Conference Agenda

Sense of belonging benefits children of all ages as it gives them emotional security, boosts relationships with others, shapes their identity and agency (Halse, 2018). Over the past decades, a growing body of literature has focused on what it means for students to have a sense of school belonging and how this relates to academic outcomes and well-being. Although children’s learning and wellbeing is often the central focus of these claims, little is known about young children’s own perspectives and understanding of the concept of belonging. Also, literature on the experiences of different ethnic minoritized groups and how they feel like they belong or don't belong in school is scarce and mainly focuses on how schools foster a sense of belonging (DeNicolo et al., 2017; Di Stefano, 2017) and not on how the children experience it.

Studies have found that minoritized children’s sense of belonging is at risk in mainstream school and that monolingual bias and assimilationist practices significantly affect the feelings of belonging of ethnic minority youth in mainstream schools (Van Der Wildt et al., 2017). Next to these mainstream schools a large part of minoritized pupils attend supplementary schools, which are organized by volunteers in the weekend ( 45% in Flanders see Coudenys et al, under review). In these schools the pupils usually learn their heritage tongue, get acquainted with cultural traditions and meet up with peers (Burman & Miles, 2018; Creese & Martin, 2006). Within the supplementary school the mainstream narratives are displaced, and pupils’ heritage language is central to the pedagogical project (Simon, 2018) . Simultaneously, in these surroundings all their classmates share a migration background and initial research has shown that such schools can foster a sense of belonging when mainstream schools cannot (Kayama & Yamakawa, 2020). Therefore, supplementary schools are interesting spaces to dissect how minoritized children experience sense of belonging in both their mainstream and supplementary school context.

In this study, we examine how children conceptualize and articulate their sense of belonging from their own viewpoints. We aim to identify the contextual and layered experiences of belonging of children attending both mainstream and supplementary education. We interview primary schoolchildren in their supplementary school. We selected two cases: A Russian language heritage school and an Arabic school in the superdiverse setting of the city of Antwerp, in Flanders. Flanders has a strong monolingual tendency in its mainstream schools (Agirdag, 2010; Pulinx et al., 2017) whereas in the supplementary schools bilingualism is encouraged and heritage language is nurtured. The Russian and Arabic language school were chosen because they both welcome pupils from varying background, which makes them interesting to study sense of belonging against a background of ethnic diversity and linguistic diversity.

The research question we hope to answer is:

How do minoritized pupils conceptualize sense of belonging against their experiences of attending both supplementary and mainstream schooling in Flanders?

We move away from static and essentialist ideas of belonging and define belonging as dynamic and highly contextualized. This means that students experience belonging in diverse ways and that these experiences may vary from place to place (e.g., in the mainstream school and the supplementary school), depending on interactions between teachers and students, participation in certain activities and linguistic and cultural policies and practices. The purpose of this study is to understand the contextual and layered experiences of belonging of minoritized children attending both mainstream and supplementary education in Europe, in which these topics to a large extent remain underresearched. These findings can give us insight in how children construct belonging which can impact future policies aimed at enhancing sense of belonging for all children.

Despite the well-known positive effect of students’ sense of school belonging for various educational outcomes, empirical research exploring the sources of school belonging is still sparse. Particularly, the question of how education system characteristics might contribute to immigrant-nonimmigrant student differences in their sense of school belonging remains unexplored. Since students' sense of school belonging is shaped by their experiences at school, we assume that the education system characteristics significantly impact their sense of belonging (c.p. Allen & Kern, 2017: 54ff.). This study focuses on a central feature of education systems: between-school tracking (shortly: tracking; e.g. Allmendinger 1989: 233). Specifically, we ask whether tracking, i.e. the grouping of students into different types of secondary schools according to ability (e.g. Betts 2012), affects ethnic inequality in school belonging.

School belonging has been defined as “the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school social environment” (Goodenow and Grady 1993, p. 80). It has been found to positively affect students’ educational outcomes by increasing their academic motivation, reducing the risk of school absenteeism, and enforcing more positive academic self-efficacy (Allen et al., 2018).

Previous studies suggest that immigrant students often tend to have a lower sense of school belonging than nonimmigrant students (Allen et al., 2021; Chiu et al., 2012; Chiu et al., 2016; Ham et al., 2017). In contrast, other studies find no differences between minority and majority students (Ma, 2003) or even a higher sense of belonging among minority students (De Bortoli, 2018; Pong & Zeiser, 2012).

We hypothesize that education system characteristics, i.e. tracking, may explain these mixed findings. Due to social differences in scholastic achievement (i.e., primary effects, Boudon, 1974), the sorting process in tracked education systems is expected to lead to more pronounced school segregation of immigrants and a higher proportion of immigrant students in the lower educational tracks. School segregation as a result of tracking may have different - and at times counteracting - effects on the sense of school belonging of immigrant students.
Higher-track students benefit from the prestige of their school, resulting in a positive attitude towards school and a stronger sense of belonging (the "basking in reflected glory effect". Cialdini et al., 1976). By contrast, lower-track students may perceive school as a source of failure and low status, causing them to oppose it (stigmatization, e.g., Van Houtte, 2006). Since immigrant students are more likely to attend lower tracks, the stigma of the lower track would cause a lower feeling of school belonging among immigrant students as compared to nonimmigrant students. Thus, tracking would lead to higher inequality in school belonging.
In contrast to the effects of stigmatization, the homophily principle (McPherson et al., 2001) suggests that school homogeneity in ethnicity could also positively affect the sense of school belonging. According to the homophily principle, relationships between similar people regarding various social characteristics are more likely to occur, and peer relationships in turn are a key factor in the sense of school belonging (Allen et al., 2018). This effect applies to immigrant and non-immigrant students. However, the often higher educational aspirations of immigrant students could result in a more positive attitudinal climate and higher levels of school belonging in schools with a higher share of immigrant students.
Together, tracking might have counteracting effects on the inequality in students’ sense of school belonging between immigrant and nonimmigrant students. It thus remains an empirical question which of these counteracting effects has more weight in determining inequality in the sense of school belonging.

As a Nordic welfare state Finland shares a collective self-image as forerunners of equality, democracy, and social justice. Education is seen as a key instrument for social justice, and education policies in Finland still largely reflect this principle, also concerning the highest level of education, the academia. Historically, Finnish academic education has distinctively been a national project, aimed at educating Finnish citizens to work as professionals in the national labour market and promoting development of the welfare state (Buchardt, Markkola & Valtonen 2013). State-funded university education has been seen as an instrument for promoting social mobility and overcoming class conflict (Lund 2020; Kaarninen 2013). Still, as the Finnish Higher Education system is one of the most competitive in the OECD countries (OECE 2019) it can be regarded as a site of privilege. Admission to university is based on grades in matriculation exams and/or entrance exams. In a formally meritocratic admission system, there are groups that are statistically under-represented, such as students with migrant (FINEEC 2019) or working-class backgrounds (Nori 2011) or disabilities (Nurmi-Koikkalainen 2017). In addition, national education statistics do not provide figures on students of colour or oppressed national minorities (e.g., Finnish Roma). As these groups enter university, they share positions that are marked by differences in relation to normative expectations and structures that tend to prioritise whiteness, able-bodiedness, and middle-classness. Their lived realities and experiences in academia have been theorised as the examples of subjection to institutional violence or misrecognition (Burke 2018), which refers to processes of treating particular groups of students as “out of place”, potentially causing encounters that are disruptive, require negotiation, and invite complicity (Puwar 2004; Mirza 2018).

The aim of our study in progress is to analyse how normative whiteness is established and reproduced in Finnish university education. Within the tradition of Critical race and whiteness studies, it has been emphasised that the analyses of racialisation should not only be targeted to the processes of racial othering and exploitation, but also to the locus of hegemonic power and privileged positions in society (Keskinen et al. 2017). Our study conceptualises whiteness as a normativity that often acts invisibly but constantly operates as a racialised touchstone for belonging in Finnish universities. Whiteness is understood here as a hegemonic power structure and a set of norms against which ‘others’ are defined. (Keskinen & Andreassen 2017). This means that whiteness is approached as a structural position of privileges that is produced and reproduced through racialising practises that take place in various encounters, procedures, conventions, routines, and meaning-making processes, both in official and informal space in the university. Racialising practices do not necessarily manifest as explicit exclusion but as taken-of-granted expectations of the adequate student and ways of being, easily experienced as inadequacy and not belonging by those who do not effortlessly meet these expectations.

The study of diversity is not only about difference in the sense of colourfulness, but also about power relations, since relations of difference are often embedded in those. Researching these power relations in qualitative approaches still poses a challenge that is controversially discussed methodologically (cf. Diehm et al. 2017; Frers/Meier 2022). Since power relations develop and establish themselves historically as macrostructures over a long period of time, it is of interest, how their impact on the micro level can be empirically recorded and which methodological approaches are suitable for this.

Where and how can power be 'discovered' in the material and/or in the research process? What does a methodology of inequality look like? What approaches are advocated from different perspectives? Where are the respective potentials and where are the blind spots? Which methodological developments are necessary and conceivable in order to track down aspects of power?

