Conference Agenda

This proposal draws upon thinking that has grown out of a research project in Ukraine that examines the views of the parents of disabled children in a time of conflict. Over 400 parents, from all 25 oblasts (regions) of Ukraine, responded to a request from Disability Rights International to share their lived experiences of caring for a disabled child.

For context, in recent years, the Ukrainian government has committed to transforming the national care system for children, as outlined in The National Strategy of Reforming the System of Institutional Care and Upbringing of Children (2017-2026), in line with the requirements associated with the EU Aquis Communautaire This requires practices in accordance with, amongst others, the guiding legal framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the United Nations Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, and, for children with disabilities, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

In 2022, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published guidelines on Deinstitutionalization, including in Emergencies, which noted that:

“Institutionalization is a discriminatory practice against persons with disabilities, contrary to article 5 of the Convention. It involves de facto denial of the legal capacity of persons with disabilities, in breach of article 12. It constitutes detention and deprivation of liberty based on impairment, contrary to article 14. States parties should recognize institutionalization as a form of violence against persons with disabilities. It exposes persons with disabilities to forced medical intervention with psychotropic medications, such as sedatives, mood stabilizers, electro-convulsive treatment, and conversion therapy, infringing articles 15, 16 and 17. It exposes persons with disabilities to the administration of drugs and other interventions without their free, prior and informed consent, in violation of articles 15 and 25” (2022, p.5).

These guidelines, taken alongside the research undertaken in Ukraine, raised a number of points for discussion about practices in the UK, and possibly other national contexts in the EU.

In the first, an analysis is needed about the adoption and use of terms such as “discriminatory practice”, “detention and deprivation of liberty based on impairment”, “forced medical intervention” and “the administration of drugs and other interventions without their free, prior and informed consent”.

Secondly, consideration is needed about the use of the term ’institutionalisation’. Eurochild describe an institution for children being “any residential setting where ‘institutional culture’ prevails” (2021, p.5), and goes on to identify three aspects of institutional cultures:

a) Children are isolated from the wider community and obliged to live together.

b) Children and their parents do not have sufficient control over their lives and over decisions that affect them.

c) Children are separated from their families and familiar surroundings, which leads to a loss of their sense of identity. Long distances between children’s placements and their immediate families, as well as unaffordable transport costs compound the issue of segregation (2021, p. 6).

Thirdly, consideration is needed surrounding differences between the use of ‘institution’, ‘institutional cultures’, and ‘institutionalisation/institutionalised’, and the value judgements that are entrenched within those usages, by asking whether practices within a setting define the usage, or whether the term defines the practices.

In response, the objective of this paper is to turn a light on practices in the UK that, by these definitions, might be seen to violate a number of articles in the UNCRPD. These include practices such as prolonged periods of isolation for young people with autism, placement in children’s homes located at considerable distances from the family environment, and legally acknowledged practices that do not meet any definition of a basic duty of care.

Western institutions constantly seek to internationalize favour enrolling Chinese International students for the economic, diplomatic, and intercultural benefits they bring to host institutions and communities (Volet & Ang 2012) and are increasingly faced with the challenges of dealing with the diversity in tertiary classrooms. Scholars claim that Western Higher Education institutions are not doing enough in understanding the international student experience and the nuances of Chinese learning practices, consequently, not innovating their services sufficiently to respond to their needs and concerns (Summers & Volet, 2008). Chinese international students reported the lowest levels of satisfaction and experienced a higher level of discrimination by teachers, university staff, and classmates compared with European peers (Glass, Kociolek, Wongtrirat, Lynch, & Cong, 2015); experience academic stress (Heng, 2019) and struggle to adjust to the Western learning environment and to make a successful transition from the Chinese education system and pedagogical practices to Western tertiary classrooms. Western teachers may encounter difficulties when addressing Chinese international students’ learning needs and concerns.

Most research on Chinese international students’ experience tends to hold a view of homogeneity, overgeneralization and otherization of this group (Hanassab, 2006). As a result, Chinese students are categorised as rote learners (Watkins & Biggs, 1996), passive learners with “lacks” or “deficits” and a “problematic” group (Tan, 2011). Not surprisingly, how to include Chinese International students in teaching by focusing on specifics of pedagogy or curriculum and embracing the diversity in Western tertiary classrooms become urgent for institutions, such are the challenges to face but also opportunities to create for both academics and international students (Claiborne & Balakrishnan 2020).

