Conference Agenda

The central research question asks how the policy of the LCA programme is being lived out in practice today and whether this lived experience continues to marry with the original aims and rationale upon which the programme was conceived and developed. This study will examine the LCA programme from the perspective of those who live the programme, namely students and teachers, as well as from the perspective of policy makers and school leaders. The study will place these voices at the heart of the analysis. The discursive, spatial and relational discourses explored in this study in relation to the recognition and valuing of difference in education is pertinent not only in an Irish context but also in a European and international context.

This research is situated within the wider field of the sociology of education and employs a critical emancipatory perspective, as informed by a Foucauldian critical approach to analysis. It was informed by a number of theoretical commitments shaped by a critical theory perspective and which underpin the conceptual and contextual framework of this study. This approach changes the focus from the perceived deficits of students in order to focus on the practices and discourses within schools and the ways in which these affect students’ experiences and their ability to voice these experiences. The voices of students are foregrounded in this study and as such there is a refocusing of analysis from student deficits to student voice. In its commitment to an emancipatory approach that centred on student voice, recognition, and lived experiences, I was keen to locate thinkers who could enable an exploration of power, dialogue and affect, hence the choice of Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire and Anna Hickey Moody as key theoretical interlocutors. Foucault’s theories of discourse, power/knowledge, the micro-physics of power, and heterotopias help us in understanding the lived everyday experiences of students. However, while Foucault offers us much, he does not deal specifically with the critical nature of pedagogy nor the affective or emotional aspects of lived experiences so his work is brought into conversation with Freire’s work on critical pedagogy and Anna Hickey-Moody’s work on affective pedagogy. Foucault’s concept of the insurrection of subjugated knowledges helps to foreground the voices of students as the starting point in a politics of possibility, with the works of Freire and Hickey-Moody further developing this in possibility to pedagogy in practice, in particular the critical and affective possibilities of pedagogy. The combination of this theoretical framework and the methodological commitments to voice, lived experience, and recognition, as I will outline below, allowed for a nuanced examination of the Leaving Certificate Applied programme. This brings wider issues of inclusive education to the fore such as the emotional aspects of inclusion, the spaces students occupy, the embodied experience of policies, and the highly contextualised nature of schools, as well as the complexity of policy enactment.

Rather than seeking demystified insights that I could use in order to ‘emancipate’ LCA students, I aimed instead to open up a space where these students could be heard and make possible a new way of seeing or doing things and the concepts offered by the thinkers utilized in this study offered a conceptual language for this. The way things are is only one, limited possibility. As Foucault puts it, ‘it is seeking to give a new impetus…to the undefined works of freedom’ (Rabinow, 1984b)

Collaboration between schools has been recently promoted by policy and policy discourses as a central component for the improvement of Chilean schools. In fact, it is at the core of national-scale policies mandating public schools to take part in school–networks as a way to promote the encounter between different actors, and the emergence of locally-based collaborative work. However, these endeavours take place in a highly-privatised school system, where 55% of schools are privately owned (MINEDUC, 2022), and privately driven throughout (Bellei and Orellana, 2014). Moreover, schooling provision is highly marketised (Zancajo, 2019), and schools are individually liable for their performance through centrally designed schemes of accountability (Parcerisa and Falabella, 2017), conditions which would seem to make school-to-school collaboration unlikely.

One of these reforms is the New Public Education (NPE), a policy aiming at enhancing the quality and equity of the depressed Chilean public-school education. This reform implies the transference of schools from municipalities to school districts, new meso-level institutional arrangements provisioned with resources and staff supporting the administration and teaching and learning processes at the school level. One of the key principles of the NPE is the promotion of collaboration between schools, encouraging them to exchange information and educational practices, offering opportunities for professional development, and promoting collective strategies to address shared challenges (Bellei, 2018; Villalobos et al., 2019).

The abovementioned informs and frames my doctoral research project, which aims at exploring, describing, and understanding relationships of support between Chilean schools, and reflecting on the capacity of ongoing policies to fit or enhance these ties or create meaningful new ones. This project supposes that examining the way schools relate to others, delving into the characteristics of those that are more likely to build trustworthy relationships, and understanding the dynamics of those interactions may shed light on key worldwide educational issues in at least three ways. First, by informing to what extent building collaborative relationships is possible within highly privatised school systems. Second, intends to inform ongoing policies with school-to-school collaboration at its core. And third, to propose a relational perspective that may illuminate the understanding of wider questions regarding the work schools daily do.