The symposium brings different methodological approaches used in studying diversity into conversation with each other in order to approach the questions raised. The symposium will focus on what is understood by "(re)construction" and which aspects of power become visible (or remain hidden) in this way. In addition to the question of the empirical (re)construction of power relations, we are also interested in discussing the power inherent in research and its methodologies and the possibilities of uncovering it (Spivak 1988) – for example, regarding normativity, location-boundness and methodological nationalism (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2003).

Since a variety of power structures emerge in the context of qualitative research, the symposium will focus with each paper on different aspects, which are further discussed in their relational references:

• Following current methodological discussions in the context of qualitative inequality research, Hinrichsen and Vehse deal with discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis in the context of biographical research. In their contribution, they show how discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis can be productive employed to trace power and domination relations regarding racism and racialisation in the German school system.
• Thoma highlights in her presentation that linguistic ethnography is predestined for the study of language and power in multilingual migration societies. She combines fieldnotes and transcripts of interviews to reconstruct how language education policies and language ideologies (re)produced, negotiated, or irritated in preschools in South Tirol (Italy).
• The paper of Chamakalayil focuses on the data collection. She illustrates, how societal power relations are discussed, shaped, and negotiated, when biographers of colour narrate experiences of racism with regard to school in Switzerland in biographical interviews – while the interview is conducted by an interviewer of colour. Further, she discusses how researchers can work towards a more reflective methodology regarding power.

The perspectives mentioned contribute to continue working together on a reflexive methodology of qualitative educational and social research that not only focuses on the production of difference itself, but also takes the power relations into account.

In qualitative inequality research, the question arises whether and how one encounters structures of power and domination in the study of diversity and difference in educational contexts by means of narrative interviews or whether these only become visible when they are brought to the empiricism by the research. For what qualitative research strives for, at least in the tradition of Schütz (1971), is a re-construction of the meaning structures of the researched and not of power structures. Whether and to what extent power structures are embedded in these structures of meaning is something that has so far remained methodologically unresolved. So far, the problem has been treated primarily as a problem of the discrepancy between micro- and macrostructures, which is bridged by increasingly supplementing the traditions of reconstructive procedures with discourse-analytical elements (Spies/Tuider 2017; Völter et al. 2005). Through the reference to social discourses, references to power structures can then be identified in the structures of meaning. The traditionally more German-speaking reconstructive approaches have strongly connected to international research and positioning analysis (Bamberg 2004; De Fina 2013; Deppermann 2015). Positioning analysis refers not only to explicit acts of positioning oneself or others, but to complex positioning activities. Discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis is currently well established in biographical research, which sees itself as research into socialization and subjectivation processes (Thon et al. 2022). Although and precisely because the two speakers work with the approach of positioning analysis, they would like to highlight its suitability for researching power and domination relations, but also to put it up for discussion. The article pursues this concern methodologically and empirically with regard to the study of racism and racialisation in the German school system. It asks specifically where and at what points the positioning analysis makes power visible in the material. For this purpose, two individual case studies from different research projects are examined comparatively: a biographical interview with a white teacher and a biographical interview with a racialised pupil of colour. The aim is to explore the possibilities and limitations of reconstructing power (structures) by means of positioning analysis and to promote an empirically grounded discussion of methodological issues in the study of diversity in educational contexts.

Bamberg, Michael (2004): Positioning with Davie Hogan. Stories, Tellings and Identities. In: Daiute, C./Lightfoot, C. (eds.): Narrative analysis. Studying the development of individuals in society. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, pp. 135–157. De Fina, Anna (2013): Positioning level 3. Connecting local identity displays to macro social process. In: Narrative Inquiry 23, 1, pp. 40–61. Deppermann, Arnulf (2015): Positioning. In: De Fina, A./Georgakopoulou, A./Fina, A. de (eds.): The handbook of narrative analysis. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 369–387. Schütz, Alfred (1971): Wissenschaftliche Interpretation und Alltagsverständnis menschlichen Handelns. In: Schütz, A. (eds.): Gesammelte Aufsätze I. Das Problem der sozialen Wirklichkeit. Springer eBook Collection. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 3–54.

Situated in the wider framework of an ethnographic research project on multilingualism in preschools in the officially trilingual region of South Tyrol (Italy), this paper focuses on the role of language(s) and power in education. More concretely, it explores the added value of linguistic ethnography (Tusting 2020) as a “methodology of inequality” for the study of language and power in multilingual migration societies. The theoretical relevance of linguistic ethnography for educational research lies in its interest in language as "ideology and practice" (Heller 2007, S. 1) in educational institutions, as it sees language as a socially and institutionally situated practice which can (re)produce, negotiate, shift or irritate powerful relations between speakers. Methodologically, its value lies in the consistent linking of ethnographic and sociolinguistic approaches (Blackledge und Creese 2020). In South Tyrol, there are three officially recognized languages (Italian, German, Ladin). Analogously, there are separate educational systems with respective languages of instruction. This separation does justice to social multilingualism only to a limited extent, because it is oriented towards the idea of a ‘natural’ monolingualism of children and, moreover, does not sufficiently take multilingualism in migration societies into account. The 'distribution' of children with certain linguistic repertoires among these three systems is the subject of socio-political discourses that lead to a "hierarchization of minority rights" (Thoma 2022). In this context, preschools with German as the language of instruction are given the role of a "bastion" (for Switzerland: Knoll 2016) against the supposed threat to 'German' identity in the national Italian context, which is characterized by migration-related multilingualism. The paper combines fieldnotes and transcripts of interviews to reconstruct how language education policies (Jaspers 2018) and language ideologies (Jaffe 1999) are (re)produced, negotiated, or irritated in educational practice and discourse. Special relevance will be given to interactions during the ethnography, both on the level of language repertoires and language choice of all actors (children, teachers, parents, researchers) involved. The results will show how linguistic ethnography is suited to explore the enactment of language (education) policy in practice, and the relevance of (national, regional, and institutional) language ideologies for relations between individuals and groups at the micro level.

Blackledge, Adrian; Creese, Angela (2020): Heteroglossia. In: Karin Tusting (Hg.): The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography. London: Routledge, S. 97–108. Heller, Monica (2007): Bilingualism as Ideology and Practice. In: Monica Heller (Hg.): Bilingualism. A social approach. Basingstoke England, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, S. 1–22. Jaffe, Alexandra (1999): Ideologies in Action. Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin: De Gruyter (Language, power and social process, 3). Jaspers, Jürgen (2018): Language Education Policy and Sociolinguistics. Toward a New Critical Engagement. In: James W. Tollefson und Miguel Pérez-Milans (Hg.): The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 704–724.

Society is permeated by multiple relations of power and inequality. Children and young people with a migration history or from socioeconomically disadvantaged families in Switzerland face an unequal education system, as national as well as European comparative studies demonstrate (cf. SKBF, 2014; Becker 2013; Heath, Rothon, & Kilpi, 2009). In pedagogical institutions, these relations of power and inequality manifest themselves especially when it comes to families and parents who are positioned as not conforming to a hegemonically presupposed normality. Such notions of normality are reflected as a hegemonic image of a 'normal family' that is "conceptualized and partly naturalized as bourgeois, white, heterosexual, cisgender, monogamous, sedentary, healthy, and capable" (Fitz-Klausner/Schondelmayer/Riegel 2021: 7). Research on these contexts of inequality takes place within these contexts of inequality, and in the face of dominant social and institutional contexts, processes of devaluation, othering, and inclusion and exclusion, can be reinforced, cemented, or even constructed by research. Mecheril, Scherschel, and Schroedter (2003: 109) call for being aware of the "productivity of the research process for the continuation of difference-constituting relations". The focus therefore should not be on the (unavoidable) avoidance of repetition, but on "reflecting on the question of how this repetition takes place." (ibid., p. 109). Within the framework of a now concluded Swiss National Science Foundation project on parents and schools in the context of societal inequality (cf. Chamakalayil, Ivanova-Chessex, Leutwyler & Scharathow 2022), narrative biographical interviews (cf. Schütze 1983) with mothers and fathers were conducted. In this context, biography is understood as a construct, «where both the subjective acquisition and construction of the social reality as well as the societal constitution of subjectivity» take place (Dausien, 1994: 152). This paper aims at exploring, how societal power relations are discussed, shaped, and negotiated, when biographers of colour narrate experiences of racism with regard to school in biographical interviews – while the interview is conducted by an interviewer of colour. Differing ways of biographers of broaching the topic, what is said and what remains unsaid, careful, or angry explorations, addressing or involving the interviewer and being involved and reacting to being addressed by the interviewer are explored and analysed with regard to making societal power relations visible. Pointers as to how researchers can work towards a more reflective methodology are discussed.

