to identify the dimensions that come into play in order to build and/or consolidate a professional posture. The aim is to continue exploring the process of constructing a posture by trying to understand, close to the teacher-researchers in training, what in their environment would "make an ecological niche" (Guérin, Simonian and Thiévenaz, 2023, forthcoming). In the course of our interviews with 15 teachers, we will therefore pay attention to everything that can have an amplifying or conversely annihilating effect on certain dimensions of posture considered to be a key element of professional development.

The initial years of teaching are a critical period in teachers’ careers characterized by stress and high rates of attrition (Borman & Dowling, 2008). The provision of adequate support to teachers during their early career is important for the development of their professional competence in a complex school environment and, subsequently, for their plans to remain in the profession (Schuck et al., 2018). This is a particularly important aspect of teacher policy in light of the widespread concern about teacher shortages in many European countries, where a number of qualified teachers plan to leave the profession within the first five years of teaching (EEPN, 2019). The research on individual and contextual determinants of teacher well-being and future career plans is therefore of growing importance for European teacher policy.

Recent studies underline the important role of personality (Kim, Jörg, & Klassen, 2019) in a number of relevant teacher outcomes. However, there is a lack of research exploring the contribution of personality dimensions to various aspects of early-career teachers’ well-being and teaching performance.

Meta-analytic findings demonstrated significant relations between five personality dimensions and evaluated teaching performance (Klassen & Tze, 2014). Specifically, teachers’ extraversion, conscientiousness and openness show moderately positive relations to teacher effectiveness as reflected in students’ evaluations of teaching. Accumulated evidence suggests that all five personality dimensions have important implications for various aspects of teaching quality, particularly interpersonal relations and support provided to students, and for aspects of teachers’ occupational well-being, such as enthusiasm and burnout. Existing findings indicate that personality dimensions are related to teacher self-efficacy (Djigić, Stojiljković, & Dosković, 2014) and to teacher outcomes such as teaching effectiveness and burnout. Meta-analytic data also indicate that teacher burnout seems to be most strongly associated with neuroticism (Kim, Jörg, & Klassen, 2019; Roloff, Kirstges, Grund & Klusmann, 2022). Also, a summary of research findings indicates that self-efficacy is related to teacher well-being (Bardach, Klassen & Perry, 2021).

However, evidence on the role of teacher personality in teaching and teacher well-being is still scarce and calls for research from various educational contexts. In recent years, Croatian educational system has been increasingly witnessing the problem of attracting and retaining qualified teachers in schools. Croatian teachers report a disproportionately lower self-efficacy regarding their ability to promote the value of learning among their students (OECD, 2014). They perceive their profession as demanding and important, and express high job satisfaction but predominantly feel that teaching is not valued in society. They also report a number of difficulties that burden the teaching profession, generated by inadequate educational policy (Burić, Slišković & Macuka, 2018). Our study aims to fill in the gap in the existing research, expanding studies on the role of personality and self-efficacy in burnout of early-career teachers to improve the understanding of the mechanisms that would efficiently support the retention and well-being of teachers in Croatian schools. Our focus on teachers at the beginning of their careers is of particular importance as they are at risk for burnout and, consequently, leaving the profession.

The aim of this research is to explore the nature of the contributions of early-career teachers’ personality and self-efficacy to the prediction of teacher burnout.

Remark: An earlier version of the project has been presented two years ago. We previously presented preliminary results of this study.

Our rapidly changing society influences the work of schools. Today, public schools in different countries are under enormous pressure to adapt and change as they need to to deal with technological improvements and cultural changes that leads to the increase heterogenization of societies (cf. e.g. OECD 2019, 2016; Imlig, Lehmann & Manz 2018; European Union 2016; Altrichter & Maag-Merki 2016).

In spite of the abundant literature about the conceptual and practical notions and processes of educational change, there is still a need to learn more about the ways to conceptualize and put into practice transitional change processes in individual schools and how to conceptualize and put into practice transitional change in individual schools and school district (Steffens, Heinrich, Dobbelstein, 2016; Reinbach 2016). Transitional change processes refer to the steps and strategies that a district takes to implement significant changes in its operations and policies such as curriculum reform, or the implementation of new technologies. Transitional change processes can be complex and multi-faceted, involving a range of different stakeholders, such as students, teachers, administrators, and community members.

For principals, teacher leaders and project managers in charge of implementation processes at different levels, these accelerated changes raise the question about how to bring successful and sustainable implementation that is accepted and carried through by all those involved?

Many leaders have assumed and taken on willingly the challenge of implementing numerous, simultaneous and, in part, highly complex transitional processes. They are often confronted with scepticism, reserve, doubt and even outright boycott, often by politicians, staff and parents (Rasmussen 2017; Landert 2014).

This is where the project Shaping Transitional Processes in Dynamic Societies comes in. This project was conducted by a research group of the Zurich University of Teacher Education and the education authority of the Principality of Liechtenstein. The project aims at developing relevant and helpful support services and practices for school principals and project leaders with which current and future reforms and improvements can be mastered alongside the demanding daily school routine.

In order to answer the questions and to advance the research process of the project as transparently and comprehensibly as possible, the approach of Design Based Research (DBR) was used (Euler and Sloane 2014; Euler 2017). Due to its methodological design, the chosen approach opens up the possibility to think and design practical school improvement processes in complementarity with school improvement research (Rau, Gerber u. Grell 2022, 353) and thus to consider both the relevance for practice and the further development of theoretical findings.

School performance feedback (SPF) systems present educational professionals with student achievement data in order to support self-evaluation and data-based decision making (Schildkamp & Teddlie, 2008; Visscher & Coe, 2003). However, in order to arrive at (formative) conclusions based on SPF, recipients need to make sense of the (summative) data they are presented with (Schildkamp, 2019; van der Kleij et al., 2015). Attribution, or reflecting on the causes of (learning) outcomes, is an integral part of this sensemaking process (Coburn & Turner, 2011). In line with the basic propositions of attribution theory (Weiner, 1985, 2010), the nature of educators’ causal explanations for student outcomes has been found to affect their emotions and subsequent (instructional) behavior (Wang & Hall, 2018).

Research finds that educational professionals often struggle to pinpoint factors that (may) have led to certain outcomes, particularly when those outcomes are unfavorable (Verhaeghe et al., 2010). Moreover, in defiance of ideals relating to data-based decision making, student performance is often attributed to external causes such as student characteristics, rather than matters internal to educational professionals, such as instruction (Evans et al., 2019; Schildkamp et al., 2016). This is especially apparent in cases of student failure (Wang & Hall, 2018). Consequently, it can be difficult to formulate productive decisions and constructive actions based on SPF (Schildkamp et al., 2016).

In the present study, we examine educational professionals’ causal explanations for results presented in a SPF report from a low-stakes national assessment (NA) in Flanders, Belgium. Like typical external standardized assessments, the Flemish NA relate school performance to standards and to the performance of reference groups (AERA et al., 2014; Visscher & Coe, 2003). We investigate educational professionals’ attributions of these data, with a particular interest in the locus of causality of the attributions they make. To what extent is the SPF interpreted introspectively (i.e., with regard to aspects of school policy and instructional practice that can be improved or sustained) and to what extent is school performance ascribed to external factors (such as aspects of the test itself, or input from students)?

Our review of the literature suggests that perceptions of school leaders remain somewhat underexposed in studies on attribution in educational data use. However, SPF intends to inform both school policy and instructional practice. Consequently, we will not only focus on teachers’ attributions in the present study, but also on causal explanations made by school leaders. Furthermore, we will examine causal explanations for both outcomes perceived as favorable, and those perceived as unfavorable. Perhaps in line with the very term “diagnosis”, we find that the attributions and attributional processes discussed in empirical literature are predominantly focused on explanations for student failure (van Gasse & Mol, 2021; Verhaeghe et al., 2010) and not so much for student success. However, school improvement is not only a narrative of identifying problems, but also of fostering what works.

In summary, the three research questions we address, are:

RQ1 To which internal and external factors do teachers and school leaders attribute their school’s performance on a national assessment?

RQ2 Do attributions differ according to the attributor’s work role?

RQ3 Do attributions differ according to the perceived favorability of the result?

We adopt a qualitative approach and make use of authentic educational data, because our aim is to illuminate how individuals and groups make meaning of something they experience (here, their schools’ SPF) from their own perspectives (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013).

This three-year study aims to design and validate the Kazakhstani Teacher Observational Protocol (KTOP) aimed at gauging the degree to which teachers/ instructors in Kazakhstan successfully implement reform-based practices in high school and undergraduate STEM lessons.

The 2011-2020 Educational Strategy for Kazakhstan outlined the goal of further development of the ‘training system and professional development’ with the primary objective being to improve teachers' learning and professional mastery in the Kazakhstani school system. Education reform has been considered necessary as the secondary curriculum was perceived as overly dense, with a focus on rote learning that resulted in only providing superficial knowledge rather than deep mastery of topics (Fimyar, Yakavets, & Bridges, 2014).

Education reform across contexts has focused on teachers' critical role in improving education quality (Schleicher, 2016). The question remains as to how initiated changes are validated or measured. Teacher observation instruments have been developed to measure effective teaching (Mantzicopoulos, et al., 2018). In addition to being used to provide standardized data to monitor education, these instruments can help to determine if professional development programs or the use of reformed curricula are producing changes in teaching practices (MacIsaac et al., 2001). Classroom observation instruments can be constructive tools for aiding in the evaluation of teachers and designing professional development (Evenhouse et al., 2018). Classroom observation allows observers to gather information on student and teacher behaviours and the classroom environment within an authentic setting, which is one way that links theory and practice in order to better understand the classroom environment (Snyder, 2012). Observations have been used to gather data on teachers’ integration of technology (Helmer et al., 2018); student-teacher interactions (Darling-Hammond, 2006); and explicit subject-area learning (Waxman et al., 2009). In Kazakhstan, the fast pace and wide range of reforms raises questions about teachers’ readiness to implement reforms in the classroom. Moreover, historically “open lessons” where teachers and administrators observe lessons may be rehearsed without systematic criteria for evaluation.

To address these issues, this paper reports on the pilot study where researchers collected data to determine how well the KTOP is suited to the reform-based practice in Kazakhstan. The reform-based practice was conceptualized by way of the following six subscales: lesson design and implementation, methods/teaching strategies, communicative interactions, student-teacher relations, assessment interactions, and integration of content and language in teaching.

. The specific questions addressed:

RQ1: What is the overall level of inter-rater reliability of the Kazakhstan Teaching Observational Protocol (KTOP) instrument?

RQ2: What is the level of inter-rater reliability of the KTOP instrument’s (a) lesson design and implementation (5 items), (b) methods/teaching strategies (5 items), (c) classroom culture (communicative interactions; 6 items), (d) classroom culture (student-teacher relationships; 5 items), (e) assessment interactions (3 items), and (f) integrating content and language in teaching (2 items) subscales?

RQ3: How well targeted is the KTOP instrument for identifying the higher- and lower-reform-based teaching practice in the Kazakhstani high school and higher educational contexts?

Despite the prioritisation of widening participation agendas globally, and increased levels of working-class people entering higher education, inequalities along the lines of social class persist (Hoskins & Shah, 2017). As a result, social class dynamics produced in the higher education remain a critical site of research, particularly as practices of precarious employment rise (Walkerdine, 2021). While a growing body of higher education research emphasises the shifting and contradictory nature of class assemblages (Hey et al., 2021; Threadgold, 2020; Webb et al., 2017), there remains a need to counter an historical tendency to use binary conceptions of power, which typically point to the stability of classed relations. For the most part, working-class students and scholars remain framed around notions of constraint in social class research, which risks naturalising deficit framings. What tools do we have then, to refocus on working-class agency? What concepts can aid in capturing how ‘dominant class interests… [are] forever encountering and sometimes fraying in the face of dissent and difference’? (Hey et al., 2021, p.18).

In this paper, I use Jack Halberstam’s insights on the queer art of failure (Halberstam, 2011) to understand complex, classed student and early career academic identities, by exploring ambivalent rejections of middle-class norms. As Halberstam has it, the failure of queer lives to comply with dominant norms generates ‘negative’ affects, but these ‘bad’ feelings are, simultaneously, a productive force. Their mobilisation can ‘poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life’ (Halberstam, 2011, p. 3) and expose capitalist logics as a sham, including the assumption that there must be winners and losers in life. Practices of queer failure blur the normative lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ affects, and undo the binarisation that often occurs in relation to working class actors, who are read as disempowered rather than as both mobilised and constrained. An impetus towards queered class relations could engender a working-class being-in-the-world as a mode in which attachments to loss, awkwardness, alienation and otherness continue, but in a way that offers relief. The impossibility of doing or being ‘elite academic’ may usher in ambivalence; knowing failures are ‘modes of unbeing and unbecoming [which enact] a different relation to knowledge’ (Halberstam, 2011, p. 23). That is, ambivalence towards middle-classed assumptions and modes of action in higher education represent a potential means of unknowing and un-feeling of class deficits—an un-becoming of class disadvantage.

In this empirical research, I apply Halberstam’s insights on reading non-normativity to the lives of working-class, women-identifying students and early career staff in Australian universities enrolled in postgraduate education. Through interview data, and in conjunction with Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) affective-discursive practices approach, I identify affective practices that enact ambivalence and productive failings. Everyday sense-making is treated as series of affective events where analytic attention is placed on the micropolitical, but in relation with ‘entanglements between the constituent social, cultural, biological and material parts of the broader field’ (Wetherell, 2015, p. 147). The art of failing to perform the elite and high performing student or early career researcher does not necessarily eradicate the negative impacts of deficit discourses. However, it has potential to displace them, by giving them other meanings. Overall, this paper contributes to a feminist and queer ethics for class research in higher education that is both intellectual and affective (Reay, 2015), and emphasises working-class capacities.