In particular, this paper aims at exploring and describing how school leaders are navigating and making sense of new school-to-school collaborative arrangements as part of their transition to the New Public Education (NPE) system.

This research project is underpinned by a Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011; Crossley et al., 2015), a conceptual and methodological framework concerned with the social structures (Marsden and Lin, 1982; Wasserman and Galaskiewicz, 1994) schools and their communities are embedded in. Empirical data was yielded through Ego-centric Network Map interviews (Altissimo, 2016) with a sample of public school headteachers. Interviews aimed at collecting data on relationships schools forge with others to support the work they daily do, acknowledging features of the networks, drivers, and the content of these bonds. Data was both quantitatively and qualitatively analysed, and show that schools relate to others as part of mandated and non-mandated networks, both encompassing different purposes. Whilst mandated networks are focused on facilitating school improvement processes by promoting the reflection and exchange of good practices between leadership teams, non-mandated networks are key to getting access to resources that schools need on a daily basis, but also to support other schools in crisis in the area. Findings also highlight some characteristics of schools and leadership teams that make them more prone to establish supportive and collaborative relationships with some and not others.

While demands on academic leadership in higher education have been increasing, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring the effectiveness and impacts of leadership development interventions. In addition, recent studies suggest a model of leadership development from international approach. Unfortunately, evaluation of those programs is scarce in the available literature. This article presents the results of the mid-term impacts of an international academic leadership development (ALD) program that has been organised since 2019. The project involved six European and six Chinese universities. After 2 years of project implementation, participants were invited to take the online survey and follow-up interview. 92 participants voluntarily took part in the online survey. Of those, 21 participants participated in semi-structured interviews. A mixed-methods approach using an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews was utilised in to evaluate each individual’s behavioral changes. The findings revealed substantial impacts on participants in two major respects: personal growth and professional practices. The research uniquely provides empirical evidence concerning the mid-term impacts of this international leadership development program that has equally emphasized leader development and leadership development. Theoretical, practical, and policy implications were presented.

To heal the planetary community in terms of humans listening to non-humans, it is essential to become aware of the symbiotic bond that interconnects them. Environmental historian Linda Lear, in the introduction to Rachel Carson's book “The Sense of Wonder. A celebration of nature for parents and children” (2017), reminds us that “the child intuitively apprehends the truth that most adults have forgotten – we are all part of the natural world” (p.9). The awareness of being what Clement calls symbiotic man, i.e. the perception of oneself as part of the environment, requires the creation of a virtuous circle: activating the sense of being part of a system of relationships in order to become conscious of one’s symbiosis with the system itself. This circle is the prerequisite for the growth of ecological intelligence (Goleman, 2009), namely the ability to behave for the well-being of ecosystems. These considerations lead to reflect on the importance of promoting teaching practices rooted in the concept of sustainability, defined as the ability to listen to all forms of life, and oriented towards the promotion of planetary citizenship (Bianchi et al., 2022). UNESCO (2022) urges tertiary education to work in interdisciplinary manners in response to complex phenomena such as Plant Blindness, which undermine the achievement of the 2030 Agenda goals (Amprazis, Papadopoulou, 2020). Consequently, the research is characterized by an interdisciplinary ecological framework (Wernli, Darbellay, 2016; Bateson, 2000; Bronfenbrenner, 1986), which places eco-pedagogy (Misisaszek, 2021) and eco-didactics (Strongoli, 2021) in dialogue with anthropology and psychology.

While anthropological inquiries underline the relational structure of our thinking, psychological ones emphasize nature-based interventions – i.e. activities aimed at modifying the living/working environment or changing people's behavior (Shanahan D., et al.,2019). Particularly stimulating is research in higher education aimed at investigating the benefits of actively experiencing indoor green environments (Van de Bogerd et al, 2020). The world of education has the responsibility to investigate the contribution that the plant world, as a pedagogical entity, can offer to the development of such citizenship and, in turn, the contribution that this can offer to the non-human. The research places the university learning environment at the center, investigated as an ecosystem (Niemi, 2021) of teacher-student, human-plant relationships. Its objective is to examine how the formation of indoor educational environments through interaction with plants, which is conveyed by an interdisciplinary (Holley,2017), green, co-constructed curriculum, can foster the development of GreenComp (Bianchi et al,2022).