The Confucian tradition has been embedded in Chinese culture for around 2,500 years and influences most aspects of Chinese culture, including the education system (Watkins & Biggs, 1996). Traditional Chinese education is described as “teacher-centred,” “classroom-centred,” and “textbook-centred” and the acquisition and transmission models are often adopted in teaching. In contrast, Western culture often promotes collaborative-based constructivism and fosters critical thinking skills in educational approaches and teaching practices (Kang & Chang, 2016). Asking questions and challenging teachers and peers are seen as signs of deep learning, which leads to group construction of knowledge. In western classrooms, transmission-based, participative, and constructivist models of learning coexist (Prosser & Trigwell, 2014); tensions and contradictions exist between the process of massification and its effects, and the pedagogical requirements for quality control.

There is no simple answer to the complexity of teaching Chinese students in a Western tertiary classroom. Thus, exploring different pedagogical practices and activities and moving beyond a fixed view of pedagogical concepts becomes meaningful in HE (Löytönen, 2017). Yet, a review of the literature shows that a practice-based approach has not been used in this area of study. Through a practice lens, this project aims to investigate what pedagogical practices and institutional arrangements can promote Chinese international students’ engagement to improve their learning experience in the West. By adopting a practice-based approach, this paper disputes the oversimplification and extends existing knowledge of Chinese international students learning to investigate what doings, sayings and relatings (Schatzki, 2019) are in their learning and how western teachers could have a better understanding of their learning practices and what practices they have learned in China continue using in the Western learning environment.

Although a vast majority of teachers in Sweden strive for equal conditions for their students and want to counteract racism (Nilsson Mohammadi, 2021), there are many studies showing that racism occurs among teachers in Swedish schools, both in the form of racist acts towards individual students and as institutional and structural racism (Behtoui et al., 2019). The presence of racism in schools is a problem that is highly relevant in other countries as well (Araújo, 2016; Crutchfield et al., 2020; Kennelly & Mouroutsou, 2020).

Superficial understandings of diversity risk confirming differences due power hierarchies of recognition that tend to split and categorize human characteristics and behaviors, attributing class, race, gender, and sexuality to them (Layton, 2008). Confirming these differences, or normative splits and categorizations, would reinforce social injustices and hinder inclusive education and equal opportunities for students from marginalized groups. Hence, there is a need for active investigations of categorizations linked to social power hierarchies and heightened awareness of normative processes that shape our understandings of ourselves and others.

The aim om this paper is to discuss, with a wider research network with similar research focus, the methodological nature of and the analytic procedures for investigations of teachers’ categorizations linked to social power hierarchies. I would like to discuss action research stance in the planned partnership between me, a former school psychologist and doctoral student, and secondary school teachers for exploring ways of bridging the gap between teachers ambitions to counter racism and the parts of their practice that facilitates the reproduction of racial power hierarchies. By combining postcolonial and psychoanalytic perspectives on subjectivity we will collaborate and actively investigate categorizations and explore deracialization practices. With deracialization practices I mean actions that counteract effects of racism (not to be confused with processes where someone starts to pass as “white”).

Teachers to a high degree avoid touching on controversial topics and often act with silence on racist comments in the classroom. Their intention is neutrality but their actions have a normalizing effect on racism (Rosvall & Öhrn, 2014). The avoidance could also be described as a cases of strategic color blindness (Apfelbaum et al., 2008) or “white” teachers’ inability to recognize and deconstruct racist acts (Sue, 2013).

Racism as a phenomenon is often reduced to only the open racist expressions of certain individuals and many students' experiences of racism therefore fall outside the scope (León Rosales & Jonsson, 2019). Simultaneously with this narrow definition, expressions of racism have since the 1960s, increasingly shifted from open forms to more subtle and hidden, in Sweden (Akrami et al., 2000) as well as elsewhere (McConahay et al., 1981; Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995). If left without further investigations these more subtle and hidden forms of racism will continue to create inequality and hinder diversity to thrive (Bell, 2002; Benson & Fiarman, 2019).

Issues regarding inclusion, diversity and racialization are complex and multifaceted. Teachers often must balance between different competing principles in their practice. Lee Shulman (1986) suggests the term strategic knowledge, which arises solving situations when two principles are in contradiction to each other. The solutions involve showing judgement and require both theoretical and practical knowledge (Shulman, 1986). An actions research stance regarding schoolteachers’ understandings of, their attempts at changing their practice against racism and following reflections on these attempts will target both their theoretical and practical knowledge. This should therefor contribute to the advancement of teachers’ strategic knowledge and their deracialization practices.