Leisure reading contributes to literacy, but Norwegian students read less than before. This paper present findings from interviews with students who are going against this trend. They read more than their classmates. Why do they do that? Research has pointed to a lack of reading motivation as the main reason why students choose not to read (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). If the school is to support students' leisure reading, strengthening their motivation should be central. Therefore, we investigate the type of motivation these most avid readers have, and what the motivation means for their reading habits. The purpose is to find out how the school can promote students' leisure reading in the best possible way. The theoretical starting point is Ryan & Deci’s (2017) distinction between autonomous and controlled motivation. Autonomous motivation is based on an experience of self-determination, while controlled motivation is induced by an internal or external pressure. Research has shown a positive connection between autonomous motivation and amount of reading (De Naeghel et al., 2012).When we conducted a survey among sixth graders at eight schools in the Oslo area, we were able to confirm this (Stavem & Skaar, accepted for publication). In this study, we continue to examine the motivation of the most avid readers. Teachers at the eight schools that had participated in the survey selected the girl and boy who read the most in their classes, and the students' parents gave their consent to individual, semi-structured interviews.

In this paper, I present results from a research project (period 2016-2022) about school-home collaboration in upper secondary schools. In the Norwegian school context, collaboration with students' parents has long traditions. The principle that schools, through their social mission, have an auxiliary role in relation to parents, was already formulated in the Almueskolelova [the Common People School Act] of 1848 (Vestre, 2012). At the time, the purpose clause stated: "It shall be the Almueskolen's purpose to support domestic upbringing...". The changes to the law up to today have largely followed similar thinking. Today, the law imposes the responsibility on school owners (municipalities, county councils and private school owners) to ensure systematic collaboration with parents (Education Act, 1998, § 13-3d); collaborative practices that include all students and their parents. This research project contributes to a comprehensive understanding of wholeness and coherence in practicing school-home collaboration at this level of schooling. In brief I share the results from three sub-studies, about practices, students’ needs, and jurisdiction, before I introduce a theoretical framework that is developed to meet and discuss these in conjunction. These results account for the complexity in practicing systematic school-home-collaboration and challenges schools to develop collaborative practices that include a diverse group of students and their parents.

The overall purpose of the project has been to theorize school-home cooperation as a pedagogical phenomenon in upper secondary school. This has been done by identifying various issues and by raising the following questions:

- How is school-home collaboration practiced in upper secondary schools?

- What are the students' need for school-home collaboration and how is the students positioned in this collaboration?

- How does the current legislation affect school-home collaboration in light of the students' need for this to happen?

One contribution from this project is the introduction of collaborative autonomy-support as a theoretical framework for developing collaborative practices to support the students. School-home collaboration, as part of the school's complex practices, involve topics such as the students' needs and agency, the role of the parents, the teachers' responsibilities, and the legal framework that regulate this. This research project draws on two overarching theoretical perspectives. Practice theory (the theory of practice architectures by Kemmis et al., 2014) is used to explain and analyse the collaboration as an educational practice, while theory of Nordic bildung (Doseth, 2011; Straume, 2013) and autonomy-support (self-determination theory by Ryan & Deci, 2017) are used to analyse the students' needs and positions in these collaborative efforts. This research project engages in a discourse that is relevant across national contexts – to collaborate with students’ parents – but it is site sensitive toward a Nordic education context.

The research field of place-based education disadvantage is in need of more theoretical discussions (Corbett 2015). There is complexity in ‘place’ as a limiting factor in schools’ access to resources. Places can appear similar, for example coastal areas, but the experiences of the communities that live there, and the schools that serve them, can vary by country. For example, coastal towns in England have predominantly high levels of socioeconomic deprivation, with little large scale or permanent employment and declining transport networks (House of Lords 2019), which makes recruiting and retaining teachers in these areas even more challenging than in urban areas in England in their communities (Ovenden-Hope and Passy 2022). Yet coastal areas in Australia have been urbanized, with increases in large employers and community affluence, which has resulted in the schools there experiencing growth in student numbers and teachers (Anderson et al. 2007). Therefore understanding place in relation to social justice for a more inclusive education system requires a more granular approach, one that looks within a country and fully appreciates the nuance of the schools’ specific place.

This symposium explores the place-based inequities of schools in three countries - the United States, Norway and England - and offers possibilities for mitigating limitations identified for a more inclusive education system. Paper One offers a research-based approach used in Montana’s rural schools and communities that elevated local knowledge to contribute to cross-community connections (Azano et al. 2021). Paper Two explores why the core values of the Nordic education system of equality, inclusion and all-embracing social community (Lundahl 2016) are not extended to curriculum in Northern rural Norwegian schools, which is argued to be metorcentric by overlooking the cultural, spatial and contextual differences experienced in rural schools. Paper Three examines how the concept of ‘educational isolation’ (Ovenden-Hope and Passy 2019) was used by a large Multi Academy Trust in the South West of England to mitigate the challenges of place experienced by its 19 schools. Paper Four presents a new way of identifying’ educationally isolated schools’ through a multi-dimensional model designed to identify the key limitations for equity of a schools place and will support policy makers in targeting resources to schools in low-density populated areas (Ovenden-Hope, Passy and Iglehart 2022). These critical discussions will open the ‘Invisible Fences’ (Gullestad 2002) that impede social justice, creating recognition of place as a potential barrier for an inclusive education system internationally.

In a time of fraying community and interpersonal relationships, rural school and community leaders are in search of research-based approaches to help build connections and sustain relationships among their students and community members. This paper describes the process of how, during the height of the pandemic, rural leaders from a community museum and local school came together to use local history and knowledge to design a museum exhibit and a K-12 curriculum about the pandemic and vaccines. We describe the process by which the museum exhibit titled, “Shots Felt Round the World: Dr. Maurice Hilleman and the Montana Origins of the Fight Against Pandemics” was developed to communicate the impact of pandemic diseases and vaccines on rural and indigenous communities across Montana. We explain the ways in which the exhibition utilized a place-conscious approach (Azano et al., 2021) to invite visitors to view the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine development through local histories of infectious disease and healthcare. The paper also describes how the K-12 curriculum titled, “Hilleman: Connecting Culture to Scientific Curiosity” was created in tandem with the exhibition by the museum’s Teacher Advisory Council (consisting of local Science, Math and Elementary teachers), to introduce students to the life of Dr. Maurice Hilleman, a Montanan who grew up on a ranch outside Miles City and became one of the greatest vaccinologists of all time (Tulchinsky, 2018). The K-6 and 9-12 lessons were designed to connect students to local history and knowledge and promote student learning through the integration of math, science, history, and critical thinking. In every aspect of this project, the human experience was emphasized as the issues of pandemic disease, inequality, scientific discovery, and technological innovation were addressed. While the subject of vaccines is politically charged, the emphasis on local history and knowledge allowed both museum and K-12 audiences to find common ground and learn about the subject through a local lens. This paper brings together findings from two recent studies documenting the process and impact on students and community members and describes how these efforts are serving to strengthen rural school and community school connections. The paper concludes with recommendations for how other rural schools and communities can use local knowledge to contribute to cross-community connections and vitality.

Azano, A., Brenner, D., Downey, J., Eppley, K., & Schulte, A. (2021). Teaching in rural places: Thriving in classrooms, schools, and communities. Routledge. Tulchinsky T. (2018). Maurice Hilleman: Creator of vaccines that changed the world. In T. Tulchinsky (Ed). Case studies in public health. Elsevier Press.

The northern most region of Norway is rural and characterized by high out-migration, lower educational level, higher degrees of drop-outs from secondary education than other regions in Norway. Limited educational provision makes it necessary for many young people in rural areas to leave home to take on secondary education. Large geographical distances make it difficult to commute on daily basis (Paulgaard 2017). Historically, this area has been the most culturally diverse, domiciled of the Saami Indigenous people and the national minority Kven, and Norwegian ethnic group. This artic region is characterized by the encounter of the three ethnicities, traditional industries as fishing, farming, and herding, combined with modern industry and high knowledge enterprises. Even though this is a rural and low populated area, this artic region has, as the rest of Norway, a relatively strong economy and the people enjoy a well-developed welfare service. Despite this multiethnic and geographically diverse society and Nordic education values and policies of equality and inclusion community (Lundahl, 2016), the schools are still struggling with the old unit-oriented curriculum, ignoring the diversity among the pupils in an education system that appears foreign. In this paper we focus on how the metrocentric norms and goals of the curriculum leave out cultural, spatial and contextual differences disguised as ‘equity’ (Lødding & Paulgaard, 2019). When norms for rapid completion of education are applied as universal oriented career paths, the existence of diversity can be overlooked and devalued. In order to create social justice for a diverse variety of rural youth, knowledges and career paths, critical discussions of values in education models and curriculum is important to discover and open up “Invisible Fences” (Gullestad 2002). We reflect on our own experiences as educational scientists in this rural context to offer a global consideration of what we can learn from each other to make meaningful, practical improvements of rural education and communities.

Gullestad, M (2002). Invisible Fences: Egalitarianism, Nationalism and Racism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(1) 45-63. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00098 Lundahl, L. (2016). Equality, Inclusion and Marketization of Nordic Education: Introductory Notes. Recearch in Comparative & International Education, 11(1), 3-12. https://doi:10.1177/1745499916631059 Lødding, B. & Paulgaard G. (2019). Spørsmål om tid og sted: Mulighetsrom og kvalifiseringsbaner blant ungdom utenfor videregående utdanning i Finnmark. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE), Vol. 3(3), 75-90 http://doi.org./10.7577/njcie/3273 Paulgaard, G. (2017). Geographies of inequalities in an area of opportunities: Ambiguous experiences among young men in the Norwegian High North. Geographical Research, 55(1), 38-46.

Pupils in low density populated areas with high levels of disadvantage have lower attainment than similarly disadvantaged pupils in high density population areas in England. A schools ‘place’ can therefore disadvantage pupils and remove equity from the education system. The researchers conceptualised ‘Educational Isolation’ to demonstrate a ‘school experiencing limited access to resources for school improvement, resulting from challenges of school location’ (Ovenden-Hope and Passy 2019: 5). This concept was adopted by a newly formed Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) in the South West of England with 19 schools and used to create a school support structure – a ‘hub school’ model. MATs are independent charities that are funded by the government to run more than one state funded academy school (any school age range). This three year qualitative research project (2019 – 2022) explored how the MAT formed in 2019 and located in a rural and coastal part of the South-West of England met its aim for the hub school model to mitigate geographical remoteness between schools, the impact of socioeconomic deprivation in the schools’ communities on pupils and cultural isolation. The ‘hub school’ model created smaller, supportive, localised school improvement communities by allocating each to school to one of four ‘hubs’ (four or five schools in each hub) that were geographically closely located. The hub school model was intended to facilitate short travel times between schools for meeting attendance, support and CPD; develop personal relationships and provide immediate support to staff. The findings demonstrate benefit to the schools of the MAT from the hub school model. There was increased communication as a consequence of school leaders working in hubs (including sharing information to solve common problems), increased collaboration with sharing of resources across schools in the hubs (including teachers), and the development of supportive and trusted relationships between school leaders and hub lead in each hub. All of these benefits of the hub school model reduced the limiting effects of educational isolation by enabling school to school support, high quality teaching and applications for externally funded interventions (Ovenden-Hope and Passy 2022) and offer the possibility of a more equitable education system.

Ovenden-Hope, T. and Passy, R. (2019). Educational Isolation: a challenge for schools in England, Plymouth: Plymouth Marjon University and University of Plymouth. Ovenden-Hope, T. and Passy, R. (2022). large but local: understanding the challenge for educationally isolated schools. A case study of a multi academy trust ‘hub school’ model in the South West of England. Year one and two interim report. Plymouth: Plymouth Marjon University and University of Plymouth.

.

.

The aim of this proposal is to consider the partnership experienced through an artistic practice on Agro-Ecological Transition (AET) from January 2022 to June 2023) in Southern France. The partners worked at the crossroads of National Support Disposal (NSD) for the French Agricultural Training System and the nationwide Institut Agro (IA) agronomy engineers Higher Education School (Montpellier-Rennes-Dijon). The documentary theatre (based on documents to create a dramatisation) was chosen to experience otherwise the AET teaching sessions and understand the developing skills. On one hand, the sensitive dimension of partnership through artistic activities has already been introduced (Covez, 2022). On the other hand, the capacity of embodying the agroecology concept through artistic practices has also been studied (Covez, 2017). Since 2019, the AET has become the priority of the agricultural education. Each secondary school therefore created an Educational AET Plan, to reinforce the trainings. The IA has created a one-year fund to make the three higher education schools meet up to experiment new ways of learning AET. This initiative consisted in creating a mixed teachers/agro-engineers students documentary theatre activity (December 2022) and, for the students to communicate upon it (April 2023). The AET education refers to: links to terrain and action, peers learning, multidisciplinary and hybridisation of learning forms (pragmatic…) and systems theories. All of this in a transition framework of uncertain, controversial and non-stabilized notions (FAO, 2020-Audet, 2015). Then, this theatre practice represents a real opportunity for mixing people in the aim of AET learning experience, creating and communicating. The partnership gathers up research and pedagogical engineers, a microbiology Professor, two teachers, five students, and Théo, artist from the Cortège de tête company.