The main research question is whether is it possible to foster the development of 'GreenComp' in initial teacher education (ITE) students by setting up plant-rich educational environments and by formulating an interdisciplinary green curriculum. Three specific questions stem from this general question.

Q1. How does the presence of plants in tertiary education contexts affect the well-being and place attachment of professors and ITE students?

Q2. How can a model of interdisciplinary green curriculum for higher education focused on the relationship between humans and the plant world be developed participatively?

Q3. How can plant-rich academic teaching spaces and activities facilitate the development of “GreenComp in ITE students?

The hypothesis guiding the research is that educational environments with plants, considered in their dimensions of well-being, place attachment, and interdisciplinary educational and didactic actions, foster the development of GreenComp. These are defined as the ability to identify sustainable values, imagine sustainable futures, embrace complexity in sustainability, and, thus, behave for sustainability. The presence of green classrooms and the establishment of a curriculum, which involve students in active, emotional, embodied, and plant-based learning will mediate the relationship between these skills and the aforementioned concepts

The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between wellbeing and health-related characteristics of preservice teachers and intended behaviour in relation to cultural sensitivity, acceptance of difference, and fairness.

Wellbeing and mental health is a major focus of policy, practice and research in the Education sector worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the wellbeing and mental health of many young people under duress. The European Commission stated at their 2021 Education Summit that “wellbeing must be put at the centre of educational policies” (European Commission, 2021).

Currently, teachers’ roles are expanding to explicitly incorporate support for student mental health and wellbeing, implementation of whole school health and wellbeing initiatives, and responsibility to ensure a culturally safe learning environment. Indeed, intercultural, social and emotional competencies are recognised as essential to the teaching profession. For example, a UNESCO report from The International Commission on the Futures of Education called for a new global social contract in which education is strengthened with a focus on social justice and cultural diversity (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2021). The Global Standards for Health Promoting Schools were launched at a similar time by the World Health Organization and UNESCO, as part of a global movement to make every school a health promoting school through consolidating and clarifying a more than 25-year old vision (WHO & UNESCO, 2021). In Australia, the AITSL standards for graduate teachers include a requirement for teachers to create inclusive spaces that promote student wellbeing and engagement (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2017).

Additionally, teachers' own wellbeing and mental health are becoming a focal point for policy, education research and initial teacher education (ITE). Teachers face high intellectual, emotional, and interpersonal demands as part of their roles. The resulting stress has implications for teacher wellbeing, teacher effectiveness and teacher retention. Therefore, there is also a vital need to focus on the wellbeing and mental health of our preservice teachers and provide them with the tools to support their own mental health and wealth being.

The research draws on the Theory of Planned Behaviour ([TPB] Ajzen, 1991; Fishbein & Ajzen, 2011). The TPB provides a conceptual framework that underscores the relevance of examining the domains of interest to look at predictive intention to behave in ways that are culturally, ethically, and socially appropriate. This study was also informed by the work of Viac and Fraser (2020) on the OECD Teacher Wellbeing for Quality Teaching Project. Their framework illustrates the complexity of examining teachers’ wellbeing and how environment, policy and individual characteristics contribute to teachers’ wellbeing. Teachers’ wellbeing, as outlined in the framework, influences student wellbeing and the classroom, as well as the health of the system overall. For the purposes of this study, wellbeing has been defined as the state of mental and physical health, encompassing positive affect, social connectedness, and cognitive functioning.

This study was conducted using an ITE selection tool that gathers comprehensive information about a candidate’s cognitive ability (such as literacy, numeracy and spatial reasoning), personal characteristics, disposition, social interaction, cultural sensitivity, and self-awareness in relation to being a teaching student and as a future teacher professional (Bowles et al., 2014). The data provides an international perspective given that it has been utilised in four different countries and by prospective preservice teachers around the globe.