Becker, R. (2013). Bildungsungleichheit und Gerechtigkeit in der Schweiz. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Bildungswissenschaften, 35 (3), 405-413. Chamakalayil, L., Ivanova-Chessex, O., Leutwyler, B. & Scharathow, W. (Hrsg.) (2022). Eltern und pädagogische Institutionen: Macht-und ungleichheitskritische Perspektiven. Weinheim u. a.: Beltz Juventa. Dausien, B. (1994). Biographieforschung als Königinnenweg? In A. Diezinger (ed.), Erfahrung mit Methode: Wege sozialwissenschaftlicher Frauenforschung (pp. 129-153). Freiburg i.Br.: Kore. Fitz-Klausner, S., Schondelmayer, A., Riegel, C. (2021). Familie und Normalität. Einführende Überlegungen. In: Schondelmayer, A., Riegel, C., Fitz-Klausner, S. (Hrsg.): Familie und Normalität: Diskurse, Praxen und Aushandlungsprozesse. Opladen: Barbara Budrich, S. 7–23. Heath, A. F., Rothon, C., & Kilpi, E. (2009). The second generation in Western Europe: Education, unemployment, and occupational attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 211–235. Mecheril, P./Scherschel, K./Schrödter, M. (2003): „Ich möchte halt von dir wissen, wie es ist, du zu sein“. Die Wiederholung der alinierenden Zuschreibung durch qualitative Forschung. In: Badawia, T./Hamburger, F./Hummrich, M. (Hg.): Wider die Ethnisierung einer Generation. Beiträge zur qualitativen Migrationsforschung, Frankfurt: IKO, 93-110. Riegel, C. (2016). Bildung – Intersektionalität – Othering: Pädagogisches Handeln in widersprüchlichen Verhältnissen. Bielefeld: transcript. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis, 13 (3), 283-293. SKBF (2014). Bildungsbericht Schweiz 2014. Aarau: Schweizerische Koordinationsstelle für Bildungsforschung

When young migrants move to a new country, they face the double challenge of learning a new language as well as entering a new educational system. A bridge between their mother tongue and that of their new home has been shown to be a necessary support for academic success and social inclusion. In Sweden, there have been various forms of so-called “multilingual tutoring” that have provided this bridge informally, and since 2015 it was officially adopted as a support structure for recently-migrated students (Avery, 2017). The purpose of the role of a multilingual tutor is to support subject learning by alternating between the students’ mother tongue and Swedish in different ways, a practice that is nowadays often referred to as “translanguaging” (Reath Warren, 2017). Multilingual tutors work in a school setting and collaborate with subject teachers. There are no specific legal limits to the length of time that students can receive study tutoring but local school policies often aim on making students independent after a few years (Rosén et al., 2019; Skolverket, 2020).

The few studies that exist on multilingual tutors underline the key role that they play for recent migrants and have described them as a "language bridge" between the students and learning in the various school subjects (SOU, 2019). Multilingual tutors often lack a pedagogical degree and their working conditions vary across the country. In many cases, multilingual tutors work outside normal school planning (Skolinspektionen, 2017), which allows them to define their own role. However, it can also mean that they work with poorly defined responsibilities, deficient resources and a lack of collaboration opportunities with subject teachers (Avery, 2017; Dávila, 2018; Ganuza & Hedman, 2015; Gareis et al., 2020; Kakos, 2022; Reath Warren, 2016). Research has emphasized the importance of the role, as reiterated by Rosén et al. (2019), who showed that multilingual tutors framed it as a ‘bridge’ for recently-migrated students that made subject courses more accessible. Furthermore, Bunar and Juvonen (2021) and Nilsson and Axelsson (2013) spoke to recently-migrated students, who described multilingual tutoring as an essential part of their education.

These research contributions, as well as national policy, emphasize the critical role of the multilingual tutor role for a group of students with high needs. However, since multilingual tutoring is a relatively new endeavour, there are few studies exploring it and the practices of multilingual tutoring are not yet well understood (SOU, 2019). Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the practices and competencies that multilingual tutors identify as essential to their role.

The study shows how multilingual tutors implement a variety of translanguaging strategies to support students’ learning in their linguistic and non-linguistic subjects. Moreover, the study identifies the multiplicity of roles multilingual tutors take on, including informal duties such as providing recently-migrated students with emotional and social support. The study also provides some insights on the role that available resources and teacher collaboration has for multilingual tutors’ professional development and fulfilment.

This paper derives from the research project Language policies and practices of diverse immigrant families in Iceland and their implications for education.

The objectives of the project are to explores language policies and practices of diverse immigrant families (Curdt-Christiansen, Schwartz & Vershik, 2013), how these affect their children’s education and the relationships and interactions between these families, their heritage language communities and their teachers.

The main research question posed in this paper is: How do the families support their children in their education, navigating between two or even three languages and diverse cultures?

The theoretical framework includes writing on familiy language policies. Families face various challenges in their attempt to bring up a bilingual or a multilingual child. Schwartz & Vershik (2013, p. 1) note that there are, for example, “identity conflicts, time pressure restraints in negotiating conflicting language demands and the negative effects of macro-level social processes such as state language policy”. Even in these challenging circumstances, some families do succeed in holding on to their heritage language and using it with their children. Families are in a key position for maintaining and preserving languages. The relatively new research field of family language policy (FLP) presents “an integrated overview of research on how languages are managed, learned and negotiated within families” (King et al., 2008, p. 97). It brings together research on multilingualism, language acquisition, language policy and cultural studies. Spolsky (2004, p. 5) distinguished three components of family language policy: 1) language practices „the habitual pattern of selecting among the varieties that make up its linguistic repertoire“; 2) its language beliefs or ideology; „the beliefs about language and language use“; and 3) „any specific efforts to modify or influence that practice by any kind of language intervention, planning or management.” These have been extended further by Curdt Christiansen (2013), who notes that FLP also recognizes the relevance and influence of economic, political and social structures and processes in a given society. While early approaches to FLP emphasized language input, parental discourse strategy and linguistic environmental conditions according to Curdt-Christiansen (2013), more recently there has been a shift of focus in research towards issues such as why different values are ascribed to different languages, how parents view bilingualism from sociocultural, emotional and cognitive perspectives, and what kinds of family literacy environment and parental capital are likely to promote bilingualism. These components are different from one family to another and Schwartz (2018) notes that pro-active family language management might interact with and be influenced by the surrounding ethno-linguistic community and schools (policy-makers, teachers, and peers). When children enter a new socio-cultural community, such as a school, where a majority language is spoken, they also encounter culturally related challenges. They have to learn not only the vocabulary and grammar, but also recognize and acquire the cultural norms connected to the language use. Bi- or multilingual children, a heterogeneous group, experience the differences on a daily basis and gradually acquire insights into all languages that they are exposed to. Sometimes translanguaging, i.e. the effective communication through activating all linguistic resources of the individual, is used to achieve communicative goals (García & Wei, 2014). Wilson (2020) argues that whilst the language management of minority-language parents tends to be geared towards transmitting a linguistic heritage, often associated with their emotional bond to the home country, their children, who may be born in the country of immigration, may not share such a deep connection with the heritage culture. As a result, their language choices may differ from their parents’.

This research takes place in southwestern Europe, in Portugal, and departs from a global/European concern that schooling needs to generate learning with real meaning and significance for students, in order to provide a meaningful educational experience and prepare them for life in society (World Bank, 2018). Education needs to go beyond preparing young people for the labour market, and should insist on skills that can proliferate active, responsible, and engaged citizens (OECD, 2018).

This paper aims to understand dance experiences young people can join in in upper-secondary school. It is part of a larger research project, funded by FCT, that seeks to explore if and how young people's experiences with dance relate to their well-being and their view of themselves as citizens.

Dance is an art form that has always been present in people's lives through festivities, celebrations or other forms of sociability (Guarato, 2015) in Europe and throughout the world. However, this more popular, communal and spontaneous dimension of dance has faded, giving rise to a more elitist approach (Alves, 2020). If on one hand public policies disregard the arts in educational debates, on the other, economically privileged families insist that their children and youngsters attend art academies because they recognize the potential of an education through art (Eça, 2010), and because the practice of a set of so-called extracurricular activities allows them to affirm and reinforce their social status (Macedo, 2009; Macedo & Araújo, 2020). There is a redefinition of the contours of dance. This is embodied by a selection of people seen as able to join in, a restrict criterion about the types of bodies (seen as) adequate and the transmission of steps to be memorized and presented in an irreproachable way, particularly in the scope of classical dance. From this elitism and restrictions associated with "who can dance" emerges the construction of a set of stereotypes. Even if several studies try to discredit the prejudiced views that dance is a target (Hanna, 2010), the connections between people's affective sexual orientation and art, namely dance, tend to be taken for granted by most people (Reed, 2011) leading to constrain an important right, the right to dance and express through it.

Educational research allows asserting that there is a hierarchy of knowledge at the level of curricula, with the arts - and dance in particular - in the last plan (EURYDICE, 2009). The prioritization of reason, of technical and technological knowledge, may neglect ethical, aesthetic and solidary dimensions in learning-teaching as it fosters competition and individualism, increasing socio-educational inequalities. In this line of concerns, a space is opened for the arts, and in particular with dance, to reflect on more human and holistic educational principles.

In Portugal, the Profile of Pupils Leaving Compulsory School (2017) seems to consider these concerns, establishing a set of principles, areas of skills and values that should be included in the education of children and young people, while recognizing the importance of a human-based education. However, when we analyze the curricular matrices for secondary education in Portugal - Decree-Law No. 55/2018 of july 6 - we see that the human, expressive, and artistic dimensions are increasingly neglected as we progress in the educational levels. In fact, the curricular pillars of the education system in Portugal aim to respond to the National Qualifications Framework (2009) which, in turn, is governed by the European Qualifications Framework (2008). In other words, a framework governed by competitive, economic and mercantilist principles that leaves small room for the exercise of a body, brain and soul citizenship.