The question is “Does a documentary theatre practice partnership contribute to an agroecological transition education ?”. Actually, as the partnership action-research goes on, it exposes itself to difficulties. Our aim is then to understand and deal with those difficulties for the greater good ! First, agroecology means training to a constant collective change within the framework of the urgent climate change, which means a lot to the participants in terms of cognitive, social, emotional and educational matters. Consequently, the partnership (Otrel-Cass & Ali, 2022) is now facing risks of Rennes students disengagement (Bordes, 2015) and misunderstanding that need the joint accompaniment on pedagogical and artistic approaches from Montpellier. The fact is that French engineers are well known now, in their wish of quitting “bifurquer” during or after their diploma. Their wish is to get out of higher schools partly dedicated to polluting agriculture and industries instead of addressing social injustice matters and ecology. On the contrary, documentary theatre can be seen as encouraging a renewal of professional, collective and personal AET postures where a shared vision for the future is involved (Hervé, 2022) where society building matters.

This theatre can create a shared understanding, as its practice encourages concept sharing and scene creating from shared ideas and emotions. All of this enhanced by the final work representation. The strength of this educational situation comes from embodiment of change boosted to enaction (Masciotra & ali 2008) in Anthropocene times. Finally, it helps creating an integrating and balancing situation with cognitive and bodily activities. The acceptance of the sensitive process inside us and all together enriches but also provokes some unbalance and change that we have to face to keep on acting, creating and partnering. The risks are real but may encourage a change for AET. As co-sharing while becoming aware of points of view and experience differences (Mérini, 2012), our common engagement is strengthening in the objective of creating a transformative change through partnership (Laing & Ali, 2022).

Contemporary social, economic and ecological challenges represent persistent problems in our society. The call for education to engage with these challenges, further referred to as ‘sustainability challenges’, is increasing (Duraiappah et al., 2021; Kuijer-Siebelink, 2022). Especially the higher, professional and vocational forms of education are searching for new pedagogies and for new structures to address these challenges, because common disciplinary and institutional ways of learning appear to fall short (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; O’Brien et al., 2013). Increasingly, parts of the educational curriculum take place in transdisciplinary partnerships between education and society, so-called collaborative learning arrangements (Coenders, 2020; Zitter, 2021). This tendency in practice is accompanied by a growing body of literature that provides directions of how to make the collaborative arrangements for sustainability work (Tassone et al., 2018; Wals, 2007).

The collaborative learning design is ideally based on principles for responsible education (Tassone et al., 2018): education for society which means fully engaging with the interconnectedness and complexity of sustainability issues and staying with the complexity through an open ended learning process rather than an orientation on solving the issues; education with society which refers to reciprocal and empathic interaction about issues between educational actors and other actors in society whose matters of concern are at stake. The third one, whole person education, refers to embodied, critical and creative forms of learning by integrating cognitive knowing, being and doing.

The collaborative arrangements address the larger whole, the context, the relationships and interactions, and the many dimensions of system levels that emerge in the process. Their aim is to be critical, to identify structural causes of issues and to develop systemic rather than partial interventions (Montuori, 2013)

Such learning arrangements are typically guided by collaborative pedagogies. These pedagogies are associated with social learning as ‘learning that takes place when divergent interests, norms, values and constructions of reality meet in an environment that is conductive to learning’ (Wals, 2007, p. 18) and with transdisciplinary learning as learning that ‘takes into account all relevant disciplinary and societal perspectives of a challenge which may be different each time’ (Visscher-Voerman & Visscher, 2022, p. 2). Three key elements of the collaborative pedagogies are generally mentioned in literature and practice. The pedagogies are relational, as a reciprocal relation to other experiences, frames of references and knowledge, reflexive, as critical thinking regarding the (taken for granted) worldviews behind problem statements and solutions, and creative, as an ongoing process of experimenting with problem frames and scenario’s with regard to sustainable futures (Lenglet, 2022; Lindley, 2015). When the collaborative pedagogies lead to deep learning that affects the values and assumptions of the learners, they sometimes are identified as being transformative (Wals & Peters, 2017). Transformative forms of learning that affect a learners’ inner-self or ‘being’, appear to be necessary for dealing with sustainability challenges (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; Woiwode et al., 2021).

While we theoretically know that collaborative learning works to contribute to sustainable futures and while the educational arrangements that address societal issues tend to be based on these principles, little is known about how these principles actually work in vocational education practices wherein these principles are espoused. There still seem to be differences between education’s stated desires for a more sustainable future and everyday’ s actions (McGrath et al., 2019; Wals et al., 2017). With this study we want to explore how the espoused collaborative sustainability oriented education manifests itself in practice. The aim of the study is to understand the next steps for education society partnerships to unfold a sustainable future.

In the context of the Anthropocene, schools have an important role to play in fostering societal creativity to develop sustainable solutions. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) takes up the challenge as it aims to empower young people to think and act for societal transformation towards sustainability (Sterling, 2011). Since the 2000s, the implementation of ESD, although its increasing presence in study plans, has faced various challenges related to productivist conceptions of education, school structure (curricula or disciplinary approaches for example), or the nature of the subjects worked on (Curnier, 2021). For example, in the curriculum of the French-speaking part of Switzerland, ESD is present in a transversal way and in a weak sustainability perspective. There are no constraints in its application and its teaching is not systematic. Nevertheless, many teachers have already taken up the subject, others would like to do so, but the proposed teacher training is not yet consolidated (Kyburz-Graber et al., 2013; Baumann & al, 2019). Moreover, research in the field still provides little support for the operationalisation of ESD, as it lacks empirical data (Shephard, 2022). Action research is a way of filling this gap between theory and practice, and a type of research with underlying paradigms coherent with those inherent to ESD.

In education, action research is defined as collaborative research that aims to share practices between researchers and practitioners to transform reality and reflect on this transformation (Sanchez & Monod-Ansaldi, 2015). The collaborative dimension of this type of research aims to make competencies explicit related to professional practices and to mediate between the research community and the community of practice (Morrissette, 2013). The process of such research ‘with’ is intended to be democratic in the definition, construction and analysis of the object of study among the participants. In addition to the scientific contribution, this type of research also seeks to strengthen the capacities of all participants, including teachers. Therefore, action research has a democratic and empowerment aim (Gayford, 2003), in adequation with the participatory nature of ESD. In theory, action research therefore aims to build a genuine partnership between the research and school communities, but in practice issues have been identified in the literature, such as asymmetrical power relations or complex facilitation roles for the researcher (Martin & Clerc-Georgy, 2017; Monceau & Soulière, 2017).

In this contribution, two case studies of action research illustrate different kinds of partnerships. One kind gathers partners within education, teachers of various school subjects and school levels working together with the researcher on didactic ‘thinking tools’ that empower teachers to plan and implement a transformative and action-oriented ESD. The other gathers pedagogical experts, field specialists and teachers to co-create, with the researcher, a lesson plan on rivers planning combining geography and ESD. The diversity in the first partnership lies in the various school subjects and levels, including an interdisciplinary aspect and the idea of a curricular progression, whereas the diversity in the second partnership lies in the very different nature of the involved partners, including a transdisciplinary knowledge construction. In this contribution, we will firstly identify the roles of the different partners in the action research process, with a special focus on the researchers. Secondly, we will analyse the opportunities and challenges that arise from these partnerships in order to improve possible synergies while implementing an ESD that enables societal transformation towards sustainability.

In many countries all over the world, digitalization has, during the last decades, had an impact on teaching practices. This has led to opportunities for teachers, e.g. more accessible colleagues and material via the internet, and challenges, e.g. teachers’ decreased autonomy to self-regulate their work due to platformization, i.e. digital platforms designed in particular ways for communication, assessment, and schoolwork, finding their way into the teaching practice (Selwyn et al., 2017; Williamson, 2017). In this environment, European policies aim at supporting schools to take advantage of digitalization and to promote teachers’ professional digital competence (PDC), where one aspect is to facilitate students’ digital competence (European Commission, 2020; European Commission et al., 2022; Redecker & Punie, 2017). Previous research highlights teachers’ complexity in utilizing PDC, leading to dilemmas and negotiations in practice (Löfving et al., 2023). However, in the literature, there is a focus on teachers’ PDC concerning technological and pedagogical competences on an individual level rather than as a collective responsibility in the school organization, leaving other aspects sometimes unattended (Skantz-Åberg et al., 2022). Further, research on PDC often draws on teachers’ self-evaluation through surveys (Moltudal et al., 2019; Svoboda et al., 2020; Tomczyk, 2020; van de Oudeweetering & Voogt, 2018). Even if these findings are valuable, we here want to investigate teachers’ PDC through their everyday work as part of a larger organization.

The present study is part of the project Reconfigurations of Educational In/Equality in a Digital World (RED) (https://www.edu-digitalinequality.org). We contribute with an ethnographic approach to be able to explore teachers’ daily experiences and interactions connected to their PDC that take place in practice. We use the lens of disruptive fixation, where educational reforms addressing digitalization, and calling for disruptive solutions, often are framed by powerful outsiders in a first cycle, reworked in a second cycle by educational experts who present solutions, and then executed in a third cycle by, here, teachers. However, the problematization and the reforms seldom take all unmeasurable aspects into account. Instead, teachers must respond to unanticipated destabilizing forces. Thus, the objective is to unpack what in the teaching practice particularly enables and constrains teachers to utilize various aspects of PDC when teachers are understood to be part of a digital teaching practice that reaches beyond the individual teacher and the classroom.

The results show that new time-consuming teaching tasks, e.g., administrating digital technology and instructing students how to use a wide range of such technology, are identified to constrain teachers utilizing diverse aspects of PDC. Additionally, there are enabling factors, e.g., a wide range of resources and infrastructures for communication. We will elaborate further on these constraining and enabling factors.

The study takes place in a highly digitalized teaching practice. Thus the results are useful for researchers and school organizations in other emerging digital teaching practices in Europe and other parts of the world. We hope for interesting discussions on how our contribution can illuminate how organizations can further facilitate diverse aspects of teachers’ PDC.

In the context of modern information technology, computational thinking (CT) as a key competence is considered necessary to live an active life that is required to adapt to the discipline of teachers’ teaching and students' learning in the digital world in primary education. CT can be seen as a thinking process and skills that are essentially about using strategies and cognitive knowledge to solve problems and test solutions with supported attitudes. Some researchers have perceived and defined CT competence. Jocius et al. (2020) mentioned that the value of CT is a way to enhance and support more complex discipline-specific and interdisciplinary understandings, not just an isolated concept associated with computer science. Brennan & Resnick (2012) proposed the key dimensions of the CT framework: “computational concepts (the concepts designers engage with as they program, such as iteration, parallelism, etc.), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they engage with the concepts, such as debugging projects or remixing others’ work), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves)”. CT plays an important role in the teaching of the subject by teachers. Understanding teachers' CT competence and their ability to teach CT is particularly necessary for teachers to instruct effective subject education. There are researchers have begun to focus on teachers' cognitions of CT. Teachers' understanding of CT must build on the subject matter they teach (Yadav et al., 2014). In an experiment to assess the impact of CT modules on in-service teachers, a statewide survey of primary Maryland teachers is conducted to understand how to integrate CT into other content lessons. The survey asked teachers about their conceptualization of CT, the CT resources they rely on, CT integration and their comfort levels to provide effective CT instruction for their students (Garvin et al., 2019). However, most CT assessments are more reflective of Europe and North America and students’ CT (Cutumisu et al., 2019; Fang et al., 2021). Based on the findings of the existing CT assessment, the evaluation content includes CT knowledge and skills, but less attention is paid to CT attitudes. There are few CT assessment instruments in a non-programming environment, and there is a lack of CT assessment instruments combined with specific subject teaching knowledge. Therefore, more research attention needs to be directed to the rest of the world and teachers’ CT competence and their teaching competence assessment to fill the research gaps. Based on the above analysis, this research mainly solves the problem of in-service primary school teachers’ CT competence and CT teaching competence. Specifically, the following questions need to be solved: (1) What are the cognition aspects of CT competence and CT teaching competence considering primary teachers' characteristics in China? (2) How to construct an assessment scale of CT competence and CT teaching competence for Chinese in-service primary school teachers? In this research, a scale has been developed for the purpose of determining the aspects of CT competence and CT teaching competence of the teachers. The assessment scale for CT competence is a six-point likert type scale and consists of 31 items that could be collected under five factors in this research. The theory in this research is mainly based on the new taxonomy of educational objectives to assess teachers’ CT competence in life application and professional application context. We hope to promote reflection on the education and teaching of CT by enriching the CT assessment scales in different contexts. Meanwhile, we hope to use this scale to further our understanding of the current situation and characteristics of in-service primary school teachers' CT competence in European and other educational contexts.

Identity in the digital age is being transformed through the configuration of new identities in the virtual world. Online identity is defined by Veale (2017) as the representation of a person online, composed of a variety of attributes, characteristics, information and content that can be used to identify a person online. What is characteristic of this identity, as opposed to offline identity, is that it is constructed according to the logics of interaction that govern virtual sociability (Murillejo et al., 2015; Torres, 2016).

Although there is a broad academic consensus that supports the existence of a relationship between online and offline identity, the type and degree of relationship between the two is controversial. For some authors there is a total hybridisation between the two (Martinez, et al., 2021; Espluga, 2021) while others emphasise the differences and the distance between both. There is also a gap in the cultural differences that exist in the constitution of online identities between different groups of diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. Thus, the aim of the research is to find out how young Moroccan immigrants and Spanish immigrants describe their online identities, to identify the main differences between online and offline identities and to understand the socio-cultural factors that are identified in the construction of their online identities.