Hope is often talked about during a crisis. To believe in hope is to understand that there are parts of human emotions that can radically alter and improve the outcomes for ourselves and many. These parts coalesce and allow us to hope and imagine a better future. During crisis times, such as the last 36 months, leaders need hope to move forward to continue to lead. Although scholars and public rhetoric have pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as the beginning of a global crisis, several crises have plagued the U.S. and international community such as the persistent war in Ukraine, the debacle of the Afghani war, racism, colonization, drought across the Horn of Africa and many others. Amid all of these crises, school leaders are tasked with recovery, providing a schoolhouse that advances educational outcomes. Studies closely exploring the lived experience of the school principals and their practices amid a virulent crisis, however, are rarely represented in the current body of research. Hope plays an integral role in educational and crisis leadership. Smith and Riley (2012) whose groundbreaking framework for crisis leadership in schools posits that one critical element of educational leaders’ response to a crisis is to engender hope. Through hope, they argue, leaders can effectively rally toward recovery, collaboration and restoration. Myrtle (2018) found leader effectiveness is determined by how well the leader responds to the leadership challenge. However, in times of crisis, leaders need a different set of behaviors and dispositions to lead through a crisis (Smith & Riley, 2012; Mutch, 2015; 2020; Author Under Review, 2021). Hope can lead to positive outcomes for leaders. Scholars (Bennis, 1999; Rath & Conchie, 2008) define hope as one of four provisions exemplary leaders exhibit that contributes to achieving positive outcomes. Yet, recent studies have not been conducted which apply hope theory to educational and crisis leadership (Urick et al., 2021; Byrne & Yoon; 2019). Thus, it seems necessary to discuss what I see hope as an affective infrastructure permitting leadership to be expressed beyond a technical or adaptive orientation. Therefore, I center this inquiry on the two following research questions: How do principals manifest hope in their leadership during times of crisis? What is the role of hope in leading through a crisis? This study aims to examine how principals lead through various crises with hope to highlight how hope is a central tenet in school leadership. Specifically, I examined how principals’ deployed hope through a systems thinking approach to respond to a crisis. While existing studies have analyzed principals and how they respond to a crisis, I draw on Snyder’s (2002) conceptualization of hope to understand the manifestations and parts that make up hope. I then apply my findings through a systems thinking lens to construct a model of how principals deployed hope. To describe principals’ leadership through hope, I use a constant comparative approach (Boejie, 2002) to present qualitative data generated with 50 school principals from 2019 – 2022. My intent was not to gather generalizable data, but to provide insights into how principals hope and how that hope influences their leadership. Thus, this paper provides a unique contribution to research on school and crisis leadership by shifting the focus from the technical and operational responses of crisis leadership in schools to a holistic picture of the ways principal navigate crisis, demonstrating a systematic approach to their responses. Finally, I describe how crisis leadership is conceptualized in the international and national settings, providing a whole picture of how scholarship has framed crisis leadership in schools, while omitting hope as part of the conceptualized frames.

Leadership research has looked at what aspects of leadership lead to successful outcomes in the educational, health or corporate contexts (Campos, Aubert, Guo & Joanpere, 2020; Lemmetty & Collin, 2020; Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008). In this vein, educational leadership research has aimed to identify the ways in which leadership is linked with achieving successful outcomes at the school level (Karadağ, Bektaş, Çoğaltay & Yalçın, 2015) and how school leaders can contribute to student achievement through the practices and changes that they implement, which can in turn transform the school culture (Karadağ et al., 2015). So, school leadership that can have transformative outcomes, is of great interest to those seeking to bring about reform in educational practice. However, in recent years, societies worldwide have become more diverse due to increased globalization, and this has called for a leadership approach that embraces greater diversity (Santamaría, 2014).

Within this context, an emerging form of leadership is dialogic leadership which identifies how different members of the community come together and through shared dialogue develop a sustainable leadership practice (Padrós & Flecha, 2014). Dialogic leadership was conceptualized as a result of the success of the INCLUDE-ED project from the 6^th Framework Programme of the European Commission. While aiming to analyze the best educational practices in schools, the project identified the strength of dialogue as its use among community members led to very positive outcomes (Padrós & Flecha, 2014). The role of dialogue in educational leadership was highlighted earlier when it was demonstrated that using a strategy to encourage meaningful dialogue between the board members and staff at a school, led to overall organizational success and achieved positive outcomes for individuals (Deakins, 2007). However, the more recent conceptualization of dialogic practice calls for participation by the whole community in schools, which is achieved by the inclusion of the voices of all members in important processes like decision making (Redondo-Sama, 2015). In the schools taking up this form of leadership, families, teachers, students and volunteers from the community all get involved in supporting the school through active engagement in school activities, which helps the school and also strengthens the neighbourhood (Padrós & Flecha, 2014). Importantly, the dialogic practices in these schools are helping to achieve improvement in academic outcomes (Redondo-Sama, 2015), which has been a foremost objective of educational leadership (Witziers, Bosker & Krüger, 2003).