"If we put Algeria in the title, no one will come!" This is the debate we were having as we prepared to present our reflections from a phenomenological (Van Mannen 2014) collective biographical inquiry into academic time, space and self as international students (Bank and Armstrong 2014, Davies and Gannon 2006). Our inquiry embraced multi-modality and invited the potential for a wider than campus frame to our academic location, as we conducted dialogue walks through the city (Ingold 2015), used the local art museum as provocation for our drawing and metaphor based explorations (Speedy 2008) and drew on our wellbeing practices at gym and mosque to inform embodied activities where we sculpted our graduate destination dilemmas (Boal 1979, Schamer 2015). For our own Arabic-European translocation we were seeking to understand what Lee (2012) terms enculturation, a process of socially becoming attuned to the academic world and the national culture so that a sense of belonging that enables study is established. To do this we opened up the many forms of literacies (New London Group 1996) that were in play.

We kept Algeria in the title of our presentation. However, a series of immigration hurdles meant none of the Algerians in the team would be able to travel from UK to mainland Europe for the presentation. Reluctant to cede the floor to the only UK and full time member of academic staff on the team, we recorded a dialogue between that staff person and one Algerian student and sent the staff member to introduce the video at the conference in an attempt to maintain our commitment to a nonexploitative, accessible research process (Lapadat 2017). As it turned out, our presentation was scheduled parallel to the key organiser’s presentation in the main auditorium. Only the other presenters, chair and one other person strayed into our session in a side room. The mood was subdued to say the least. The other speakers overran and by the time our turn came, the chair was reluctant to take the time for the video presentation to run. In microcosm, this encapsulates the many challenges our attempts to find a place of belonging, from which to develop our work and academic profile, have encountered.

Metalinguistic awareness is generally considered a driver for other language skills, such as reading and writing (see Sun & Curdt-Christiansen, 2018; Tunmer & Bowey, 1984). The construct metalinguistic awareness focuses on cognitive and formal-functional aspects of language such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics (Gombert, 1992; Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1996). In this context, metalinguistic awareness is definitely understood as a specific feature of language awareness, in which linguistic features are processed in the course of metacognitive processes through language reflection and analysis (Jessner & Allgäuer-Hackl, 2019). According to this view, at least two forms of knowledge about language underlie metalinguistic awareness: 1. the ability to focus attention on formal aspects of language, and 2. the ability to analyze, reflect on, and explain functions of language using metalanguage (Bien-Miller & Wildemann, 2023).

In Germany, metalinguistic awareness has long been studied exclusively in relation to the German language. However, against the background of linguistically heterogeneous classrooms, it is necessary to systematically embed metalinguistic awareness in a multilingual teaching and learning context. In a language-integrative German classroom, teachers draw on students' contact with languages systematically and purposefully for the formation of language competencies. To date, no studies have focused on the effectiveness of such language-integrative (German) instruction on the reflective and analytical skills of monolingual and multilingual students. A connection between linguistic integration, comparative work, and the development of metalinguistic awareness and students’ multilingualism has repeatedly been suggested, but it has not been empirically proven. The studies presented here focus on the question of whether language-integrative German instruction, in which other languages are systematically examined in comparison to the target language German, has a positive effect on language-related reflection and analysis skills, i.e., on the metalinguistic awareness of monolingual and multilingual students.

Both explorative studies, besides metalinguistic awareness, it could be observed how multilingual speakers position themselves as multilingual. This happens in two ways: 1. by positioning themselves as language proficient or language nonproficient within the language community (I only know Russian and German) and 2. by concealing the languages they speak (I only speak German). The findings on students' self-reflexive and self-referential utterances will be presented and discussed for the first time in the presentation. The question will be asked what function language-integrative (German) instruction and metalinguistic awareness can have for the formation of a multiliterate identity. This follows Creese & Blackledge's (2015) notion of identity, whereby identity is modeled as equally complex and hybrid in a world where languages are mobile and complex.

An integration of languages in the classroom should guide children to develop both operational and descriptive knowledge of the linguistic practices of their world and critical awareness of how these practices shape their multiliterate indentity. In this way, children are empowered to critically question social and power structures, as well as their consequences (Fairclough 1992). Language reflection and language comparison can be the first step in becoming aware of linguistic structures and functions. This cognitively shaped examination of languages alone enables monolinguals and multilinguals to gain critical insight into the relationship between language and power (I always thought German was the main thing).

The lecture will involve showcasing elicited meta-linguistic utterances of children, which indicate metalinguistic awareness and, moreover, demonstrate how multilingual learners position themselves in a monolingual power structure.

Given how prominent writing in English is in our globalized world, it is no wonder that EFL students’ writing skills have been the focus of many educational researchers in the past decades (see Javadi-Safa, 2018 for an overview). Writing in English is an essential skill and mastering it can determine students’ future academic career (Ortega, 2009). Building on recent translanguaging research, mainly emanating from the UK and the US, there are multiple benefits to using a translanguaging pedagogy for teaching writing (see Leung & Valdés, 2019 for overview). Although the Swedish National Board of Education is now fully endorsing such a pedagogy, by supplying articles with guidance to English language teachers, only one study so far has investigated classroom practices of EFL students from a translanguaging perspective in our schools (Källkvist et al., 2022) and none have centered on the use of translanguaging space in the teaching of writing to year-9 EFL students. In Sweden, the skill of writing is crucial in year 9, as the students have national exams in English, a gate-keeping test which may impact on their entry into upper secondary school. Following a sociocultural approach to teaching and learning, the current study addresses the research gap in EFL writing in Sweden through a design intervention covering six lessons. Using the curriculum cycle (Derewianka, 1991) as a starting point, lessons were planned taking into account recent findings of classroom translanguaging research and were executed by researcher and lead teacher conjointly. For five of the lessons, students were presented with writing tools, the main tool being their previously learnt languages, to assist them in the process of generating ideas and solving problems in their writing, while the sixth lesson was reserved for essay writing entitled A Good Life (a national exam used in the past).

While one of the objectives of the study was to design the six lessons included in the intervention as a module for teachers to employ, the second objective was to discover how the main tool of language is used by multilingual students to interact and to solve writing tasks in the classroom. Last, but not least, the third objective was to allow students to write an essay without restrictions on tools. When students are presented with the written part of the national exam in Sweden, they receive the topic minutes before writing, are allowed no software tools, such as spell- or grammar check, and internet access is disabled. In this artificial scenario, a lot of pressure is placed on 15-year-old students to produce text in a language that is not their first. Therefore, the present study was designed to see how students would fair, when not only all tools were allowed, but when students had also received an inventory of tools based on previous research and received training in how to use them.

With these three objectives in mind, the study was guided by two research questions: 1) How do students use their language repertoires to interact when provided with translanguaging space to solve writing tasks? and 2) Which tools do students prefer to use when all resources are allowed and how does allowing all possible resources impact students’ experience and final product?

Several scholars (e.g., Martin & Veel, 1998; Seah et al., 2014) have emphasized that language usage in school science contexts may be characterized by high lexical density, abstraction, and technicality. In addition, the language in science classrooms has, according to Lemke (1990) specific characteristics related to the use of words, grammar, and semantic patterns that may be a particularly challenging issue. At the word-level, following Nation (2013) language use in science can be grouped into three categories: (a) science-exclusive words; concepts (e.g. allopatric, exothermic reaction, and force, (b) words found both in science and elsewhere, but with different meanings; homonyms (e.g. adapt, cycle, and energy), and (c) general academic words (e.g. converted, proceeds, and originates). All types of words are important in meaning making of science in order to appropriate the semantic pattern of how science is communicated in classrooms. In other words, teachers must understand how language influences learning and develop strategies to enhance students’ successful appropriation of scientific language in the continuum between daily and scientific registers and increase the students’ discursive awareness and mobility in relation to content and language (Authors, 2019; Schleppegrell, 2016).

Starting with the triadic idea from, among others, Nation (2013) have Authors (2019) developed a more fine-grained categorization with two main parts with three subcategories each. These are a) content neutral words divided in 1) common words (e.g. talk); 2) unusual words (e.g. disappointment) and 3) general academic words (e.g. consider) and b) content related words divided in 4) homonyms (e.g. pressure); 5) content-typical words (e.g. pollution) and 6) content-specific words (e.g. photosynthesis).

Aim and question

The aim of this project is to investigate language related issues in relation to meaning making of school science in multilanguage settings. This is done through a multidisciplinary and quantitative approach in Swedish secondary schools.

The specific research question focused is: what kind of words are challenging for students with Swedish language background and students with other language backgrounds.