Among the results obtained, the following stand out:

1. Young people report that they spend most of their time online on social networks tik tok, instagram and whatsapp. Their motivations for using them include communicating with other people they know and do not know, keeping up to date with what friends and celebrities are doing and "gossiping". They recognise that they are constantly monitoring and controlling other people's lives.
2. Among the positive aspects of their virtual socialisation, they express the ease of communication between distant people. However, they underline numerous negative effects: (1) exhibitionism of intimate life and female hypersexualisation in order to increase their virtual popularity, (2) frustration, decrease of self-esteem due to the underestimation of the perfect life and (3) the feeling of diminishing or wasting time.
3. They find difficult to define their online identities because they are not very stable. They recognise they want to show the good side of things, the positive, the perfect, the idyllic. In this sense, they applaud having a greater ability to decide what to show and what to hide about themselves than in the offline world. This idealisation of the virtual self is justified by the need to generate good opinion in others, favouring their social acceptance and admiration- "showing their best version"-. The aspects they value most in the construction of virtual identity are physical beauty, creativity and popularity or sociability.
4. When comparing online and offline identities, they most claim to appear natural, while they identify falsehood, deception and imposture in the profiles and avatars of their peers.
5. Finally, it is recognised that socio-cultural factors affecting online identity vary according to young people's backgrounds. Although peers are fundamental in the construction of both young's identities (Davis,2014), different cultural patterns are recognised. Spaniards are more active in networks and give more importance to the number of followers. They also do not limit themselves as much when it comes to publishing certain content. On the other hand, Moroccans do not perceive that social networks waste their time; they give priority to enjoying time with family, friends and offline hobbies before being online. They also report giving less importance to appearance. They also reveal less personal and intimate information. In terms of the elaboration, they give more importance to religion and national identity (while spaniards give it to leisure).

The evolution of mobile phones in the world has been explosive since the first call was made from the first mobile phone in 1973 [Holguin, 2020]. Today, recent studies on mobile technology show that its use has been actively intensifying [Ally et al., 2014; INE, 2021] and that this phenomenon will continue to grow. The main uses of these mobile devices are far from just making phone calls. Today, this evolution has meant that mobile phones can perform a huge number of simultaneous functions, boosted by the momentum and reach of the Internet, as well as the development of countless applications and the use of social networks.

While this is not a new phenomenon, the truth is that with the Covid-19 pandemic the use of mobile devices has only grown, especially among the younger population. According to the recent report by Common Sense [ 2021], the use of mobile phones by children aged 12 to 18 has increased by 17% since the pandemic began, and much more among adolescents (13 to 18 years). In the case of Spain, the most recent data states that Internet use is practically universal (99.7%) among people aged 16 to 24 and that 68.7% [INE, 2021] of children aged 10 to 15 have a mobile phone.

Unlike other digital technologies, such as personal computers or laptops, which have been introduced and promoted as useful tools for learning and for the personal and professional development of students in the near future, mobile phones today pose a challenge when it comes to integrating them into the classroom [Calderón-Garrido et al., 2022]. While their ubiquity, their socialising function and their role in the development of digital skills are recognised, there is a clear fear that smartphones, due to their individualised and difficult to control usage, generate social inequalities and distractions that undermine the efforts of teachers [Selwyn et al., 2017).

In Spain, the lack of consensus on the issue at hand is also observed in the different political stances of the autonomous communities. Mellado-Moreno et al [2022] refers to the existence of three different discourses. While the communities of Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia have opted for prohibition, other autonomous communities have softened their positions, such as the Valencian Community and Aragon. Catalonia, on the other hand, through the mòbils.edu plan is committed to promoting the use of mobile devices as a strategic educational tool for curriculum development, competence work, inclusive education, tutorial action and the management of coexistence and human relations to promote educational success [Mellado-Moreno et al., 2022].

In this context, the project "US'MOV: Young people and mobiles in the classroom. Discourses and dynamics of prohibition, promotion and indeterminacy" came about, and whose main objective was to identify and analyse the discourses, practices and positions of educational administrations, teachers, young people, families and companies in the sector on the use of mobile phones in compulsory secondary schools in Spain. Ten case studies were conducted in compulsory secondary schools in four autonomous communities in Spain (Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha)

In the case of Catalonia, the fieldwork was carried out in three schools in the province of Barcelona and one in the province of Girona. This article presents the results of the three cases developed in secondary schools in the province of Barcelona (two public and one state-subsidised) that, in the first instance, were positioned as centres in favour of the use of mobile phones in the classroom and that had an explicit commitment to include mobile technology to promote learning processes and access to knowledge.

The aim of this research was to re-investigate, explore and analyze the new characteristics of Hungarian Netgeneration. (In this case, we use this term to labeling students born after 2006.) This paper offers empirical data on several features and characteristics of Hungarian students (13-17 years old).
Overview
There are many debates among educational researchers about the phenomenon 'Digital natives' since Prensky's first article (Prensky, 2001). Many critical studies have been published in the literature, with more founded arguments (Helsper, E. J. & Eynon, R. (2010); Zur, O., & Walker, A. (2011); ).
We are agree with Kischner's statement: "As has been shown, there is quite a large body of evidence showing that the digital native does not exist nor that people, regardless of their age, can multitask. This corpus of research also shows that though learners in this generation have only experienced a digital connected world, they are not capable of dealing with modern technologies in the way which is often ascribed to them (i.e., that they can navigate that world for effective and efficient learning and knowledge construction)." Kirschner, P. A. & De Bruyckere, P. (2017). Several studies have analyzed the learning habits of Digital Natives or so-called Net generation students in recent years (Gallardo-Echenique1, E. E., Marqués-Molías, L., Bullen, M. and Strijbos, J-W. (2015); Cilliers, (2017); Shtepura, A. (2018); Zenios, M. & Ioannou, E. (2018); Dastane & Haba, (2023); Fleury, S. & Richir, S. (2023)), however, few large-scale studies analyze the change during and after the Covid-19 situation.
In our recent research project, we investigate the change in so-called 'Netgeneration' students in comparison to the Netgeneration-2010 study (has been conducted in Hungary, 2010).
The main research questions were the following:
How did ICT and Internet usage habits and skills change for these students (compared to preliminary research Netgeneration 2010)?
How do they relate to new social media applications (Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram etc.)?
How did they feel ourself during online learning (Covid-era)? What is their opinion regarding this type of learning?
Are they reading more digitally than traditional paper-based sources (books etc.?
What type of evidence can be found about the digital creativity of this generation (webpages, blogs, youtube channels etc.)?

The Roma ethnic group has been living on the territory of Lithuania since about the 16th-17th centuries (Mróz, 2015), so they cannot be considered newcomers. On the contrary, they are historical neighbours of Lithuanians, with whom Lithuania shares common history. But in spite of this, we are still faced with mutual misunderstanding and sometimes complete ignorance. As an example, cureent presentation gives a brief history of Roma[1] education in Lithuanian capital - Vilnius.

Historically, Vilnius city (where the concentration of Roma students is largest in the country (Romų platforma, n. d.)) faced a paradoxical situation: for more than 30 years, the education of Roma children was very isolated, with only a few schools educating them. This situation was influenced by the geographical location when the former nomad Roma, after becoming a very sedentary, immobile, and isolated community, were educated in the schools closest to the Roma settlement. An interesting and unique field of education for Roma children in Vilnius emerged when by collecting oral history interviews from older and younger generations of the Roma people, teachers and other participants in the field of education, as well as by analysing archival data, strategic educational documents, and visual sources, an attempt was made to distinguish the historical cross-sections that have not only influenced the elements of change in the situation of Roma education, but have also determined the reproductive situation of Roma education today. The field of education in question has been confronted with both local educational challenges and global ones that are characteristic of other European countries educating Roma children: early dropout of school, ethnic marginalisation (Alexiadou, 2019; ERRC, 2017), school absenteeism, low academic achievement, early marriage and childbirth, gender inequality (FRA, 2014, 2016; REF, 2010), etc. These schools, which had educated Roma children for more than 30 years, accumulated a wealth of experience that perfectly illustrates the interesting, localised relationship between the Roma and the others (non-Roma) (Stonkuvienė, Žemaitėlytė-Ivanavičė, 2019). Currently, when referring to the education of this ethnic group in the educational field of Vilnius, examples of both segregation and excellent inclusion, local achievements can be provided, but they are revealed only by studying the historical context.

At present, the situation is drastically changing: the Roma settlement (Kirtimų gyvenvietė) have been liquidated by government decision, almost all the families who lived there have changed their living places, and Roma children are starting to attend new to them schools. Lithuania is also introducing drastic changes to inclusive education policies and practices, which will directly affect the education of Roma children. Non-governmental organisations and day care centres have also contributed to these changes. Therefore, considering how these and other factors will affect future processes of Roma education processes in Vilnius and all over the country remains a challenge.

[1]The term Roma is used here to refer to different groups (Roma, Litovska roma, Polska roma, Ruska roma, Kalderash). It is recognised that Roma are a heterogeneous group, and there is a need to be sensitive to framings that problematise the minority (Matras, 2011).

My presentation attempts to represent a relatively unknown aspect of Cold War history, based on unique sources, which has not been analysed deeply in the history of education. The sources are interviews with children fled from Hungary to Austria between 1950 and 1954, stored in the Radio Free Europe Archive (OSA). The specific aspects of childhood memories gain highlight here, through considering possible official US goals. The result is a «(re)-ideologized childhood»: both Hungarian and US administration could only see the children through the lenses of their own political intentions. The research aims to exceed the simplifying dichotomy of resisting society vs. repressive power with these examples, showing a more complex and dynamic environment. In this situation, I am going to utilize a double, inside/outside perspective, as we can see childhood experiences from a retrospective and transformed view.

When researching everyday educational history in a totalitarian-authoritarian political system, it is difficult to find sources and narratives because of a definite state/party control over public opinion and discourses. If we see for instance the Soviet system in its «’totalizing’ environment (…) everything necessarily became political» (Johnson, 1996, 290) and even self-expression, identity making appeared in a ritualized, Party-like language using, clearly showing the overall influence of the ideology (Halfin, 2000). It is a great challenge to find sources free from the official political implications of the communist period, including personal dimension, with honest feelings and thoughts: private diaries or memories can be good options to do this (Hellbeck, 2006; Paperno, 2009). In this analysis, I am going to portray a kind of counter-ideology of Marxism-Leninism in Hungary in the 1950s, through interviews conducted with emigrant children in Austria and Germany. They fled with their families from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Their situation meant that US officials might have got insider information about the East Bloc. Usually older students were the ones delivering relevant reports on living in a communist country (Sheridan, 2016); children under 14 rarely come into a historian’s sight. I am going to focus on the memories of this age, based on the reports – two sources were over 14 at the time of interviewing, but they spoke about their previous experiences, which allowed featuring them in the study.

My main concept defined in the term of re-ideologized childhood, a typical feature of these interviews. This approach shaped by an English abstract of a Polish doctoral dissertation utilizing the Soviet idea about making a new Man (Kadikało, 2012; to the complex nature of this educating process: Kestere & González, 2021). In his summary Kadikało depicted an ideal development, which started from the early childhood, targeting children through different forms of popular culture: tales, intended values, propaganda campaigns, and content of learning, etc. An equivalent meaning to Kadikało’s ideologized childhood was the leading slogan of «struggle for hearts and minds» in the «Free World» in the bipolar 1950s (Borhi, 2016, 94-103). The reports went through different, usually unknown transformations during the interactions of the interviewer(s) and respondent(s). We cannot be sure, but we can presume that the anonymous western officials controlled these interviews. This a priori aspect and determination is a clear limitation of such analyses: after making, selecting and transcribing these narratives, an explicit counter-ideology (a re-ideologized childhood), and an anti-communist viewpoint developed by the US officials in the 1950s, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Benedetto Croce recounts that during a lecture a student asked Labriola how he would educate a Papuan. Labriola replied that he would provisionally enslave him and then see if with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren he could teach him something.

Antonio Labriola (1843-1904) was an important Italian philosopher and educationalist. His studies marked the second Italian 19th century: he was the first recognised interpreter of Marx and Engels' thought and his works influenced thinkers such as Gentile, Gramsci and Croce.

Starting from this famous provocation on the education of the Papuan, we intend to analyse the theme of diversity by defining it within Labriola's thought.

We will not rely only on his most famous and significant writings, but we will provide examples of how this thought threaded through many of his communications and correspondences.

We will analyze the sources trying to understand in what terms the theme of 'different' is grasped in Labriola's theoretical framework and how it is linked to his ethical, political and pedagogical framework.

The problematic nature of this theme and these links was grasped by Gramsci himself when he commented on Labriola's statement on the Papuan in his quaderni dal carcere. In this case, it will be interesting to see how the theme of the 'different' is dissect in a sharper and more defined manner from the perspective of the 'spirit of the split' and the emancipative value of educational action.

There can be a significant disconnect between how we teach History and what we understand as good historical practice as evident in the work of historians. We often teach History in the tertiary classroom as a collection of facts, or perhaps historical stories, or maybe even a series of arguments, issues and interconnected events. This approach suggests history is easily periodised, knowable, and singularly interpreted. Yet we know that History is what historians write. It is highly individualised, drawn from embodied experience and intuitive and imaginative interpretation. It is not the same as the past nor is it necessarily the same for any given two people. What we hope to emphasise more consciously is how to help history students to recognise and engage with their own ontological positioning.

Teaching positioning and knowledge-making processes in tertiary History classrooms promises to raise awareness not only of the role of diversity in the understanding and reading of History, but perhaps more importantly, in the construction and communication of innovative and ground-breaking History as well. As a dynamic discipline, History relies on different perspectives and new approaches to move it forward and to push its boundaries.

This paper examines how the teaching of good History as a challenging, constantly re-worked and revitalised exercise relies on teachers understanding the importance of recognising the impact of diversity in the History discipline. We ask: How might the introduction of post-qualitative approaches and new materialism to the teaching of History provide a diversification of the contemporary tertiary History classroom? Moreover, we explore a number of ways in which diversity can be accessed by students who may struggle with recognising their own ontological positioning and how that might influence, and should influence, how they write History. By considering how to employ a number of post-qualitative and new materialist strategies in the classroom, we argue that teachers can help students to identify themselves within the History-making process and understand what impact that self-knowledge has on the subjects they explore, the sources they access, the methods they employ, the questions they ask and the conclusions they draw.