The dialogic practices support further learning and cognitive development, and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory can be used to understand these as the underlying theoretical framework as proposed by Mercer and Howe (2012). The sociocultural theory emphasizes the importance of interactional dialogue on learning (Mercer & Howe, 2012). Knowledge is constructed through interactions among individuals, so, the schools implementing these strategies are achieving effective results with increased dialogue (Redondo-Sama, 2015). Less is known yet about the role of dialogic leadership in student success, so, the purpose of the current systematic literature review is to review the literature on dialogic leadership. The main aim of the current research is to analyse the development of dialogic leadership practice and contextualize it within the educational leadership research.

Educational institutions are constantly scrutinized concerning their successes or failures in meeting their educational goals. School principals alone are generally unable to cope with the increasing demands within their schools because a single leader does not have all the time, expertise and energy to lead reform (Spillane, 2006). Such challenging circumstances have intensified the need for a collaboration between all members of educational institutions and a distribution of leadership powers within schools. For Harris (2013a, p 12), distributed leadership is a term used to refer to “leadership that is shared within, between and across organizations”. One strand of distributed leadership prevalent in the literature is teacher leadership. Educational institutions are, accordingly, required to extend their sources of change, decision making and influence and incorporate teachers as agents of change in school improvement (Muijs & Harris, 2006). The concept of teacher leadership has, thus, evolved as a paradigm shift in school leadership, from the centralized top-down perspective to a more decentralized and distributed approach to school leadership, giving empowerment to teachers to take on leadership roles (Mangin, 2007). Teacher leadership has been a recurrent theme in educational reforms landscape since the mid-1980s (Murphy, 2005; York-Barr and Duke, 2004) and strong arguments have been provided by scholars advocating its value for students, teachers and schools as a whole. Despite increasing interest in teacher leadership research, consensus on a definition of the concept is still missing in the existing literature. According to Neumerski (2012), lack of consensus in defining teacher leadership is mainly because it “tends to be an umbrella term referring to a myriad of work” (p.320). In a similar way, Cooper, Stanulis, Brondyk, Hamilton, Macaluso and Meier (2016) explained that teacher leaders’ roles vary depending on the research and the school context. Defining teacher leadership is, thus, not an easy task as a number of authors have put forward various competing and overlapping definitions of the concept (Muijs & Harris, 2003). Although many studies have investigated teacher leadership in various contexts, it could be clearly noted that research in this area remains pre-dominantly Western (Nguyen et al, 2019; Wenner & Campbell, 2017), with very few studies conducted in non-western contexts. More specifically, no study of this kind has been conducted in the Algerian context to the best of my knowledge. Given that contexts matter, this study aims to contribute to the existing body of research on teacher leadership by providing a knowledge base of Algerian middle school EFL teachers’ perceptions and reported practices of teacher leadership. This paper, which is part of a more extended doctoral research, is thus, guided by the following research questions:

1. What perceptions do middle school EFL teachers hold regarding teacher leadership?
2. What are middle school EFL teachers’ reported practices of and experiences with teacher leadership?

Teaching in Sweden is undergoing a vocational crisis in terms of facing increasing teacher shortages reflected by low examination rates and increasing teacher attrition rates (Adermon & Laun, 2018). These shortages are particularly evident in elementary-year schooling. Reports by the Swedish National Agency for Education suggested that there will be a shortfall of ~80 000 teachers in 2031 (Skolverket, 2017). This shortfall is driven by demographic factors such as projected increases in the student population; low teacher education examination rates; and a high proportion of teachers nearing retirement-age (European Commission, 2019). Another contributing factor is the inability to retain teachers, illustrated by teachers’ turnover and attrition rates (Ingersoll, 2001).

Why teachers choose to leave their profession has been widely studied in the literature. Individual factors associated with attrition have provided an insight into which teachers are more likely to leave the profession whereas contextual factors have provided an insight into why these teachers choose to leave the profession. The results point to teacher attrition being higher among younger, less experienced teachers who report low levels of self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Borman & Dowling, 2008). Moreover, studies have consistently shown how challenging work environments, characterized by high job demands and low job resources, causes teacher burnout and exhaustion and subsequently contributes to teachers’ intention to leave the profession (Chambers Mack et al., 2019). In contrast to what makes teachers want to leave the profession, less focus has been placed on understanding the vast majority of teachers who choose to remain in the profession despite being subjected to the same occupational challenges (Sell, 2019). Refocusing the attention towards what can help teachers stay in the profession can provide valuable information about nuanced organizational practices that can safeguard teachers work-related health and facilitate teacher retention. This is important as better teacher retention can contribute towards addressing teacher shortages in Sweden (Lindqvist & Nordänger, 2016). Studies in the teacher retention literature have attempted to identify factors that can facilitate teachers’ willingness to remain in the profession. Some studies have indicated that contextual factors can facilitate teacher retention by providing teachers with a more advantageous work environment, characterized by horizontal and vertical support processes, that buffers against teachers’ job demands and poor work-related health outcomes (McCarthy, Lambert, & Reiser, 2014).