In schools and teacher education in Denmark, ‘cooperative learning’ and similar learning methods are often designed in a manner where group roles are clearly assigned, and interactional progression is scripted. Such patterns are said to function as a guard against “off-task behavior”, and thus aid students in solving the assignment and facilitating learning (e.g., Stenlev 2003; Kagan and Stenlev 2010). In this conceptualization, talk not directly oriented at the assignment is viewed as undesirable. Moreover, such directives are thought to be crucial for multilingual students’ learning, who are considered to lack key linguistic resources when the language of instruction is not their first language. However, such recommendations run counter to findings in studies of language play (Cook 2000; Tarone 2000; Belz 2002; Cekaite & Aronsson 2005; Pomerantz & Bell 2011), which have found language play is not necessarily a distraction to communication, but rather often functions as a facilitator for language learning, identity work, and student wellbeing. For example, Pomerantz and Bell (2011) showed how a group of foreign language learners “constructed new ways of interacting and new subject positions” (158) through language play and humor. This paper aims to demonstrate how students’ interests and identities are inherent in their language play during different researcher-generated literacy assignments in the classroom. It argues that language play, rather than being universally disruptive can aid students’ learning processes by synthesizing findings from three consecutive, iterative studies of different peer-groups of multilingual students participating in a large-scale longitudinal project, Signs of language (Laursen & Kolstrup 2018a, 2018b, forthcoming). The participating students in two of the groups were in year 7 (age 12-13) while the students in the third group were in year 9 (age 14.15).

In the three studies, different and intersecting forms of language play, as described by Cook (2000), stood out: We observed language play 1) with linguistic form, when one group repeated syllables from a word in the text in focus accompanied by explicit statements of joy; 2) with semantics, when another group, while visibly amused, created an imaginative world where one of the students was an Egyptian princess who had died and was about to be mummified – a process that paralleled the scientific process of mummification explained in the text at hand; and 3) with pragmatics, when the third group continuously engaged in stylizations of accents and gender, and when they tested out racial and national categorizations on each other, making their own and their peer’s identities an item of play.

The first part of the paper demonstrates how language play in the three groups is not a mere distraction to the interaction or the assignment at hand, as implied by Stenlev (2003), but rather a means to the students’ continued interest and personal investment in doing the assignment well. The second part of the paper discusses the implications of these findings for teachers and teacher educators, drawing on previous literature of language play and creative language use (Kramsch 2009; Cook 2000; Laursen 2019) and translanguaging pedagogy (García et al 2017). In this discussion, we focus especially on how those in teacher education can use such research to challenge teachers’ oftentimes conservative viewpoint of student language, and accordingly soften dichotomies between on-task and off-task behavior. In this way, the paper adds to current scholarship in educational research by showing how this research-based view of language play dovetails with efforts to conceptualize student interest as dynamic and continuously developing during classroom activities. Its findings also specify the pedagogical and epistemological benefits from embracing a holistic view on student identity to encompass students full linguistic and cultural repertoires.

Introduction

In our globalized world, multiculturalism is the societal norm for many contemporary societies and according to Turner and Cross (2016, p.289) today’s education reflects an “increasing normalisation of multilingualism”. However, even though multilingualism is now regarded as a valuable asset, there is still a need to identify pedagogical approaches, strategies and practical concepts for teaching in such circumstances. Also, the integration of digital technologies in early childhood education is widely acknowledged as an important aspect of young children’s learning (Berson & Berson, 2010). On the other hand, Kewalramani et al. (2020, p. 163) argue that ‘early childhood settings need more guidance in relation to what high-quality pedagogies with technologies may look like’.

The goal of this design-based research is twofold:

- to develop new pedagogical knowledge oriented towards teaching at the intersection of preserving and developing bi- and multilingual children's languages and integrating digital technologies in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC),

and,

- to further develop the Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care theory (Pramling et al., 2019).

The following research questions are addressed:

1) How are various semiotic repertoires introduced and responded to during collaborative digital storytelling?

2) How is agency negotiated in teacher and children’s interactions during collaborative digital storytelling?

Theoretical Framework

In this study, PRECEC not only provides the theoretical framework for understanding and studying the teaching process in preschool but also its principals are used to analyze the empirical data. PRECEC emphasizes the need of a responsive interaction between teaching and children's play (Pramling et al., 2019). Responsivity is viewed as the core of teaching that supports children’s learning and development. Empirical studies show that when interactions between teacher and children during play activities are characterized by responsivity lead to mutual participation and co-constructions of play because participants are responsive to each other understanding, needs, play scenarios, and negotiate the nature of their participation (Pramling et al., 2019). Teaching from this perspective can denote participation to children’s play where concepts are introduced, play scenarios are developed, and meaning is negotiated. Imagination is key component for both play and teaching. In play children move between acting and thinking in an as if or as is mode. As if corresponds to an engagement with an imaginary reality, how things could be, whereas as is corresponds to an engagement with the reality as it is. PRECEC argues that teaching also should alter between as if and as is mode to be responsive to children’s meaning making. Intersubjectivity and alterity are two dynamic concepts that can be apparent in a play-responsive teaching approach. A common ground - a temporarily sufficient intersubjectivity – between teacher and children is required in a joint playful activity in order for them to engage in it and for their words and actions to be comprehended. However, due to participants’ multiple viewpoints, voices, and actions the activity's direction or meaning is constantly negotiated (alterity).

The concept of semiotic repertoires (Kuster et al., 2017) is employed, which encompasses both named languages and other semiotic modes.

The concept of translanguaging is also employed that is a way of communication between bilinguals (Garcia & Li, 2014), as well as a pedagogical approach to bi-/multilingual education (García & Kano, 2014). According to Cenoz (2017, p. 194) there is a distinction between pedagogical translanguaging (a systematic and spontaneous translanguaging and strategic use of flexible languages practices aiming in supporting children’s communication and meaning making and ensuring equal participation and inclusion​) and spontaneous translanguaging that denotes ‘fluid discursive practices that can take place inside and outside the classroom’.

The concept of multiliteracies stems from a broad definition of text (in a general understanding) by emphasising multimodality in meaning-making and is therefore highly relevant to arts education (Lähdesmäki et al. 2022). This is because, as the founders of the concept, the New London Group, pointed out in 1996, the role of linguistic and cultural diversity as well as the impact of technology, media and multimodality are considered as part of what constitutes (cultural) literacy; e.g. language-based communication is seen as intertwined with visual, auditive, corporal, gestural, and spatial patterns of meaning. In particular, the notion of multiliteracies promotes a broader understanding of the arts as semiotic systems that are integral to meaning making, including for young children and early childhood education (Crafton et al. 2009) and for adult learners (Holloway 2014; 2021).

Based on this understanding of multiliteracies in arts education, this research workshop discusses the opportunities and potential shortcomings of the research design of a proposal for a project on cultural literacy and arts education for the EU Horizon Program. The proposed project builds on the assumption that formal and non-formal arts education can be a vehicle for social inclusion (Ferrer‐Fons et al. 2022). Thus, the project aims at underpinning social cohesion in European societies by furthering cultural literacy among children, youth and adults through arts education in formal and informal educational settings within schools and in the interplay between schools and local communities.

The proposed project adopts a critical ethnographical (e.g. Palmer & Caldas 2015) and community-based approach to cultural literacy (e.g. Boyd 2014; Panos et al. 2022), which implies that the exploration and development of cultural literacy is perceived as a bottom-up process that acknowledges and values the cultural literacy of all children, youth and adults, regardless of ethnicity, gender, class or race.

In the workshop, critical aspects of the research design and the challenges arising from the aforementioned approach to cultural literacy will be presented from three national perspectives of the international consortium (Denmark, Germany, and Spain). Furthermore, we welcome input and reflections on conducting community-based research within schools and in spaces intersections between schools and local communities. For the conclusion we are delighted to welcome the link convenor of network 20 "Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments", Carmen Carmona Rodriguez from Spain (Valencia), as a discussant.

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.

Since the 74 Portuguese Revolution, policies associated with the promotion of school success and education improvement were implemented and justified based on social justice principles. One of these policy measures was the TEIP program - Educational Territories of Priority Intervention (like French ZEP). This policy implies the promotion of innovation through the identification of local problems, namely, for schools in territories/regions characterized by poverty and social exclusion where dropout and school failure are more evident; and mandatory schools' self-evaluation processes (Law 147-B/ME/96). Some of these TEIP schools are located in Portugal's border regions which already suffer from structural inequalities as well as unequal access to local services, education prospects, and job opportunities. These regions have high levels of school underachievement and high rates of illiteracy when compared with coastal territories. Moreover, due to regional inequalities and depopulation, the National Program for Territorial Cohesion (2018) was created based on the need to provide equitable services and access justified as an important issue in terms of social justice between different territories.

In fact, border regions have additional challenges that may print specificities to local policy developments in addition to the heterogeneity of border regions themselves. In 2023, 146 school clusters are included in the TEIP program and, in addition, 10 of them are in border regions (Mogadouro, Freixo de Espada à Cinta, Idanha-a-Nova, Castelo Branco, Portalegre, Serpa, Elvas, Mourão, Moura and Vila Real de Santo António). The social and demographic scenario regarding Portuguese border regions illustrates striking opportunity inequalities for young people living in these regions (Silva, 2014) and this is why addressing these issues is a matter of social and educational justice (Sampaio, Faria & Silva, 2023). Fraser (2001, 2008) states that social justice results from a dualistic dynamic between recognition and redistribution that, idealistically, should be balanced. Whilst redistribution seeks a more equal distribution of material resources, recognition calls for institutionalized cultural values that express equal respect for all actors, thus ensuring equal opportunities for social recognition (Fraser, 2008). Taken the portrait of the Portuguese border regions, this dynamic is undermined as the struggle for recognition occurs in a context characterized by countless inequalities that may be material, also demanding redistribution, considering the lower incomes and limited access to employment; but also, the symbolic demand for recognition of identity differences linked to geographical, historical and cultural context (Sampaio, Faria e Silva, 2023).