Our work is theoretically informed by post-qualitative theories of affect (Taylor & Fullegar, 2022), and new materialism (Barad, 2012, Fox & Aldred, 2017). Post-qualitative theory offers us ways for thinking differently about data and the traditional conventions of research. It offers a new degree of flexibility and responsiveness to doing research (Adams St Pierre, 2014, p3). Infusing questions of affect and matter into history allows for new questions of historical imagination, locatedness and knowledge making.

Affect and affective entanglements offer an entry point into historical thinking, how historical knowledge can be constructed and can evolve. Affect can be thought of as a type of sensation, or relational and transpersonal becoming (Taylor & Fullegar, 2022, p.8-9). Affect might be spotted out of the corner of an eye, through a hunch, an uneasy feeling or realisation. It is intensely personal and embodied and may emanate between the corporeal and the material. Using a pedagogical focus on affective flows and entanglements between body and material, we argue there is a wealth of opportunity for new approaches to teaching History.

New materialism provides alternative theoretical insights for thinking about history and matter. It speaks to the liveliness of matter. Bennett reminds us that matter has intrinsic vitality, it can be disruptive, affective, effervescent (2010, p. 112). It can be encountered in assemblages or be boundered or isolated. New materialism supports a relational ontology; one that questions how students of history encounter matter, consider the human and nonhuman relations, think about locatedness and the ethics of knowledge making.

‘Why is Socialism necessary? Socialism is necessary because the present system enables a few to enrich themselves out of the labour of the People.’

• Socialist Sunday School Federation (in Gallagher, 2021)

Looking to Glasgow's past, a small committee of organisers are working to revive a lost tradition of providing radical learning spaces in Scotland’s most densely populated city. Founded in the 1890’s, the Socialist Sunday School Federation once provided a radical alternative to traditional schooling, offering ‘a widespread feeling as to the inadequacy of the orthodox Sunday Schools as a training ground for the children of Socialists’ (W.C.N.L., 2016). As chronicled of the modern incarnation by Gallagher (2021), ‘one of the main objectives was to develop the next generation of socialist leaders’ - something that has arguably ceased within the contemporary Scottish party-political scene, yet, seemingly thrives within social activist and, arguably, the trade union movements (McAlevey, 2016, 2020). Indeed, several former students went on to hold prominent positions within Scottish politics, with anti-fascist Patrick Dollan elected for the Independent Labour Party and serving as Lord Provost (Gallagher, 2010; Carrigan, 2014), and Janet ‘Jennie’ Lee going on to found the Open University after serving as an M.P. for the Labour Party (Dorey, 2015). A revived version, however, was established in January 2020 (Bhadani, 2022) it’s the rationale and possibilities of this current incarnation that this submission explored.

Through the support of a public fundraiser, the organisers raised circa £2,000 to cover essential costs involved in running the initiative, as well as a reserve to ensure compliance with child protection, and for providing food for learners as a means of providing a comfortable learning environment (Callaghan, 2021). As summarised by Callaghan (2021), the Red Sunday School affords children opportunities to develop ‘the tools to explore nature, culture and society from a radical perspective and get involved with modern day struggles such as anti-racism, feminism and the climate crisis’ (see also Bhadani, 2022). The space operates only once-per-month, resulting in circa ten to eleven sessions per year given the break over the Christmas and New Year period. With the Kinning Park Complex selected as the venue (itself a site of a one-time occupation by community members [Akilade, 2022]), the facilities were already in-place to prepare meals (the centre already runs a weekly community meal, demonstrating the appropriateness of venue choice), whilst the informal learning environment of the community-owned building (Bhadani, 2022) helps distinguish it further from traditional schooling spaces. The programme itself is not constrained by state-produced programmes, rather it is generated by the learners and families (the focus of the Glasgow Red Sunday School being children and young people), and, as such, is able to include arts, physical activities, alongside more traditional input style learning (O'Neill, 2022). One of the co-founders Mackinnon advises that the programme was specifically 'tailor-made for engaging children'.

One of the most important functions of the education system in the 19th century was to promote nation-building by developing and disseminating national culture and identity (Westberg et al., 2019). This tendency also applied to teacher education and the textbooks used in it.

The development of educational history writing gained momentum in the first half of the 19th century. Its development was closely linked to the development of teacher training, and textbooks for use at different levels of education played an important role in the formation of the discipline. Research (Tröhler, 2004, 2006) points out that the content and narrative of these textbooks are strongly linked to national (and imperial) frameworks.

Hungary was in a unique position in terms of both its educational system and nation-building. The development of its culture and educational system was strongly influenced by transnational trends (Mayer, 2019). In this regard, the role of German culture should be emphasized. One of the main goals of Hungarian textbooks on the history of education was to place the history of Hungarian education in a European framework.

At the end of the 19th century, Hungary was a multinational, multi-religious, socially fragmented, agrarian-industrial country (Romsics, 2010). When writing a national history of education, the authors should (have) taken into account not only the European framework, but also this diversity.

In my research, I investigated whether, and if so, to what extent, the above-mentioned diversity is reflected in Hungarian history of education textbooks published in the second half of the 19th century. I understood diversity from different perspectives (gender, religion, sex, special needs).

My research questions were:

How is the diversity of European culture represented and what is the role of Hungarian culture in it?

Does the textbook include nationalities other than the majority nationality?

Is the religious diversity of the country represented?

Does it reflect the ethnic and religious tensions that existed at the time?

How is women's education represented in the textbooks?

Are children with special educational needs represented in the textbooks?

The main aims of this symposium are to introduce members of the UK Physical Education (UKPE) Collaborative and to share some of the findings from their UKPE cross-border learning project.

The UKPE Collaborative consists of a group of researchers from across the four nations of the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), all with a shared interested in curriculum, or more specifically, physical education (PE) curricula and the role that curriculum plays in shaping the practices of PE teachers. Relatedly, they are also interested in exploring the mechanisms through which teachers might be encouraged to engage critically with curriculum, and how they develop capacities to re-imagine PE curriculum – what purpose it serves, who it serves and the possibilities for enactment both now and in the future. One of the ideas currently being explored by the UK PE Collaborative in this regard is cross-border curriculum learning. That is, the professional learning potential of cross-curriculum analyses, discussion and debate. The premise is that, by exploring ‘other’ curricula, it is possible to see your own curriculum from a different perspective (Gray, MacIsaac & Harvey, 2018). This then encourages different questions to be asked about curriculum, challenging previously taken-for-granted assumptions about what PE is and who it is for.

The starting point in this endeavor was to carry out a series of cross-border curriculum analyses focusing on the four PE curricula of the UK, namely those in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (Gray et al., 2021). Through these analyses, dominant discourses within each curriculum have been uncovered and the concept of health has been critically analysed (Gray et al., 2022), as have the pedagogical messages conveyed within each curriculum. Furthermore, the comparative approach adopted has enabled the identification of similarities and differences across curricula, which has stimulated ideas about what PE curricula could be in the future. Following these curriculum analyses, one-to-one interviews with PE teachers (n-11) from across the four nations of the UK were conducted to explore how they understand PE, with some focus on the role of health and well-being within the subject. In addition to this, and aligned with a future-orientated (or perhaps, change-orientated) perspective, the PE teachers were also asked to reflect on the changes they made to their curriculum and practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, a series of teacher workshops was organised, bringing together PE teachers from across the four nations of the UK to share and discuss the findings from the teacher interviews. The two main aims of the workshops were: first, to use these discussions as a form of cross-border learning; and, second, to use this learning to work together to begin to (re)imagine what PE could be.

The three papers presented within the symposium reflect each stage of this research process described above. In Paper 1, researchers will present the key findings from the critical discourse analysis of the health discourses evident within each UK PE curriculum. Paper 2 will then present the findings from the teacher interviews, highlighting teachers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes they made to their curriculum and practice as a result, including a renewed focus on the development of social and emotional competencies. Finally, Paper 3 will describe the teacher workshops and explore the ideas that were produced from the future-orientated co-creation activities that the teachers engaged in as part of these. The symposium will conclude by reflecting on the value of cross-border learning, considering the ways in which this approach might build the capacity of teachers to engage more critically with curriculum and have a greater say in future curriculum developments.

In this paper, we present the findings from our critical analysis of the health discourses evident within physical education (PE) curricula in each UK home nation – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (Gray et al., 2022). We carried out a critical discourse analysis of those curriculum documents that talk directly to PE teachers about how to organise, enact and assess PE curricula in schools. The results from our analysis uncovered that, with the exception of the curriculum in England, all PE curricula conceptualise health and wellbeing holistically. However, our analysis also uncovered complex health landscapes within curricula, where discourses move from notions of supporting and enabling pupil health and wellbeing, towards a more concrete (and measurable) concept of health-related learning, often associated with public health goals of promoting physical activity. We conclude by suggesting that PE teachers need to develop a critical understanding of the health discourses evident within their PE curriculum. This will help them to navigate, interpret and enact curriculum in an informed way, enabling them to challenge discourses that are deficit in nature, where pupils are taught how to be healthy, rather than having the freedom to learn about themselves and their health.

Gray, S., Hooper, O., Hardley, S., Sandford, R., Aldous, D., Stirrup, J., Carse, N., & Bryant, A. S. (2022). A health(y) subject? Examining discourses of health in physical education curricula across the UK. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3820

This paper seeks to provide an overview of physical education (PE) teachers’ responses to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes that they made to their curricula and practice as a result, sharing findings from individual interviews conducted with PE teachers in the wake of this. It was found that – like much of the education system – significant disruption was encountered due to the pandemic. However, the effects of this were seemingly felt more strongly within PE, given the unique nature of the subject in relation to, for example, the subject matter, the learning environments and the nature of interactions within it. Teachers noted how they had to think creatively about how they taught PE in pandemic times, detailing a range of approaches and strategies that they employed when forced to take PE lessons online. Interestingly, it was found that, on returning to in-person lessons, teachers had reoriented their curricula and practice, with a renewed focus on social and emotional learning. Indeed, amongst teachers there was a perceived need to support the development of these capacities due to the detrimental impacts of the pandemic – and associated lockdown measures and restricted social interaction - on pupils. However, despite noting the benefits of a renewed focus on social and emotional learning – for example, enhanced engagement and student enjoyment – there was a desire from many teachers to ‘get back to normal’. Typically, this meant reverting to what might be considered more ‘traditional’ PE lessons focused on skill acquisition and sport performance. As such, this paper asks questions of how we bring about meaningful and sustainable change within PE and how we support PE teachers to think differently about their curriculum and practice to move beyond such ‘business as usual’ approaches.

NA

In this paper, we present initial findings from our workshops with teachers, exploring the ideas that were produced from the future-orientated co-creation activities that teachers engaged in as part of these. The research to be presented here is in its early stages but will draw on data collected during the two series of workshops conducted with PE teachers from across the UK. These workshops focused on: i) engage in discussions about PE curriculum and practice as across the home nations as a form of cross-border learning and ii) to use this learning to work together to begin to (re)imagine what PE could be in the future. The first workshop provided stimulus for the teachers to think about their own and others’ curricula and practice as well as presenting them with opportunities to discuss their thoughts with other PE teachers from across the home nations of the UK. Following this, participants completed a ‘take home’ task to encouraging them to consider and co-create with their departments what they see as the ‘ideal learner’ in PE. These creations coupled with the initial ideas from the first workshop, were the starting point for the second workshop whereby teachers were asked to consider their conversations to date and how these might encourage more innovative thinking around PE curriculum and practice. Indeed, it was intended that by exploring different curricula and practice, PE teachers might be able to see their own curriculum from a different perspective, perhaps asking different questions about what PE is and who it is for. The focus of this paper, therefore, will be to share and explore how teachers began to think (and think differently) about their own curriculum and practice as a result of the workshops and professional dialogue with other teachers from different home nations of the UK.

NA

In recent decades, Sweden has experienced a large increase in the number of migrant adolescents, many of whom arrive with little prior experience of school-based learning (Skolverket, 2016, p. 189). Learning to read and write for the first time, and in an additional language, represents a great challenge to recent migrant adolescents who have little previous experiences of formal schooling. While engaged in the process of developing literacy in a second language, migrant students must also navigate their ways into, or learn to read, a new society (Franker, 2017). Therefore, learning a new language and developing literacy in a new sociocultural environment not only involves learning the grammar, principles of decoding scripts and new vocabulary, but also the ability to engage in new discourses. For example, teenage students may have to learn to talk about the body’s anatomy and functions, as well as subjects related to relationships or sexuality, which might represent taboos to some students. As Alexander (2008) put it: “Learning how to talk fluently and critically about sex and sexuality composes a significant part of becoming literate in our society” (p. 2).

In this investigation, the analyzed interactions concern topics of sexuality and the constitution of families. Such topics might raise questions about heteronormativity, which, according to Cameron and Kulick (2003), can be defined as “those structures, institutions, relations and actions that promote and produce heterosexuality as natural, self-evident, desirable, privileged and necessary” (p. 55). Thus, this ethnographic study combines two fields of research that rarely meet, at least in a Nordic context (Milani et al., 2021); namely, the education of basic literacy in Swedish as a second language and discourses about sexuality.