The study that will be presented at the conference is part of a doctoral research project and aims to contribute to the teacher retention literature by exploring factors that are associated with teachers’ intention to remain in the profession in Sweden. By doing so, this study aims to provide an insight into protective aspects of teachers’ psycho-social work environment that can facilitate teacher retention.

This is a part of a PhD project in science education and this paper is structured around a concept, created by the author, inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law, 2004; Mol, 1999) with an ambition to try to investigate how nature and preschool are assembled together in various preschool practices. In this paper I would like to discuss how this concept of preschool-naturing could be theoretical and methodological useful when understanding nature’s role in preschool practices in the time of the Anthropocene.

In this study the notion of the Anthropocene, originally a suggested name of a geological time period to mark humans’ substantial impact on planet earth (Crutzen, 2006; Steffen et al., 2007), is used as an underpinning to stress the need for studies concerning human/nature relations. Gilbert (2016) argues that in these peculiar times of the Anthropocene we need to find the “blind spots” of science education and acknowledge previously unacknowledged assumptions. One of these unacknowledged assumptions in science education is the fondness of “entities” and Gilbert (2016) argues that we need to ask different questions to be able to deal with this: “How are science, society, and education inter-connected? How do they depend on each other? How do they influence each other? How do they construct each other? How do they talk to each other?” (s.18). These questions with the ambition to disrupt clear cut entities and with a focus on how, is in line with the ambition of this PhD project. Here the aim is to trace the complexity of how ”nature” and natures role in preschool is done together with preschool practice by also taking an interest in power aspects involved in these enactments.

In Sweden “nature” can be seen as a part of preschools aim and practice in several ways. This is stemming from a long tradition of connecting children to nature through natural environments but also as a part of the educational system, articulated in the curricula connected to science education, sustainable development, health and wellbeing (Halldén, 2011; National Agency of Education, 2018). In a hybrid understanding of the world where everything is nature and culture, also constantly connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting, this is a try to use a concept for investigating taken for granted assumptions concerning nature and preschool. According to Fenwick and Edwards (2010) ANT can offer a different way to approach education and help us to better understand the complexity of everyday practice that often is overlooked. Preschool practices can be understood as actor-networks where humans and other-than human actors are connected in assemblages that are not symmetrical but draw on different certainties, already established. To stabilize themselves, actor-networks use relatively already stabilized networks, for instance materials or discursive resources (Nespor, 2011). Mol (1999) discusses how decisions can be made invisible by pushing them into places out of sight making them appear as if they are not decisions, but facts. This makes it interesting to understand where these facts, concerning preschool and nature, are made, and which places and actors are involved. These decisions are not only intellectually made but occurs in practice involving both human and other-than-human actors. This is a practical and necessary stabilization of the actor-network that enable practicians to handle reality but it is relevant, to try to understand where decisions are made since they often are taken for granted as facts when they rather could be reconstructed into other understandings of reality (Mol, 1999). Can the concept of preschool-naturing be helpful to make visible natures complex role in preschool practices and acknowledge unattended assumptions concerning nature and preschool?

Ulrich (2018: 75) points out that inclusion – in a pedagogical definition – dodges the aspiration of formalization that organisations process. Instead, it remains in the undefined which refers to the unavailability of the mental systems and attitudes of the organisational members (cf. ibid.: 74). This indirectly describes an empirical research program that is dedicated to the question of what exactly happens when organisations (such as schools) work inclusively – or claim to do so. More precisely – in terms of the level of pedagogical interaction following the systems theory sensu Luhmann (2002) – it would be to speak of an underdetermination: the decisions made at the organisational level tend to take on a form that contours the operational level (e.g., the classroom interaction) but does not determine it extensively (cf. Kuper 2008: 153). In this sense, organisations specify the rather diffuse expectations on the part of society and translate them into concrete programs (e.g., via curricula, timetables, cf. ibid.) or prevent them from being overwhelmed – as not all decisions can be made in the classroom itself (cf. Luhmann 2002: 121). On the other hand, freedom is created for professionalised actions, which cannot be oriented towards rules, since it always must deal with individualised clients (cf. Stichweh 1996: 60).