Indeed, as youth transitions are generally accepted to have become more protracted, heterogeneous, complex, and non-linear over time (Furlong et al., 2019; Sanderson, 2020), young people face new opportunities and risks, where social structures continue to shape life experiences opportunities (Furlong et al., 2019). There is also growing evidence that young people from these regions value the role of school in their pathways (Silva, 2014). Some authors even consider that the resilience of schools as organizations may positively influence the students’ education path quality (Ungar, 2012; Whitney, Maras & Schisler, 2012) despite being in unequal conditions compared with others. Additionally, previous works (Sampaio & Leite, 2015; Sampaio, 2018) showed that social justice inside the TEIP program is related to schools' self-evaluation processes. So, if schools play a fundamental role in building a social justice ideal, it is then essential to pay attention to how schools are mediated by politics, power, and ideology, as well as the contradictions among them. Given this, can schools’ self-evaluation promote social justice inside these TEIP schools and, at the same time, make schools more resilient? This is the guiding question of this paper.

The benefits of student participation in educational design has long been established. Furthermore, in both education and civic particiaption the importance of critical agency has been shown to be highly beneficial for participation and attainment. Minorities and marginalized youth seem to benefit from developing critical consciousness (Diemer et al., 2015). This research aims to highlight the opportunities and challenges of co-production in the Finnish secondary educational system and sets out to illustrate how, when utilized effectively, co-production can be effective in improving both the design and delivery of educational programs which invariably shape educational climate. This research seeks to further expand the analysis of co-production by going deeper, by framing the argument in terms of what traditionally marginalized groups in educational organisations (students) can contribute in designing and delivering educational experiences and achieving social justice as localized, grassroots constituents of educational organisations.

As a normative concept social justice is fairly recent, stemming back to the middle of the 19th century, however as a sociological practice, its roots are ancient, with evidence of what we now call social justice stemming back millennia. In recent years the term has become weaponised, taking on new political meanings and contestations. This research refers to social justice in a normative sense, that being the Rawlsian conception of rights and opportunities for individuals, regardless of their race, gender, religion, class of origin, natural talents and reasonable conception of a good life.

Previous studies have shown that Finnish lower-secondary school students are not very active in civic participation nor school democracy (Schulz et al., 2018.)” Thus, more effective social justice education would be needed, entailing analysis of systems of power and oppression and aiming to promote social change and student agency. Four tools for this are: factual information, critical analysis, personal reflection and action, and awareness of group dynamics of culturally diverse groups (Hackman 2005). Democratic and inclusive practices are often seen as fundamental. This requires reciprocal relationship between teachers and students fostering their identities and advocating for their active participation (Hackman, 2016; Klaasen, 2020).

The theory of co-production goes beyond participation. While participation allows for some input, when realised to its full capacity, co-production enables people with lived experience to play an equal role in both designing and delivering services (Ostrom 1996; Pestoff 2014; Turnhout et al. 2020; McMullin 2022). The topic of this research surrounds the potential for co-production in lower-secondary education to act as a catalyst to increase social justice in the Finnish educational sector, and furthermore seeks to understand more about student engagement in regulating and negotiating organisational capacity, to which they themselves are deeply contingent upon. The topic of this research thus directly relates to the expansion of democracy to groups in society historically understood as having low productive value in sustaining democracy and democratic principles, namely young people. This is investigated with the following research questions:

RQ1: How do students act as representatives of their own interests to seek empowerment?

RQ2: To what extent do students themselves see their role in shaping and formulating educational climate to achieve social justice?

This paper discusses the Welcoming Languages (WLs) project, with a specific, critical focus on the elements of decoloniality as de-linking embedded in project’s aims, objectives and processes. The WLs is a 12-month proof-of-concept project funded by the UKRI (AHRC, funding Ref n. AH/W006030/1) between Jan 2022 and Jan 2023. The project was collaboratively designed and carried out by an international team based at the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and at the Islamic University of Gaza (Palestine).

The project explored the potential for inclusion of a ‘refugee language’ in Scottish education as a way to enact the idea of integration as a two-way process that is at the heart of the "New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy" (Scottish Government, 2018). It did this by offering a tailored beginner Arabic language course to education staff in Scottish primary

Schools. Arabic is a language spoken by many children and families who make Scotland their home (who we call here, in line with the Strategy, the ‘New Scots’). Arabic was also chosen as it is the language in which the international team has a long history of collaboration, having previously designed an Arabic course for beginners.

The WLs project started from the premise that, by learning language useful in a school setting, education staff can make Arabic speaking children and parents/carers feel welcome, to see that their language is valued and that staff in their school are willing to make the effort to move ‘towards’ them. Throughout, the project sought to ‘delink’, that is to “[…] change the terms in addition to the content of the conversation” (Mignolo, 2007: 459) in order to “[…] reorient our human communal praxis of living” (Mignolo, 2018: 106). The project pursued a delinking in several ways. Firstly, it challenged the expectation that it is the (sole) duty and it is the sole responsibility of New Scots to make themselves understood. This meant ‘delinking’ the role of language in Scottish education from the unquestioned teaching of the national/majority language(s) and of a smattering of standardised named European languages. Secondly, by grounding the course content on the linguistic needs identified by Scottish staff and by Arabic speaking children and families, the project delinked language learning from the accumulation of an object/system to be ‘had’, instead grounding learning in the “analyses of local language practices and assemblages” (Pennycook, 2019). Thirdly, the project made a deliberate (and deliberated) choice of teaching the Levantine Arabic dialect spoken by most New Scots, rather than opting for the standard variety of the language. This meant delinking the target language from the colonial assumption that official, standardised varieties of a language have higher status, and thus are more worthy of being taught/learnt (Macedo, 2019). Fourthly, through the crucial expertise of the Palestinian members of the team, who took leadership in developing and delivering a tailored course, the WLs project delinked international research with LMIC countries from widespread assumptions around who has needs and who provides solutions (Fassetta and Imperiale, 2021).

The WLs project shows that it is possible to build a culture of hospitality that includes language as a crucial component, to make space in Scottish education for the many languages that New Scots bring with them. It argues schools can accommodate a greater number of languages, including those of the people and the communities who have more recently settled in Scotland (Phipps and Fassetta, 2015), and that learning the languages spoken by New Scots can be a way to act in favour “[…] of conviviality, harmony, creativity and plenitude [which] are some of the ideals and interests that decoloniality promotes” (Mignolo, 2018: 109).

The increase in migratory movements and, in particular, forced displacements since 2015 has led to a significant increase in the number of third-country nationals seeking protection in different European countries, which, together with the uncertainty that characterises the reception and asylum process in the receiving communities, requires studies that, from the educational and social field, show potential courses of action in the face of such genuine circumstances (ACNUR, 2020; Cernadas et al., 2019; Donato & Ferris, 2020; Iglesias-Martínez & Estrada, 2018; Iglesias et al., 2016; Pace & Severance, 2016).

This is why understanding the various factors that condition the integration of third-country nationals is key to the effectiveness of policy interventions. Policy-makers need to know which categories of participants are involved in the integration process and what their specific characteristics are. Furthermore, they must examine the role of the different social fields, institutions and entities involved in integration. On this basis, we must highlight the indicators and determining factors for achieving integration, as well as the problems or difficulties in this process (Hynie, 2018; Wolffhardt et al., 2019).

Therefore, we start from the ‘two-way process’ approach to the concept of integration, applied mainly in the field of forced migration and refugee status. (Ager & Strang, 2008; Castles et al. 2002; Iglesias-Martínez & Estrada, 2018; Klarenbeek, 2021; Strang & Ager, 2010). Specifically, we refer to the connection between "belonging" and rights and values, the role of social capital in integration processes, and the dynamic interconnectedness of the dimensions that constitute integration as a ‘two-way process’.

In this sense, in our study, we follow the ten core domains identified by Ager and Strang (2008), which reflect normative arrangements, while providing a potential structure for the analysis of integration processes. Specifically, they consider the successful attainment of and access to education, employment, health and housing; processes of social connectedness within and between community groups; barriers arising from lack of cultural and linguistic competencies, and from fear and instability; and assumptions and practices about citizenship and rights. Beyond identifying possible 'indicators', we based the paper on a conceptual framework that encompasses the key components of integration.

This model incorporates common elements found in other research attempting to define and measure integration (Berger-Schmitt, 2002; Cantle, 2005; Sigona, 2005), as it bring together perceptions of the key challenges that determine the integration of refugees in disparate contexts. Furthermore, these indicators form the basis of subsequent studies (Bakker et al., 2016; Correa-Velez et al., 2015; Fozdar & Hartley, 2013; Grzymala-Kazlowska & Phillimore, 2018; Hynie, 2018), as they explore social capital as an explanatory concept for integration processes.

In a context in which the growing social and educational interest in attending to intercultural coexistence is more than evident, the aim of this paper focuses on the importance of examining integration and the factors that condition it. Specifically, the main objective of this research is to analyse the process of integration of refugees, asylum seekers, applicants for asylum, subsidiary or international protection in the educational, social and labour fields in Spain. More specifically, we study which variables influence the integration of refugee families and which can enhance this process fully in a society characterised by uncertainty.