The aim of this study is to investigate how learning about sexual and gender diversity may enhance recently arrived migrant students’ understanding of different cultural norms, including some that may be considered taboos, in the context of an introductory language course in Sweden. I will argue that this understanding can be enhanced not only through the teaching of tolerance towards others but also through examinations of different practices related to sexuality. Concurrently, this cross-cultural educational context presents challenges and pitfalls that places high demands on teachers when choosing their subject content and their ways to teach it. For instance, teachers need to navigate among discourses related to sexual identity, which are not evident within queer theory: “Rather than affirming sexual identity categories, queer theory questions the need for them. Rather than legitimizing minority sexual identities, queer theory problematizes all sexual identities” (Nelson, 2002, p. 48). Using the concept of sexual identity might actually contribute to the binary opposition that was to be avoided (Nelson, 2002, p. 47). Therefore, teachers’ eagerness to use a pedagogy of inclusion (Nelson, 1999, p. 376) to enhance tolerance towards others might contribute to the dichotomy between heterosexual or gay students. Instead, Nelson advocates a pedagogy of inquiry, which is not aiming to enhance tolerance towards the other, but about analyzing how discursive and cultural practices create heteronormativity: “Whether the intention is to critique these practices or to learn them (or a combination of the two), the task is to investigate the workings of language and culture in order to make them explicit” (Nelson, 1999, p. 389). Thereby, Nelson means that the admittance of differences, and the possibility to investigate them, are crucial for intercultural comprehension (2002, p. 48) and therefore for the possibilities to communicate in a certain society. This claim supports the use of this framework to analyze the education of this cross-cultural context.

This contribution builds on a year-long ethnographic fieldwork in a 6^th turned 7^th grade class in inland Norway between January and December of 2020. The study was conducted for my PhD-project about Boys’ identity formation in at school and in the classroom which has a focus on gender, social class, and identity. The main research question for the project is “How does gender and class play a part in identity formation in the social life of boys between 11 and 13 in school, and how does it form their understanding of the world and the future?”. An inspiration for the project is the ongoing discussion regarding boys in school getting lower grades than the girls and dropping out of upper secondary and tertiary education more frequently (Eurostat, 2021), which makes it important to understand how ideas and practices of gender and masculinities are formed and take place among pupils at school. Furthermore, it is of importance to understand the interplay between the school and its pupils, and how they mutually influence each other, and produce more and less acceptable ways of being and behaving.

In this contribution I discuss how certain behaviors and ways of being are associated with perceptions of risk, and how they are manifested and communicated in the classroom. In school pupils are aware that bad behavior leads to bad results, which then can turn into bad grades in secondary school, and later to dropping out of school and/or not getting a good job/future. As a consequence, a failure to follow expectations set by the school is perceived with an inherent risk. In this contribution I will discuss this perception of risk (regardless of whether the risk is “real” or not) through the use of relevant ethnographic examples from my fieldwork. I will especially look at how ideas of the future and what it holds are used on one hand to keep pupils in line by the teachers, and on the other hand as a part of oppositional practices by some of the pupils.

The ethnographic context will be linked to the more general discussion regarding how boys are doing at school to highlight how risk perceptions in the classroom are affected by the discourse surrounding boys at school and vice versa. To explore these issues, I will make use of the concept of learner identities, which Kristinn Hegna describes as the way a learner see themselves in the world and how it makes them relate to their participation in learning (Hegna, 2019, p. 53). These learner identities, in turn, can be related to subject positions and pupil roles, and the expectations related to them in the classroom and at school (Lyng, 2004). To connect these oppositional and problematic pupil roles with the already existing societal worry about boys’ school performances I will use Ian Hacking’s concept of looping effect where categories and category mutually affect and constitute each other (1992). Furthermore, Anthony Giddens’ perspectives regarding self-identity on how modernity have made the self into a reflexive project where the future is always making itself known in the present (1991, p.3) is highly relevant. This ever-looming future in the present coupled with the reflexive project of the self has given the individual responsibility of a successful life, thus creating a possibility of leading a failed life. This makes inhabiting divergent learner identities and pupil roles deemed problematic a risky endeavor. The aim of this contribution is to show how these discourses and ideas makes themselves known and felt in everyday life at a school in Inland Norway.

Pedagogical activities in schools are necessarily always directed at the individual pupil on the one hand and the school class as a group on the other. This creates a tension that teachers need to manage. The growing diversity of the pupils exacerbates this tension, as diversity increases, but the demand for community and shared commitment cannot be completely suspended. For all the tendencies towards individualisation as the preferred response to growing diversity, schools cannot avoid creating community. This is not only the task of the school, but also necessary if the activities of the pupils as a group are not to be in permanent conflict with each other.

Diversity, individuality and community are thus in conflict with each other in the classroom. In recent years, with the 'opening up of teaching' for a different way of dealing with diversity, practices have increasingly been implemented which can be described as contratualism (Brown et al., 1996). This refers to the tendency for pupils and teachers to enter into contracts.

Contracts have many functions. Contracts can be used to coordinate the actions of the signatories They can create a binding obligation to perform expected behaviours. They establish and secure a ‘norm-oriented’ basic order of the social. Finally, contracts legitimise the actions of their signatories by providing a reliable basis for actions (Nagel 1991).

In school classrooms, learning contracts with pupils are on the one hand orientated towards measuring pupils performance in specific fields (Greenwood & McCabe, 2008; Coy, 2014). On the other hand, regulatory approaches to behaviour, such as the ‘time-out room’ – where pupils are sent when they ‘disturb the class’, and where they must complete a contract to return to class participation – are based on contractual assumptions (Adamson et al., 2019). Such pedagogical practices follow the principle of negotiating rather than commanding. Contracts should govern social interaction, create community and respect the individuality of the pupils. But they also provide an opportunity to address these rules, norms and values pedagogically. A common basis for behaviour is to be practised and established through contracts (Budde et al. 2021).

On the one hand, contractual pedagogy is welcomed in the context of democratising reforms that seek to consider the agency and self-control of individual children (Sant 2019). It is also seen as contributing to an inclusive approach to diversity. On the other hand, the power effects inherent in this instrument need to be questioned. It is assumed that contractualism is intertwined with power effects that can be understood as both self-governmental and external regulation (Apple 2011). Contractualism is criticised for establishing a pedagogical order based on homogenising notions of the school as an institution. Against this background, the article asks what power effects are produced by contractualism as a strategy for dealing with diversity in school character education?

To this end, a practice-theoretical perspective is used, which essentially focuses on the activities of the actors involved. The practice-theoretical based approach assumes that human activities are based on practices which are expressions of social orders. Practices are closely linked to material arrangements such as humans, artifacts, organisms and things (Schatzki, 2005, 476 f.). The paper follows the idea of a "flat ontology", as proposed by Schatzki (2016), for example, which locates social phenomena on a single level of reality. With regard to practice theory, the focus of analysis is on practice-arrangement-bundles. These practice-arrangement-bundles – based on an interweaving of practices, discourses, artefacts and subjectivation- form larger constellations (Schatzki 2002).

Students are more likely to cross borders to pursue their studies as they reach more advanced levels of education (OECD 2022). According to the latest researches (Mok, Xiong, Ke, Cheung, 2021; Bilecen, 2020) and statistics (OECD 2022, UNESCO 2020) international student mobility has been rising considerably faster over the last three decades and now exeeding 4.4 million international students worldwide. Students mobility and the internationalization of higher education creates a better understanding of the diversity of experiences (França, Padilla, 2022).

Researchers (Shields 2019; Chung et al. 2018) who have studied first year students in higher education have found that a certain percentage of students do not complete their studies and obtain a bachelor's or master's degree. On the one hand, it depends on the entrants' own motivation and environmental factors (Eidimtas, Juceviciene 2014). On the other hand, it is noticed that one of the possible reasons for failure is racial, ethnic, socioeconomic differences (Banks and Banks, 2019; Quaye, 2019).

Another aspect, which researches (Museus 2014, Hurtado et. al. 2012) emphasize, that students came from abroad face with negative campus climates, higher levels of discrimination from faculty or local society and greater insensicity in the classroom than their colleagues.

International students’ past educational experiences, worldviews, and cultural approaches can be quite different from those of domestic student, even despite sharing the same racial background. Research has shown how international students from non-European countries are less socially engaged with their college than their European peers (Quaye, Harper, Pendakur, 2019). Other studies also stress, that student encounter with specific challenges for example: English language and learning (pronunciation and accent, class discussions in silence and etc.), social isolation (loss of social network, differences in preferred style of learning in peer group and etc.), cultural norms (classroom interactions between teachers and students, academic norms and etc.).

Museus (2014) Culturaly Enganging Campus Environments (CECE) theoretical model is grounded by Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) theory. The CECE model posits that a variety of external influences (i.e., finances, employment, family influences) shape individual influences (i.e., sense of belonging, academic dispositions, and academic performance) and success among racially diverse college student populations. The model also suggests that students enter higher education with precollege inputs (i.e., demographic characteristics, initial academic dispositions, academic preparation) that influence individual influences and success. The focal point of the model underscores the environmental (i.e. culturally engaging campus environments) and individual influences on college success. Specifically, the focal area of the model suggests that the degree to which culturally engaging campus environments exist at a particular postsecondary institution is positively associated with more positive individual factors and ultimately greater student success.

A number of studies have also been conducted on the adaptation of foreign students studying in Lithuania (Razgulin, Smigelskas, Argustaite-Zailskiene, 2021; Grebliauskiene, 2019, Gudaityte et al. 2014). Also, it was analyzed student attitudes towards learning space (classroom) environment created at specialized biomedical university by Eidimtas, Bruneviciute, Blazeviciene (2018). However, factors, circumstances, perhaps direct facts, that allow teachers to recognize other forms of diversity in Higher Education (HE) which was impacted by learner's earlier educational culture, were not examined.

The aim of this research is to reveal the possibilities to recognize other forms of diversity in learning environments in Higher Education

The objectives of the research were the following: 1) To analyze the expectations of first year students to the learning environment; 2) To reveal key elements of other forms of diversity in learning environments in HE.

This self-study of our practice as teacher educators explores a graduate course focused on inclusive pedagogy and teacher professionalism involving an ethical and social commitment to all students. The purpose of this research is to find new ways to work with teacher students through reviewing their learning processes. The aim is to understand key learning moments witnessed in students’ self-assessment papers and how we can build on those to further support students in their learning. The research question is: What are the different ways of learning that students report in their self-assessment?

Inclusion can be realized when teachers see themselves as agents of change, with the values, knowledge and attitudes that allow every student to succeed (UNESCO, 2020). An essential element of inclusive education involves ensuring that all teachers are prepared to teach all students. Inclusion implies a shift from emphasizing the source of learning differences or difficulties in school as coming from within the pupil or from their social circumstances to viewing the problem as the influence of the system of education or the environment (Schuelka et al., 2019). School is then a place where difference is understood as fundamental to human development and the aim is to create rich learning environments for all students through differentiation, focusing on what is to be taught rather than who is to learn it (Óskarsdóttir et al., 2018). So, rather than expecting pupils to assimilate to existing school and subject structures, the curricula, teaching practices and learning situations must mirror the inherently diverse human nature.

Teaching for equity, where teaching practices that presume diversity from the beginning are employed and built on a recognition of pupil resources, can be considered simply as good teaching for all. These connotations of inclusion challenge all teachers to investigate their values and beliefs, to reflect on their understanding of teaching, learning and curriculum, and to reinvent their roles as participants in school change. Through the recognition of their identities, their unique qualities and their roles, teachers have more opportunities to empower their pupils. In working with diverse pupils, it is critical that teachers understand how their own identities influence the ways they work and how they respect the value of diverse identities (Freire, 2005).

Teaching people to become responsive teachers in inclusive settings is not straightforward because people do not necessarily refer to their own experience of diverse classrooms. It can be demanding to create a learning environment of trust, collaboration and problem solving, as reconstructing thinking, beliefs and learning takes time (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2023). It can be challenging, both for participants and teacher educators, to move out of the comfort zone, risk uncertainty and explore new ways of planning, teaching, and learning. However, previous research in teacher education reports that most participants were comfortable with the various learning environments provided (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2020).

Feedback to students is a key element in learning to become responsive teacher in inclusive settings. Formative assessment can influence future performance and provide information from feedback that improves learning (Black & Wiliam, 2009). It is a planned, ongoing process that can be used by students and teachers to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve their progress in achieving intended learning outcomes (CCSSO, 2018). Thus, formative assessment is a method teachers can use to improve instruction and impact the teaching-learning process aiming to enhance students’ understanding of their own learning and to give them an opportunity to influence their learning (Brookhart, 2013).

As the field of international student mobility (ISM) research develops, it is becoming more and more obvious that there is a lack of a theoretical framework that would encompass different disciplinary contributions and bare a coherent explanatory power for often contradictory empirical findings. The great disparity emerges when the research is done into individual decision-making as opposed to general international student flows as more variables inevitably are drawn into consideration and human agency starts to manifest. Despite acknowledged and well-researched influences of macro-level push and pull factors shaping ISM, students make agentic decisions to take part in mobility on an individual micro level. To investigate these decisions the research needs to account for “students' visions of the past, their perceptions of the present and their ambitions about the future” which are fluid and subjective (Wells, 2014, p.22).

Despite the apparent contradictions in research on ISM participation and decision-making, it is, nevertheless, possible to create a Meta-Framework based on the complementary nature of various paradigmatic and disciplinary approaches and their convergence potential. The theorised Meta-Framework of ISM decision-making builds upon previous applications to ISM of Rational Choice model (Lörz, Netz, & Quast, 2016), Rubicon Model of Action Phases (Netz, 2015), Theory of Planned behaviour (Kim & Lawrence, 2021; Albien & Mashatola, 2021; Goel, de Jong, & Schusenberg, 2010, 2012; Presley et al., 2010; Petzold & Moog, 2018; ) and Self-determination theory (Chirkov et al, 2007; Yue & Lu, 2022) combined with studies on push-pull factors across various contexts, research on the effect of personality traits and the recently theorised overarching theory of migration – Aspiration-Capability Framework - proposed by de Hass (2021)

Until recently due to the plethora of factors affecting individual ISM decisions, testing the validity of such Meta-Framework would be very difficult, if not impossible. IaD allows us to assess the decision-making process of those involved in the absence of the most prominent barriers to participation, such as financial, academic, and familial. Most importantly it gives us an opportunity to explore the changes evoked by purely educational international experience (stripped of country immersion components) and how these changes alter aspirations for studying abroad as a transition into another educational culture before all.