In this view, there is drawn a complex relationship between the interconnection and disconnection. Subsequently, research questions should not only focus on the orientations and practices of teachers, but also on the organisational structural condition for the interaction (cf. Bohnsack 2017: 135). In this context, Bohnsack – following Luhmann (2000: 222ff.) – describes it as a characteristic of organised social systems that they are based on decisions enabling further decisions. Consequently, interactions within organisations differ categorically from those outside since the latter do not know such (decision-based) frameworks (cf. Bohnsack 2017: 135). In this respect, the praxeological sociology of knowledge speaks of a constituting framing since it is of constitutive importance for organisations (cf. ibid.).

The question of how the specific framing is contoured can function as a 'yardstick' of professionalised action, because it focuses on the necessary processing of the demands on the part of the organisation as well as on the part of the interactions with the clients (cf. Bohnsack 2020: 109). Bohnsack thus addresses a tension that has already been raised in existing theories of professionalised action (cf. Oevermann 1996) but outlines it differently – especially regarding the question of how the individualised clients (Stichweh 1996: 60) are thought. The present contribution wants to use this framework within an empirical study.

Decades of previous research has addressed the need for changes in physical education where embodied experiences and learning are emphasized (Wrench and Garrett 2015; Wright 2000). Accordingly, we align with the ongoing call for a ‘corporeal turn’ (Smith 2007, 66) in physical education, towards a more holistic understanding of learning and experience as embodied and emplaced (Pink 2011).

The concept of embodiment has roots in phenomenological philosophy. As such, understanding the body as the ground of subjective experiences (Standal 2020) deconstructs the notion of a mind/body divide. We come to know ‘in relation to the other elements of the environment’ (Pink 2011, 348, italics in orginal). Viewing learning as embodied and emplaced means that learning is a social activity, situated in the relationships between persons and with the environment around us, and that learning has tacit dimensions (Polanyi 1983) which cannot easily be put into words.

Physical education is a social arena where most experiences are characterized by the social aspect of collaboration and group activities. Relationships with peers form an integral part of pupils’ experiences in physical education (Wellard 2013). Previous research has shown the importance of friendship and social support in school physical activity, e.g., greater enjoyment when participating with friends (Owen et al. 2019), and feelings of a sense of belonging and a positive affective climate made pupils enjoy and value the physical activity more (Wright and Li 2009). In this study, I expand these existing contributions by exploring friendships in physical education by making use of data from a sensory ethnographic fieldwork. The research question for this presentation is “How do social relationships influence pupils’ embodied and emplaced experiences in physical education?”

Theories of embodied affect will be used to interpret the findings. Embodied affectivity can be described as the bodily resonance (sensations, postures, expressive movements, or movement tendencies) to affective qualities or affordances in the environment (Fuchs and Koch, 2014). Building on phenomenological theories of embodiment, emplacement and intersubjectivity, where the body is both subject and object at the same time (Merleau-Ponty 2010), and we constantly interact with our environment, we can talk about interaffectivity, where we continuously move and are being moved by others (Fuchs and Koch 2014). A greater focus on the affective perspectives in educational research have resulted in a call for an ‘affective turn’ when it comes to how we understand teaching and learning (Garrett 2022; Dernikos et al. 2020) and thus development of pedagogies of affect (e.g., (Kirk 2020; Ingulfsvann, Moe, and Engelsrud 2020).

The study carried out by WHO (2018) indicates that 23% of adults and 81% of teenagers do not follow the global recommendations in terms of physical activity (PA). It is recommended to engage in 150-300’ of moderate aerobic activity per week for all adults, and 60’ of moderate aerobic daily for teens and children. In this sense, we must value the importance of Physical Education (PE) when it comes to instilling healthy lifestyle habits, considering aspects as motivation and enjoyment to promote the development of physically active citizens (Trigueros-Ramos et al., 2019; De Vargas et al., 2020). In addition, it must be considered that there is a relationship between rewarding experiences in PE sessions and affinity towards them (Aibar et al., 2015). Likewise, part of the students who practice PA after school continuously have a greater interest and affinity for PE, yet it provides positive attitudes towards sports practice. This fact is highlighted by the differences between gender in the sport practice, where is needed to seek equity in practice to avoid stereotypes and sedentary lifestyles (Gutiérrez, 2017).