The Roma people were recognised as a distinct ethnic group by the United Nations in 1979, followed by the emergence of international Roma organisations. A growing awareness of discrimination against the Roma has been observed and Roma-related issues have increasingly been raised in international organisations such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, UNESCO, UNICEF, and the Council of Europe. The Roma ethnic group deliberately chooses isolation to preserve its identity, as a way of distancing itself from the outside world. The closed lifestyle of Roma results in their social exclusion, which causes social (unemployment, housing, poverty, health) and educational (adult illiteracy, low education of Roma, children’s learning and education) problems and is an obstacle to the successful socialisation of Roma children.

The goal of the research is to disclose the factors that determine the problems related to Roma children education.

The following question is formulated: What factors predetermine educational problems for Roma pupils and can the challenges of educating Roma pupils be attributed to gaps in the national education system, a lack of interdepartmental coordination, or a lack of teacher competency?

Roma education faces the same problems almost everywhere in Europe (EU Roma strategic framework for equality, inclusion, and participation, 2020). In Lithuania (Baršauskienė, Leliūgienė, Pauliukonis 2003, Štuopytė, 2008), as well as in other countries (Kozma, Pusztai, Torkos, 2003), the most serious socio-educational problems of Roma people have been highlighted so far, which include illiteracy in adulthood, unemployment, poverty, bad living conditions, poor health, and the lack of cross-cultural education of children, which is manifested in low motivation for schooling, absenteeism, and low academic performance, and in early school dropout.

The comparison of something pedagogical in multilingual contexts to reflect and understand literary teaching and learning is still fraught with difficulties because the meaning of teaching and learning to write and read and its scope for setting object have also changed (cf. New London Group 2000). The similarity can also be observed in the field of qualitative research with narrative interviews in a foreign language and their translation process to understand what we can make possible for (re)reading and (re)writing. The focus of this paper is therefore on whether and how it is possible to approach the (re)reading and (re)writing of textual content from narrative interviews in a foreign language methodologically in order to reflect something pedagogical in multilingual contexts.

Scholars in German-speaking countries have been concerned with changes in pedagogical vocabulary. Nowadays, they tend to do so by analysing, and interpreting the process by which something pedagogical emerges from the actions, interactions, and cultural conditions of individuals. In doing so, they distinguish two German concepts of education (e.g. Koller: 2022, Nohl: 2022), from other concepts and practises in order to (re)read and (re)write the pedagogical by comparing it with social conditions and interactions. And on this basis, it seeks to (re)read and (re)write the uniqueness of pedagogy as distinct from other disciplines (cf. Liesner and Lohmann: 2010). Both in intercultural pedagogy and in qualitative educational research, the above-mentioned perspectives are combined with language and migration as the objects of analysis. This is done not only to examine how pedagogy is (re)readable and (re)writable, but also to provide new pedagogical perspectives on multilingualism (cf. Gogolin and Duarte: 2018, Krüger-Potratz: 2018).

Meanwhile, scholars of intercultural education outside the German-speaking world have pointed to the difficulty of developing different ways of doing intercultural research. One of the main reasons for this difficulty stems from the different interests by researcher's backgrounds for choosing a research topic, concept and method (Bhatti and Leeman: 2011). Moreover, this problem is clarified through methodological reflection on the relevance of narrative interviews as an approach for analysing and interpreting their structures in the context of migration and languages. Despite the great interest in qualitative research with foreign or multilingual narrative interviews (Hangertner: 2012, Temple and Edwards: 2002, Tempel:2008), research process of a narrative interview in a foreign language viewed from its translating in transcription is still unclear.

For this purpose, a narrative interview with a Japanese person was chosen as the source of data. In 2020, when I conducted my interviews, my interviewee was a regular international student at a German university. A transcription of the interview with her is presented in the original (Japanese) and translated into English. In order to consider the methodological reflection on the relevance of narrative interviews for the analysis and interpretation of their structures in the context of migration in multilingualism, I translated the original into English using the formulating interpretation according to the documentary and narrative structure analysis by Nohl (2006/2012). I then attempted to reflect on the translated sentences using Fritz Schütze's 'narrator's interest constellations'. While formulating interpretation and narrator's interest constellations are methodologically compared to narrative structures (cf. Franz and Griese: 2010), the discussion of foreign languages and their translation by researchers is not yet sufficiently developed (cf. Bittner and Günther: 2012). This kind of interpretation can show that the translation process should also be reflected in the analysis and interpretation of the narrative structure in interlingual storytelling.

Combined with a discussion of the methodological relevance of narrative interviews in foreign languages in intercultural education, this study provides important insights into the potential for developing a multi-literacy pedagogy.

The United Nations (2015) sustainable development goals acknowledge that extractive relations must change for climate justice to be realised. Yet marginalising practices in education continue to reinforce disadvantage and impede the learning across sectors needed for societal change to reach the breadth and depth of scale required. Decolonization of educational practices can enable perspective and voices to vitalise the sensemaking needed to provide timely suggestions and solutions that have long been overlooked due oppressive structures.

This panel will engage in Freirean dialogue (Freire & Macedo, 1987) around the multiplicity of calls to create critical pedagogies of social justice through the curriculum that work to decolonize higher education.

Our collective research spans critical scholarship, education, decolonization, multilinguistic perspectives, art-based approaches, sustainability, media studies, and wellbeing of youth across the globe. Drawing on the breadth and depth of our expertise, we seek to advance conscientization and praxis of decolonization in academic institutions and related spheres of social activism. Using our own ways of knowing and being, we will work within the panel and with the audience as we discuss curricular possibilities in which to engage in educational decolonization. In keeping with the notion of Freirean dialogue we do not speak at, lecture, or academically grandstand; taking our scholarship and commitments seriously, we create an equitable and shared space within our panel, drawing on social justice pedagogies (Freire; 1972; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Gomez, 2015; Gramsci, 1957) and Indigenous knowledges (Wahinkpe Topa & Narvaez, 2022; Kimmerer, 2013; Cajete, 1994) to create spaces of transformational possibility.

The panelists represent various and overlapping spheres in education and research. Dr. Markides is a Métis educator who leads professional learning in Indigenous education, arts-based research, and critical pedagogy. Dr. Cross is an interdisciplinary and critical scholar who practices arts-based pedagogies that support marginalized voices to effect policy change in masters that affect them including work with Scotland Indigenous traveling people. Dr. Steinberg is a critical pedagogy, youth and media scholar. Her work at Kainai Nation Blackfoot Reserve in Canada spans a decade, receiving multiple international awards for her recent documentary, The Elders' Room, with filmmaker Dr. Michael B. MacDonald. Dr. Graham Jeffrey’s research in Arts and Media also includes wellbeing of young people in diverse communities; his work in India importantly connects both with the recycling hub in Mumbai and with the Rohinga Refugees. Dr. Mark Langdon’s work is in social activism and community development, supporting marginalized voices within climate talks. Dr. Sylvie Roy’s research brings to together critical and multilingual perspectives in the transnational context. The panel chair, Dr. Sandro Carnicelli’s current research is based on critical pedagogy in curriculum design and tourism education; specifically, he is working in Brazil both as a visiting professor at the Federal University of Parana and using his position of privilege to help with special issues focusing on the work coming from the Global South. The important work of decolonizing higher education is ongoing and a priority that will be addressed through critical dialogue.

Example of Panelist Positioning:

As a Métis scholar, I (Jennifer Markides) question the backwards movement in North America – a return to the “good old days” of taught racism and learned ignorance regarding the occluded histories and marginalized voices in the classroom. Working with Indigenous communities and school divisions in Northern Alberta, we ask the youth, families, and community what they want to be taught in schools. They have asked for their cultural teachings, history, language, values, and practices be included in curriculum. We are working to create space and opportunity for their curriculum to be valued as equal and privileged within existing systems of education.

This symposium consistes of 3 papers.

Paper 1:

This paper presents the four-year (2015-2019) journey of Nabah, a young Bangladeshi-British Muslim woman. Her story lies on a spectrum that runs from being a ‘science refuser’, through ‘science hesitancy’ to ‘science responsive’, and then to being a ‘science habitue’. The group we call ‘science refusers’ is substantial in the UK. It includes those who are virulently anti-science, who, for example, believe the earth is flat, that the Covid19 pandemic is a government ploy to microchip the country’s population etc. (Watts, 2023). However, more germane to our discussion here, this group also contains people who find science inhibitively difficult, for whom science makes little or no sense at all. More importantly, for some, science is simply ‘not for them’ because they belong to racially and economically underprivileged British backgrounds, and so they reject science education/career status (Archer, 2018; Wells, Gill and McDonald, 2015). For this group, science is seen as counter-intuitive and fails any personal cost-benefit analysis. We have coined the term ‘dysciencia’ (Salehjee and Watts, in Production) to describe anti-science beliefs because ‘symptoms of disaffection…are grounded in a person’s functional worldview’ (Holton, 1993, p.145).