It is generally believed that a physical study abroad period enhances future mobility aspirations (e.g. Findlay et al., 2006; Wiers-Jenssen, 2008). Lee et al. (2022) found that those students who have participated in international virtual exchange (a type of Internationalisation at a Distance (IaD)) are twice more likely to take part in immersive study abroad. However, the authors acknowledge that the correlation can take different forms, with either study abroad intentions leading to engagement with IaD opportunities, or vice versa, showing how the two are bound together on the motivational level.

The research questions are, thus, the following:

1. How does motivation for IaD participation differ from motivation for physical student mobility, if any?
2. How does IaD participation affect consequent aspirations for cross-border immersive study abroad?
3. What is a possible mechanism behind such influence as an overarching model of ISM decision-making?

The outcomes of this research are likely to make a substantial contribution to both theory and practice. Apart from proposing a more universal theory of individual decision-making in ISM that has the potential to erase contradictions among existing empirical findings, it allows distinguishing between students whose disengagement with studies abroad is a well-weighted rational decision, a product of existing constraints, or an overseen opportunity due to limited vision.

Educationalists across the globe face ever-increasing pressure to reform and improve schooling (Kalenze, 2014). But they regularly struggle to implement and sustain these changes as intended (Fullan, 2007; Hallinger & Heck, 2011). This is not particularly surprising: educational change, as with all behavioral change, is neither linear nor externally controllable. It is a process of differential enactment based on a myriad of individual and collective psychosocial processes, which theorists often term “sensemaking” (Brown et al., 2015).

Diverse literatures, from organizational psychology to learning science, adopt a cognitive lens to describe and explain this complexity. More specifically, scholars often highlight the power of individual beliefs (Ajzen, 2005) and perceptions (Smith, 2001) in shaping behavior change. That is, the ways in which actors conceptualize and assess external phenomena essentially direct their decisions to adopt or alter all manner of actions (George & Jones, 2001). Education researchers, in particular, have long demonstrated that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs shape not only their classroom behaviors (Raths, 2001), but also their approaches to novel reforms (Fives & Buehl, 2016). They have further shown that students’ educational conceptions inform all manner of pedagogical decisions, from engagement and motivation (Könings, 2007) to learning approach (Dart et al., 2000).

However, the nature of and interrelations between belief and perception are underexplored in the context of educational change. First, empirical studies have rarely aimed to link these cognitive constructs with actual changes at the heart of teaching and learning—classroom-level pedagogical practices (Fives & Gill, 2015). Second, researchers have rarely collected longitudinal data on these shifting concepts (Wiltsey Stirman et al., 2012). Third, studies on educational change tend to either assess only a handful of qualitative cases, or reduce data down to average beliefs across a diversity of actors (Zhang & Soergel, 2014). Finally, studies generally overlook the classroom-shaping power of students’ cognitive processes, particularly as they interact with teachers’ shifting beliefs and practices (Hilgendorf, 2012). Taken together, these traditionally static, non-agentic snapshots complicate a detailed understanding of the complex cognitive mechanisms underpinning educational change.

This study adopts a multi-case, mixed methods, longitudinal approach to bridge these gaps. It seeks to build a theoretical model of individual pedagogical belief, perception, and behavior change, answering three interrelated questions:

• How do schooling beliefs, reform perceptions, and pedagogical practices change over time for individual teachers and students?

• What types of teacher and student profiles emerge from analysis of their schooling beliefs, reform perceptions, and pedagogical change?

• To what extent do schooling beliefs and reform perceptions relate to pedagogical change, for individual teachers and students?

Set in the context of public education reform in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this project analyzes the shifting beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors of students and teachers across five upper-primary schools implementing a government-led reform known as Ensino Integral. This “whole education” reform aims to not only double the school day from four to eight hours, but also shift pedagogy toward student-centered, hands-on, and contextualized learning (Diretrizes do Programa Ensino Integral, 2016).

In the last fifty years, transitions from university to work have become more difficult for young people, as reflected by longer periods of unemployment, job mismatches, and diversified pathways (Allen & vanDer Velden, 2007). The content of the learning objectives connected to the education and training systems, is changing, thus reflecting specific global priorities. A conclusive example is indicator 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals – according to which, by 2030, all graduates will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development. These strongly suggest that education and training systems should equip learners with skills such as problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. The focus on these "21st century goals" is visible in education, in general, and curriculum reforms, in particular, and has been promoted by global discussions about the changing needs of work and society as a whole.

These tendencies imposed a consistent debate, with philosophical nuances, related to the identity, roles and missions of the contemporary university. In this context, the controversies generated between utilitarian approaches and those with a more critical orientation were numerous and sometimes intense, generating resistance or producing transformations of principles. The central point of the debates was, explicitly or implicitly, the influence that the labor market should have on the mission of higher education and, of course, on its development agenda for a certain social and economic context (Rego et al, 2022). Such a controversy, in a post-industrial era and a growing knowledge economy, imposes answers to the question regarding the association between higher education and graduate employability (OECD, World Economic Forum, etc.). It should come as no surprise that the European Union, through the Bologna process, has prioritized both the competence-centered approach and employability in its higher education policies, supporting a line of research whose basic premise is to provide the theoretical basis and, wherever possible, to empirically validate the employability skills of university graduates (Rego & al, 2022).

The main concept is the term "21st century skills", that denotes a combination of skills that are important in a modern society and workforce, (Ercikan & Oliveri, 2016). The terms "transferable" (UNESCO, 2012) or "transversal" skills encompass some of the same skills that can be applied in multiple situations, as opposed to technical professional skills that are specific to certain occupations. In a world facing rapid technological and social change, this transversality/transferability is seen as increasingly important, as facilitating transition towards work (Kearns, 2001).

In our research project, we aim at doing a mapping exercise and understand the way transversal competencies are conceptualized in the curricular documents of three bachelor study programs, in the University of Bucharest, a public, large university from Eastern Europe: educational sciences / pedagogy, teacher training education and physics. In this sense, we identify the transversal skills already present in the study programs, but also those that are omitted, by referring to a competence framework developed by the research team based on a rigorous analysis of the literature. Our main research questions were: what sets of transversal competencies are in use in the curricular documents analyzed; what transversal competencies are present in different study programs and disciplines; what issues can we identify by analyzing transversal competencies, that are relevant to higher education and could be explored in next phases of our research. The finality of our study is curricular and practice change through the integration of transversal skills in the programs in the field of education and sciences, but also contribution to the international debate regarding transversal skills, as Hart et al (2021) emphasized that the concept is still understood in different and contradictory ways.

The transition into higher education has been the focus of both government policy and practice with a goal of a smooth transition in the context of increasing the diversity and population of students in higher education. For example, Hulme & De Wide (2015), who organised the transition into higher education in the STEM education department, found that there is now existing practice that attempts to smooth the transition, and that sharing good existing educational practice is a top priority for education stakeholders.

However, in recent years, researchers in the UK and in other countries have begun to criticize the traditional focus on a smooth transition into higher education. For instance, according to Ecclestone, Biesta, & Hughes (2010), 'while certain transitions are unsettling and difficult for some people, risk, challenge and even difficulty might also be important factors in successful transitions for others' (p.2). Moreover, an alternative concept called 'becoming' has been proposed to replace the traditional transition concept (Gale & Parker, 2014 & Gravett, 2021). It has been suggested that transition as becoming should be seen as 'perpetual series of fragmented movements involving whole-of-life fluctuations in lived reality or subjective experience, from birth to death' (Gale & Parker, 2014, p. 737). Besides, Gravett (2021) described the chrematistic of 'becoming' as (1) troublesome transitions, (2) transition as rhizomatic, and (3) transition as becoming. Thus, Gravett (2021) suggested a shift from a traditional paradigm of transition into framing of transition as becoming.

Given both the concept of transition and becoming, then, how can the concept of transition into higher education in Japan be reconstructed? Considering the oppositional structure between the traditional concept of transition and its alternative becoming, the following research questions are set out in this study.

RQ: How do Japanese students experience “transition into higher education”?

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct existing concepts of transition into higher education. In general, in recent years, Japanese high school curriculum has established an interdisciplinary curriculum called 'inquiry-based learning' in addition to the regular curriculum of academic subjects. And Japanese universities offer liberal arts courses in the first and second year of university, and specialized courses in the third and fourth year of university. In Japanese universities, which differ from the structure of the European education system, this paper will clarify how Japanese students experience the transition into higher education compared with the transition into higher education in European countries in previous literature.

In interpreting students' transition and becoming, Gravett's (2021) three components of becoming (transition as troublesome, rhizomatic transition, transition as becoming) are used as an analytical framework. Specifically, this analytical framework includes “threshold concepts” proposed by Meyer and Land (2005) and concepts of the ‘rhizome’ and ‘becoming’ in "A Thousand Plateaus written by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Meyer & Land (2005) state that struggling with threshold states to overcome the discomfort and difficulty felt when passing through transitional spaces is important in transforming students' understanding. Deleuze & Guattari (1987) stated that rhizomes mean that there are no uniform pathways, that transition is divergent, fluid, and multiple, and that becoming refers to the permanence of ongoing change.

Education and career pathways are extensively studied in the sociology of education and labor economics. Sociologists explore transitions between study and work within the framework of the life course perspective (Monaghan, 2020), paying special attention to the patterns of trajectories (Lorentzen et al, 2019) and transition regimes (Walther, 2006). Extensive literature in the sociology of education is devoted to the relationship between education and labor market outcomes and individual socioeconomic backgrounds. The latter is manifested by parental education, professional status, and income, as well as cultural capital. Also, socioeconomic status (SES) impacts educational and career aspirations–low SES students have lower aspirations than their counterparts from a more advantaged background (Kim, Klager, Schneider, 2019). In various countries, there is empirical evidence that low SES is a strong predictor for lower levels of educational attainment and labor market outcomes (Walpole, 2003). In due turn, labor economists focus on the labor market outcomes of the trajectory, returns on investments in human capital, and its determinants. Drawing from the human capital theory, the accumulation of more human capital–a higher level of educational attainment, stronger cognitive abilities, and noncognitive skills, combining studies and work– positively impact labor market outcomes (Nilsson, 2019) and could make school-to-work transition smoother.

Typically, event history and regression analysis methods are used to examine educational pathways. However, such methods commonly examine only unique transitions rather than full sequences of steps in education and employment. With the growing popularity of longitudinal data, sequence analysis accompanied by logistic regression analysis has become the option to overcome this limitation and explore trajectories in their complexity. A number of international, especially European, empirical studies have incorporated sequence analysis in the investigations of youth transitions (see e.g., Brzinsky-Fay, 2007; Quintini & Manfredi, 2009; Lorentzen et al. 2019). However, only a few studies employing sequence analysis on representative samples specifically examine the trajectories of university graduates (Duta, Wielgoszewska, Iannelli, 2021).

Using data from the Russian national cohort longitudinal study "Trajectories in Education and Career, this study aims to untangle the nine-year education-career pathways of 9th-grade students who have received higher education by the age of 25. In Russia, bachelor's and master's degrees were introduced in 2009, though master's programs have anchored and proliferated across universities only recently, in the mid-2010-s. Thus, the cohort participating in this longitudinal study is the one experiencing the newly established educational options. Our study aims to identify the different types of pathways followed by Russian graduates in their journey from school to higher education and to work and explore the factors contributing to different pathways. We investigate pathways following the sociological approach and methodology of sequence analysis but considering the key findings of labor economists, thus embracing the framework of the socioeconomic background and educational inequalities and the human capital theory. We investigate how socioeconomic status and aspirations, as well as academic abilities and personal characteristics, and an extended set of socio-demographic factors, shape students’ paths through postsecondary education and the world of work. By considering how different factors shape not just specific transitions but long-term sequences of educational-employment states, we broaden our understanding of who follows certain paths and why.

Traumatic experiences differ from highly stressful events due to their characteristics such as threatening bodily integrity and personal exposure to death. Therefore, these events can impact human psychology and well-being. For years, the adverse effects of trauma have been studied in the field of psychology and psychiatry (Tedeschi et al., 1998). However, a growing body of literature has shown that some people may be more resilient than the pre-traumatic period (Groleau et al., 2013; Lindstrom et al., 2013, Park et al., 2012).

Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004) constructed a holistic model that includes personal, social, and trauma-related factors to explain the phenomenon, termed “post-traumatic growth (PTG)”. According to this model people have core beliefs about themselves, others, and life that guide people and help them make sense of life. A traumatic event can shake the structure of these assumptions, thus creating the need for restructuring. PTG emerges from the restructuring process. According to the model, growth is a highly personal process rather than a direct outcome that can start with the disruption of core beliefs rather than the event itself (Calhoun et al., 2010). Lindstrom et al. (2013), found a strong significant positive relationship between PTG and disruption of core beliefs. Similar results have been found in cross-sectional studies (Calhoun et al., 2010; Eze et al., 2020; Taku et al., 2015), and longitudinal ones (Danhauer et al.,2013; Ramos et al., 2018).

The theoretical model emphasizes that personal variables such as coping mechanisms are also important factors affecting PTG (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Coping with stress can be defined as the process of managing emotional requisitions arising from events perceived as stressful in person-environment interaction (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Fisher et al. (2020) found that active and supportive strategies were positively associated with PTG, while avoidant strategies were negatively related to it. On the other hand, some research emphasizes that active, supportive, and avoidant strategies like denial were positively related to PTG (Lelorain et al., 2010; Park et al., 2012). These findings show that coping mechanisms are important predictors of PTG.