PE faces many challenges due to constant concern for the quality of education and the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods, pointing out that student achievement depends on the teachers’ techniques (Herrera and Almonacid, 2019). The methodology nowadays present 5 blocks of content that form the PE curriculum: I. Physical conditioning and health; II Games and Sports (collective, individual, and traditional sports); III Natural Environment; IV Body Expression and Comunication; V Transveral Elements. All these blocks possess great importance into the development of the PE curriculum, teacher training and everything related to the methodology used in the sessions. Thus, the attitudes, interests and motivations of the students must also be taken into account, in order to provide appropriate spaces and didactic materials. Therefore, one of the key links in this chain is the PE teacher, defining himself as an active, responsible person, with a high self-concept and intrinsic motivation, high initiative, and the ability to adapt, innovate, communicate, and make decisions (Benítez et al., 2017).

It should be noted that during the last two decades there has been a massive emergence of innovative proposals in the PE area, which, depending on their application will significantly affect the way of understanding education. These programmes might influence the approach of the E-A processes, the development of the practice, the typical structure of the sessions, the methodology, the evaluation, and attention to diversity, among others (Pastor and Fernández, 2010; Pastor et al., 2016). These can mean progress towards what we consider to be the key challenges in education, and should respond positively to the following questions:

Can our students transfer the learning they acquire at PE to their daily life, during and after school time? Are the learning and knowledge that we currently generate in PE authentic, and do they have a connection to real life? And does PE currently contribute to the social transformation the school? (Pastor et al., 2016, p. 185).

There are several studies that cover the quality of the PE teacher in their classes, specifically, is analysed the opinion of the secondary school students (García et al., 2015). However, no scientific evidence was found over students’ perception once that period was finished and the role that PE and their teacher had in their adherence to sports practice.

The aim of the study was to analyse the perception of first-year university students over their PE teachers from Secondary School, as well as its influence on adherence to sports practice of the student, according to the gender.

In recent years, education is no longer understood as a simple transmission of knowledge. Nor is it identified exclusively with learning certain essential skills such as communication, writing, etc. There is a global academic consensus where education is understood from a holistic perspective that encompasses all dimensions of the human person. Following a neo-Aristotelian perspective, education must reach the essence of the acting person on being, and not exclusively on knowing or doing. If not, otherwise it would be a superfluous or incomplete education. Let us give an example for your better understanding. In the case of educating in justice, education would not consist of knowing what justice is, nor knowing how to carry out acts of justice, but would consist of being fair (Aristotle, 2003). Knowing and doing can only be understood as previous steps of the ladder.

James Arthur defines character as a set of abilities that guides a person’s usual way of behaving (2019), that’s to say, his way of being. The way someone behaves is how he is, and it is reflection of his character. For example, one person is considered cheerful when he usually smiles, and as a consequence, he’s said to have a cheerful character. Therefore, it can be deduced that educating character makes impact in what me mean as real educaction, the way of being, and and hence the importance of character education in order to achieve a comprehensive holistic education.

Character is a set of virtues that a person acquires, which enables him to do good and be good (Kristjanson, 2019), and, character education is the process in which young people know and do the good (Jubilee Centre for the Character and Virtues, 2017).

Sport is widely considered as an ideal practice for the person’s character development (Rudd, 2005). There are numerous colloquial expressions that we can find in which sport is positively related to the character and virtudes development: “sport forges character”, “sport is a virtues’ school”, etc. However, how much of the previously said is based on scientific evidence? Is sport really a medium to achieve character education?

In fact the discussion about the influence of the sport practice on the person’s character is completely open (Giroux 2020; Kirk, 2018). Although it seems true that physical education correlates especially with the development of the performative virtues (Likona, 2009; Shields, 2011), the knowledge is more diffuse in the rest of the character’s dimensions: intellectual, moral and civic (Baehr, 2013; Lickona, 2009).

From a theoretical point of view, sport gathers the necessary characteristics to think that educational sport and physical education can positively impact on the character development (Brunsdon & Walker, 2021; Weiss & Bredemeier, 1990), but it’s actually that way in the practical standpoint?

In the present project we will do a systematic review of the experimental programmes about character education taught in the subject of physical education in order to shedd more light about the relationship between physical education and character education. We will stand out the different proposals, methodologies, programmes implemented in schools, as well as the main investigated virtues in the physical education area.