Paper 2:

This paper develops the inclusion of organizational hierarchy and contemporary leadership in discussions around the decolonisation of the curriculum by use of a critical realist approach (Thorpe, 2019) that helps to identify hierarchical fragility and the dominant leadership approaches that support hierarchy as a mechanism to justify privileges and maintain racism and other forms of injustice. The paper outlines how modern leadership’s roots can be traced back to the accounting practices of the slave plantations (Rosenthal, 2019) and managerialism (O’Reilly and Reed, 2010) with its wish to create and maintain hierarchy even in its discourses, such as collaborative leadership, that appear to offer liberation (Lumby, 2019). It then identifies how much energy has been expended in seeking to eradicate fragility in organizations with the goal of improving efficiency through ‘strong leadership’, before moving to link racism and hierarchy as constraints upon the decolonisation of the curriculum.

Paper 3

This paper calls for the continued raising of cultural awareness through diversity training at all levels of education, through kindergarten / nursery into further, higher and adult education (Race, 2015). Maria Montessori obtained her doctorate and worked at Sapienza University in the 1890s. Her approach to learning that focuses on developing independence amongst learners and personal development in the classroom is still very much applicable today. It is this application of the Montessori theory and method in Italian and international contexts that needs to be encouraged and developed (Williams, 2021; 2022). But that, or any development, has been affected by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The need to educationally adapt in unpredictable times provides both challenges and opportunities for professional practitioners. UNICEF (2020) encouraged the use of multiple delivery channels with 68 out of 127 countries reporting in relation to remote learning with Covid-19. Access to content is the key to remote learning but also to provide children with psychosocial support and encourage the safe use of technology. Gilead and Dishon (2022) talk about the possibilities or adapting educational practice, but future predicted crisis situations hinders both change and wider transformation. Within these European and Global climates, how to be continue to advocate multicultural dialogues within multicultural education?

In voicing Nabah’s story, we have aired the sense of a ‘dysciencia syndrome’, wherein people exhibit inability, incapacity, disinterest, low motivation and poor self-esteem in relation to the learning of science. Nabah’s a story, in Hanson’s (2008) words, is of a young woman swimming against the tide. To maintain the metaphor, while social waves roll over her, there also exists a powerful undertow of personal perceptions and beliefs. She began as a girl in science refusal, as dyscientic, and ended (so far) as a young woman in growing personal agency in science acceptance – moving from one end of our putative spectrum to the other. In this, it is also a story of a movement from self-exclusion to self-inclusion. Nabah’s future lies, of course, in the future. We sincerely hope that she succeeds in achieving her science habitué. We gathered a collection of Nabah’s self-perceptions through interviews between 2015 and 2019. Over these four years, we used several different methods to work with her, primarily collecting her self-told, reflective stories. Other approaches included six short questionnaires and classroom conversations between October 2015 and August 2017 that explored Nabah’s aspirations, engagement, perceptions about school and out-of-school science. In addition, we conducted two semi-structured interviews, one in August 2016 and the second in July 2017, and a further open-ended conversational interview in March 2019.

Archer, L. (2018). “An Intersectional Approach to Classed Injustices in Education: Gender, Ethnicity, ‘Heavy’ Funds of Knowledge and Working-Class Students’ Struggles for Intelligibility in the Classroom”. In Education and Working-Class Youth (pp. 155-179). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Charmaz, K. (1999). “Stories of suffering: Subjective tales and research narratives.” Qualitative health research 9(3): 362-382. Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly. F.M. (1998). “Stories to live by: Narrative understandings of school reform.” Curriculum inquiry 28(2): 149-164. Hanson, S. (2008). Swimming against the tide: African American girls and science education. Temple University Press. Holton, G.J. (1993). Science and anti-science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Salehjee, S., Watts, D.M. (In Production) Dysciencia to Science: The story of Nabah,. in Race, R. (Ed.) Evolving Dialogues in Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education. London, Open University Press. Wells, C., Gill, R., & McDonald, J. (2015). “‘Us foreigners’: Intersectionality in a scientific organization.” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 34, 539–553. Watts, D.M. (2023) Science and anti-science. In Debates in Science Education, 2nd edition (pp. 85-98). London: Routledge.

When applying a critical realist approach to the decolonisation of the curriculum by drawing on the concept of white fragility (DiAngelo, 2018) that exposes the hierarchical fragility in educational organizations that maintains social injustice and inequalities. In my contribution to a collection of proclamation and provocations about decolonising the curriculum, I argued that ‘the decolonising of the school curriculum must involve the removal of oppressive authority. A focus on the content of the curriculum is not enough unless aligned from the beginning with a challenge to hierarchy in schools and other education organisations… as learning about a liberating content when filtered through an oppressive authority will not decolonise the curriculum’ (Race et al., 2021, p. 89). Hypothetically, transforming authority has to produce a change in culture which will not only allow all education organisation to change in relation to decolonising curriculum but also addressing white privilege, thereby increasing understandings of colonising processes in different countries, but how we can use teaching and learning from top to bottom to address how we can transform education for a more social, multicultural and equitable profession (DiAngelo, 2021). A critical realist understanding of mechanisms and structure is used to connect Kellerman’s (2012) argument about the change in the balance of the power between leaders and followers that leaves the former more fragile with the concept of white fragility leads to a new understanding of fragility within hierarchy and how this works again the decolonisation of the curriculum, whilst acknowledging how appealing leadership discourses can be for those seeking curriculum reform and greater social justice. The ambiguity involved in the legitimation of hierarchy as a form of control embedded in struggles around matters of diversity and inequality (DiTomaso, 2021) is used to argue that things need not be as they are and that the challenge to hierarchy must remain an important aspect of all attempts to decolonise the curriculum.

DiAngelo, R. (2018) White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Boston: Beacon Press. DiAngleo, R. (2021) Nice Racism. How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm, London, Allen Lane. Kellerman, B. (2012) The End of Leadership. New York: Harper Business. Lumby, J. (2019) Distributed Leadership and bureaucracy. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 47(1), pp. 5–19.  Race, R., Gill, D., Kaitell, E., Mahmud, A., Thorpe, A. and Wolfe, K. (2022) Proclamations and Provocations. Decolonising curriculum in education research and professional practice. Journal of Equity in Education and Society, 1(1), pp. 82–96. Rosenthal, C. (2018) Accounting for slavery: Masters and Management. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. Thorpe, A. (2019) Educational leadership development and women: insights from critical realism. International Journal of Leadership in Education 22(2), 135-147.

It is important to report that evolving dialogues continue in academic literatures relating to multiculturalism and multicultural education (Baptiste and Writer, 2021; Race, in Production). However, it would be naïve to belief how politics has shaped or moved policymaking to more integrationist and assimilationist based ideas. Within this paper we will look at the Trojan Horse affair, Fundamental British Values and the Prevent Policy and Channel Processes (Bi, 2020; Winter et al, 2022; Elwick and Jerome, 2019). Miah et al (2020: 232) argue that the Trojan Horse affair can be interpreted through the prism of ‘security as a discourse’; a discourse through which certain groups in society are securitised.’ What does this mean for groups that are ‘securitised’ or stigmatised? Fundamental British Values develops the debate. Britain contains four unique countries with four different education systems. FBV should be international in its education application but does the curricula and professional practice focus on one rather than four countries histories and cultures? Prevent and Channel also returns to how groups are ‘securitised’ with the fact that more Channel multi-agency groups are set up for extreme right-wing radicalisation concerns is greater than referrals for Islamist concerns (Home Office, 2023). Is this information being taught in schools and universities? Another important education issue to be highlighted is (under) performance in the classroom. Within wider international perspectives, the OECD (2018) focus on the nature of education performance and argue that the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged which develops from the age of 10 years old. The impact of well-being on performance is also examined. The report highlights that one in four of disadvantaged students across OECD countries are “socially and emotionally resilient”, meaning they are satisfied with their life, fell socially integrated at school and do not suffer text anxiety. In Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the share of such students is among the largest (30% or more) but in other European countries, including Bulgaria, Italy, Montenegro, Portugal and the United Kingdom, the share is comparatively small (less than 20%) (OECD, 2018). Specifically, we will look at the recent developments within the Ministry of Education and Merit in Rome, Italy to see whether recent education policy covers a multicultural, integrationist or assimilationist agendas (MoEM, 2023).

Home Office (2023) Individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent Programme statistics, 2021-2022, Individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent Programme statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), last accessed 29th January 2022. Ministry of Education and Merit (MoEM) (2023) Italian Government Home Page, Ministry of Education and Merit - Miur, last accessed 31st January 2023. Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) (2018) Equity in Education: breaking down barriers to social mobility, Equity in Education: Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility | en | OECD, last accessed 7th November 2022. OECD (2021) Better Life Index – Italy, OECD Better Life Index, last accessed 7th November 2022. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (2020) Promising practices for equitable remote learning Emerging lessons from COVID-19 education responses in 127 countries, IRB 2020-10.pdf (unicef-irc.org), last accessed 13th October 2022. Williams, M. (2021) The Contribution of “A Sister of Notre Dame” and the “Nun of Calabar” to Montessori Education in Scotland, Nigeria and Beyond. Rivista di Storia dell Educazione 8(2): 123-134. doi: 10.36253/rse-10344m, last accessed 13th October 2022. Williams, M. (2022) Becoming an International public intellectual: Maria Montessori before the Montessori Method, 1882 -1912/, British Journal of Educational Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2022.2108757, last accessed 13th October 2022.