Contemporary PTG literature focuses on another important variable named “event centrality”. Event centrality refers to the extent to which the memory of an event becomes a central part of people's identity, a fulcrum for understanding everyday life, and a turning point in life (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006). Groleau et al. (2013) found that event centrality was a significant predictor of PTG even after controlling for rumination and disruption of core beliefs. Similarly, Bernard et al. (2015) indicated that event centrality was a significant predictor of PTG. All of these findings show that coping mechanisms, event centrality, and disruption of core beliefs have crucial roles in the creation of PTG and therefore were used as variables in this study.

This study aimed to determine the predictors of PTG levels of university students with trauma experience in light of the current literature. Traumatic experiences are quite common around the world (Kessler et al., 2017) and can influence the academic experience and even university graduation in the long run (Lecy & Osteen, 2022). Therefore, understanding the predictors of PTG can shape psychological help, facilitate growth and well-being, and thus ensure the success and continuation of the higher education process. Event centrality is a relatively contemporary variable that has not been sufficiently studied in Turkish culture, therefore another aim is to understand its relationship with PTG in Turkish culture. According to these aims, a research question has been created; Do the disruption of core beliefs, stress coping mechanisms, and event centrality predict PTG?

In the recent years, there has been much focus on so-called “student-active learning and teaching methods” (“studentaktive lærings- og undervisningsformer”) in Norway, which require higher education (HE) institutions to break away from one-way communication by the teacher and employ more practical methods such as cases, discussions, and participation in research (Meld. St. 16 (2020-2021)). The same is true for Italy, where the creation of Teaching Learning Centres and Digital Education Hubs is at the core of the NRRP (the Next Generation EU funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan) effort. This should be the major impulse towards a transformation in Italian’s HE teaching practice after several laws and guidelines that served as precursors such as "Reform of university and research" (Legge 30 dicembre 2018, n. 145), "Guidelines for the quality of university teaching" (Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca, 2019), "Guidelines for the evaluation of university teaching" (ANVUR, 2020) and "Report on the quality of university teaching" (ANVUR, 2021, periodically published).

Research has documented student-active learning methods not only leading to students’ improved learning outcomes (Komulainen et al., 2015), but also strengthening students’ soft skills such as collaboration, presentation, and assessment (Godager et al., 2022). The use of such learning methods is perceived by students as motivating and supporting in knowledge acquisition (Langsrud & Jørgensen, 2022). While many university educators employ or wish to employ various student-active methods in their teaching, the final grade students receive in the course is still often based on the result of the final high-stakes summative exam at the end of semester.

This format of examination often provides students with limited opportunities to holistically demonstrate the knowledge and skills they are supposed to have acquired by the end of the semester, which in its turn leads to students’ decreased motivation to engage in learning activities and increased focus on “what’s going to be in the exam”. Moreover, the concept of final exams is further problematized by emergent artificial intelligence (AI) technology which has been employed by higher education students worldwide for example for essay-writing. Currently, this led to some universities (e.g., in Australia) taking a “pause” and temporarily returning to traditional “pen and paper” exams while searching for a way to redesign student assessment.

To address this issue, we have chosen to employ the principle of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996, 2014) which is based on the constructivist tradition and that serves as a framework for designing coherent teaching programs and curricula. The idea is to share with students in advance what will be required of them in terms of learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment modalities. The stress is on student engagement in their own learning process to set up a meaningful and integrated learning experience. To attain this goal, the assessment is integrated into this process rather than being left apart as a final and disconnected task (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004).

In this paper, our goal is to examine the current situation in Norway and Italy, discuss possible ways forward and address some of the challenges. The paper is guided by the following research questions (RQ): (1) What are the different types of student assessment involved at universities in Norway and Italy? Which are the most commonly used and which are the least? (2) What challenges do reported assessment modalities can pose, and what can possible solutions be? (3) What are the differences and similarities between the Norwegian and Italian universities in this respect? What can we learn from each other to advance in disseminating meaningful assessment practices?

Reflecting and reflections today are being understood as a vital part of learning processes. Critically reflecting on one’s own experience not only is assumed to holding advantage in terms of consolidation and retention of knowledge; but it bears the potential for transformative and expansive learning through changing conceptualization and worldviews (for an overview cf. Rogers, 2001). Integrating reflections into pedagogical arrangements has been highlighted with respect to the development of competences, as becoming competent involves personal transformational processes and self-awareness (e.g., Mezirow, 1991). However, developing students’ reflexivity proves a challenging undertaking, since the entanglements of professional identities with personal trajectories can easily lead to frictions in the pedagogical process (Fladkjær & Otrel-Cass, 2017). To add insult to injury, teachers all too often pretend on being able to take a neutral stance when “facilitating” reflective activities and neglect their own entanglements and frictions.

In the present paper, we share a journey of understanding the intricate interplay between students’ reflections in a pedagogical activity, and our own entanglements with them, both as teachers facilitating these reflections, and as researchers struggling to interpret them. The context of this study was a project at a university built on the pedagogical foundations of Problem-based Learning (PBL). Despite of the well-elaborated benefits of PBL for learning and competence development, students struggle to reflect on their own professional identity, and to communicate their competences on the labor market. Under this focus, we explored new pedagogical approaches to reflections by engaging a group of 12 students in a series of reflective activities, and collected data while simultaneously revising our own pedagogy in a series of micro action-research cycles (Mills, 2014).

In this paper we will analyze, juxtapose and questions the processes we encountered under a reflective perspective to highlight what new understandings we gained. Being reflective as part of research has been described as a useful tool to disentangle complex material and personally embedded narratives (Fook, 2011; Hickson, 2016). However, reflections and reflexivity has also been critiqued lately as providing an all too cognitivist and therefore disembodied view on the pedagogical process (Hill, 2018) and for not providing ample conceptualizations for the entanglements and materiality of learning (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Some researchers argue therefore, that research perspectives need to move away from a self-affirming reflexivity towards an “uncomfortable reflexivity” (Pillow, 2003, p. 188).

Over the course of the project, we embraced the critique expressed towards reflexivity and reflections as part of our research methodology, as we felt that new perspectives were needed to deepen our understandings of the entanglements between our participants, ourselves and the technology involved in the process. Inspired by research in the field of primary teacher education (Moxnes & Osgood, 2019; Moxnes & Osgood, 2018) we embraced the concept of diffractions introduced by Donna Haraway (2018/1997) and Karen Barad (2014; 2007) to trouble rather than to streamline pedagogies through a research-based positioning. However, diffraction should not be seen as a counter-concept to reflection (Hill, 2018). Instead, by “cutting together appart” (Barad, 2014, p. 168) concepts, Bozalek and Zembylas (2017) argue for an acknowledgement that the “‘entanglement’ of reflexivity and diffraction is one that includes continuities and breaks rather than a ‘story’ of one vs. the other” (p. 9). In our analysis we are troubling this with yet another entanglement, the intra-actions between ourselves as teachers and researchers. By analyzing these two processes as simultaneous and entangled, we dive into an understanding of research on pedagogical processes that is by itself pedagogical.

This paper presents preliminary results of a first exploratory study, with multidisciplinary (Psychology, Economics, Market Law, Art History and Teacher Training) and multilevel (various undergraduate and master courses) conditions. This multidisciplinary glance is of utmost importance in Higher Education (Alexander et al., 2011). Up to now, we have plenty of educational research on educational students. Research on psychology-students or teacher-students is insufficient to understand learning processes at all areas of HE, and certainly HE-instructors at other disciplines would benefit from inquiry on their own students’ behaviors and motivation. The time has arrived to move beyond our lecture room walls and inquiry how students at other faculties tackle their learning processes and cope with the challenges (Quinlan, 2015). In this study, two different Spanish universities participate.

We designed a concrete instructional plan which offers a systematic study support for students with the purpose of enhancing self-regulated learning. We applied a particular psychometric algorithm on a system of learning tests, specially designed for promoting metacognitive engagement (Bruttomesso et al., 2003; Leclercq, 1993). This algorithm does not only evaluate the correctness of students’ responses to multiple-choice items, but also the degree of certainty of their given response. Other authors call it certainty-based-marking (CBM) (Gardner-Medwin, 2008). CBM breaks the traditional marking scheme (in our country 0-10), since grades are adjusted to the degree of confidence or certainty declared by the student (low-middle-high). For example, a 10-item test –as we used in our study- generates a grading range from -60 to +30. That is: students need to learn how to reinterpret their own results and make sense of them. All sorts of emotional, motivational and metacognitive reactions happen (Remesal et al. 2022a) when using this strategy. In this paper we want to focus on the students’ very first reactions to that new evaluative algorithm, within an instructional plan where this testing system has an underlined formative purpose. We look at CBM-results in connection with emotional reactions (positive and negative / activating and de-activating emotions, following Pekrun (2006); calibration (relation between expectations and achievement (Dinsmore & Parkinson, 2013; Hadwin & Webster, 2013) and metacognitive thoughts. All three phenomena together interweave towards new possibilities of self-regulated learning behavior (or lack thereof!) (Barr & Burke, 2013, Remesal et al. 2022b).

The instructional system we designed and put to the test roots on a view of self-assessment as the basic tool for self-regulated learning (Panadero et al. 2016). In this study we want to evaluate the effectiveness of such instructional system to pedagogically support complex learning processes of students at different disciplinary areas and levels (bachelor – masters).

In Finland, structural, ideological and functional changes in universities have often been linked to the change in the University Act 2010. In line with the Modernisation Agenda, several New Public Management approaches have been applied to the activities of Finnish universities (de Boer & Enders 2017). Furthermore, international attractiveness has increasingly motivated university reforms, and the demand for internationalisation has challenged the national role of universities (Saarinen & Talas 2017).

This presentation is based on a research project Changing University and Equalities in Academic Work (Haapakorpi, Plamper, Tapanila, Jauhiainen, Laiho, Leinonen, Ylijoki & Jauhiainen 2023), which examined the tasks of university researchers and teachers in various positions, the conditions and possibilities of doing the work, and related changes. There is no established and shared definition of the concept of equality, it receives its content within a given time and context. Different actors – political and administrative actors or employees, for example – pay attention to the different meanings of equality and there is ongoing debate on the concept. (Kantola, Koskinen Sandberg & Ylöstalo, 2020) Equalities in academic work are intertwined not only with gender equality but also with age, social background, position, discipline, the possibility of attaching themselves to the university community and time resources.

The equality and non-discrimination work of universities is linked to national policies, legislation and international commitments. The promotion of equality at the university has traditionally meant actions aimed at individuals, especially women, but the individual perspective has shifted to structural and cultural factors. In international comparisons, progress on equality has been observed to slow down or halt (Tanhua 2020, 4). The Ministry of Education and Culture's report on the state of equality and diversity in Finnish higher education institutions noted, among other things, that women working in universities experience discrimination slightly more often than men, and ethnic minorities experience discrimination twice as often as ethnic Finns (Jousilahti, Tanhua, Paavola, Alanko, Kinnunen, Louvrier, Husu, Levola & Kilpi 2022).

In this presentation, we are interested in how representatives of the middle management of three case universities approach equality and non-discrimination in academic work and what challenges they talk about in terms of equality and non-discrimination. We also highlight the experience of international researchers and teachers in the field of equalities of academic work.

Current literature relating to academic employment suggests the academy is approaching a crossroads. There is evidence that the academy is reaching a period where a significant portion of staff intend to leave the profession within the next five years, which would seem to make way for new entrants into the workforce. However, casualisation of the academic workforce has steadily increased over the last two decades, resulting in fewer permanent academic staff positions. Sparked in part by long-term funding cuts occurring, despite student numbers increasing, and then the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Heffernan, 2022); a scenario has formed where a growth in casual labour practices is the norm (Crimmins, 2017). These academics are widely known as being precariously employed and may be known as ‘sessionals/teaching assistants’ (for teaching-related work) or ‘research assistants/fellows’ (for research-related work) and can be employed on contracts, sometimes ranging from hours through to fixed-term contracts that can extend from months to years. For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘precarious’ is used to include all academics employed on short-term and casual contracts (Mula et al., 2022). Similar to ‘tenured academics’ in the United States, some Australian academics have ‘continuing’ employment, while academics in Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdome have ‘permanent’ roles which denotes a degree of security and permanency to their positions. For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘permanent’ is used for academics in these roles.

Varying rates of casualisation exist with reports of between 16 to over 70 per cent of the academic workforce now engaged in casual employment or short-term contracts (Byers & Tani, 2014; Crimmins, 2017). While countries such as Canada and Finland have had a less pronounced oversupply of qualified candidates, the massification of doctoral programs means that the number of PhD holders seeking academic employment now outstrips available academic jobs in many countries (Heffernan, 2022). While figures differ between countries, institutional type (research vs teaching focused), and disciplinary areas, but in a majority of cases, the trend is that casual employment has increased at a time when the market continues to be flooded with graduates seeking academic employment (Heffernan, 2019).

One might have expected that academics leaving the profession due to retirement or other professional opportunities would have made way for sessional employees to gain permanent positions; but this has not proven to be the case. Instead, staff with permanent positions leaving the academy have been replaced by cheaper-to-employ workers on contract (Heffernan, 2020; Ryan et al., 2013). The COVID-19 pandemic has had further repercussions for the higher education sector. Although COVID’s impact differs between countries, institutions, and faculties, overall, the pandemic has driven universities into times of austerity. Blackmore (2020) highlights that though these levels of austerity are institution dependent, any form of financial downturn is often met with hiring practices that shift resources to cheaper forms of employment such as casual and contract staff. It has also been noted that COVID has not significantly altered the higher education employment landscape; but has exacerbated already existing trends for replacing continuing staff members with casual/contract workers; diminishing permanent positions, and increasing competition for permanent employment (Doidige & Doyle, 2020).